Although the NFL may one day have a franchise in London, it won’t be the Los Angeles Chargers. Team owner Dean Spanos denied a report that the team is interested in moving across the Pond with an expletive-deleted remark, emphasizing that LA is the team’s home and will be for a long time. The NFL issued the following statement in response to the report in The Athletic: “No consideration has been given to the Chargers playing anywhere other than Los Angeles at the new stadium in Hollywood Park next season and beyond. There have been no discussions of any kind between the NFL and the Chargers regarding moving to London. Both our office and the Chargers are entirely focused on the success of the team in Los Angeles.” The Chargers currently play their home games in Carson, Calif. at Dignity Health Sports Complex, the 27,000-seat soccer stadium home to Major League Soccer’s LA Galaxy. The team is scheduled to move into SoFi Stadium in Inglewood, where the Los Angeles Rams will also play, when the venue opens next season.
NBC Sports is bulking up its sports-betting push with a weekly batch of Washington Wizards predictive games. Beginning Nov. 6 at 7 p. when the team travels to meet the Indiana Pacers, NBC Sports Washington Plus will air 20 Predict The Game contests. The Wizards telecasts on the overflow channel will feature most of the video and audio that will be found on NBC Sports Washington’s primary game presentations, but will also integrate dedicated hosts, who will appear intermittently to provide predictive participants with contest updates, information and results. The free contest gives fans a chance to predict various game and player performance outcomes during the live Wizards games. The leading predictive scorer at the end of each quarter will earn or share a $500 prize, before a new contest tips with each subsequent quarter, affording predictive player four contests and $2,000 in prizes per game. This marks the first time that an NBC RSN is providing predictive-gaming presentations throughout a full season. Last year, the overflow NBC Sports Washington channel aired alternative sports-betting-oriented and predictive telecasts around eight Wizards contests and four preseason games for the NFL’s Washington Redskins. For its part, NBC Sports Philadelphia also aired a number of similar telecast with the 76ers last year.
On a national basis, free gaming app NBC Sports Predictor has served up predictive contests around Premier League soccer, the PGA, NASCAR and the NFL, with players also getting a chance to win cash prizes around correct answers tied to the events.
