The marquee game between the NFL’s Buffalo Bills and Cincinnati Bengals looks increasingly likely to be canceled in the wake of Bills safety Damar Hamlin going into cardiac arrest.
(Bloomberg) — The marquee game between the NFL’s Buffalo Bills and Cincinnati Bengals looks increasingly likely to be canceled in the wake of Bills safety Damar Hamlin going into cardiac arrest.
Monday’s postponed game, which featured the Bills, the top team in the AFC East, and the AFC North-leading Bengals won’t resume this week and no decision has been made about whether it’ll happen at all, the NFL said Tuesday in a statement. Next week’s slate of games — the last before the playoffs — hasn’t changed.
Balancing players’ potential trauma from witnessing a catastrophic injury with the demands of rigorous scheduling poses an unprecedented challenge for the NFL, the most-watched US sports league. ESPN, owned by Walt Disney Co., and other broadcasters pay billions of dollars each year for rights to show the games on TV and streaming services.
DraftKings, FanDuel and other sportsbooks said Tuesday that they would void wagers on the Bills-Bengals matchup that hadn’t been determined prior to the game being suspended. Sports betting became legal in Ohio on Jan. 1.
The Bills are scheduled to play the New England Patriots on Sunday, while the Bengals are set to host the Baltimore Ravens. Both teams have clinched berths in the playoffs, which begin with Wild Card games on Jan. 14.
NFL players typically get at least four days of rest between games. If that criterion holds, it’s difficult to see how the league could squeeze in the contest.
But scrapping the game entirely poses its own set of headaches. The Bills (12-3) are vying for the No. 1 seed in the AFC with the Kansas City Chiefs, with Buffalo holding the tiebreaker from its October win.
It’s unclear what will happen if the game isn’t rescheduled. When TV networks don’t deliver the audiences they promised advertisers, they typically make it up to them in the form of “make goods,” or free commercial time during their other programming.
The league said Commissioner Roger Goodell had spoken with representatives from both teams and the NFL Players Association leadership.
Hamlin spent Monday night in an intensive care unit at the University of Cincinnati Medical Center and remains listed in critical condition, the Bills said in a tweet.
–With assistance from Gerry Smith.
(Updates with sportsbooks in fourth paragraph, advertisers in eighth.)
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