The Canadian Football League (CFL) has announced that it is indefinitely suspending Lemon, who played for three Grey Cup winners during his career. Lemon, who hails from South Carolina, unexpectedly announced his retirement on Apr. 10, which coincides with the time the league was investigating.
The CFL suspension comes a week after the NBA banned Toronto Raptor JonTay Potter for sharing confidential information and betting on the league. The Ottawa Senators’ Shane Pinto was also suspended for 41 games for violating league betting rules.
The league found “clear and irrefutable evidence” that Lemon violated league policy, according to a CFL press release, but said there were no signs of match fixing.
Integrity of the “most important” game
The CFL found Lemon betting on league games, including the ones he played in 2021. Lemon, then a defensive lineman, played for the Calgary Stampede. Single-event sports betting became legal in August 2021, but does not reside in Canada. The first and only state to ever operate is Ontario on April 4, 2022.
“The integrity of our game is paramount,” CFL Commissioner Randy Ambrosi said in a statement. “Other factors, such as career performance, behavior in the community, timing, number or size of bets, have no impact when you can question the legitimacy of CFL.
“It is our responsibility as a league to investigate and address these ideals and it is our shared duty with our teams and players to ensure that sports betting does not affect the quality or status of the CFL.” 온라인카지노사이트
When Lemon made a bet, it wasn’t legal in Canada
Lemon played for eight CFL teams during his career, and was an All-Star in 2022. He played college football for Akron, where he was in the mid-American All-Star selection as a senior.
Lemon played for the Montreal Alouettes last season. The team beat the Winnipeg Blue Bombers to win the Gray Cup. Lemon also won the Gray Cup with Toronto Argonauts (2017) and the Calgary Stampers (2014).
The CFL did not say which platform Lemon was betting on or where he was when he made the bet. But at the time Lemon was betting, single-event betting was legal in Canada, but it was not available anywhere in the legal market. There were gray market operators offering sports betting at the time.
The suspension is the first for the CFL, but it is the 11th North American professional footballer to be banned since sports betting became a state rights issue in the U.S. in 2018 and became legal in Canada in 2021. Last summer, the NFL suspended 10 players for betting, and in the final week, it returned six players, including Isaiah Rogers of the Philadelphia Eagles.