The National Football League has stepped up its attack on online gambling by hiring a full-time Washington-based lobbyist to pressure U.S. lawmakers on its behalf.

Jeff Miller, formerly a senior aide to Wisconsin Democrat Senator Herb Kohl, was hired to work as an in-house lobbyist at the league's new Washington office. The NFL has also set up a political action committee to make federal campaign contributions to increase its influence in the capital.

The NFL's opposition to online gambling is well-known and the issue will be at the top of Miller's agenda when he begins his job. The league wants to protect the current ban on Internet gambling under the 2006 Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act (UIGEA), which effectively banned Internet gambling by outlawing the transfer of funds from a financial institution to Internet gambling sites.

Miller was quoted by news agencies as saying that "We want to maintain the integrity of the game, and gambling threatens that."

In the US, betting on the National Football League is just as popular as the games themselves. Nevada bookmakers alone took in $81.5 million in bets on Super Bowl XLIII in January, despite the slight drop on previous years as a result of the financial crisis.