NBA commissioner Adam Silver wrote an opinion piece for The New York Times on Thursday in which he advocated for the legalization and regulation of sports betting in America.
Silver’s op-ed comes a few days after the league announced a partnership with FanDuel to become its official daily fantasy basketball game. FanDuel is not allowed in five states because of the nature of its online game business, but the NBA’s new stance is to recognize and attempt to legalize and organize the kind of gaming its fans are doing.
Here is the type of regulation Silver would like to see:
Congress should adopt a federal framework that allows states to authorize betting on professional sports, subject to strict regulatory requirements and technological safeguards.
These requirements would include: mandatory monitoring and reporting of unusual betting-line movements; a licensing protocol to ensure betting operators are legitimate; minimum-age verification measures; geo-blocking technology to ensure betting is available only where it is legal; mechanisms to identify and exclude people with gambling problems; and education about responsible gaming.
[…]
But I believe that sports betting should be brought out of the underground and into the sunlight where it can be appropriately monitored and regulated.
Nevada is the only state where sports betting is legalized, and that is a big reason why it does not have an MLB, NBA, NFL or NBA team.
The NBA is the first major league to express an interest in supporting or legalizing sports gambling. Many professional teams have casinos or state lotteries as sponsors, so it’s not like they’re not sending an anti-gambling message; it’s that they are queasy about encouraging betting on their sports because of integrity reasons. Baseball is especially fearful of any ties to gambling because of its history of corruption going back to the 1919 World Series.
Though the NBA may support legalizing sports gambling, many other leagues likely will not.
As much as I know sports betting occurs, I’m not sure I support it becoming legalized. I really do think we are protecting ourselves by keeping it illegal. Sports betting is addictive and can result in serious financial problems, which can lead to much worse.
