NEW YORK — “Betting on professional sports is currently illegal in most of the United States, except Nevada. I think we need a different approach.”
The 10th subsequent post by NBA Commissioner Adam Silver writing those two sentences is important because those words were part of a movement that changed the field of sports and took a bet on games, something debatable for many years – mainstream.
Those two sentences were the beginning of an op-ed byline by Silver in The Brandnew York Times, which was first published on the newspaper’s website on November 13, 2014 and in the print version, see the time. He wrote the piece himself, not even sure when he started where he was going.
The headline, “Legalize and Regulate Sports Betting,” represented a seismic shift from the NBA’s previous position on the issue. Silver said he was simply looking to start a conversation. A decade then, the NBA has more than two business relationships with gaming companies.
The perception that sports have a stake is no longer just a dialogue. It’s a phenomenon.
“I would say that when it comes to sports betting, I certainly don’t regret writing that op-ed and being in favor of legalized sports betting,” Silver mentioned. “I still think you can’t turn back the clock. I think, as I said at the time, with the advent of the Internet, widely available online sports betting… that we had to deal directly with the technology and recognize that if we didn’t legalize sports betting, people will find ways to do it illegally.
Silver’s op-ed didn’t change having a betting field on its own, but it sure helped get things going. At first the ball did not move at any time; Nearly four years later, as I wrote the op-ed, the U.S. Supreme Court passed a federal law banning the playing of sports in most states and gave them the green light to legalize betting.
That law, the Professional and Novice Sports Coverage Feature, had been in effect since 1992 and prohibited the playing of state-sanctioned sports with some exceptions. It made Nevada the only state where a person can bet on the outcome of a single game.
In the first four years after PASPA hit I’m Sick, American citizens legally bet $125 billion on video games.
“I was in favor of a federal framework for sports betting and I still am,” Silver mentioned. “I still think the state-by-state hodgepodge makes it harder for the league to manage. I think it creates competition, understandably, between the states to get…just think of New York, New Jersey or a situation like that. where They are both competing for the same customer, so they can compete on tax rates and other things and a regulatory framework.
“I think the disadvantages of betting on sports certainly exist, and I think we need to pay close attention to that. I think where we’re hearing it in more than one section, we certainly look at incidents where underage countries have a bet. We need to pay close attention to that, which is probably happening on school campuses, where countries undoubtedly have a bet on their heads.”
And, as the league was reminded last season, within the NBA as well.
In April, Silver banned Toronto Raptors player Jontay Porter from the NBA after a league investigation found he revealed confidential information to sports bettors and bet on games, including betting on the Raptors to lose.
Silver called Porter’s actions “flagrant” and “a cardinal sin.”
The investigation into Porter’s actions began once the league learned from “approved sports betting operators and a company that displays prison betting markets” about unusual playing patterns surrounding Porter’s performance in a game on Sept. 20. March against the Sacramento Kings. The league discovered that Porter gave a bettor information about his health status before that game and said another individual, known to be an NBA bettor, placed an $80,000 bet that Porter would not reach the numbers set for him. in parlays through an online sportsbook. That bet would have won $1.1 million.
Porter withdrew from that game after less than three minutes, citing illness, and none of his statistics met the totals set on the parlay. The $80,000 bet was frozen and unpaid, the league said, and the NBA launched an investigation soon after.
“We take this very seriously,” Silver said. “As I mentioned in the first hour, it’s not a huge trade for us in terms of a wave of revenue in the league, but it’s a big staying commitment. It’s something that nation is obviously experimenting with doing. I would say it’s in the division of other problems in the population that I would not criminalize, but on the other hand they must be closely controlled because if there are no security barriers, the country will enter into conflict and develop problems, problems for themselves, probably for their homes or for themselves. operations like ours.
