Adam Silver Stance
There’s one commissioner that understands sports gambling isn’t going anywhere; Adam Silver. Unlike some of the old boys network that lives in the stone ages with taboo attached to sports betting, Silver understands a legalized and regulated betting market only helps the integrity of the sport. Yesterday he shared his thoughts with ESPN on the topic.
Here’s a brief transcript of that conversation courtesy of an American Gaming Association press release sent out earlier today.
ESPN: “Of all the commissioners in the four major professional sports, you have been the most outspoken when it comes to gambling. There’s a lot of other leagues that are very skittish on that particular issue. Why do you think you’ve been so bold about talking about what generally is – whether people want to admit or not – a huge part of why people watch sports?”
ADAM SILVER: “I can’t speak for the other leagues. I’d only say in my case…my many years in the NBA and I used to run NBA Entertainment and we do a lot of business internationally where sports gambling is legal and because the NBA is well known outside the United States there’s a lot of legal betting on the NBA going on just like there is in Nevada in the United States. And for me as I began to study the issue, I realized that there’s this enormous – measured in the hundreds of billions of dollars – underground betting market in the United States.
And ultimately my job as Commissioner is to protect the integrity of the game. Just like the stock market with insider trading, if you don’t have an open exchange you can’t know what insider trading is going on and to me when there’s an enormous amount of betting; it’s all underground; we have no idea what’s going on and there’s no transparency to the league and you have no sense what’s happening. Now, don’t get me wrong, we have a lot of ways to monitor activity out there, but for me if all that betting is going on anyway, I think it should be legal; I think it should be regulated; it should be transparent to the league and ultimately, it’s our intellectual property as well.
And there’s also a business issue there as well, just as you said, I recognize through sports betting comes engagement and the other thing, of course there are problem gamblers and we have to watch out for them. But when people are putting in their credit cards and can be monitored, you can also stop and track if a person has a problem. So, I think it’s good for the integrity of the game; I think it’s good for business and I think when done within certain limits, it’s an appropriate form of entertainment and engagement for people in this country and they do it now in a widespread way; they do it in small pockets legally and largely illegally.”
