In November 2014, long before sports gambling legalization had reached mainstream public appeal, NBA commissioner Adam Silver wrote two of the most controversial sentences uttered by a Big Four Sports leader.
“Betting on professional sports is currently illegal in most of the United States outside of Nevada,” Silver, then just under a calendar year removed from assuming the NBA’s highest office, wrote for the New York Times. “I believe we need a different approach.”
Now, a decade on and the world of legal sports betting more robust than ever -- thanks in part undoubtedly to Silver’s different tone to his predecessors and contemporaries -- Silver has had no second thoughts on his stance, even as sports across the globe have increasingly seen their games influenced by players and staff illegally betting, including the NBA.
“I'd say when it comes to sports betting, I certainly don't regret writing that op-ed piece and being in favor of legalized sports betting,” Silver told the Associated Press. “I still think you can't turn the clock back. I think, as I said at the time, with the advent of the internet, widely available sports betting online ... that we had to deal directly with technology and recognize that if we don't legalize sports betting, people are going to find ways to do it illegally.”
Notably, the NBA was forced to confront legalized sports betting and its consequences as recently as last season when Silver issued a lifetime ban on then-Toronto Raptors wing Jontay Porter after an investigation found him illegally providing insider information to bettors.
“I think that on the downsides of sports betting, they certainly exist, and I think we have to pay a lot of attention to that,” Silver added. “I think where we're hearing it in multiple categories, certainly you see incidents of underaged people betting. We have to pay a lot of attention to that, what's potentially going on at college campuses, certainly people betting over their heads.”
'Not a huge revenue stream'
In the case of Porter and his illegal activity, Silver seemed to indicate that while the league viewed those as serious issues, the downsides were still outweighed by the potential reach that an increased presence in the sports betting market provided.
“As I said sort of day one, it's not a huge business for us in terms of a revenue stream into the league, but it makes a big difference in engagement,” he said. “It's something that people clearly enjoy doing. I'd put it in the category of other things in society that I wouldn't criminalize them, but on the other hand that you have to heavily regulate them because if there's not guardrails, people will run afoul and create issues, problems for themselves, potentially for their families or for operations like us.”
Silver specifically has been a proponent of a more federalized model, claiming that it would help the league more effectively monitor and administer concerns around the league, particularly with regard to maintaining the game's integrity.
The commissioner has broadly held that the league’s ability to protect its players and the sport's competitive honesty is somewhat limited by external factors such as those differences in state-to-state regulation, even pointing earlier this year to limiting prop bets, but only having so much control over what the league can ultimately do.
“In some cases, we have partnerships with, just take DraftKings and FanDuel, where we don't have absolute control, but when we have a marketing partnership with those companies we have a lot more say than with companies where we have no partnership whatsoever,” Silver said back in May. “Then we're relying on them doing a broader-based concern about integrity in the industry and them not running afoul of the regulators.”
