Despite the Jontay Porter betting scandal that embroiled the NBA within the spring, league commissioner Adam Silver has no regrets about being one of many first leaders in American skilled sports activities to advocate for betting to be authorized outdoors Nevada.
Silver started lobbying for extra legalized betting a decade in the past and penned an opinion piece for the New York Times titled “Legalize and Regulate Sports Betting,” expressing his views on the difficulty. That turned a actuality in 2018 when the Supreme Court overturned the digital federal ban on most betting outdoors Nevada.
“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 lately advised ESPN. “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.”
Controversies Don’t Sway Support
The state of New Jersey led the cost to repeal the Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act (PASPA), which turned regulation in 1992. Since then, the nation has seen 39 states, together with Washington D.C. and Puerto Rico, enact some type of legalized sports activities wagering. That has introduced billions of {dollars} in wagers and has helped gasoline file playing income throughout the nation.
Expansion hasn’t come with out some points alongside the best way, nonetheless. Most skilled leagues, in addition to school sports activities, have handled betting scandals over the previous couple of years. That included Toronto Raptors ahead Jontay Porter getting banned for all times from the NBA earlier this yr and pleading responsible in federal court docket in July to conspiracy to commit wire fraud as a part of a bet-fixing scheme.
Despite that, Silver stays undeterred in his assist of bringing regulated betting into the professional sports activities panorama. He now favors seeing the federal authorities get entangled within the trade.
“I was in favor of a federal framework for sports betting,” he stated. “I nonetheless am. I nonetheless suppose that the hodgepodge of state by state, it makes it harder for the league to manage it. I feel it creates competitors, understandably, amongst states to get – simply suppose New York, New Jersey or a state of affairs like that the place you’re each competing for a similar buyer so you’ll be able to compete on tax charges and different issues and a regulatory framework.
“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. 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.”
