tagged: David Stern, gambling, legalized gambling, NBA, recession

The NBA…where legalized gambling happens?

Posted by Emmett Jones in Basketball

Tim Donaghy...NBA gambling pioneer?

One part “All Star game in Las Vegas” + one part “recession” + one part “$175M loan” = Legalized Gambling?

Maybe that isn’t the NBA’s equation, but it sure does look like they’re leaning that way.  SI’s Ian Thomsen interviewed NBA commissioner David Stern, and a very candid Stern didn’t completely shut down the idea of legalized gambling on NBA games, even in light of the Tim Donaghy betting scandal.  Some excerpts,

“We used [the Donaghy revelations] as an opportunity to get better, to coordinate with law enforcement and go through a variety of processes that I don’t necessarily want to detail publicly, but you are on ready alert,” he said. “And we’re mindful of what can happen, because we’re more-than-interested bystanders in the European football scandal. Two-hundred [soccer] games are being looked at by law enforcement across the continent. It’s fascinating to see what’s happening. And we’re mindful of the cricket [2007 World Cup match-fixing] issues, of the football referees in Germany — there’s a lot going on.”

Then he made a new point. “The betting issues are actually going to become more intense as states in the U.S. and governments in the world decide that the answers to all of their monetary shortfalls are the tax that is gambling.”

I asked Stern if it is in the best interests of his league to seek legalization of sports betting. He sighed with his head down, as if to emphasize the gravity of what he was going to say.

“It has been a matter of league policy to answer that question, ‘No,’ ” he said. “But I think that that league policy was formulated at a time when gambling was far less widespread — even legally.”

What has changed, Stern acknowledged, is that the NBA can no longer oppose gambling on moral grounds.

“Considering the fact that so many state governments — probably between 40 and 50 — don’t consider it immoral, I don’t think that anyone [else] should,” Stern went on. “It may be a little immoral, because it really is a tax on the poor, the lotteries. But having said that, it’s now a matter of national policy: Gambling is good. (via CNNSi)

Wow.  That really just happened.  A high ranking person actually didn’t take the political angle, and actually played one side of the fence.  Lets just stop for a moment and take that all in…

*moment*

Okay, now that we got that out of the way, this is the part where everyone looks unsurprised.

The sports climate is ever changing.  How can you expect rules that were made 30 and 40 years ago to govern now in 2009?  When everything else about the game has changed (even look at the rule changes in the last 10 years in the NBA) who could possibly expect the business rules surrounding the NBA to remain rigid?  Its simply a matter of evolution.

But its more than just evolution that will bring legalized sports betting to the NBA at sometime in the future; its the revenue source.  A large majority of American business are capitalistic by nature.  The NBA is no exception to this rule.  That being said, if there is a legitimate, potentially legal revenue source out there…why wouldn’t they at least explore the opportunity let alone implement it?  Even if you throw out the capitalist mindset, the NBA has another reason to look into legalized gambling.  They need the money.  “Need the money” not in a greedy sort of way, no, more along the lines of long term viability.  That $175M loan wasn’t borrowed to give the NBA a $175 million dollar surplus; teams needed it.  The Maloofs didn’t disband the Monarchs because they developed a hatred for women’s basketball…attendance was low and so was revenue.  Think of the revenue the NBA could pull in from a legalized gambling scheme that they had control over, or could take a substantial piece of the revenue from…The revenue brought in from illegal betting on NFL games has to total at least in the hundreds of millions of dollars every year.  Even if the NBA only got a portion of that, I think they’d be quite content.

Not that the NBA is in danger of folding in the next few years.  On the other hand though, they also aren’t walking around with a billion dollar surplus either.  A little extra money never hurt anything, right?

Of course, any league looking to accept the idea of legalized gambling also has to realize the threat that gambling can bring to the integrity of the game. If nothing else, the Donaghy scandal showed this. How easy is it for a rogue referee to change the outcome of a game?  And if gambling was legal, how many more people would wager on those games and run the risk of losing their money due to an unnatural outcome?  Stern’s point in the article about gambling preying on the lower classes would all too easily come to fruition.  Even with that threat though, Stern does recognize the possibilities legalized gambling could bring,

“You’re right about the threat that we perceive, and we stay on it,” said Stern of the menace of illegal gambling rings. “I think the threat is the same legal and illegal — the threat is there.

“Gambling, however it may have moved closer to the line [of becoming acceptable], is still viewed on the threat side,” he said. “Although we understand fully why, buried within that threat there may be a huge opportunity as well.”

That all being said, I can’t quite figure out if the NBA lost its morality a long time ago, and now its okay to admit it because no one was really up at arms about the Donaghy scandal, or if the recession has finally forced the league to look for other sources of revenue to ensure the NBA doesn’t live “from check-to-check”.  Who knows, maybe all of sports was excited when the FBI caught up to Donaghy because now they could gauge public reaction and potentially focused on a large untapped revenue stream?

I’ll leave that to the Conspiracy Theorists…

Someone once said, “Adversity introduces a man to himself“.  The NBA, and sports in general are going through some adverse times.  Cutbacks, layoffs, and contraction have brought new ideas to the forefront, some of which were previously taboo — practice jersey sponsorship, lenient black-out rules, on-court liquor ads…For better or for worse, the sports landscape is shifiting and is forcing leagues to look at the different weapons they can use to find streams of revenue.  Legalized gambling is one of those weapons that I predict will see a lot of usage in the not too distant future.