NBA Commissioner Adam Silver Asks for Tighter Gambling Regulation

The National Basketball Association (NBA) and its commissioner, Adam Silver, were among the first professional sports leagues to drop the antagonizing language when sports betting was still in its innings.

Yet, Silver has been critical of certain aspects of gambling, calling for more regulatory oversight, and has called on sports betting companies to eliminate player props, which are perceived as more open to manipulation.

Silver has already suggested that betting scandals were inevitable due to the nature of how the industry is regulated and the rules’ application, but that things have gotten better since.

More Oversight Should Be Applied to Sports Betting

The case of Jontay Porter is a good example of that. Silver spoke on The Pat McAfee Show and laid out some thoughts on what course regulation should pursue. Cited by ESPN,  Silver said:

“We’ve asked some of our partners to pull back some of the prop bets, especially when they’re on two-way players, guys who don’t have the same stake in the competition, where it’s too easy to manipulate something, which seems otherwise small and inconsequential to the overall score.”

Notably, Silver is not railing against betting companies but seeing them as equal partners who can help strengthen safeguards and ensure that the room for manipulation is smaller.

Silver and the NBA have also been aware of hecklers and online abuse, with the association arguing that more efforts need to be made to enforce the NBA Fan Code of Conduct directed at people who get upset over failed wagers and then take it out on athletes.

Sportsbooks Are Not the Enemy

A more unified approach is also on Silver’s mind, with the commissioner thinking that states should probably not be left alone to regulate all aspects of the industry.

“I wish there were federal legislation rather than state by state. I think you’ve got to monitor the amount of promotion, the amount of advertising around it,” he said on the show, echoing a sentiment that more centralized oversight ought to be coming to ensure that promotions and other aspects of the industry.

He also highlighted how far the industry has come and said that sportsbooks are able to track where bets are placed with unfaltering accuracy, whether it’s at the arena or at home. Aberrational behavior is also easily established and thus can prevent instances of manipulation.