Report: NBA commissioner calls for improved regulation after Jontay Porter suspension
Adam Silver points to league’s relationship with operators such as FanDuel and DraftKings as a way to prevent further integrity issues
National Basketball Association (NBA) commissioner Adam Silver has said there isn’t much the sport can do when it comes to players placing wagers amid calls for further regulation.
Speaking earlier this week at the Associated Press Sports Editors Commissioners Conference, Silver said the NBA only has “so much control” over player sports betting after Toronto Raptors forward Jontay Porter was suspended for violating the league’s gambling rules last month.
His comments came after an ESPN report on May 3 claimed the NBA and its sportsbook partners – such as BetMGM, DraftKings, and FanDuel – were looking to change “betting menus,” including not allowing prop bets and preventing users from betting on players on two-way contracts between the G League and NBA.
Likewise, the National Collegiate Athletics Association (NCAA) has called for college prop bets to be banned in order to better protect student-athletes.
Responding to the current relationship between sports and gambling, Silver admitted that while there was only so much the NBA could do, its partnership with regulators did allow for further protective measures.
In quotes attributed to CBS Sports, Silver said: “There are limits to our control, but we think there should be a regulated framework, where it’s the leagues working together with the state oversight groups and the betting companies, whether or not we have partnerships with them.
“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 whatsover.
“Then we’re relying on them doing a broader-based concern about integrity in the industry and them not running afoul of the regulators.”
Silver also alluded to the NCAA’s call for prop bets ban and pointed out two-way players such as Porter had less at stake in terms of their careers compared to “superstar” players.
The commissioner continued: “We only have so much control. For example, the NCAA has made the point about the risk to college players.
“There’s a large pool of players in college whose careers will end after they participate in college athletics, so there’s not as much at stake.
“There’s clearly a lot more at stake for a superstar player than there is for a two-way player. So it goes to the kinds of players those bets can be placed on, and then the types of bets as well.
“Certainly, prop bets, depending on how precise they are, lend themselves to more shenanigans than other kind of bets.
“Now, some of that can be captured through various monitoring, but we also recognize that a large amount of the handle – I’m not sure the precise percentage – but my hunch is there’s still far more illegal [betting] than legal,” Silver added.
Porter is serving a ban after he was found to have given an individual, who proceed to place bets on the power forward’s in-game performance, a “health status” update.