Silver calls for legalized sports betting

Betting and sports have always been related. Since the the dawn of organized sports and the advent of money, wagers have been made. Indeed, sports betting in America dates to the advent of the colonies themselves, if not earlier. I'm not going to wax poetic on the history of sports gambling, but it has a long history, and, like other activities deemed unsavory and banned, cannot be abolished by simply making it illegal. Despite this, sports betting in the US is only available in a few select locales. The relationship between professional sports and gambling, with the long history of scandals, has always been tenuous in the modern era. Indeed, the fact that a city as large as Las Vegas lacks any major professional sports teams(for now) says a great deal about the uneasy relationship. Sports leagues have long fought the expansion of sports betting outside of Nevada, fearing systemic risk widespread availability could bring.

Yet this relationship is slowly thawing, as NBA Commissioner Adam Silver's op-ed in the New York Times shows. There, Silver makes a call that sounds far more familiar coming from a drug policy reform activist than a sports figure, "legalize and regulate". Indeed, Silver seems to be channeling his inner Ethan Nadelman more than David Stern. He argues that the broad ban on sports betting outside of Nevada has only driven the gambling underground. He then goes on to argue that sports betting is not only allowed, but ubiquitous abroad, including in the UK, and that safeguards could be put in place to alleviate many of the common objections to wider availability of gambling.

Silver seems to be far more in touch with the reality of gambling's relationship with sports than any other US sports commissioner in decades. He has acknowledged that simply wishing gambling out of the world is not only impractical but dangerous. I'll end this short post with the great quote from Silver to end his, "But I believe that sports betting should be brought out of the underground and into the sunlight where it can be appropriately monitored and regulated." Indeed commissioner, indeed.