Dan Spillane, attorney for the National Basketball Association (NBA), shared the sports association’s vision for sports betting in the United States, should New Jersey’s bid to have federal betting laws overturned prove to be successful.
New Jersey is seeking to have the 1992 Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act removed from the law books and the Supreme Court is currently hearing its appeal.
The NBA has essentially given its formal support to legalized sports betting in the United States with its latest announcement by Spillane, who has called for 1% of every wager made on the association’s games in a legal and regulated industry.
Spillane said last week that the NBA has studied the issue of sports betting at length, and its conclusion is that the time has come for a different approach – one that gives sports fans a safe and legal way to bet on sporting events, all the while protecting the integrity of the underlying competitions.
Spillane noted that the NBA’s preference would be for Congress to adopt a federal framework that would allow New York and other states to authorize betting on sports “subject to regulatory requirements and technological safeguards.”
The attorney said that creating a legal framework for sports betting “is not a novel proposition.”
While the American Gaming Association applauded the NBA’s support of sports wagering, it said that the government’s job “most certainly does not include transferring money from bettors to multi billion dollar sports leagues.”
A spokesperson for the NBA, Michael Bass commented in response that sports leagues provide the foundation for sports betting, while at the same time bearing the risks that it imposes, even when the industry is regulated.
“If sports betting is legalized federally or state by state, we will need to invest more in compliance and enforcement, and believe it is reasonable for operators to pay each league 1% of the total amount bet on its games to help compensate for the risk and expense created and the commercial value our product provides them,” he said. “This is a similar approach to legally-regulated sports betting in other international jurisdictions.”
