Former National Basketball Association commissioner David Stern laid out how his position on legal and regulated sports wagering has evolved over the past 25 years in a keynote address at the Global Gaming Expo Thursday morning.
In the years since he testified in Congress in 1992 in favor of the Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act – which effectively prohibited sports betting outside of Nevada, Stern explained that he has become more bullish to the idea that legalization and regulation would be more effective at minimizing associated risks.
“As a young lawyer, I prepared testimony for J. Walter Kennedy (former NBA commissioner) railing against the introduction of gaming in Atlantic City,” Stern said. “Over time, I’ve come to accept the notion that a properly run gambling operation – or gaming as we like to say in Las Vegas – is protective and not deleterious to the health of sports.”
While he didn’t call for a full-fledged repeal of PASPA, he called for the law to be modified to better address current conditions. “I believe that PASPA should be amended to allow gaming under a PASPA-regulated system,” he said.
He further articulated the lengths to which he witnessed sports leagues go to distance themselves from any form of Las Vegas-related advertising or association.
“I remember at times we didn’t use to allow advertising of casinos in our arenas and by our teams,” Stern continued, noting that he modified his concerns and his “gambling is bad” mindset over the years.
“The notion that (sports betting) is going to lead to bad things has gotten to be an outdated notion as we learn more about illegal gambling and the size of the market,” Stern said.
After expressing his general loathing of how the legislative process in Washington functions nowadays, he expressed his support for a coalitional approach to instituting a new legislative framework that would establish a sports betting scheme of which individual leagues would be able to opt in or opt out.
“The position I’ve come to is that we’ve got to get everyone together – and that involves the casinos, the gaming technology companies, the financial regulation experts and the sports leagues – and come up with[ …] model legislation,” Stern said.
He added that an ideal legislative framework would require participating sports leagues to contribute their intellectual property to casinos and receive adequate compensation, would regulate the betting process in a manner that ensures consumer protection and game integrity and also provide the option for states and leagues to participate.
He also said that further legalization and regulation of sports betting would create new revenues for cash-strapped states and curb the influence of organized crime.
Stern fiercely pushed back against comments by Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban and others suggesting that the NBA is hypocritical for supporting daily fantasy sports and a national conversation on sports betting while opposing New Jersey’s repeated legal challenges to PASPA.
“Do I have to explain why I don’t want Governor Christie regulating my game?” he responded, saying that a federal regulatory scheme was needed to avoid the individual states “pecking away” at the game.
Stern also called for the introduction a sporting version of Interpol – an intergovernmental organization that facilitates global law enforcement cooperation – to investigate, prosecute and enforce sport integrity issues around the world.
The worst possible approach, he noted, would be to go on pretending the problem doesn’t exist, adding that greater cooperation among all stakeholders is needed to fully make the environment safe for all participants.
“We’re not there yet in terms of enforcement and understanding what’s going on,” he said. “I think we could make the final jump if we get the leagues and the gaming industry together.”
