At the moment, only Nevada, Oregon, Delaware and Montana allow sports betting. However, Adam Silver said that won’t be the case for much longer.
The NBA commissioner said it won’t be too long before more and more states will allow sports betting, which gives good interaction for the fans.
“My sense is the law will change in the next few years in the United States,” Silver said, via ESPN.com. “People want to bet throughout the game … It results in enormous additional engagement with the fans.”
At the moment, New Jersey won an appeal from the Supreme Court to legalize sports betting in the state, further proving Silver’s case.
He also has not been that secretive in finding a constructive way to legalize betting, as was evident in the piece he wrote for the New York Times in 2014.
Silver was with fellow commissioners Roger Goodell, Rob Manfred and Gary Bettman for a panel in New York when the topic came up. Like Silver, Manfred has also been outspoken on finding a constructive way to legalize sports betting.
“There’s a difference between someone betting on whether the next ball is a strike or betting on the outcome of a game,” he said.
With both the NFL and NHL now having teams in Las Vegas (the Raiders and Golden Knights) it will be interesting to see how that affects sports betting in those sports.
The NFL has long been opposed to sports betting, but since the NHL has a smaller fanbase in the U.S., Bettman said he’s not worried “about fixing games.”
