“The Bucks winning was amazing for the league, and Giannis choosing to stay in Milwaukee and not go somewhere bigger – it’s a global game, people can pick up their phones and get our content and news anywhere, so market size is almost irrelevant, and players want to be where they can win.”
Those are the words of NBA Commissioner Adam Silver, who was Craig Carton’s final guest of three on WFAN’s Day of Commissioners – and after saying that, Craig had to ask about how the commish feels about the notion of “superteams,” which Giannis expressly dissed after winning the title.
“I don’t think we’ll ever have a rule where players don’t talk, but I think there are improvements we can make to the system before it comes to collective bargaining,” Silver said. “Players all want to win championships and be together, but they also have an interest in parity. Most GMs and executives want to make sure top players are distributed throughout the league so the game is level; you don’t want to see too much talent aggregated in one place.”
One thing that is helping with global engagement, and all of this player empowerment, is the rise of daily fantasy and sports betting, something the NBA was ahead of the curve on.
As someone with an admitted gambling problem, Craig is one who is trying to do everything he can to help those who might be in the same situation, and Commissioner Silver lauded him for that while explaining how the NBA, too, had that interest at heart when advocating for more.
“You have to strike the right balance. The issue I pointed out when we were first advocating for legal betting is that there will always be problem gamblers, and that 10 percent is most likely to be the ones to bet illegally,” Silver said. “Look at European betting platforms that have been around: the notion was that if you can move the action to a legal platform where people have to identify themselves, you’ll be much more likely to uncover a problem gambler and push their issue to the forefront.”
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Silver remembers that evolution well, because he was a big part of it.
“When everything was still largely illegal, I would tell people in presentations to Google “bet NBA” and you could spend a week finding ways to do it,” Silver said. “Now, if you talk to these sports books or daily fantasy outlets, they have really sophisticated algorithms where they can pick it out.”
That said, there are some things fans may think about the league’s partnerships that simply aren’t true – and some things they may not know the league is sensitive to when it comes to problem gambling.
“For us, it’s not the goldmine fans think it is in terms of betting – the impact for us is the increased engagement. If you have a betting interest, you’re all in on a game you may not care about,” Silver said. “Gambling can be incredibly destructive, but hopefully, the vast majority can do it in a responsible way and get joy from it. We have an obligation to find the right balance, and make sure were not sending the wrong messages to the 10 percent, by using our PSAs and limiting the amount of ads we take in for games.”
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Craig then asked about the NBA possibly trying an alternative broadcast, similar to the way MLB will do their Statcast-centric broadcasts, for those purposes – and apparently, that’s already in the works.
“We’ve already experimented with that in Washington and Philadelphia,” Silver said, “and what we’re seeing through technology is that we’ll soon get to a point where you can have almost unlimited broadcasts, and can sync a game on TV to all different audio streams, like the Twitch model.”
The NBA, out on the forefront of a trend once again.
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