NBA Wants to Reap the Reward of Legalized Sports Betting, Says Company Exec
*By Michael Teich*
The NBA is transparent about its approval of legalized, regulated sports betting ー but the league is also clearly communicating that it wants a fair share of the money wagered on its games.
"It's our view that if state governments are going to be authorizing private entities, in most cases casinos, to generate significant revenue ー billions of dollars of revenue ー off of the NBA competitions, that the NBA participate in some way. Especially when you consider the additional costs and training and enforcement and monitoring, the risk to our brand if anything happens, if there is any kind of scandal," said the NBA's head of fantasy and gaming Scott Kaufman-Ross.
Data will be a key revenue driver for the NBA. The league has already struck deals with The Stars Group and SportsRadar, in addition to sponsorship partnerships with MGM ($MGM) and FanDuel. But the NBA is determined to collect integrity fees, wherein the league would get a small percentage of the total amount of money bet on its games from operators.
“We are distributing the official data of the NBA," Kaufman-Ross said. "Our data is authentic, it's collected in real time so it can be distributed instantaneously." He added that competing services can only offer data that is stolen or copied from the live broadcast.
While he's optimistic about the future of sports betting, Kaufman-Ross acknowledged the industry is in the nascent stages and the NBA will need to be patient until the industry has realized its full potential. So far eight states have legalized sports betting, and many of the larger markets have yet to approve it.
"We have some time before those dollars will become significant, and the states need to pass laws for that to happen," Kaufman-Ross said.
To protect the sport's integrity, Kaufman-Ross said the NBA plans to invest in new technology that will allow it to "monitor suspicious betting patterns much the way the stock exchange does."
He said the NBA will also work to educate players about the rules to head off any bad behavior.
That said, Kaufman-Ross isn't deeply concerned about players manipulating games to influence betting outcomes.
"Our players are well compensated," he said. "We don't think there is go to be the incentive for anyone to do anything like that."
The median salary for NBA 2018-2019 player contracts is $3,526,480, according to BasketballReference.com
For full interview [click here](https://cheddar.com/videos/the-nba-wants-its-fair-share-of-the-booming-sports-betting-market).
The State Department had been in talks with Elon Musk’s Tesla company to buy armored electric vehicles, but the plans have been put on hold by the Trump administration after reports emerged about a potential $400 million purchase. A State Department spokesperson said the electric car company owned by Musk was the only one that expressed interest back in May 2024. The deal with Tesla was only in its planning phases but it was forecast to be the largest contract of the year. It shows how some of his wealth has come and was still expected to come from taxpayers.
At 100 years old, the Goodyear Blimp is an ageless star in the sky. The 246-foot-long airship will be in the background of the Daytona 500 — flying roughly 1,500 feet above Daytona International Speedway, actually — to celebrate its greatest anniversary tour. Even though remote camera technologies are improving regularly and changing the landscape of aerial footage, the blimp continues to carve out a niche. At Daytona, with the usual 40-car field racing around a 2½-mile superspeedway, views from the blimp aptly provide the scope of the event.
You'll just have to wait for interest rates (and prices) to go down. Plus, this deal's a steel, the big carmaker wedding is off, and bribery is back, baby!
It’s a chicken-and-egg problem: Restaurants are struggling with record-high U.S. egg prices, but their omelets, scrambles and huevos rancheros may be part of the problem. Breakfast is booming at U.S. eateries. First Watch, a restaurant chain that serves breakfast, brunch and lunch, nearly quadrupled its locations over the past decade to 570. Fast-food chains like Starbucks and Wendy's added more egg-filled breakfast items. In normal times, egg producers could meet the demand. But a bird flu outbreak that has forced them to slaughter their flocks is making supplies scarcer and pushing up prices. Some restaurants like Waffle House have added a surcharge to offset their costs.
William Falcon, CEO and Founder of Lightning AI, discusses the ongoing feud between Elon Musk and Sam Altman, and how everyday people can use AI in their lives.
U.S. tariffs on steel and aluminum “will not go unanswered,” European Union chief Ursula von der Leyen vowed on Tuesday, adding that they will trigger toug
The Trump administration has ordered the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to stop nearly all its work, effectively shutting down the agency that was created to protect consumers after the 2008 financial crisis and subprime mortgage-lending scandal. Russell Vought is the newly installed director of the Office of Management and Budget. Vought directed the CFPB in a Saturday night email to stop work on proposed rules, to suspend the effective dates on any rules that were finalized but not yet effective, and to stop investigative work and not begin any new investigations. The agency has been a target of conservatives since President Barack Obama created it following the 2007-2008 financial crisis.
