NBA Leaves The Door Open For Sports Betting

Adam Silver recognizes that one of the reasons his league lags behind the NFL in US popularity, is that fewer bets are made on NBA games than NFL. Of the major sports, NBA games rank 4th in the US in number of bets made and amounts wagered. That’s behind NFL, college football, AND college basketball. If you look globally it ranks behind soccer too.

Silver and David Stern before him, recognized the value of the global fanbase, for which betting is a big part, long before the NFL. Part of capitalizing on the global fanbase is the higher level of social media and internet presence by the NBA. Clips of NBA are legal on YouTube and plentiful, while clips of NFL games on YouTube are copyright violations and therefore not as common. Based on his quotes at the Bloomberg Conference, the NBA is open to legalized US sports betting. And Silver thinks being an early adapter to it will give his league a chance to catch the NFL in domestic markets.

The scarcity of games and subsequent importance of ‎each one is something the NBA cannot replicate from the NFL and is one reason why the NFL captures such a large market. 16 games vs 82, both players and fans care more about the games when there are fewer of them to earn a spot in the playoffs.

Dan Soder just bet on the 76ers to win the championship, but may have been confused on how to bet.

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