NBA Commissioner states case for 1% integrity fee

Commissioner, Adam Silver has called for the introduction of a 1% integrity fee payable by sportsbook operators to protect the NBA’s position as “intellectual property creators”.

Speaking in an interview with ESPN, Silver, who has been one of the leading voices in sports betting legalisation, said: “We created in our minds, what a model bill should look like. What was included, to your point, in that model bill is a 1% fee; call it an integrity fee or a royalty to the league.

“I would only say that from the NBA’s standpoint we will spend this year roughly $7.5 billion creating this content, creating these games. Those are the total expenses for the season. So this notion that as the intellectual property creators that we should receive a 1% fee seems very fair to me.”

Silver was of course referring to lobbying efforts made by the NBA and Major League Baseball (MLB) in states across the US to approve sports betting legislation which would favour the leagues, ahead of any potential repeal of the Professional and Amateur Sports Participation Act (PASPA) by the US Supreme Court.

At present the NBA and MLB are engaged in active lobbying in seven states including: Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Missouri, New York, Rhode Island and West Virginia. The highest profile of these activities were in New York, where the NBA submitted written testimony to the New York Senate and West Virginia, where senators serving on West Virginia’s Finance Committee approved a sports betting bill but dismissed the inclusion of a 1% integrity fee.

This is not the first time Silver has weighed in on sports betting legalisation in the US, indeed he most famously wrote an op-ed piece for the New York Times in November 2014 in which he championed sports betting legalisation as a way of curbing illegal betting, claiming: “Any new approach must ensure the integrity of the game.

“One of my most important responsibilities as commissioner of the NBA is to protect the integrity of professional basketball and preserve public confidence in the league and our sport. I oppose any course of action that would compromise these objectives.

“But I believe that sports betting should be brought out of the underground and into the sunlight where it can be appropriately monitored and regulated.”

As sports betting legalisation efforts proceed apace, there will undoubtedly be more states included on the NBA/MLB lobbying bandwagon as they strive to ensure that they receive a piece of any sports betting action.