The Monday Line: NBA Not Shying Away From Gambling After Porter Ban
The Monday Line: NBA Not Shying Away From Gambling After Porter Ban
Here’s today’s quick rundown in the world of US gambling.
After Porter ban, NBA back to advertising gambling
You likely already know that Jontay Porter of the Toronto Raptors was banned from the NBA for violating the league’s gambling policies. It was feasible the NBA would pause direct promotion of gambling as a result… but that didn’t happen. This was posted from the official NBA account on Sunday with a link to FanDuel:
To be clear, I don’t think the promotion of legal sportsbooks by the NBA is bad. However, the Porter incident is so fresh I think the NBA should give the incident some room to breathe before diving back in. The NBA is arguably the most aggressive of the major U.S. leagues in promoting and advertising sports betting, including the recent news that live odds are now a part of League Pass. If the NBA is going to rein in gambling promotion in the wake of the Porter incident and other negative news around sports betting, there’s not any evidence of that in the short term.
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Daily fantasy apps come back to Florida
The fantasy parlay industry is starting to return to Florida… just as a peer-to-peer game. So far it appears PrizePicks and Underdog are back after being told to cease and desist from offering their fantasy vs. the house offerings; many operators stopped serving the state a couple of months ago.
It’s clear at this point that the issue Florida and many other states have is the “vs. the house” element. If you’re running a P2P fantasy game, you’re probably in the clear in many places until we get evidence to the contrary.
While we’re on the topic of fantasy, I’m now getting ads on Twitter/X that tell me I could multiply my money by a thousand times!
Spoiler, very few people are going to hit 12-leg parlays. (To be fair, you’re also not likely to win huge fantasy contests at DraftKings or FanDuel). I’ll beat the drum that while people are wringing their hands over sports betting advertising, there are essentially no standards for advertising what amounts to a gambling product that is arguably legal in many states outside of gambling regulations.
Quick hitters
DraftKings hired its first Chief Responsible Gambling Officer.
The over-the-top commentary about US sports betting continues unabated.
The NFL reinstated several players after they violated the league’s gambling policy, but one player is still sidelined.
The latest on the court wrangling involving a VIP executive that left DraftKings for FanDuel.
Even though many have moved on from the story, there are still a lot of lingering questions around the gambling scandal involving Shohei Ohtani’s interpreter.
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