[Ganguli] NBPA President Fred VanVleet worries about sports gambling’s effect on players, particularly since money from gaming companies is about 1% of BRI. “It’s not substantial enough to make it worth any of this. For us or for the league.”
Fred VanVleet sat in an Italian restaurant a short drive from the Houston Rockets’ practice facility. Between bites of his spicy pepper-topped pizza, he considered how the ubiquity of sports gambling has affected the players he represents as the president of the National Basketball Players Association.
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The new agreement has also opened investment opportunities for players, including allowing them to invest in Women’s National Basketball Association teams as long as those teams aren’t owned by N.B.A. owners. And in a move that has further complicated the sports-gambling picture, it allows players — like teams and the league before them — to have investments and endorsement deals with sports-betting and fantasy-sports companies, as long as they don’t promote bets on the N.B.A.
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Mr. VanVleet said he hoped he could bring together players who disagreed.
And, of course, gambling has his attention. The union is looking into ways to protect players against some of the problems that sports gambling have caused. Mr. Kelly said that if the union couldn’t find productive solutions — he mentioned eliminating certain kinds of prop bets, which are wagers on specific, individual outcomes — it planned to fight to roll back the presence of sports betting in the N.B.A. sphere.
The league has had partnerships with sports betting companies since 2018, shortly after the Supreme Court cleared the way for any state to legalize sports betting. That July, the N.B.A. announced BetMGM as its official gaming partner. Players have taken advantage of their new right to sign endorsement deals with gambling companies, or even to invest in them, provided they don’t promote bets on the N.B.A. That’s why when LeBron James does ads for DraftKings, he typically focuses on football bets.
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It’s an ecosystem that Mr. VanVleet thinks has had more negatives than positives.
He believes there should be zero tolerance for anyone who harms the integrity of the sport. But he also worries about the reputations of players who face accusations of breaking the rules and are presumed guilty by the public. He lamented the way players have been accosted by gamblers, as he was in church one day, or as in a viral video that showed a person who had lost money on a bet shouting at the Warriors forward Jimmy Butler, “You work for Vegas,” among other insults.
“If Jimmy escalates that situation and somebody’s got a gun on him, that’s real,” Mr. VanVleet said.
Mr. Bass, the league spokesman, said that compared with illegal gambling, “our belief is that a legal framework is far better because it creates transparency and accountability in the industry.” Mr. Bass said their partnerships with gambling companies include commitments from those companies to monitor integrity.
Revenue from gambling companies now makes up about 1 percent of the pie that the league and players share.
“It’s not substantial enough to make it worth any of this,” Mr. VanVleet said. “For us or for the league, quite frankly.”