NBA Supports Online Gambling Ban

February 15, 2008

It would appear that the National Basketball Association is in support of the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act, or UIGEA. The Act is responsible for the ban on payment processing as it pertains to online gambling. Even as many fight to get the online gambling ban reversed, there are those that are fighting to keep it.

The NBA would obviously be one of those looking to keep the online gambling ban, but they have ulterior motives in the deal. The NBA paid McGuirewoods Consulting $280,000 in the second half of last year, adding to the $52,000 they had already paid last year.

The consulting company is a lobbying firm, and they lobbied on several different items. One of the things they lobbied on was on behalf of the online gambling ban, which is the part that mystified many people. They say that the sport should be happy that people are placing bets on them online, and don’t understand where the problem lies. They say that without all of the online gambling on the sport, probably no one would watch.

However, the NBA would like to see online gambling as well as all sports gambling made illegal. They also lobbied on things closer to home like a new drugs and steroid policy and work visas for any foreign players. However, the online gambling ban support may be the hardest pill for their fans to swallow.

They say that the current online gambling ban has already made it difficult and instead of trying to ban sports gambling they should simply try to regulate it and make it safe. However, this is not of interest to the NBA.





Back to February 2008 Archive.