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NBA commish Adam Silver calls for more gambling regulation

  • David Purdum

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    David Purdum

    ESPN Staff Writer

    • Joined ESPN in 2014
    • Journalist covering gambling industry since 2008

  • Doug Greenberg

Oct 21, 2025, 05:11 PM ET

NBA commissioner Adam Silver, the first acting professional league commissioner to come out in support of legalizing sports betting in the United States, said Tuesday that more regulation is needed to reduce opportunities for game manipulation related to gambling and to combat bad fan behavior in arenas, which may stem from losing wagers.

Appearing on “The Pat McAfee Show,” Silver pointed to the NBA’s efforts to reduce betting options on players on two-way contracts. In the summer of 2024, the NBA asked its sportsbook partners to refrain from offering prop bets on players on two-way contracts to underperform, after Jontay Porter, formerly of the Toronto Raptors, was found to have manipulated his performance in multiple games during the 2023-24 season as part of a gambling scheme. Silver banned Porter from the NBA.

“We’ve asked some of our partners to pull back some of the prop bets, especially when they’re on two-way players, guys who don’t have the same stake in the competition, where it’s too easy to manipulate something, which seems otherwise small and inconsequential to the overall score,” said Silver. “We’re trying to put in place — learning as we go and working with the betting companies — some additional control to prevent some of that manipulation.”

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Silver said that prop bets also can lead to abuse of players from fans, even in winning efforts.

“It’s often the case that your team wins and a player scores 25 points, but the fan, the bettor, had bet that the player was going to score 28 points or 30 points,” Silver said. “We have to protect the competitors. We want to protect the environment in the arena of people getting out of hand.”

The NBA sent out a memo to teams last week, emphasizing the “need for consistent and vigilant enforcement of the NBA Fan Code of Conduct to deter and address fan misconduct at NBA games and events,” according to a source familiar with the memo.

In 2014, Silver wrote an op-ed in the New York Times calling for a new approach to sports betting, including federal regulation. At the time, state-sponsored sports betting was allowed primarily only in Nevada. Eleven years later, 39 states, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico have launched legal betting markets.

“I think, probably, there should be more regulation, frankly,” Silver told McAfee on Tuesday. “I wish there was federal legislation rather than state by state. I think you’ve got to monitor the amount of promotion, the amount of advertising around it.”

Silver added that the regulated market does allow for more visibility of the bets, who is placing them and from where.

“With this regulated structure of legalized betting, we can monitor it in ways that were unimaginable years ago,” said Silver. “If there’s any aberrational behavior: People betting large numbers who hadn’t historically done so, just opening an account to place bets, or even the geotargeting, we know exactly from where the bets are being placed, very specifically. If you’re in an arena and place a bet, we know you’re in the arena in many cases. We know where in the arena you are when you place that bet.”

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5 picks our gambling expert loves

Welcome to our weekly PGA Tour gambling-tips column, featuring picks from GOLF.com’s expert prognosticator, Brady Kannon. A seasoned golf bettor and commentator, Kannon is a host and regular guest on SportsGrid, a syndicated audio network devoted to sports and sports betting, and is a golf betting analyst for CBS Sportsline. You can follow Brady on Twitter at@LasVegasGolfer, and you can read his picks below for the 2025 Baycurrent Classic, which gets underway Thursday in Japan. Along with Kannon’s recommended plays, you’ll also see data fromChirp Golf, a mobile app that features both free-to-play and daily fantasy golf contests where you can win cash and prizes with each round and tournament.

The PGA Tour and the FedEx Cup Fall are headed to back to Japan this week for the Baycurrent Classic. Formerly the ZOZO Championship, this will be the seventh edition of this event and the sixth time this competition has been staged in the Land of the Rising Sun. We do have one other change however, as the host course moves from Narashino Country Club to Yokohama Golf Club in Yokohama, Japan. This is a limited field event — just 78 players — and there is no 36-hole cut.

Yokohama Golf Club is regularly considered the No. 1 public course in Japan. It has been around for over 60 years but received a massive renovation in 2016 by the team of Bill Coore and Ben Crenshaw. The fairways are Zoysiagrass. They are wide and bordered by none too threatening rough, but any tee shots veering too far off line will find dense tree lines that frame each fairway. The golf course is not especially long at just over 7,300 yards and it plays to a very interestingly routed par 71. There are 13 par 4s, just two par 5s, and three par 3s. The greens are above average in size and made up of Bentgrass.

Xander Schauffele looks on during practice at the 2025 Genesis Scottish Open

2025 Baycurrent Classic odds: Xander Schauffele favored in Japan

By:

Josh Schrock

Not having seen this golf course before makes it difficult to decide what the most important skill sets needed for success will be. Strokes Gained: Approach will always be a priority. The forecast is calling for windy conditions on Thursday. There has been rain leading up to the tournament start and we could see a sprinkling throughout the week. Ultimately, I believe ball-striking will be the differentiator. I focused on this and also looked at Scrambling and Strokes Gained: Putting (Bentgrass). Finally, I used Strokes Gained: Par 4s given the heavy doses of those holes here at Yokohama.

Choosing correlated courses is a bit of a guessing game as well. TPC Southwind (FedEx St. Jude Championship) is one of the few tracks on the PGA Tour that has Zoysiagrass fairways. So does TPC Craig Ranch (CJ Cup Byron Nelson), which also features wide fairways and large Bentgrass greens. Pinehurst No. 2 (2024 U.S. Open) is on the Coore-Crenshaw resume as far as renovations and redesigns, and the Plantation Course at Kapalua (The Sentry) is solely a Coore-Crenshaw creation. I also looked at past results at Narashino given that the travel and environment is obviously very similar, and it does have the same Zoysiagrass/Bentgrass combination of fairways and greens.

Alex Noren (23-1)

Not that the European side needed any help at the Ryder Cup, but Noren was probably the one man that deserved a spot on that team that did not make it. But really, he got off to a late start in 2025, returning after a roughly seven-month hiatus due to injury. Since his return though, he has been excellent and has been especially good in recent weeks. He finished the PGA Tour regular season with a seventh-place finish at the 3M Open and a third-place finish at the Wyndham Championship. Just over a month ago, he won the British Masters at the Belfry. I’ll take a stab with him here based on current form and his always tremendous short game. He ranks fourth in this field for SG: Putting (Bentgrass). Noren has also twice finished top 20 at Narashino and his last three visits to TPC Craig Ranch have resulted in 21st, 12th, and most recently, a third-place finish in 2024.

Kurt Kitayama (26-1)

If we are concentrating on ball-striking, there are not many better in this field than Kitayama. This will be his fourth straight trip to Japan for this event and he’s been progressively better each year with finishes of 29th, 16th and fifth last year. Kitayama also took fifth earlier this season at the CJ Cup Byron Nelson and was ninth at the FedEx St. Jude Championship at TPC Southwind back in August. Over the last 24 rounds, Kitayama ranks third in this field for SG: Ball Striking, third for SG: Approach, and 26th on the par 4s.

Kurt Kitayama hits a shot during the final round of the 3M Open
Kurt Kitayama hits a shot during the final round of the 2025 3M Open.

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Christiaan Bezuidenhout (52-1)

Like Noren, the South African is another short game specialist who has been playing well as of late. Bezuidenhout finished sixth last week at the Sanderson Farms Championship, his first appearance on Tour since August. He was No. 1 in the field in Scrambling, ninth in SG: Putting, and gained strokes on approach. Over the last 24 rounds, he ranks third in this field for Good Drives Gained and is sixth on the Par 4s.

Mac Meissner (65-1)

Meissner finished 14th last week at the Sanderson Farms Championship where he ranked 16th in the field for SG: Approach, 15th for Greens in Regulation, and third in Scrambling. Over the last 24 rounds, Meissner ranks 13th in this field for SG: Ball Striking, seventh for SG: Approach, 13th in Scrambling, and 16th in Good Drives Gained. Earlier this summer, Meissner finished 14th at the 3M Open and runner-up at the Wyndham Championship. If he can find a hot putter this week, he ought to be in contention.

Kevin Roy (100-1)

Quite the range of prices on Roy this week as I have seen as low as 66-1, as high as more than 100-1, along with a few numbers in between. He was red-hot this summer when he strung together consecutive finishes of 18th, eighth, and third. He showed up again last week in Mississippi with an 18th place finish at the Sanderson Farms, where he ranked 19th in the field for SG: Off the Tee and was ninth in Scrambling. Over his last 24 rounds, he is very solid in the stats this week, ranking very high in this field across the board, including fourth for SG: Par 4s.

Who Chirp Golf users are picking this week

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