00:00We have a very prominent NBA player who has a very small share of equity
00:04in a prediction market company, and we also have Major League Baseball
00:08recognizing that, hey, if other people are doing this,
00:12why can't we jump in as well?
00:14What do you make of these slopes that both the NBA
00:17and Major League Baseball may dive into?
00:19Yeah, I feel like you got the news early last week
00:22if you were listening to this segment because just in the past week
00:25since I've been on, we've had both the commissioner of the NBA
00:27and Major League Baseball weigh in on prediction markets.
00:31We had Adam Silver talking about this at NBA All-Star Weekend.
00:35He does press availability, talked about this.
00:37He said, quote, we currently are looking at prediction markets
00:41essentially in the same way that we're looking at sports betting markets
00:43or sports betting companies.
00:45It's rapidly evolving.
00:46Prediction markets have now come on the scene fairly recently
00:48as I don't know how else to say it.
00:50Major sports betting marketplaces, whether prediction markets
00:53are allowed to go forward in the form they're in now,
00:55will, I think, be ultimately an issue for the courts and for Congress.
00:59So again, like at one of the hallmark events of the NBA season,
01:03we have Silver talking about this and addressing it.
01:06He doesn't say we're doing a partnership with a prediction market tomorrow,
01:10but he's setting the stage for that, I think.
01:12And then we also had Major League Baseball.
01:15We had Commissioner Rob Manford talking about this spring training.
01:19It's underway.
01:20He said, quote, the interesting thing about the prediction markets
01:22is there's an opportunity to work with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission.
01:25If you got where you want it to be, you'd have a real nice federal regulation.
01:29It'd be the same everywhere, kind of a nice thing.
01:32So reading tea leaves, like we're not, again, we're not snapping our fingers.
01:36We're going to see a deal between Major League Baseball and NBA tomorrow,
01:40although maybe we will.
01:40Who knows?
01:41I say that now and we could get that announcement tomorrow,
01:45but they're setting the stage for, like,
01:47they have to work with prediction markets down the road.
01:49Right now this is legal.
01:51That is not changing anytime soon.
01:53Yes, the courts may roll that back at some point in the next year or two.
01:57It's a possibility, but it's also very possible it survives.
02:00And I think NBA and Major League Baseball,
02:02like they were with the legalization of sports betting,
02:05are setting the stage for how do we work with prediction markets,
02:08do we have to work with prediction markets,
02:10and how do we monetize this for our audience and for the league and our team.
02:14So definitely predictable that this was going to happen,
02:17but it's been an escalation, I'd say, just in the past week
02:20as two of the major North American sports leagues look at this more seriously
02:23and how they're going to be involved.
02:25We'll see you next time.
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