As sports betting gradually becomes legal across the country, there may be one unexepected beneficiary: the league’s TV rights, argues former NBA Commissioner David Stern.
He expects the ratings for games to go up as people who have bets riding on the results tune in—even if they’re not necessarily fans of the teams. That’s just one of the factors that he expects to change the value of TV rights in the near future. He also expects the major tech companies (Facebook, Apple, Amazon and Google) to make a serious effort to pick up the rights when they’re up in 2025.
