The recent NBA gambling scandal has shook the community "to the core," says Washington Wizards owner Ted Leonsis.
"Fans need to trust that they are seeing real time competition and that the outcomes are fair. The outcomes are based on the talents of the franchise and the players and the coaches, and that everything is on the up and up," Leonsis of Monumental Sports & Entertainment (MSE) told Yahoo Finance Executive Editor Brian Sozzi during Yahoo Finance's annual Invest conference.
The longtime sports owner stressed that all parties have a vested interest in doing the right thing by the fans.
"We're in partnership. You know, these gaming companies have become one of the largest advertisers in the media landscape, and they're working with the NFL and the NBA and the major media networks," he said.
"And so we're in it together, and no one wants to do anything that strikes at the integrity of the game. Because viewership would go down, fans would stop coming to games."
A former executive at AOL, Leonsis is the founder and CEO of the Washington, D.C.-based sports company. He first waded into sports team ownership in 1999 with the $85 million purchase of the NHL's Washington Capitals. Other prominent teams that followed include the WNBA's Mystics in 2005 for $10 million and the NBA's Wizards in 2010 for $310 million.
The recent NBA betting scandal has led to 34 arrests and involved a coach, an assistant coach, and two players, among others. The accused face charges of betting on games with non-public information, according to ESPN. During some games, players went so far as to stop playing to "benefit the gamblers' bets," per ESPN.
"When a thing like this happens and it happens every day basically on Wall Street, right," he said. "It's just not publicized in in this way. And I think over time, that's how it'll be in sports that, you know, you get caught, bang you're out."
Every season, "We explain to the players there's signage everywhere, and it's not just for the players, it's for everyone in the organization, especially about insider information," he said of the precaution that teams take.
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Over time, sports gaming is a positive for the league as the technology advances, said Leonsis.
"I want to remind everybody it was our technology that was able to find it, and that sports gaming is really moving into the class, like Wall Street is," he said of the recent incident. "You can find something that's happening that is untoward."