Roundup: Ohhh Mexico... is where the NBA might have to go now

Adam Silver goes to Mexico, more NCAA dam blowing, Apple out on the NFL

Welcome to our new weekly cadence -- to your inbox Monday-Wednesday-Friday morning with news and updates in sports, gambling, and media. On Thursday, takes directly from our text threads.

We don't know where you are reading this, but where we are the temperatures are falling. It's already hat-and-gloves weather, and Christmas is projected to be a positively North Pole cold experience. Thankfully, the sports media and gambling news cycle continues to run hotter than a Cancun airport tarmac in July.

In the email today:  

1) NBA Commissioner Adam Silver keeps opening the door toward expansion in Mexico 🏀

2) The National Labor Relations Board deems NCAA athletes "employees," blowing a door wide open💰

3) Apple is reportedly no longer a suitor for NFL broadcast rights 🍎

I don't like Mondays.

1) THE NBA MAY PUT A TEAM IN MEXICO CITY 🏀

The Miami Heat beat the San Antonio Spurs on Saturday night, 111-101. The game was really only notable because it was this season's NBA Mexico City game. 

It was probably unavoidable that NBA Commissioner Adam Silver would be asked (again) about the potential for his league's expansion into Mexico. Ever mindful, Silver did not say the league would put a team in Mexico City. He also didn't say it wouldn't.

We recommend this post from Sam Quinn at cbssports.com for the particulars. We will condense the enormous upsides and serious roadblocks now.

UPSIDES

  • Mexico City's population hovers around nine million. If the city receives an NBA team, it would immediately become the most populous city in the league. Note that New York, the most populous city in the United States, boasts both the New York Knicks and Brooklyn Nets. Mexico City wouldn't share two teams (not yet, anyway).

  • Mexico City Arena was built in 2012, seats over 22,000, and would be plug-and-play for an NBA team.

  • Ice hockey isn't coming to Mexico City any time soon (to our knowledge), so scheduling games in the arena should be a snap.

  • The NBA does not hate that the Toronto Raptors are the only Canadian team in the league. Nearly 40 million Canadians putatively have one favorite team. Mexico's population approaches 130 million. That's a lot of merchandise.

ROADBLOCKS

  • It's tough to compete in the NBA if no one wants to go to your city, especially in an expansion context. When the NBA expanded to Vancouver and Toronto, some players wanted no part of moving out of the United States.

  • Players may shy away from Mexico due to their perceptions around crime. Some of it is stigma, some of it is ignorance, but then again some of it has basis in fact.

  • Have you ever flown internationally to Mexico? Would you like to clear Customs each way every time you play a road game?

  • Dealing with taxes is difficult enough. Now add in Mexico's cut.

Silver's comments lead us to believe that it is not a matter of if the NBA places a team in Mexico. It's when.

"There's no doubt we will be looking seriously at Mexico City over time," Silver said at a press conference connected to the 2022 Mexico City Game. Silver also dropped some John O'Sullivan on our heads, citing the league's "manifest destiny" to expand.

Our take: The NBA will have a team in Mexico City before the end of this decade. Mexico City has to wait in line behind, minimally, Las Vegas. But there is too much money to be made to leave Mexico City aside much longer.

2) NATIONAL LABOR RELATIONS BOARD RULES THAT NCAA ATHLETES ARE "EMPLOYEES" ⚖️

One of the great lines from the extraordinary Ernest Hemingway novel "The Sun Also Rises" comes from a secondary character named Mike Campbell. Asked how he went bankrupt, Campbell responds: "Two ways. Gradually, then suddenly."

The NCAA and its schools had players printing money without being paid beyond their scholarships for literally decades until the name, image and likeness rules came into effect. 

As it often happens, the capacity for some athletes to earn full livings off their NIL rights turned out to be the small leak en route to an eventual dam break. 

From Chris Isidore's post for CNN: "the NLRB’s Los Angeles office found merit in an unfair labor practice complaint filed on behalf of players on the football and basketball teams at the University of Southern California. This could open the door to previously unsuccessful efforts to form the first union of college athletes."

The piece quoted NLRB General Counsel Jennifer Abruzzo as noting that "this kind of misclassification deprives these players of their statutory right to organize and to join together to improve their working/playing conditions if they wish to do so."

To be clear, this is not the dam coming down. Not yet. 

"The NLRB only has legal authority over labor relations in the private sector, not in the public sector," Isidore clarified. That is, if this ruling sticks, it will help players at private universities (Duke, Villanova, Stanford et al) but not the players plying their wares at state schools.

We feel confident saying, at the least, that this ruling is a direct shot at the NCAA to either figure out how to stop egregiously exploiting its athletes or cope with the reality that the Federal Government will figure it out for them.

3) APPLE PIVOTS FROM THE NFL 🍎

We burned some bytes on Apple's dalliance with the National Football League around grabbing streaming rights. It was a story, at the time.

Day's end, though, it appears that Apple has decided to find less expensive profit venues to plunder.

Truth? We get it. The NFL has already carved up its product into so many bits and pieces (TNF on Amazon, SNF on NBC) that overpaying for anything the league offers is probably not worth Apple's time. Streaming rights matter. Just not so much for an Goliath like Apple.

JOB LEAD OF THE DAY 💰

We're always innovating here at Raising Stake, and we're also men of the people. Help us help you, etc. Thus, this new item in the newsletter.

Today's Job Lead of the Day is Fraud Monitoring Associate for DraftKings. This one is for our C-Suite types-to-be. The salary range is not published, but here are the job responsibilities:

  • Monitor and analyze daily alerting, flag and escalate any potential fraud activities and take necessary immediate actions to mitigate losses.

  • Review player deposits and withdrawal transactions for potential fraud.

  • Monitor and escalate suspicious activities associated with money laundering (including, but not limited to, tax evasion, fraud, and terrorist financing)

  • Assist management and internal teams with ad hoc requests and additional fraud reviews as needed. 

  • Ensure compliance with anti-money laundering, including KYC requirements and gaming regulations.

Why is this for the "to-be's? One year of experience and "a Bachelor's Degree in a related field will be considered an asset."

That says "young and hungry" to us. We wish you happy hunting.

WHAT ELSE IS GOING ON? 😎

WHAT TO KEEP AN EYE OUT FOR BEFORE THE NEXT SEND 👁️

This emailed was compiled today by the Raising Stake staff. Jason and Kyle contributed. Images from Getty.

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