Old Men in Sweats! TM
By: Tommy T. & Barry D.
Volume 22
Lucky, Meyer, & Bugsy had it right all along!
Boy our people really took a lot of heat nearly a century ago for all their illegal activities. Charles “Lucky” Luciano, a Sicilian-born immigrant whose life was loosely portrayed in the Godfather films, was a man way before his time. Almost 100 years before.
Ol’ Lucky divided New York among “the 5 families” and later formed The Commission, which is still in place today. He had a business mind that preyed on certain appetites of the regular man. Gambling and prostitution were the Mafia’s main calling cards in the early days. And thankfully due to the Prohibition Act, bootlegging reigned supreme in the 20s.
Lucky ran into trouble with the law several times, ultimately earning a 30-year prison sentence in the late ’30. After helping the Allies with his contacts in Italy during WWII, his prison sentence was commuted and he served out his later years in relative anonymity in his native Naples, Italy.
This week, the NBA and MGM Resorts International announced a partnership that will make the casino conglomerate the league’s official gaming partner. MGM will have exclusive rights to NBA and WNBA highlights and logos in its venues and on its digital app, as well as the leagues’ data feed. Talk about coming full circle.
To make a further parallel point, there was a very pivotal moment in the original Godfather movie, when Don Corleone refused to get into the drug trade with the other families for fear of losing all of his political connections. The Don viewed drugs as a blight on his new country and didn’t want any part of it. Today we look at both gambling and drugs almost exactly the same way.
The NBA and all the major sports want nothing to do with drugs. The NFL even imposing the stiffest penalties possible on the self-medicating marijuana users. But gambling, that’s a different story. Adam Silver, the brilliant commissioner of the NBA, has always looked at gambling with an open mind. And a business mind.
Why not? Everybody in our country is cool with gambling. Nearly everybody gambles in some form.
Even if it’s only the lottery or fantasy football. And of course casinos are no longer limited to Las Vegas and Atlantic City. They’re in every corner of the country.
So Silver has positioned the NBA to grow his sports’ revenue streams. That is probably the ultimate goal of all commissioners and owners. That’s why everybody is looking to Europe and China to expand their brand. The best way to grow your revenue is to grow your consumers. The NBA-MGM deal comes two and a half months after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that states were within their rights to allow sports betting. That ruling sent tremors across the western hemisphere. To the general peruser of news that ruling leads us to think gambling will be legal everywhere. I’m hearing things like, “We’ll be able to bet on games while we’re watching the games live.” Even though I think that’s possible now. Plus gambling seems like it is already legal everywhere. But the point has been made. The Supreme Court is in on the fun and the party is ongoing. The neighborhood bookies are a thing of the past and everybody will have a gambling app on their phone in no time.
My money is on Adam Silver and the NBA to set the trend. To get in front of the wave and ride it all the way to the beach. Hell, Adam may not even get wet on that ride in. Silver will also be leading his red-headed stepbrothers into the new age. Because let’s face it, Goodell, Manfred, and Bettman are all looking at Silver the same way the heads of the other families looked at Lucky Luciano 100 years ago. “What do we do next, Adam?”
Certain men have an eye for business. An instinct for making their people money. And most of the time those men are simply possessors of the most common sense in the group. They look at things in a pragmatic way and know what moves to make.
Late in Godfather 2, Johnny Ola presented Hyman Roth to the heads of the 5 families on the rooftop of a hotel in Havana. Hyman Roth was Meyer Lansky in the film. And Ola declared, “Hyman Roth always makes money for his partners.”
Forgive me for continually comparing our Sports leaders as mafiosos, but if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, guess what?
Adam Silver is this era’s “Don”. He’s the man who will lead our sports into previously forbidden territory. Gambling. But like Lucky and Meyer and Bugsy called it 100 years ago, the more times goes by, the more we all want the same thing.
-OMIS
OMIS: “PREACHING SPORTS KNOWLEDGE FOR A LIFETIME!”