The other day the Adelson family, which controls Las Vegas Sands (LVS), and Mark Cuban, who owns the Dallas Mavericks, announced a deal, under which Cuban will sell a majority interest in his NBA team to the Adelsons for $3.5 billion. The Adelsons will raise $2 billion of that through an offering of LVS stock, slated to close tomorrow. The sale will clip something like four percentage points from the current family holding of about 56% of the outstanding LVS shares. LVS itself will reportedly be taking up an eighth of the offering.

A number of things made this deal catch my eye:

–the fact that the Adelsons, not LVS, are making the purchase,

–that Cuban will retain operating control over the Mavericks, despite becoming a minority holder,

–the (understandable) outrage from gambling interests in neighboring Oklahoma, and

–my curiosity about the increasing link between professional sports and gambling.

My guess is that the first two of these are calculated to short-circuit any worries about gambling influencing how games are played and/or to satisfy specific league bans on casino operators owning sports teams.

Legalizing casino gambling in a given state is typically argued for on the grounds that it will supplant underground operations run by organized crime. The experience of New Jersey, whose casino business in Atlantic City was very badly damaged–and for a long time–by legalization in bordering Pennsylvania.

I learned early in my investment career that ice cream makers only begin to offer chocolate or cookies and cream after the market for vanilla is saturated. So, to my mind, the emergence of online gambling is as much about saturation of the traditional casino market as about the lower operating cost and ubiquity of access of gamblers to betting and vice versa. What troubles me are studies, both years ago in Europe and currently in the US, that seem to show that all the profits from gambling apps come from a small group of heavily addicted gamblers who are severely damaged by their habit. My guess is that the steady refinement of social media tactics has only made today’s problems more severe. Two issues: does one want to be an enabler, and at some point either the leagues or the government may well intervene to address social harm.