Last week’s suspension of Toronto Raptors player Jontay Porter by the NBA for violations of the league’s gambling policy poured more fuel on the fire on the relationships between professional sports leagues and sports betting companies operating in legal gambling jurisdictions across the United States and Canada.

Doug Smith, who’s been covering the Toronto Raptors since Day 1 for the Toronto Star, appeared on this episode of the Gaming News Canada Show with Legal Sports Report gambling biz journalist (and former NBA beat writer) Mike Mazzeo. Smith spoke about the conversations he’s had with Raptors players about the new world of online sports wagering, and the ties that bind leagues and betting operators while Mazzeo weighed in on the measures being taken by all stakeholders in the fight against match-fixing and other potential betting scandals in pro sports.

Daniel Umfleet, the founder and CEO of Kindbridge Behavioral Health, then joined the show from Southampton, England to weigh in on the Porter ban. Kindbridge’s partners include NASCAR, Entain, BetMGM, DraftKings, U.S. Integrity and Sportradar, and Umfleet answered our questions about the roles companies in different sectors of the sports wagering landscape play in preventing situations such as Porter’s, and the pressures faced by today’s athletes – current, former and those who are trying to prepare for life after playing. He also got into the evolution of responsible gambling programs in the U.S., which traditionally have been based on bricks-and-mortar sportsbooks and casinos to deal with the still-newish world of online gambling.

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