As owner of the NHL’s Mammoth and NBA’s Jazz, Ryan Smith is deeply involved in Utah sports. He recently spoke to Front Office Sports about whether Salt Lake is ready for an MLB team, the plan to leave money to his alma mater BYU when he dies, and what he thinks about the proliferation of sports betting and prediction markets in sports.

Ryan Smith on …

The NBA’s historic penalties against the Clippers and owner Steve Ballmer following the Kawhi Leonard salary-cap circumvention investigation:

“This game is tricky; this game is hard. And obviously we have rules, and the NBA’s gotta do it; I’m glad he accepted it, and we can all just turn the page and move on.”

Giving to his alma mater BYU:

“When I’m no longer here, they’re going to get a big chunk of whatever I’ve got … but that’s the right thing to do because that’s where it all started. It’d be really weird if they didn’t. You gotta remember where you came from, and I came from there.” 

Pursuing an MLB team in Utah:

“Our group will be pretty aggressive in how we pursue sports. … We do it our own way. We don’t do a lot publicly. I actually think that’s not the way expansion really gets done. Salt Lake’s ready for it, but if you saw how we operated with the NHL, it just happened. We said we wanted the NHL, and a couple of months later, we had a team and we were rolling. The sale of the Angels, it just happened.”

Sports betting:

“We all know the risks of gambling. We’ve seen lives destroyed, people destroyed, because of it. … It’s not going away. I think we need a little more moderation in all of it. You should be able to watch sports without having to always have too much there, but I also see the appeal, because it’s super fun for people.”

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Watch the full interview with Ryan Smith, who talks about building the future of sports in Utah.

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