Prop'd Up: U.S. sport's latest gambling scandal
NBA's latest crisis featuring active players and coaches was inevitable as the walls come down around legal gambling.
On these pages early last year, I penned a piece on why the U.S. sports gambling dam being cast wide made for particularly bad, predictable news.
I won’t go as far as to say I told you so, as it was so blatantly obvious what was going to happen, but the latest scandal emanating out of the NBA is just another predictable instance of sport losing its integrity as legal gambling becomes the norm in America.
For decades, U.S. sport and the professional sport leagues shunned the greasy tentacles of gambling, until widespread gambling reforms across the States jerked open the door for sporting organisations and their respective media and television industries to get into bed with the lucrative betting sphere, opening up a treasure trove of new business opportunities and sponsorship opportunities.
This all came in stark contrast to sport’s efforts on this side of the pond to curb the influence of gambling in advertising and marketing material and sponsorship that appears on and off the field.
Instead, the U.S. sports market was ripe for gambling’s vices. Hyper-specific markets and prop bets, widespread insider information across a whole swathe of sports, divisions and the many, many hundreds and thousands of personnel around teams and leagues to extract information on.
The latest scandal embroils current and former NBA figures, including Miami Heat’s Terry Rozier and former Portland coach Chauncey Billups. It involved Mafia families and dates back to scammed card games in 2019, with a scheme featuring a shuffling machine that had been secretly altered to use concealed technology to read the cards in the deck.
FBI investigators allege the gambling scheme involving non-public game status information began, with the co-defendants accused of using “access to private information known by NBA players or NBA coaches that was likely to affect the outcome of upcoming NBA games or individuals’ performances,” according to the federal indictment.
The indictment alleges Rozier, then playing for the Charlotte Hornets, had informed co-defendants that he was going to prematurely remove himself from a game against the New Orleans Pelicans in the first quarter. This information was sold to various co-defendants, and substantial sums were placed on prop bets for Rozier’s “unders” in the game.
Rozier, indeed, removed himself from the game in the first quarter after playing less than 10 minutes and did not return. He had five points and two assists and finished “under” the lines set by oddsmakers for his points, assists and 3-point shots.
Billups had allegedly told co-defendants that his Trail Blazers were tanking and several of their best players would not be playing.
The prop bet, featuring hyper specific in-game scenarios, have become ripe for insider information. You can bet on player overs and unders, team dynamics, and injury information on big name withdrawals before that news reaches the news and betting markets give betters a crucial edge to go all-in on.
On the other hand, these bets wildly stand out on sportsbooks and it’s argued that the fact gambling is now legal, these instances of insider gambling can be more easily caught.
NBA commissioner Adam Silver has criticised prop bets, calling for reform after the previous NBA scandal involving Jontay Porter, who has been banned from the NBA for life after the league found that he violated gambling policies by “disclosing confidential information to sports bettors, limiting his own participation in one or more games for betting purposes and betting on NBA games.”
Sporting commissioners have taken a stern position against players and personnel betting on games and other sports, with various scandals dating as far back as 1919 and the Black Sox scandal, in which eight members of the Chicago White Sox were accused of throwing the World Series for the benefit of a gambling ring.
David Samson, a former sports executive and president of baseball club Miami Marlins for 15 years, explained on the Pablo Torres Finds Out show that MLB players personnel must sit through an annual lecture on the illegality of gambling on baseball, in an effort to combat issues down the road.
The opening of the dam has created a new category of gambling addicts, paired athletes and sports personnel with crime syndicates, while the leagues have gone beyond just tolerating the change and made partnerships and sponsorship deals with major sports gambling companies. The two leading companies, FanDuel and DraftKings, are official corporate gambling partners of the NBA, the NFL and MLB, as well as with individual teams.
During broadcasts, it’s common to see betting ads and in-game statistical projections on-screen, complemented with the corresponding prop bet.
The prop bet has been described as like heroin to the vulnerable, offering instant gratification during games for those betting. They “may be associated with risky gambling behavior,” according to the National Council on Problem Gaming.
In a memo issued by the NBA, they singled out prop bets as trouble spots: “In particular, proposition bets on individual player performance involve heightened integrity concerns and require additional scrutiny.”
And as gambling becomes mainstream and roundly legal, it’s become more accessible than ever. Phone apps mean you can drop bets at the few touches of a button, loading up your balance with barely a verification check.
The ills will have been well sign posted, but there really is no putting the cat back in the bag. DraftKings has more than doubled its revenue since 2022, reaching $4.8 billion last year, and nearly doubling its monthly average users to 3.7 million. There is just far too much money and it’s far too lucrative for executives to correct course.
With gambling now legal across most of the country, it’s almost impossible for governments to re-regulate and for sports leagues to turn up away from the vast incomes that are now flowing through their coffers. This will be one of the more unusual gambling scandals that hit the headlines - it most certainly won’t be the last involving sporting figures in America’s big leagues.