Sports fans have been treated to some thrills this year. One of the most competitive Super Bowl’s in history had to be decided in overtime. In addition, the NCAA basketball tournament set a record for viewership of the women’s championship.
Now fans turn their attention to baseball. As they do, a specter from a dark past is casting its shadow over all sports — gambling.
It has been 105 years since eight members of the 1919 Chicago White Sox – later dubbed the Black Sox – threw the World Series. Yet, gambling has never left the sphere of sports.
Even now baseball is dealing with an illegal gambling scheme. The probe centers on an interpreter for Los Angeles Dodger star Shohei Ohtani. Ippei Mizuhara is accused of stealing money from Ohtani to fund his gambling habit.
Illegal Betting Thrives
Sports betting has become legitimate in 38 states plus the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico since a 2018 Supreme Court ruling. The rationale for most state laws has been that legalizing sports betting increases tax revenues and chokes off income to illegal organizations. However, while tax revenues have increased, illegal gambling has not skipped a beat.
A 2022 American Gambling Association report estimates that $63.8 billion was wagered illegally through bookies and offshore websites in 2021.
Research from licensed betting and gaming marketplace Yield Sec found that “two-thirds of Super Bowl bets (were) wagered illegally in 2024.”
During March Madness betting produced similar results. Illegal bets on the college hoop classic totaled $2.4 billion, according to Yield Sec. In comparison, legal wagers totaled $4.3 billion.
The Lure of Credit
With easy access to the internet and offshore betting, you might think the old neighborhood bookie was a relic of the past. Don’t bet on it. The bookie has an edge over the legal competition.
Bookies offer credit to gamblers. In short, credit from a bookie means you can bet money you do not have.
The danger for gamblers playing on credit is that a loss leaves them in debt to the bookie. However, the bookie is almost always happy to extend further credit. See where this is going? Credit from a bookie becomes the shovel you use to dig yourself into a deeper and deeper hole.
One way out of your gambling hole is to refer friends to the bookie. Then, as your friend loses money, a small cut is applied to your debt. After all, what are friends for?
Bookies also offer bets that legitimate betting operations may not offer. For instance, some states prohibit betting on local college teams.
Prop Bets
The NCAA has been pushing all states to restrict betting on college games. The primary focus of that effort has centered on prop bets on specific athletes.
Prop bets, short for proposition bets, can cover anything related to a sports event. That can include the outcome of the coin flip at the Super Bowl to the length of the national anthem at a baseball game.
However, the most prevalent prop bets are on the performance of a single player. For example, you could bet on how many assists a point guard might have in a basketball game or how many touchdowns a quarterback might throw.
Prop Bet Threat(s)
What makes prop bets particularly troubling is their impact on players and the integrity of sports.
There have been several point-shaving scandals in college sports. Perhaps the most famous is the 1950-51 City College of New York (CCNY) episode. Though other players on other teams were involved, CCNY was the most prominent team and the case broke in New York.
CCNY became the only team to win both the NCAA and National Invitational tournaments in 1950. The next year three of the starters for that squad were arrested for point fixing in exchange for bribes. In all, 32 players from seven schools pled guilty to shaving points.
For decades, college coaches cited the CCNY case as a cautionary tale for players.
The history lesson has not been lost on NCAA President Charles Barker.
“Sports betting issues are on the rise across the country with prop bets continuing to threaten the integrity of competition and leading to student-athletes getting harassed,” Barker posted in late March.
A couple of days after Barker’s post, the National Basketball Association revealed it was investigating Toronto Raptors’ Jontay Porter play related to prop bets in two games. Subsequently, the league banned Porter for life after determining he limited his play in games, disclosed confidential information to betters and wagered on games himself.
Porter is 24.
An Awkward Entanglement
Porter’s wagering was done through a VIP account with FanDuel The Action Network reported Tuesday. However a source for that report said FanDuel did not accept any bets from Porter on NBA or college basketball.
FanDuel is an online sports betting platform and is perfectly legal. It also has a promotional relationship with professional sports teams. That is the awkward part, says Porter’s former teammate Garrett Temple. He is the vice president of the National Basketball Players Association.
“You watch a game and you may see FanDuel or DraftKings as a big-time sponsor for a team,” Temple told The Canadian Press, “but obviously it’s illegal for us to do it in any regard on any type of professional basketball like the NBA, G League, WNBA. We understand that. Sports betting has always been around, it just obviously is even more available.
“It’s not as if a rule change happened, so it is awkward but at the same time, we understand what we’re getting ourselves into.”
More Than Awkward
However, players and coaches may be getting themselves into more than expected – even if they follow the rules.
Cleveland Cavaliers head coach J. B. Bickerstaff says he has been threatened by gamblers.
“I personally have had my own instances with some of the sports gamblers where they got my telephone number and were sending me crazy messages about where I live and my kids and all of that stuff,” Bickerstaff told News 5 Cleveland, “so it is a dangerous game and a fine line that we’re walking for sure,”
Do As I Say, Not As I Do
What players are getting into are relationships with leagues and teams that threaten to ban them from their sports if they gamble. However, those leagues and teams have partnered with gambling operators.
Even Major League Baseball has joined the party. In 2019, the 100th anniversary of the Black Sox scandal, FanDuel became the “authorized gaming operator of MLB”.
In a PBS interview, Andrew Brandt, director of Villanova University’s Moord Center for the Study of Sports Law commented on the National Football League’s involvement with sports betting platforms.
“Leagues, teams, owners can embrace sports betting,” said Brandt. “They’re investors in sports betting. FanDuel, DraftKings, they sponsor every team. Some of the NFL owners are early investors with equity portions in those companies, but players can’t. And that’s really the dichotomy we have here. Do as I say, not as I do.”
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