The expansion of legal sports betting in the US over the last six years has made gambling more popular — including, it seems, among athletes.
2024 is shaping up to be the year of the sports-betting scandal, with several players across professional sports facing lifetime bans.
In April, the NBA permanently banned former Toronto Raptors center Jontay Porter for leaking confidential information and betting on games, including on the Raptors to lose. San Diego Padres player Tucupita Marcano was banned for life in June for gambling on 25 games involving his own team. And, in the UK, Premier League player Lucas Paqueta was charged by the Football Association in May for alleged breaches of its betting rules, which could lead to a lifetime ban if he’s found guilty.
It’s not just athletes.
A former baseball coach for the University of Alabama was caught last year knowingly sharing insider information with a gambler who had been betting against the team. And there was the April saga in which the former interpreter for Dodgers star Shohei Ohtani was charged with stealing $16 million from the pitcher to pay off his own gambling debts.
It seems every month, a new betting controversy shakes the sports world.
That’s not entirely a bad thing.
While the expansion of legal sports betting has made gambling more accessible, it’s also helped spot infractions like these. It’s bringing to light behaviors that once occurred in the dark, with bets run through bookies or offshore companies.
“Unfortunately, the system is working,” said Sara Slane, a consultant who works with teams and other sports properties on betting through her firm Slane Advisory. “It’s flushing out when people are betting that should not be betting and having action taken against them.”
Given the growing popularity of gambling and the propensity for athletes to take it up, it’s hardly surprising that we’re seeing a wave of betting scandals in sports. But with new technology and practices being rolled out to track and thwart it, along with a spate of high-profile controversies that have made examples of players who break the rules, 2024 could be the high-water mark for gambling controversies and not the new norm.
Sports-betting activity that once happened in the dark is being brought to light
Gambling scandals, from match-fixing to the sharing of insider information to athletes breaking leagues’ betting rules, have long pervaded American sports. Look no further than Major League Baseball legend Pete Rose, who was suspended from the league in 1989 for betting on baseball, including wagering on the team he was managing when he was caught.
That’s a big no-no in the MLB and other professional sports. It’s a slippery slope from betting on your own team or sport to trying to fix games.
Back then, Rose’s gambling habits only surfaced after his bet slips were found at an Ohio restaurant. Meanwhile, Porter’s suspicious activity was flagged to the NBA by licensed sportsbooks and a firm that works with sports-betting apps, regulators, and leagues to monitor betting activity. The MLB also said it was tipped off about Marcano’s betting activity by a legal sports-betting operator, ESPN reported.
Matt Holt, CEO of IC360, the integrity minority firm that helped flag the suspicious betting activity surrounding Porter and the Alabama baseball coach, said that from 2022 to 2023, there were almost 250 cases of athletes being suspended for “prohibited bettor issues” or betting on a sport they play, which typically violates league rules.
There’s little data available to show whether gambling violations like these occur more or less often in the age of legal gambling, in part because they weren’t easily tracked before 2018. (Holt said he’s seen an uptick, but that’s also due to new states introducing legal sports betting and regulators putting up better guardrails.)
Still, it’s reasonable to assume that as sports betting becomes more popular, so has gambling among athletes, who are sports fans themselves.
Six years into the industry’s development in the US, the infrastructure and technology are in place to better spot and investigate prohibited and illegal betting within the sports world.
“When you are operating in the dark, you have no idea what is actually happening — if refs are partaking in illegal betting or players are partaking in betting,” Slane said. “What the system now has provided is a legal, transparent operation where the leagues and the teams and the operators are working in partnership to identify it and stop it and thwart it.”
Many US states where sports betting is legal require gambling companies to work with a licensed independent integrity-monitoring service, like IC360 or Sportradar, to identify suspicious betting activity. Leagues also work with companies like these on their own integrity monitoring.
Generally, these sports-tech companies use AI to monitor multiple data sets, like live odds, live betting data that comes from sportsbooks, and social-media activity. When they identify unusual betting activity, it’s investigated by an analyst and then flagged to the relevant licensed sportsbooks, regulators, and sports leagues to take a closer look.
Sports-betting apps also do their own monitoring.
Still, regardless of the progress in information sharing and technology that’s making it easier to catch bad actors, these scandals are prematurely ending the careers of promising athletes, like the Iowa State University student-athletes who got caught up in gambling. They’re also threatening to undermine the integrity of sports if fans think games are rigged, and giving sports betting a bad rep.
“No one likes the obviously negative backlash,” Slane said, “but I think the counter option — burying your head in the sand — is just worse.”
Leagues are trying to educate athletes, who can be more prone to problem gambling
Sports leagues and teams from the collegiate to the professional levels are now putting more effort into educating their athletes, trainers, and coaches about gambling.
Studies have shown that athletes are at especially high risk for problem gambling.
“Athletes are more vulnerable to problem gambling because of their nature, natural competitiveness, and win-at-all-costs mentality,” said Jim Brown, head of integrity services and athlete wellbeing for North America at Sportradar. “So how do you help educate them about that and how to get resources if needed?”
Some leagues are developing curriculums and bringing in experts to educate players on everything from anti-match-fixing to the role of social media to the impact gambling can have on mental health. On top of gambling addiction, players and coaches have spoken out about being harassed by bettors on social media.
Regulators are also getting involved to protect younger athletes. Brown said Sportradar created programs for Colorado and Ohio, which provide free educational resources to all student-athletes in their states and access to an app where they can report if they’re approached about something like match-fixing.
Another challenge: The athletes may not even be aware that they’re doing anything wrong when they place a bet on their own sport.
Holt said that in over 90% of those roughly 250 cases of player suspensions for prohibited bets in the last two years, the athletes weren’t trying to fix or manipulate the games at all. They could be college football players betting on the NFL, or NFL players betting on games their teams weren’t playing in.
He thinks tech can help alongside education.
IC360 launched a product called ProhiBet that teams and colleges can use to upload a list of their players, coaches, and referees so that the app can monitor if they try to place a prohibited bet. It’s integrated with about 70 sportsbooks, so the operator and league are notified in real time if an athlete tries to place a prohibited bet, and the player is notified that they’re barred from doing so. The goal is to stop the bet from happening before the athlete violates any policies.
“Instead of busting them after the fact, let’s stop them from doing it on the front end,” Holt said.
As sports-betting continues to expand in more states and the industry evolves, there may be more gambling scandals to come. But some in the industry also hope the recent high-profile examples may make athletes think twice before placing a bet.
“To now see real consequences for the actions — hopefully it course corrects itself, and if it’s happening, it stops happening, or they’re just being educated about it more,” Slane said.