In the aftermath of the Minner scandal, UFC CEO Dana White first insisted that nothing untoward had taken place.<\/p>\n
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\u201cI don\u2019t think anything happened,\u201d White said initially, adding that there was \u201cabsolutely zero proof that anybody that was involved (in the fight) bet on it.\u201d<\/p>\n
A month later, he had apparently been convinced otherwise. The people involved in this, White said, would go to \u201cfederal f***ing prison.\u201d They didn\u2019t, though. The Nevada Athletic Commission handed out suspensions to Minner and his coach James Krause, who was subsequently painted as the ringleader of a vast MMA gambling ring, as well as to Minner\u2019s teammate Jeff Molina. People didn\u2019t exactly get off easy, but they stayed well clear of federal (freaking) prison. UFC banned fighters from working with Krause. He became persona non grata, at least outwardly. Beyond that, the story seemed to just \u2026 evaporate.<\/p>\n
Back when the Minner incident first happened I spoke to Matthew Holt, then the president of US Integrity, which monitors sports betting activity across a number of platforms. (US Integrity has since been renamed IC360.) Holt told me that his firm had known for some time that insider betting in the UFC was a problem, with fighters and coaches betting on UFC bouts at a rate far higher than what the firm saw from other pro sports leagues. Holt said his company had told the UFC as much on several occasions.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think it’s (an issue of) league structure, and the UFC is at a disadvantage, to be fair,\u201d Holt told me in 2022. Whereas leagues like the NFL knew exactly who was and wasn\u2019t a team employee, and had them all under the roofs of team facilities confined to the United States, the UFC has fighters all over the world making use of a loose confederation of coaches and training partners.<\/p>\n
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Still, it\u2019s not as if there\u2019s nothing that could be done. Holt said at the time that his company had noted the strange betting activity ahead of the Minner fight and sent out alerts to various sportsbooks, online and otherwise.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn this case, what was also really interesting is when we sent out the alert, we got responses from double-digit sportsbooks across the U.S. saying they were seeing very similar activity,\u201d Holt told me. \u201cAbnormally large amounts of money wagered on the under two and a half rounds (prop bet), and abnormally large amounts of money wagered on this fighter to win by first-round knockout.\u201d<\/p>\n
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Coach James Krause and Darrick Minner (right) were central players in the 2022 UFC betting scandal.<\/p>\n
(Chris Unger via Getty Images)<\/p>\n
This is one of the advantages to having a sports-betting market that exists mostly on the internet and in our phones, all while we are living in the age of the algorithm. It\u2019s much easier to spot suspicious betting and to get the word out in advance. It\u2019s also easier to see who is placing the bets, which means it\u2019s a lot easier for those involved to get caught. It should even be easier for the UFC to get word in advance and pull matches with suspicious betting activity around them<\/p>\n
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But then what? That\u2019s the next step that has been missing lately. UFC, like virtually every other pro sports organization, has embraced online sports betting with both arms. You can\u2019t make it through a UFC event with being bombarded by betting odds updates and commercials for sportsbook apps. Gambling has always, always been a part of fight sports, but now it\u2019s out in the open and the promoters get to feast on their own financial piece.<\/p>\n
This would seem to argue for a more aggressive approach from the UFC. It needs fans to believe that fights are on the level \u2014 for several reasons. Simply dodging the bad publicity and laying low until the story dies a natural death only guarantees that it will eventually happen again.<\/p>\n
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Isaac Dulgarian was cut from the UFC following suspicious betting activity ahead of a bout he lost at Saturday’s UFC event, but he isn’t the first to find himself in this situation.<\/p>\n
(Jeff Bottari via Getty Images)<\/p>\n
And the thing is, it will happen again. UFC is uniquely vulnerable to this. Athletes are independent contractors who the UFC has very little contact with or oversight of outside of fight week. Many of these fighters are also among the lowest-paid people in professional sports, and they\u2019re surrounded by people who help them in highly unofficial capacities. If you were a nefarious gambler looking for a way in, you\u2019d have your pick of paths to the waterfall.<\/p>\n
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The one thing we know for sure is that these issues won\u2019t magically go away on their own. Gambling has its hooks in American sports. No one is about to turn down the money that flows from these apps. Maybe the best we can do is make it legit and fair. But even that is a fight the UFC has to willingly join, and with all the vehemence that it approaches other issues that are in its financial best interests. To not become part of the solution is to declare yourself a part of the problem.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Stop me if you\u2019ve heard this one: A mostly unheralded fight on a completely skippable UFC Fight Night…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":261935,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[570],"tags":[64,63,51898,104729,958,153794,786,153796,153795,785,153798,85,23371,153797,787],"class_list":["post-261934","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mma","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-bets","tag-betting-odds","tag-dana-white","tag-darrick-minner","tag-fighting","tag-isaac-dulgarian","tag-matthew-holt","tag-mma","tag-online-sportsbooks","tag-sports","tag-sports-betting","tag-suspicious-activity","tag-ufc"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/261934","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=261934"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/261934\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/261935"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=261934"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=261934"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=261934"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}