Had you placed a bet then that prop bets would go away, you would have ended up a loser. <\/p>\n
When the NFL staged the Super Bowl between the Los Angeles Rams and the New England Patriots five months after the NFL\u2019s testimony, bettors could still choose among hundreds of prop bets. And six years later, they are still a source of headlines, concern for leagues and income for sportsbooks.<\/p>\n
In 2024, the NBA banned the Toronto Raptors\u2019 Jontay Porter for life<\/a> for sports betting after an investigation found he had, among other findings, \u201climited his own participation to influence the outcome of one or more bets on his performance in at least one Raptors game.\u201d In June, reports surfaced that a federal investigation into longtime NBA guard Malik Beasley<\/a> was related to activity around prop bets.<\/p>\n \u201cI do think some of the bets are problematic,” NBA Commissioner Adam Silver said in July, the month Major League Baseball placed a Cleveland Guardians pitcher on paid leave while it investigated unusually high wagers on the first pitches of innings on June 15 and June 27, ESPN reported<\/a>. <\/p>\n Weeks later, after MLB placed a second Guardians pitcher on leave as part of a sports gambling investigation<\/a>, MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred told a group of baseball writers<\/a> that there were \u201ccertain types of bets that strike me as unnecessary and particularly vulnerable, things where it\u2019s one single act [and] doesn\u2019t affect the outcome, necessarily.\u201d <\/p>\n Whether MLB considers prop bets \u201cunnecessary\u201d enough to try to have its gambling partners restrict the kinds that are offered is unclear. But if MLB does, it might look to the NBA for a possible blueprint. <\/p>\n During the 2024-25 NBA season, the league\u2019s gambling partners including FanDuel, DraftKings, BetMGM and several others who make up upward of 95% of the legal U.S. sportsbooks agreed to no longer offer \u201cunder\u201d prop bets on players either on 10-day or two-way contracts. (Porter had been on a two-way contract.) Fans could still bet on the sport’s big names, like Stephen Curry\u2019s 3-pointers or LeBron James\u2019 rebounds \u2014 but legal sports betting operators in the United States were no longer offering action on the NBA\u2019s lowest-paid players.<\/p>\n The decision wasn’t a mandate handed down solely by the NBA.<\/p>\n \u201cWe do not have control over the specific bets that are made on our game,\u201d Silver said in July. Years earlier, the league had sought just that type of power, but it was unsuccessful in persuading state lawmakers to pass legislation that would have given the NBA the right to approve what types of bets could be offered on the league. It also doesn\u2019t hold veto rights over what its gambling partners can and cannot offer, according to sources with knowledge of the situation. <\/p>\n Instead, much like the NFL\u2019s attempt in its congressional testimony six years earlier, the NBA had to ask for help. <\/p>\n Representatives for DraftKings and FanDuel didn\u2019t respond to requests for comment on their back-and-forth with the league that led to the decisions to restrict certain prop bets. Multiple people with knowledge of the situation not authorized to speak publicly on sensitive discussions said the league had to rely on making the case to its partners that prop bets on 10-day and two-way players weren\u2019t worth the relatively small amount of business they brought in.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s a small part of the marketplace,\u201d a person involved in the process said, \u201cbut had outsized integrity risks.\u201d<\/p>\n Such dialogue between a league and a sportsbook would have been unthinkable before the Supreme Court\u2019s 2018 decision to overturn a federal prohibition on sports gambling<\/a> freed states to decide whether to permit legal sports betting. (Thirty-eight states and the District of Columbia allow sports gambling, and Missouri is set to launch its own operation in December.) Almost overnight, leagues and sportsbooks that once steered clear of one another were now in business together. <\/p>\n Sometimes, the back-and-forth between a league and its sportsbook partners has stopped bets from appearing before they are even listed. In 2020, with leagues still months away from making a pandemic comeback, ESPN scrambled to fill programming that included NBA players\u2019 competing against one another in video games and even HORSE. As those competitions were announced, the NBA was contacted by betting operators and regulators who wanted to know whether betting odds should be offered on the unusual action, according to the sources with knowledge of the situation. The NBA strongly advised against it because the tournaments had been tape-delayed, meaning a handful of people already knew the outcomes and could benefit from that information if bets were offered. Sportsbooks agreed.<\/p>\n The NFL recently has also found success restricting certain types of prop bets, this time through legislation. The Illinois Gaming Board in February approved the NFL\u2019s request<\/a> to prohibit 10 types of what it classified as \u201cobjectionable wagers,\u201d including whether a kicker would miss a field goal or an extra point and whether quarterback\u2019s first pass of a game would be incomplete \u2014 the same type of \u201csingle-actor\u201d bets that leagues have come out against and that have reportedly sparked investigations into multiple athletes.<\/p>\n By seeking to influence which bets are offered, leagues and their gambling partners are attempting a delicate balance of limiting bets they consider risks to the integrity of their games while still ensuring that enough betting options are offered to keep fans wagering their dollars in legal markets, rather than through offshore sportsbooks where tracking suspicious activity is much more opaque.<\/p>\n Proponents of sports betting suggest that although the headlines about players or league staffers being investigated, or caught, for betting manipulation isn\u2019t good public relations for the sports, they\u2019re a sign that a \u201ccomplex system that detects aberrational behavior,\u201d as Silver said in July, is working as intended. As part of their partnership agreements, leagues, betting operators and so-called integrity firms have data-sharing agreements that allow them to communicate with one another to monitor suspicious activity. <\/p>\n “The transparency inherent with legalized sports betting has become a significant asset in protecting the integrity of athletic competition,” DraftKings said in a statement. “Unlike the pre-legalization era, when threats were far more difficult to detect, the regulated industry now provides increased oversight and accountability that helps to identify potentially suspicious activity.\u201d<\/p>\n In the case of the pair of Cleveland Guardian pitchers, the Ohio Casino Control Commission was notified June 30 by a licensed Ohio sportsbook about suspicious wagering on Guardians games and \u201cwas also promptly contacted by Major League Baseball regarding the events,\u201d a commission spokesperson said in a statement. \u201cUnder the Commission\u2019s statutory responsibilities, an independent investigation commenced.\u201d<\/p>\n It’s why leagues and sportsbook operators consider restricting bets a fine line. <\/p>\n \u201cIf you have sweeping prohibitions on that type of a bet, you\u2019re taking away the ability for your league to ensure the integrity of that activity,\u201d said Joe Maloney, a senior vice president for strategic communications at the American Gaming Association. \u201cYou will not have the ability to work with an integrity monitor to identify any irregular betting activity on such a legal market. You will not have the collaboration of a legal operator who will share that information. You will not have the collaboration of a legal operator to say to them, \u2018Here\u2019s the do-not-fly list for betting activity for our league: employees, club employees, trainers, athletic officials, referees,\u2019 etc. …<\/p>\n \u201cBetting engagement on prop bets is largely a reflection of fandom. And so, by pushing that away, I think you absolutely lose the ability to properly oversee it and to root out the bad actors that would seem to exploit it. Because it will still take place.\u201d<\/p>\n In 2022, legal sports betting accounted for $6.8 billion in legal revenue, while illegal sports betting accounted for about $3.8 billion, according to research from the American Gaming Association, a trade association. Last year, it estimated<\/a> that revenue from legal sports betting rose to $16 billion, while the illegal market grew to about $5 billion.<\/p>\n A 2024 analysis by the International Betting Integrity Association<\/a>, a nonprofit integrity firm made up of licensed gambling operators, questioned the efficacy of restricting prop bets. The IBIA reported that 59 out of 360,000 basketball games that had been offered for betting from 2017 to 2023 were \u201cthe subject of suspicious betting.\u201d <\/p>\n \u201cThere was no suspicious betting activity linked to match manipulation identified on player prop markets,\u201d the IBIA report said. \u201cThere is no meaningful integrity benefit from excluding such markets, which are widely available globally. Prohibiting those products will make offshore operators more attractive.\u201d<\/p>\n By persuading its partners to keep some prop bets off the books, the NBA nonetheless provided a precedent for how to remove bets leagues have considered, to use Manfred\u2019s term, \u201cunnecessary.\u201d Would MLB, amid an ongoing investigation into two pitchers, follow? Unlike the NBA, MLB doesn’t have easily defined classifications of contracts such as 10-day and two-way players. One method could instead be to target so-called first-pitch microbets. MLB is having \u201congoing conversations\u201d related to gambling, according to a person with knowledge of the league\u2019s thinking. <\/p>\n If baseball were to make such a push against microbets, its reasoning might mirror the NBA\u2019s last year, said Gill Alexander<\/a>, a longtime sports betting commentator for VSiN. \u201cI think basically baseball\u2019s point would be, you know, this is the type of prop that is just begging for trouble, right?\u201d Alexander said. <\/p>\n![\"The](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/250819-adam-silver-jg-83ef81.jpg\")
NBA Commissioner Adam Silver in Sun Valley, Idaho, on July 9.David Paul Morris \/ Bloomberg via Getty Images<\/p>\n![\"Cleveland](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/250819-luis-ortiz-jg-e6548d.jpg\")
Luis Ortiz of the Cleveland Guardians pitches against the Athletics at Sutter Health Park in Sacramento, Calif., on June 21.Scott Marshall \/ Getty Images<\/p>\n