{"id":330014,"date":"2025-12-04T13:13:09","date_gmt":"2025-12-04T13:13:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/330014\/"},"modified":"2025-12-04T13:13:09","modified_gmt":"2025-12-04T13:13:09","slug":"sports-betting-scandals-have-called-integrity-of-games-into-question","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/330014\/","title":{"rendered":"Sports betting scandals have called integrity of games into question"},"content":{"rendered":"

Two recent headline-grabbing scandals \u2014 one in the NBA<\/a> that resulted in the arrests of a player and a coach, and one in MLB<\/a> that resulted in two Guardians pitchers being charged \u2014 thrust the integrity of sports into the limelight and have fans wondering if every injury is fake or if a pitch in the dirt is intentional.<\/p>\n

Get Starting Point<\/p>\n

A guide through the most important stories of the morning, delivered Monday through Friday.<\/p>\n

That cloud\u2019s not going to chase itself away.<\/p>\n

\u201cI can understand why fans are pissed off,\u201d said Jordan Maynard, chair of the Massachusetts Gaming Commission, the state agency charged with monitoring sports and casino gambling. \u201cWhat I would say is that the legal market helped catch these issues. There\u2019s now a certain deterrent factor.\u201d<\/p>\n

There\u2019s no question that the integrity monitoring systems used by all the leagues work as intended to flag unusual betting patterns that correlate to specific suspicious actions by a player.<\/p>\n

Maynard and the other four commissioners constantly have to balance concerns about addictive and underage gambling and sports integrity with the commercial interests of a state-approved industry that has through September collected more than $339 million in tax revenues and assessments since sports betting launched in the first quarter of 2023.<\/p>\n

Asked if the state is considering more stringent restrictions or even outright banning of proposition bets, Maynard echoed the arguments of the sports betting industry and leagues about the downside of banning prop bets while keeping the door open to a significant curtailment.<\/p>\n

\u201cTo just outright ban [prop bets] based on these instances I think would potentially create some issues of driving people out of the regulated market,\u201d said Maynard, who also noted that \u201canything the leagues are doing is an improvement over what they were doing before these situations broke.\u201d <\/p>\n

Legislators at the State House are considering a bill that, among other sports betting reforms, would ban in-game prop bets.<\/p>\n

Before the most recent batch of scandals, Maynard said the commission\u2019s sports wagering division already had begun considering if any of its allowed wagers needed to be reconsidered.<\/p>\n

Maynard also said the commission is watching what is happening with New York regulators.<\/p>\n

After MLB announced last month that it would limit prop bets on pitches to $200 and exclude those types of bets from parlays, Brian O\u2019Dwyer, chair of the New York State Gaming Commission, said the state will investigate the vulnerability and viability of prop bets.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf we believe any wager is susceptible to manipulation, we will eliminate it, not restrict its offering,\u201d said O\u2019Dwyer. \u201cThe problem may be proposition betting, inherent by its very nature, is more susceptible to manipulation than betting on an outcome or a team as a whole.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhile limiting exposure is a good step, it may not be enough. It is not enough.\u201d<\/p>\n

To baseball commissioner Rob Manfred, the steps taken are enough for now.<\/p>\n

He described them at last month\u2019s owners\u2019 meetings in New York as a \u201creally, really significant change that should reduce the incentive for anyone to be involved in an inappropriate way.\u201d<\/p>\n

Asked if the league is considering banning prop bets, Manfred said, \u201cWe think the changes that we\u2019ve made strike the right balance.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"EmmanuelEmmanuel Clase was one of two Guardians pitchers indicted on federal charges of wire fraud, conspiracy to influence sporting contests by bribery, and money laundering.Yuki Iwamura\/Associated Press<\/p>\n

The American Gaming Association, the national trade group for the gambling industry, applauded the changes made by MLB. The group has no doubt that banning prop bets would backfire, in large part because of how popular the bets are with the betting public that enjoys \u201cplacing bets on their favorite athletes to do really tremendous things,\u201d said Joe Maloney, senior vice president of communications. \u201cBlanket prohibitions won\u2019t take away that activity. Prohibitions just move that stuff into the shadows.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Sports Betting Alliance, made up of sports betting operators that includes Boston-based DraftKings, struck the same cautionary note.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf protecting the integrity of sports and safeguarding consumers is the goal, then keeping prop bets on the legal regulated market is the only effective path forward,\u201d said SBA spokesperson Conor Yunits in an email.<\/p>\n

In the aftermath of the Terry Rozier and Guardians cases last month, an \u201cNFL Sports Betting Update\u201d memorandum sent to the 32 teams made its way into the media to send a reminder of how much of a risk prop bets pose to the league.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur highest priority has been protecting the integrity of the game,\u201d read the memo in part. \u201cFrom the earliest days of legal sports betting, we have recognized the particular risks associated with prop bets and the corrosive effect they have on fan perceptions, league reputation, and the safety of players, club staff, and game officials.\u201d<\/p>\n

Asked about the issue, the NHL referenced remarks made by commissioner Gary Bettman on the \u201c32 Thoughts\u201d podcast in which he, in part, gave the impression that the sport was insulated from trouble.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you look at the nature of our game, it\u2019s not really susceptible to outside influences and our players play hard and play to win every night,\u201d said Bettman. <\/p>\n

\u201cOur vigilance and the importance of the integrity of the games is something that is a daily task for all of us and something that I have complete confidence in.\u201d<\/p>\n

The NBA is facing a congressional inquiry. According to ESPN, the league is investigating its injury-reporting policies \u2014 the 76ers were just fined $100,000 for inaccurately reporting on the game availability of Joel Embiid \u2014 and The Athletic reported that the league has asked multiple teams to hand over documents, cellphones, and cellphone records.<\/p>\n

Since becoming legal in 2018, sports bettors have placed close to $600 billion in wagers, generated $51.3 billion in revenues for sports betting operators, and placed more than $10 billion in tax revenues in state coffers, according to Legal Sports Report.<\/p>\n

That money flow drowns out the drip, drip, drip of sports betting scandals.<\/p>\n

Marc Edelman, professor of law at City University of New York\u2019s Baruch College, believes it\u2019s wishful thinking to believe that leagues, never mind sports gambling operators, can be counted upon to take meaningful action to reduce the threats to sports integrity.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe decision that the sports leagues are taking is one that amounts to whack-a-mole that as a problem is emerging, they\u2019re taking the minimal steps to address them,\u201d said Edelman. \u201cThe professional sports leagues made the decision that the benefit of making revenue through selling advertisements and data to sports gambling companies was greater to them than the risk of monetary and reputational harm that could emanate from another sports betting scandal. <\/p>\n

\u201cAt the end of the day, the decision that was made by the team owners in the sports leagues came down to expected return in dollars and cents more than issues of integrity and sanctity of the game.\u201d<\/p>\n

Michael Silverman can be reached at michael.silverman@globe.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Two recent headline-grabbing scandals \u2014 one in the NBA that resulted in the arrests of a player and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":330015,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[60],"tags":[97,259,260],"class_list":{"0":"post-330014","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mental-health","8":"tag-health","9":"tag-mental-health","10":"tag-mentalhealth"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/330014","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=330014"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/330014\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/330015"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=330014"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=330014"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=330014"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}