US sports leagues rushed to get in on the multi-billion US dollar bonanza of legalized betting, but the arrest of an National Basketball Association (NBA) coach and player in two sprawling US federal investigations show the potential cost of partnering with the gambling industry.
Portland Trail Blazers coach Chauncey Billups, a former Detroit Pistons star and an NBA Hall of Famer, was arrested for his alleged role in rigged illegal poker games that prosecutors say were tied to Mafia crime families.
Miami Heat guard Terry Rozier was charged with manipulating his play for the benefit of bettors and former NBA player and assistant coach Damon Jones was charged in both cases.
Photo: AP
FBI director Kash Patel described “a criminal enterprise that envelopes both the NBA and La Cosa Nostra” and called the scope of the fraud “mind boggling.”
However, for those who have watched US leagues become increasingly entwined with an exploding sports betting industry it is not necessarily surprising.
“Smartphone gambling creates this huge accessibility where any of us can access a gambling app wherever we are within seconds,” said Luke Clark, a psychology professor and director of the Centre for Gambling Research at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver.
“I study the psychology of gambling games and gambling harm, and I think a lot about the normalization of gambling in sport,” he said.
“We primarily think about that in terms of the fan ... but in this latest story around the NBA arrest, it sort of brings a focus onto the athletes. They’re doing their jobs in an ecosystem that has become saturated with gambling and betting opportunities within quite a short space of time,” he added.
“The teams are partnered with gambling firms, the major leagues are all partnered, players can be sponsored, and the ways that gambling information is woven into sports broadcast in terms of the commentary and the odds updates ... the players and coaches are in quite a kind of exposed position,” he said.
Sports wagering in most US states was illegal until 2018 and professional leagues took care to distance themselves from the thriving operations of illegal bookmakers and offshore betting outfits.
However, seven years ago the US Supreme Court struck down a 1992 federal law that effectively banned commercial sports betting in most states.
NBA commissioner Adam Silver was among those advocating for the change, writing in a New York Times opinion piece in 2014 that he believed sports betting “should be brought out of the
underground and into the sunlight, where it can be appropriately monitored and regulated.”
It is no surprise that Silver, along with officials of other leagues, has moved to claim their piece of the pie.
The American Gaming Association (AGA), which advocates for the industry and tracks the economic impact of commercial gaming, calculates that year-to-date commercial sports betting revenue through August stands at US$10 billion — 18.9 percent higher than the same period last year.
However, for the NBA, the indictments unsealed on Thursday taint what should have been a celebratory season-opening week under a new, 11-year, US$77 billion media rights deal.
Players across the league expressed shock at the arrests of Billups and Rozier, but they also quickly pivoted to the problem of online abuse driven by disappointed bettors.
The prevalence of “prop” bets, in which bettors wager on in-game occurrences such as how many points or assists a player will have — or even such minutiae as whether they would make their first three-point attempt — has changed the way fans interact, even as it offers opportunities to manipulate the system.
“We as players feel it a lot when we step on the court,” Chicago Bulls center Nikola Vucevic said. “Before you used to hear ‘Vuc, get a win.’ Now it’s like ‘Hey, my parlay is 10 rebounds.’”
“Honestly, it pisses me off, because it’s disrespectful to the game,” he said.
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