Organized sports, both professional and collegiate, fought for years against attempts to legalize sports betting. When the U.S. Supreme Court took the fight out of them by overturning a sports betting ban in 2018, the inevitable sank in.
While the National Basketball Association became the first pro league to declare its support of legalized wagers, Major League Baseball was slower to jump on board. Commissioner Rob Manfred used the term “dragged” when responding to a question during the 2024 Associated Press Sports Editors Commissioners Meetings.
Perhaps that owes to the fact that MLB carries two of the most celebrated betting scandals in all of sports around its neck: the attempt to throw the 1919 World Series by the Chicago White Sox and Pete Rose. The Cincinnati Reds beat the White Sox in a series that year, overshadowed by the scandal which cost eight players a lifetime ban from the game. Rose was banned from baseball in 1989 after it was revealed that he bet on his team and MLB.
There have been lesser-known betting scandals since, in baseball and other sports. Two emerged in the post-legalization period for the national pastime. The first involved the University of Alabama, where coach Brad Bohnana was banned for five years after providing inside information to a gambler who bet on the team. The $100,000 bet was placed at an MGM sportsbook in Ohio.
The second did not include a legal sportsbook, but entangled one of the superstars of the game, Shohei Ohtani. Unbeknown to Ohtani, his interpreter Ippei Mizuhara allegedly stole millions of dollars from him and using it to illegally gamble on sports.
Manfred cites both episodes as proof the integrity system in place for years worked.
Prop bets—a certain batter will strike out twice, for example—offer easier routes to compromise integrity than convincing a team to lose the World Series.
“We’ve been on prop bets from the very beginning. When we lobby in states, there’s always certain types of bets that we have lobbied against. I mean, the first pitch of the game, we really don’t want that available as a prop bet,” Manfred told CBS Sports.
He reminded the editors that the Ohtani incident did not involve the player or any player, for that matter. Moreover, the bets did not involve a legitimate sportsbook. But the Alabama scandal broke open easily because it took place in a legal sportsbook.
“When you have problems in our sport or in other sports, it makes you refocus your efforts, but we really do think that our integrity program—in terms of the monitoring and data available to us—protect the sport,” he said.
For years, MLB has worked with a full-time integrity and compliance team. The league permits players to bet on other sports, but not on baseball, softball, or any similar derivatives.
“We find ourselves in this world and you can make an argument from an integrity perspective we’re in a better position. One of the advantages of legalization is it’s a heck of a lot easier to monitor what’s going on than it is with an illegal operation.”
While MLB opposed legalization, it’s interesting that it has embraced gambling advertising and that there are in-stadium sportsbooks.
“I also think that the fallout pieces of it, in terms of pressure being put on athletes and what not, if they get into trouble, the potential for that is much less when you’re talking about a legalized operation than when you’re talking about illegal,” Manfred said.
NBA player Jontay Porter got his comeuppance for questionable betting actions while a member of the Toronto Raptors earlier this season. The National Basketball Association hopes this scandal is the last. With that in mind, the NBA and partner sportsbooks have conferred about modifications to the wagering options.
A player prop adjustment under consideration calls for a ban on bets for players on two-way contracts between the NBA and the G League, a position Porter occupied at the time of the wagering issues. More severe steps such as prohibiting bets for the “under” on a player prop also emerged during talks, according to sources. But those kinds of moves carry the risk of sending bettors to offshore sportsbooks.
Thanks to its commercial deals with BetMGM, DraftKings, FanDuel and others, the NBA brings its weight to the table when it comes to types of bets.
“Since states began legalizing sports betting in 2018, we have worked closely with betting operators as well as integrity monitoring organizations to put in place essential monitoring and reporting systems so that we are best positioned to identify potential betting anomalies and to act to protect the integrity of our game,” an NBA spokesperson said in a statement to ESPN.
Porter, banned by Commissioner Adam Silver April 17, earned $415,000 from the Toronto Raptors on a two-way contract. The NBA accused Porter of informing a known gambler about his health situation and then altered his play to help the bettor. He also wagered on the NBA a minimum of 13 times with someone else’s account, with the highest single wager at $22,000. A trio of parlay bets selected the Raptors to lose. In all, Porter had a net win of $21,965. Players may not bet on the NBA, according to league rules.
Before a March 20 game against the Sacramento Kings, an unidentified accomplice wagered an $80,000 same-game parlay bet featuring the under on Porter stats. The Raptors player competed for three minutes before leaving the game with an undisclosed illness. His friend would have received $1.1 million had the bet not been flagged by the sportsbook, according to the NBA.
Another instance occurred Jan. 26 when the Raptors played the Clippers. Porter only played four minutes claiming an eye injury received days before in a game against the Grizzlies.
