Does legal online sports betting change behaviors of players and fans?
North Carolina is among the 38 states and Washington, D.C., where online sports gambling is legal in the U.S.
Paul Haagen, professor of law and co-director of the Center for Sports Law and Policy at Duke University Law School, said systems are in place to monitor if there is gambling by players.
"Once you make it legal, you can have some greater control in monitoring the market,” Haagen said.
Haagen said he doesn’t think betting scandals dating back to the 70s, 80s and 90s are making a comeback.
“Do I think it's extraordinarily likely? I actually don’t,” Haagen said. “It's hard to fix individual games.
“There are incentives not to participate in such things, but when you have that much money and that many people involved, I think it’s inevitable that there will be some."
Legalized sports betting was an $11 billion industry in 2023, according to the American Gaming Association’s annual report.
However, the new, legalized systems aren’t foolproof.
Instances of players betting on sports
This week, NCAA President Charlie Baker urged lawmakers in states with legal wagering on sporting events to ban betting on individual player performances of collegiate players. Prop bets allow gamblers to wager on statistics a player will accumulate during a game.
A letter from Baker last summer found 175 infractions of its sports-betting policy since 2018 in college sports.
The NBA announced this week it has opened an investigation into Toronto Raptors two-way player Jontay Porter amid gambling allegations relating to his own performance in individual games.
MLB launched an investigation into Los Angeles Dodgers star player Shohei Ohtani, whose interpreter is accused of an illegal gambling scheme. He claims Ohtani helped him pay off $4.5 million dollars in gambling debts. Ohtani denies this, saying the interpreter stole from him. This is still an ongoing investigation.
In the NFL, at least 12 players have gotten suspended for violating gambling rules in the past five years.
On Sept. 17, 2023, the Los Angeles Rams lost to the San Francisco 49ers 30-23. The Rams made a 38-yard field goal as time expired. The Rams were between a 7-point and a 7.5-point underdog in the game. The field goal was the difference between winning and losing a wager for many bettors.
In May 2023, authorities investigated 41 Iowa and Iowa State student-athletes for criminal conduct related to sports gambling. Many of them bet on games they played in. Some have since pleaded guilty, others had charges dropped and several are still fighting in court.
In many instances, while gambling rules were broken, no one has been accused of cheating or trying to fix games.
A brief history of sports gambling scandals
Perhaps the most famous gambling scandal in sports history involves Pete Rose. He agreed to a lifetime ban from pro baseball in 1989 after the MLB found he was placing bets on the Cincinnati Reds while playing for and managing the team.
“Shoeless” Joe Jackson was among eight members of the Chicago White Sox accused of losing the 1919 World Series against the Cincinnati Reds on purpose. In a public trial in 1921, Commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis permanently banned all eight players from professional baseball.
In the early 2000s, there was the infamous Tim Donaghy scandal. He’s the NBA ref who pleaded guilty to gambling charges.
Donaghy told CNBC in 2018 that he believes legalized gambling will lead to more scandals.
"I think it happens at a college level,” he said. “They win by 10 when the line is 12 or 14.
“So, in their mind, they’re not hurting their team. They’re just collecting money and not winning by as many as the line indicates they should."
In 1978, five Boston College basketball players were convicted in a point-shaving scheme, meaning they were missing shots on purpose to rig the score.
In 1996, 13 Boston College football players were kicked off the team for placing bets.
