The NBA betting scandal shows who really runs the sport now
By Jay Willis | Published: 2025-10-28 17:30:00 | Source: Fast Company – technology
The latest gambling scandal to rock the NBA revolves around a real-life event that ordinary people would never have noticed. In March 2023, the 35-37 New Orleans Pelicans posted a 115-89 win over the Charlotte Hornets, who would go on to finish the year with a 27-55 record. The Pelicans never trailed in the game, thanks in large part to the performance of Brandon Ingram, who notched the first triple-double of his career.
The ninth paragraph of a summary On ESPN mentions another factor that may have contributed to the crucial margin of victory: Hornets guard Terry Rozier left the game early, complaining of pain in his right foot, and did not return.
like The alleged one By federal prosecutors in New York, this was no coincidence. They say that Rozier, before the game, told his childhood friend that he intended to fake an injury, allowing that friend to place a sure bet on Rozier’s tools — a type of bet that allows users to gamble on whether a player will collect more (“over”) or less (“under”) than the total offered by the sportsbook in a given statistical category.
Rozier’s friend then sold this information to an unconfirmed but large number of people last The bettors, collectively betting hundreds of thousands of dollars that Terry Rozier, the serviceable but not spectacular point guard playing in a late-season game between two forever forgettable teams, will happen to have a bad night.
Sure enough, Rozier pulled the bet after scoring just 5 points in less than 10 minutes of playing time, which, he promised, meant that the “lower” bets had been made. A few days later, the bettors gathered in Philadelphia to settle the matter. Rozier’s friend then drove to Rozier’s home in Charlotte, where they counted their money together, according to the report. Indictment.
Promotional bets – bets that a certain event will or will not happen in a game – are not the only type of cheating alleged in this game. scandalwhich involves a cast of characters that includes current and former NBA players, enterprising sports gamblers, and mafia associates running fake poker games and which is almost certain to be depicted in a Netflix limited series sometime next year. But player props are at the heart of this story, because player props will likely be at the center of every sports betting scandal for the foreseeable future.
Props represent the betting industry’s single biggest threat to the legitimacy of the games fans watch, and to the public trust that leagues have spent decades building. However, because its availability makes a lot of money for everyone involved – not the bettors, of course, but the leagues and their teams. Official sports partners-No one in a position of power has much incentive to do anything about it.
Props are popular among bettors because they are fun: they give casual viewers a reason to root for players they otherwise wouldn’t care about, and they benefit from the strong belief among armchair quarterbacks that they understand their favorite team’s tendencies better than any potential maker. But from a game safety point of view, the problems with these bets are pretty self-evident.
First, in many cases, one person can easily manipulate the outcome. A player in Rozier’s position cannot guarantee that he will score a certain number of points, and he certainly cannot guarantee that the Hornets will win (or lose) the game. But he can guarantee that he scores less From a certain number of points. All he has to do is remember what that number is, hold his foot and… He winced a little before he reaches it.
Second, the results of promotional bets are often insignificant to the final outcome, which is what most non-betting fans notice and care about. Earlier this year, for example, regulators It has been marked Bettors in Ohio, New York and New Jersey seem unusually confident that Cleveland Guardians outfielder Luis Ortiz, in two specific games and in two specific innings, will pitch the ball or strike out a batter with his first pitch. Sure, in Both casesOrtiz’s deliveries were outside and in the dirt. One that was completely skipped by the catcher
Major League Baseball has placed Ortiz on leave, and the investigation is ongoing. But if Ortiz was colluding with friendly bettors he tipped off in advance, it’s easy to see how they settled on this money-making strategy, which hinged on the outcome of a single pitch, thrown when no one was on base, while fans who had gone for a beer during intermission still returned to their seats.
Again, a player like Ortiz alone cannot control his team winning a nine-inning game. But he can control whether his first pitch in the third inning is close to the strike zone, or hits a shortstop.
In the past year or so, leagues have begun to understand the risks that spread betting props pose to their organizations. During the recent MLB All-Star break, commissioner Rob Manfred criticize Prop bets are deemed “unnecessary” and “particularly vulnerable” to manipulation. At the request of the NFL, organizers in Illinois Forbidden Props on blocked kicks, incomplete passes, and other incidents where the outcome is “100% determinable by one person on one play.” he asked Congress bans player props in college athletics; In Ohio, Gov. Mike DeWine has called for a complete ban on props in both college and professional sports, Contact The market for these bets constitutes an “experiment” that “failed miserably.”
The NBA had a chance to address props last year, when Toronto Raptors reserve Jontay Porter was involved in a Rozier-style scheme, where he removed himself from a game to ensure his bets were lower than expected. Shortly thereafter, NBA Commissioner Adam Silver he asked Sportsbooks have stopped offering props to players who, like Porter, signed two- or 10-day contracts, arguing that marginal players who make the least money are most vulnerable to pressure to try to supplement their income while they still have the chance.
But the Rozier scandal exposes the inherent flaws in trying to regulate a multibillion-dollar industry by responding to the latest scandal. First, the lack of props for players of Porter’s caliber wouldn’t have affected Rozier, a 10-year veteran who, when he opted out of that game back in March 2023, was a first-year Four-year contract Worth $96 million. Secondly, it was all Silver could do I ask Sports betting is asking for help, because the league only has so much control over the bets its partners do or don’t take. as a result of, According to According to NBC News, even after the Porter scandal, the league had to make the business case to sportsbooks that backed bets on young players like him and weren’t profitable enough to continue the show.
It is true that leagues, sports betting, and regulators have procedures in place to try to detect cheating. Hours before the game that Rozier pulled himself out of, several sportsbooks stopped betting on his props after a third-party monitoring company… It has been marked Unusual betting activity on his ass, including one bettor at one casino who bet more than $13,000 across 30 separate bets in 46 minutes.
But the fact that these systems have caught some people cheating raises the question in fans’ minds about how much cheating is actually going on. If Rozier’s friend had been more careful about placing his bets — or at least, if he hadn’t relayed the information to God knows how many people flooded gambling apps and casino floors, looking to get in on the action — perhaps no one would have found out.
Even if (highly likely, but stay with me) these systems are as effective as the leagues would like you to believe, perception is just as important as reality. The more often bettors read about scandals like this in the news, the more their lost bets and poor results begin to feel like they are the results of corruption that the leagues must ignore.
Indeed, players across sports Endure harassment and Receiving death threats Of bettors angry that one leg of their bet didn’t hit. If you search
So far, the leagues have bet – pardon the pun – on that Billions of dollars That they profit from legal gambling will make the occasional embarrassing scandal worth it. (Silver recently described The NBA describes it as “learning as we go.”)
For now, that may still be true, but at some point, if betting fans and non-betting fans no longer trust the product on the field, on the court or on the ice, it won’t be the case. The question is whether the leagues will give up some of that easy money to protect what’s left of their credibility, or whether they’re willing to risk losing it forever.
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(tags for translation) betting
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