NBA Betting Scandal

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NBA Betting Scandal

Unless you either have no interest in sports, the news, or live under a rock, you must have heard the news about the FBI’s sports gambling bust.

Long story short, the FBI busted current NBA player Terry Rozier and NBA coaches Chauncey Billups and Damon Jones for being part of an illegal gambling and sports rigging operation.

The news gets even spicier, with star Kylie Jenner being linked to the case, which is also directly tied to organized crime syndicates, with 30 total individuals being arrested.

As the days move on, more and more information about the case will be revealed, and it’s safe to say, it’s only going to get uglier.

While the case itself is, at the very least, entertaining from the outside looking in, there are a few significant things to highlight as it pertains to the future of sports betting.

Chauncy Billups, the Blazers’ head coach, told people to bet against his own team due to tanking.

Terry Rozier told associates to bet on his unders because he was going to play and then fake an injury.

What does this mean for the future of legalized sports betting?

Key Takeaways

Since the case dropped, social media, particularly Gambling X, has been debating what this means for the future of sports betting.

Here are a few takeaways from our end. (These are our opinions, not facts)

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Legal Sportsbooks Are a Good Thing

Without legal sportsbooks, who knows how much longer some of these schemes could have continued?

One benefit of regulation and legal sportsbooks is that they can catch things like this. One market, like Terry Rozier unders, that gets, for example’s sake, an average of $5,000 in liability a night, suddenly gets 5x that over a week—it’s clear something is up.

Because legal sportsbooks have intel into betting patterns, they move lines, and they know what’s “normal”, the red flags that were raised helped bring this scheme to light.

The offerings that sportsbooks have are not the issue. The issue is that an illegal scheme was in place. Sportsbooks actually helped bring the case in.

The Future of Player Props

NBA Commissioner Adam Silver said in a press conference that he wants sportsbooks to stop offering player props bets.

He argued that it’s too easy to manipulate these markets, which is likely true. However, Adam Silver is also complicit; the NBA ran an investigation into Rozier and found nothing, just for the FBI to run an investigation and arrest Rozier, other prominent NBA figures, and members of an organized crime syndicate.

AKA, Silver tried to sweep it under the rug, failed, and now his call to action is for sportsbooks, which are NBA partners, to remove player props.

From a bettor’s perspective, this is a worst-case scenario, and it’s also a band-aid on an industry that’s in the middle of open-heart surgery.

Player props are more popular than sides and totals. Rec bettors love to bet props, sharp bettors love to make a killing on props.

If Silver gets his wish (we deem this unlikely), there will be a massive shift in the betting landscape, and not a good one.

Sportsbooks already mainly offer overs, since value lies with unders. In a world where there are no props or only over bets offered, bettors, rec or pro, are the ones who suffer.

The Signs Were There

It’s easy to see a tweet or a TikTok video of a player on a podcast or highlights of them in-play, talking about being approached to take a dive or making bone-headed plays, and think it’s BS, or it isn’t significant.

It’s hard to know what’s true on the internet. Short-form videos of podcasts often take quotes out of context, and many people would do or say crazy things for 15 minutes of virality.

However, as more and more data about the case comes out, especially given that it’s been 4+ years in the making, the less these videos and sound bites seem like a conspiracy, and the more they look like the evidence was right in front of us.

Is every play in every sport rigged? No.

Is this just the tip of the iceberg, especially given that this is not the first —and likely not the last — time something like this will happen? Yes.

Let’s Get This Straight

Every week, we dissect a relevant sports betting topic to determine its validity.

Sports Betting Needs Federal Regulation

It’s abundantly clear that lawmakers have no idea what they are doing as it pertains to sports betting.

They see books making a lot of money and want their share, so they make laws with money on their minds, even though they actually have no idea how the ecosystem works.

Here’s the reality:
Until lawmakers who understand the ecosystem take control on the federal level, bettors will suffer.

The percentage of the population that is a professional sports bettor is small, but it exists.

With the gambling law, potential universal limits, no player props, and even taxes on bets…

Until there are uniform laws backed by people who actually understand the industry, sports betting will remain suboptimal for both recs and pros.

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