America’s sports betting nightmare
US sport suffers betting boom side effects
Former Toronto Raptors point guard Fred VanVleet adopted the catchphrase “bet on yourself” to describe his unlikely rise from an undrafted athlete to a National Basketball Association starter.
His teammate, Raptors power forward Jontay Porter, took that advice a bit too literally. This week, the NBA delivered its most severe punishment – a lifetime ban – to Porter, after a league investigation found that he had been wagering on basketball games this year, including limiting his own on-court performance to coincide with an acquaintance’s $80,000 wager on his stats.
The episode is effectively a nightmare scenario for US sports, which have rapidly changed tack from vehement, full-throated opposition to sports betting (in 2012, the Big Four leagues and the collegiate sports governing body sued the state of New Jersey to prevent it) to a delirious embrace of the more than $10bn industry. Now legal in 38 states and the District of Columbia, sports betting has spawned a fast-growing cottage industry of wagering apps, team and league sponsorships, and betting-specific simulcasts of NBA games, where viewers can watch hosts debate evolving odds in real time.
Already, there have been questions over how much adoption of gambling culture in US sport is too much. Last summer, Shams Charania, a prominent NBA reporter for The Athletic, swung betting lines ahead of the NBA Draft when he tweeted information suggesting the Charlotte Hornets would select one player over another, information that ultimately proved false. Complicating the matter was the fact that Charania is a paid endorser for FanDuel. (FanDuel has said the company is not privy to news Charania breaks before he does so.)
And in recent weeks, Major League Baseball has been adjacent to a gambling firestorm surrounding the face of the league, two-way star Shohei Ohtani, whose now-former translator Ippei Mizuhara has been charged with bank fraud for stealing $16mn from Ohtani to cover the translator’s own illegal wagering debts.
Which is to say, an active professional athlete who is allegedly in cahoots with major bettors — and willing to log fewer minutes in service of their punts — is the worst possible outcome for leagues today. Adam Silver, the NBA commissioner, said “there is nothing more important than protecting the integrity” of competition, which led to the ultimate punishment of Porter even with the league’s investigation still ongoing.
An agent for Porter did not respond to a request for comment.
Porter is not the first hooper to be hit with a ban for gambling, but he is the first to face the music since 2018, when the US federal prohibition of sports wagering was struck down. It’s a warning shot to all athletes: do not risk your millions in salary for five-figure punts.
Barring that, in case it needs to be said: if you’re going to bet on yourself, at the very least consider taking the over.