‘Prop betting’ allegations rock the NBA
Terry Rozier of the Miami Heat © AP
The NBA returned on Tuesday night with a stellar display from San Antonio Spurs’ centre Victor Wembanyama. But by Thursday morning, all anyone was talking about was a betting scandal that has rocked the world’s top basketball league.
At a press conference in Brooklyn, prosecutors in the Eastern District of New York unveiled charges against Terry Rozier of the Miami Heat, accusing him of using inside information to help people make bets on games. Rozier’s lawyer described it as a “non-case”, and said his client “looks forward to winning this fight”.
The allegations are linked to an earlier scandal involving Toronto Raptors player Jontay Porter, who was banned from the NBA for life last year and is awaiting sentencing for conspiracy to commit wire fraud.
Prosecutors also charged Chauncey Billups, head coach of the Portland Trail Blazers, in a separate indictment related to poker matches. Both Rozier and Billups have been placed on leave.
But it is the Rozier case that really matters for the NBA because it raises serious questions about whether the explosion in online sports betting poses a real risk to the integrity of the competition.
The danger comes predominantly from what people in the US call “prop betting” — bets that relate to individual or team performances rather than the outcome of a match. That means how many points an individual player might score, for example, or how many rebounds they might collect.
Major League Baseball is also grappling with these issues, having put two Cleveland Guardians pitchers on leave in July amid a gambling probe. One of those players, Luis Ortiz, was reportedly placed under investigation by MLB after a betting-integrity firm flagged two individual pitches that had received unusual gambling activity.
In football, equivalents would be betting on a player receiving a yellow card, how many shots a player might have during a game, or how many times they might commit fouls. This is also where allegations of wrongdoing have surfaced in recent years. In tennis, another sport with a rough history when it comes to betting, it might be how many double faults a player scores in a single set.
Speaking days before the indictments were announced, NBA commissioner Adam Silver told The Pat McAfee Show that he had asked gambling companies to cut back on prop bets. “It’s too easy to manipulate something which seems otherwise small and inconsequential to the overall score,” he said.
Sports leagues across the world have been beefing up their ability to spot potentially dubious behaviour, largely through deals with technology companies such as Genius Sports and Sportradar.
These companies track patterns in the betting market, and have algorithms that set off alarm bells if someone, somewhere appears to bet an unusually large sum on a specific event. The smaller the market, the more likely a big wager will look out of place.
Betting companies can flag their concerns to the rest of the market too. Most are false alarms, but some lead to investigations, such as watching back live footage to see if there is any sign of foul play.
With more sophisticated defences evolving all the time, and the size of the market for many of these niche bets limiting returns, perhaps the bigger question is why highly paid sports stars would bother to get involved in such schemes in the first place.