How The Explosion Of Prop Betting Threatens The Integrity Of Pro Sports

John Affleck does not work for, seek advice from, own shares in or receive funding from any business or company that would gain from this short article, and has revealed no relevant affiliations beyond their scholastic consultation.


Penn State supplies funding as a founding partner of The Conversation US.


https://doi.org/10.64628/AAI.dpfyfqy6j


When I initially became aware of the arrests of Portland Trail Blazers coach Chauncey Billups, Miami Heat guard Terry Rozier and previous NBA player Damon Jones in connection to federal investigations involving prohibited gaming, I could not help however consider a recent moment in my sports composing class.


I was revealing my trainees a clip from an NFL game in between the Jacksonville Jaguars and Kansas City Chiefs. Near the end of play, Jaguars quarterback Trevor Lawrence threw an ideal pass to receiver Brian Jones Jr. to protect a vital initially down. Out of the blue, a student groaned and said that he 'd lost US$ 50 on that toss.


I thought about that minute since it exposed how common sports betting has ended up being, just how much the kinds of bets have actually changed gradually, and - offered these trends - how it's naive to believe gamers won't continue to be tempted to game the system.


The prop bet strikes it big


I have actually been following the development of sports gambling for about a years in my position as chair of Penn State's sports journalism program.


Back when legal American sports wagering was mainly confined to Las Vegas, the standard bets tended to be tied to selecting a winner or which team would cover a point spread.


But ahead of the 1986 Super Bowl between the Chicago Bears and the overmatched New England Patriots, casinos used bets on whether Bears protective lineman - and occasional running back - William "Refrigerator" Perry would score a goal. The enjoyment around that sideshow kept fan interest going during a 46-10 blowout.


Perry did end up scoring, and the prop bet took off from there.


Prop bets are wagers that depend upon an outcome within a game but not its result. They can often include an athlete's specific efficiency in some - for example, the number of lawns a running back will rush for, the number of rebounds a basketball center will secure, or the number of strikeouts a pitcher will have. They have actually become routine offerings on sports betting menus.


For instance: As I compose this, I am taking a look at a FanDuel account I opened years earlier, seeing that, for the Green Bay Packers-Pittsburgh Steelers game presently in progress, I can put a wager on which player will score a goal, the number of backyards each quarterback will toss for and much, a lot more. As the game progresses, the odds continuously shift - enabling what are called "live bets."


Returning to my trainee who lost the bet on Lawrence's pass completion: It's possible he 'd placed a bet on Lawrence to toss fewer than a set variety of lawns. Or he might have been part of a dream league, which is also based on specific gamer performances.


In any case, an issue with prop bets, from an anti-corruption viewpoint, is that an individual can typically manage the outcome. You do not require a group of players to be in on it - which is what happened during the infamous Black Sox Scandal, when 8 players on the Chicago White Sox were implicated of conspiring with bettors to intentionally lose the 1919 World Series.


In the indictment versus him, Rozier is accused of informing a co-defendant to pass along info to particular wagerers that he prepared to leave a March 2023 video game early - a move everybody involved understood suggested he would not reach his statistical standards for the video game. They might then place bets that he wouldn't strike those marks.


In baseball, on the other hand, Luis Ortiz of the Cleveland Guardians was positioned on leave throughout the 2025 season and is under investigation for potentially illegally wagering on the outcome of two pitches he tossed. MLB authorities are essentially trying to figure out if he intentionally threw balls as opposed to strikes in 2 circumstances. (Yes, prop bets have actually ended up being so granular that you can even bank on whether a pitcher will toss a ball or a strike on a private pitch.)


An exploding market with no end in sight


The appeal of prop bets feeds into a worldwide sports gambling industry that has experienced explosive development and reveals no sign of slowing.


Since the U.S. Supreme Court in 2018 ruled that states might pick whether to allow sports betting, 39 states plus the District of Columbia have done so.


The leagues and media are more than simply onlookers. FanDuel and DraftKings are official sports wagering partners of the NBA and the NFL.


In the days after the Supreme Court ruling, I wondered whether reporters would accept sports wagering. Nowadays, ESPN not only has a betting program, but it likewise has a betting app.


According to the American Gaming Association, sportsbooks gathered a record $13.71 billion in earnings in 2024 from about $150 billion in wagers. A study launched in February 2025 by Siena and St. Bonaventure universities discovered that almost half of American men have an online sports wagering account.


But those figures do not start to touch the around the world sports betting market, specifically the prohibited one. The United Nations, in a 2021 report, reported that as much as $1.7 trillion is bet annually in illegal betting markets.


The U.N. report warned that it had actually found a "staggering scale, manifestation, and intricacy of corruption and arranged criminal activity in sport at the worldwide, local, and national levels."


Who's the one in charge?


In early October 2025, I attended a conference of Play the Game, a Denmark-based organization that promotes "democratic worths in world sports." Its periodic events bring in specialists from worldwide who have an interest in keeping sports reasonable and safe for everyone.


Among the most sobering topics was unlawful, online sportsbooks that include wagering on all levels of sport, from the most affordable levels of European soccer on up.


It sounded somewhat familiar. This summertime at the Little League World Series, which my trainees covered for The Associated Press, managers complained about overseas sportsbooks using lines on the tournament, which is played by 12-year-old novices.


And with so much illegal betting in the world, the problem of match fixing was bound to come up.


One session screened a recent German documentary on match repairing. Meanwhile, Anca-Maria Gherghel, a Ph.D. candidate at Sheffield Hallam University and senior scientist for EPIC Global Solutions, both in northern England, told me how she had actually talked to a professional female soccer gamer for a group in Cyprus. The gamer explained how she and her teammates were consistently approached with lucrative offers to toss matches.


Put everything together - the vast amounts of cash at play and the relative ease of repairing a prop bet, not to mention a match - and you can not be surprised at the NBA scandal.


I utilized to believe that gambling was simply a section of the bigger sports industry. Now, I question whether I had it precisely backward.