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 get financing from any company or company that would take advantage of this article, and has actually divulged no pertinent associations beyond their scholastic visit.


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


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


When I initially found out about the arrests of Portland Trail Blazers coach Chauncey Billups, Miami Heat guard Terry Rozier and former NBA player Damon Jones in connection to federal examinations including prohibited gambling, I couldn't assist but think about a recent minute in my sports writing class.


I was showing my trainees a clip from an NFL video game between the Jacksonville Jaguars and Kansas City Chiefs. Near completion of play, Jaguars quarterback Trevor Lawrence tossed a perfect pass to receiver Brian Jones Jr. to secure a critical first down. Out of the blue, a student groaned and stated that he 'd lost US$ 50 on that throw.


I thought about that moment since it exposed how ubiquitous sports wagering has ended up being, just how much the kinds of bets have changed in time, and - offered these trends - how it's ignorant to believe players won't continue to be tempted to video game the system.


The prop bet hits it huge


I've been following the advancement of sports gambling for about a decade in my position as chair of Penn State's sports journalism program.


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


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


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


Prop bets are wagers that depend upon a result within a video game however not its outcome. They can often include a professional athlete's private efficiency in some statistical classification - for example, the number of yards a running back will hurry for, how numerous rebounds a basketball center will secure, or the number of strikeouts a pitcher will have. They've ended up being regular offerings on sports wagering menus.


For example: 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 video game presently in progress, I can position a wager on which player will score a touchdown, the number of yards each quarterback will toss for and much, far more. As the video game advances, the chances constantly shift - enabling what are called "live bets."


Returning to my trainee who lost the bet on Lawrence's pass conclusion: It's possible he 'd placed a bet on Lawrence to toss fewer than a set number of yards. Or he could have belonged to a dream league, which is likewise depending on private gamer performances.


In either case, a problem with prop bets, from an anti-corruption perspective, is that a person can often manage the outcome. You don't require a group of players to be in on it - which is what occurred during the infamous Black Sox Scandal, when 8 gamers on the Chicago White Sox were accused of conspiring with bettors to purposefully lose the 1919 World Series.


In the indictment against him, Rozier is implicated of telling a co-defendant to pass along information to particular bettors that he prepared to leave a March 2023 video game early - a move everyone involved understood suggested he would not reach his analytical criteria for the game. They might then put bets that he wouldn't strike those marks.


In baseball, on the other hand, Luis Ortiz of the Cleveland Guardians was put on leave during the 2025 season and is under examination for potentially unlawfully wagering on the outcome of 2 pitches he threw. MLB authorities are essentially trying to determine if he intentionally tossed balls rather than strikes in 2 circumstances. (Yes, prop bets have become so granular that you can even bank on whether a pitcher will toss a ball or a strike on an individual pitch.)


An exploding market without any end in sight


The popularity of prop bets feeds into an around the world sports gambling industry that has experienced explosive growth and reveals no indication of slowing.


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


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


In the days after the Supreme Court judgment, I questioned whether journalists would accept sports betting. Nowadays, ESPN not just has a wagering program, but it also has a betting app.


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


But those figures do not begin to touch the around the world sports wagering market, especially the unlawful one. The United Nations, in a 2021 report, reported that as much as $1.7 trillion is bet yearly in prohibited betting markets.


The U.N. report alerted that it had found a "incredible scale, symptom, and complexity of corruption and organized crime in sport at the international, local, and nationwide levels."


Who's in charge?


In early October 2025, I participated in a conference of Play the Game, a Denmark-based organization that promotes "democratic values in world sports." Its occasional events bring in specialists from all over the world who are interested in keeping sports reasonable and safe for everybody.


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


It sounded somewhat familiar. This summer at the Little League World Series, which my students covered for The Associated Press, supervisors grumbled about offshore sportsbooks using lines on the competition, which is played by 12-year-old novices.


And with a lot illegal wagering on the planet, the concern of match repairing was bound to come up.


One session evaluated a recent German documentary on match fixing. Meanwhile, Anca-Maria Gherghel, a Ph.D. candidate at Sheffield Hallam University and senior scientist for EPIC Global Solutions, both in northern England, informed me how she had spoken with a professional female soccer gamer for a group in Cyprus. The player explained how she and her teammates were consistently approached with profitable deals to toss matches.


Put it all together - the huge 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 used to believe that gaming was simply a segment of the bigger sports market. Now, I wonder whether I had it exactly backwards.