Sports leagues of all shapes and sizes have plunged headfirst into gambling in the six years since the Supreme Court passed a law limiting betting on games in Nevada. After brushing aside decades of opposition, professional leagues have taken millions of dollars from casinos and sportsbooks that spend big to attract new customers. Former no-go zones like Las Vegas are now accessible to all; the National Football League even hosted the Super Bowl there last month.
Yet, echoing the zero-tolerance policies they once championed in court, leagues continue to maintain that their priority when dealing with gambling companies is protecting the integrity of their games. This means penalizing any player or coach who bets on their sport, and in some cases any other sport. Betting on the games, the thinking went, would give them an incentive to influence the outcome in potentially underhanded ways, such as by shedding points.
But the greater risk to leagues could come from people close to the players and coaches. Reports emerged Wednesday that the interpreter for Los Angeles Dodgers slugger and pitcher Shohei Ohtani was fired by the Dodgers after they were accused of stealing millions of dollars from the player to place bets at an allegedly illegal bookmaker who is under federal investigation.
The details of the Ohtani situation remain very unclear. But he and interpreter Ippei Mizuhara have been close for years, and the uncomfortable question arises as to whether Mizuhara could have used insider knowledge of Ohtani to improve his gambling. For example, who better to know whether the star had a sore knee or shoulder on the day he was scheduled to pitch?
A Major League Baseball spokesman said the league was still gathering facts about the case.
Robert Williams, executive director of the New York State Gaming Commission, said gambling by members of a player’s or team’s entourage using insider information is not only one of the greatest threats to the integrity of sporting events, but also one of the most difficult threats to police be.
“Your problem will be if a player’s first cousin is twice removed or a friend knows something about injuries to one or more players – or, worse, can somehow affect a player’s performance, such as missing a free throw,” says Williams said. “I don’t think anyone is confident that we can do all of this.”
In fact, legal sports betting is exploding and the task of tracking suspicious activity is becoming a game of whac-a-mole. According to the American Gaming Association, Americans will legally bet nearly $120 billion on sports in 2023. Nearly 25 million more Americans bet on sports last year than in 2018, the group said, and the number of states where sports betting is legal will reach 38 this year.
California is one of the holdouts, which is why Mizuhara might have gone to an illegal bookmaker. Either way, Mizuhara is just the latest and undoubtedly not the last employee of a team or league to become involved in gambling.
Last week, Amit Patel, who worked in the financial department of the Jacksonville Jaguars, was sentenced to six and a half years in prison for embezzling more than $22 million from the team. Patel used some of the money to place bets on online gambling sites as well as purchase cryptocurrencies, sports memorabilia and a country club membership.
The NFL, which has had no gambling violations in decades, punished 10 players last season, including seven who served season-long suspensions for betting on NFL games. But the league has also punished about a dozen league employees, including two who were fired within the last two years for violating its gambling policies. One of the former employees said the firing was because he had bet less than $1,000 on the NFL and other sports four years earlier through a company that is now a league partner. The other employee said a major concern for the league appeared to be the possibility that any debt could be used as leverage against the employee.
“We need to train our staff,” commissioner Roger Goodell said last month in response to a question from people wondering whether NFL games were being fixed. “That goes from the owners to the players and coaches to everyone in the organization, everyone at the league level and our partners. We make sure they understand that while people can speculate and have perceptions, we have to keep that standard as high as we possibly can.”
Some experts argue that professional athletes in the United States are paid so well that they have little motivation to take money to organize a competition. Still, insider information Information useful to players can still be filtered out in other ways
For example, in April 2022, a Professional Fighters League event was recorded and marketed as if it were a live fight. “We’ve had sports bettors saying, ‘I don’t know what’s going on, but it feels like they’re betting on the fights like they know who’s going to win,'” said Matt Holt, the founder of US Integrity, who looks for unusual betting patterns on behalf of sports organizations.
Some sportsbooks and state regulators have frozen betting on the event, but not without incurring significant losses. It later emerged that someone within the league had violated the confidentiality agreement and told others about the outcome of the fights. However, no known penalty was imposed.
Tim Donaghy, an NBA referee, served a 15-month prison sentence in 2008 for his involvement in a betting scheme in which he was paid to pick winners of NBA games and provide inside information to players.
Sports betting has also spoken out against the use of insider information. Three days before quarterback Tom Brady announced in March 2022 that he was coming out of retirement to join the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, several large online bets – $10,000 to $20,000 – were placed on the Buccaneers’ victory in the Super Bowl 2023 completed with odds of up to 60 to 1.
“The bets were too big to be placed by random people acting on the assumption that a team without a clear quarterback would win the NFL title,” said Jay Kornegay, vice president of SuperBook, an online gambling company.
Whether that’s true or not, it’s clear that the rise of gambling nationally will raise more questions about the boundaries between athletes and those who have close access to them.
“I think it would be crazy to think that there won’t be a scandal involving someone trying to influence the outcome of an event,” said Williams, the executive director of the New York Gambling Commission. “There are always individuals trying to gain an advantage, whether legally or illegally.”
Rebecca R. Ruiz contributed reporting.
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2024-03-23 03:08:28
www.nytimes.com
