John Affleck does not work for, seek advice from, own shares in or get funding from any business or organization that would benefit from this short article, and has disclosed no appropriate associations 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 found out about 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 including illegal gambling, I could not help however consider a current moment in my sports composing class.

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

I thought about that minute since it revealed how common sports wagering has become, how much the kinds of bets have actually changed gradually, and - provided these trends - how it's naive to think gamers won't continue to be lured 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 mainly confined to Las Vegas, the standard bets tended to be connected to selecting a winner or which group would cover a point spread.

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

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

Prop bets are wagers that depend on an outcome within a game but not its outcome. They can frequently involve a professional athlete's individual performance in some analytical classification - for instance, how numerous backyards a running back will rush for, how numerous rebounds a basketball center will protect, or how many strikeouts a pitcher will have. They've become regular offerings on sports wagering menus.

For example: As I compose this, I am looking at a FanDuel account I opened years back, seeing that, for the Green Bay Packers-Pittsburgh Steelers video game currently in progress, I can position a wager on which player will score a goal, how numerous backyards each quarterback will toss for and much, far more. As the game advances, the odds continuously shift - allowing for what are called "live bets."

Returning to my student who lost the bet on Lawrence's pass conclusion: It's possible he 'd put a bet on Lawrence to throw less than a set number of lawns. Or he could have been part of a fantasy league, which is also based on specific gamer performances.

Either way, an issue with prop bets, from an anti-corruption viewpoint, is that an individual can often control the result. You do not need a group of players to be in on it - which is what occurred throughout the notorious Black Sox Scandal, when 8 players on the Chicago White Sox were implicated of conspiring with gamblers to purposefully lose the 1919 World Series.

In the indictment against him, Rozier is implicated of informing a co-defendant to pass along information to particular wagerers that he planned to leave a March 2023 video game early - a move everyone included knew suggested he would not reach his analytical standards for the video game. They might then place bets that he would not strike those marks.

In baseball, on the other hand, Luis Ortiz of the Cleveland Guardians was positioned on leave during the 2025 season and is under investigation for possibly unlawfully betting on the outcome of two pitches he threw. MLB authorities are essentially trying to figure out if he deliberately threw balls rather than strikes in two circumstances. (Yes, prop bets have become so granular that you can even bet on whether a pitcher will toss a ball or a strike on a specific pitch.)

An exploding market without any end in sight

The popularity of prop bets feeds into an around the world sports betting industry that has actually experienced explosive development and reveals no sign of slowing.

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

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

In the days after the Supreme Court judgment, I wondered whether journalists would welcome sports betting. Nowadays, ESPN not just has a betting program, however it likewise has a wagering app.

According to the American Gaming Association, sportsbooks gathered a record $13.71 billion in profits 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 males have an online sports betting account.

But those figures don't begin to touch the worldwide sports betting market, particularly the unlawful one. The United Nations, in a 2021 report, reported that approximately $1.7 trillion is wagered annually in prohibited wagering markets.

The U.N. report warned that it had found a "staggering scale, symptom, and complexity of corruption and organized criminal offense in sport at the global, local, and national levels."

Who's the one in charge?

In early October 2025, I went to a conference of Play the Game, a Denmark-based company that promotes "democratic worths in world sports." Its periodic gatherings draw in specialists from all over the world who have an interest in keeping sports fair and safe for everyone.

Among the most sobering subjects was prohibited, online sportsbooks that feature betting 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 trainees covered for The Associated Press, managers grumbled about overseas sportsbooks using lines on the competition, which is played by 12-year-old beginners.

And with so much unlawful betting on the planet, the problem of match fixing was bound to come up.

One session evaluated a recent German documentary on match repairing. Meanwhile, Anca-Maria Gherghel, a Ph.D. prospect at Sheffield Hallam University and senior researcher for EPIC Global Solutions, both in northern England, told me how she had actually talked to an expert female soccer player for a group in Cyprus. The player described how she and her teammates were regularly approached with financially rewarding offers to throw matches.

Put all of it together - the vast amounts of cash at play and the relative ease of fixing a prop bet, let alone a match - and you can not be amazed at the NBA scandal.

I utilized to believe that betting was just a section of the bigger sports industry. Now, I question whether I had it precisely backwards.