Sports leagues of all shapes and sizes have been involved in gambling in the six years since the Supreme Court struck down a law that restricted betting on games in Nevada. Brushing aside decades of resistance, the professional leagues have taken millions of dollars from casinos and sportsbooks that spend heavily to attract new customers. Formerly no-go zones like Las Vegas are now a free-for-all. the National Football League even held the Super Bowl there last month.
But in a nod to the zero-tolerance policies they once championed in court, the leagues continue to assert that their priority when dealing with gaming companies is protecting the integrity of their games. This means punishing all players or coaches who bet on their sport and, in some cases, any sport. Betting on the games, the thinking goes, would give them an incentive to influence the outcome in a potentially perverse way, such as shaving points.
The biggest danger to leagues, however, may come from people around the players and coaches. Reports surfaced Wednesday that Los Angeles Dodgers slugger and pitcher Shohei Ohtani’s interpreter was fired by the Dodgers after he was accused of stealing millions of dollars from the player to place bets at an allegedly illegal bookmaker that is under federal investigation.
The details of Ohtani’s situation remain very murky. But he and the interpreter, Ippei Mizuhara, have been close for years, and it raises the uncomfortable question of whether Mizuhara could use inside knowledge about Ohtani to benefit his gambling. Who knows better, for example, if the star had hurt his knee or shoulder on the day he was scheduled to play?
A spokesman for Major League Baseball said the league is still gathering evidence in 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 inside information was not only one of the biggest threats to the integrity of sporting events, but also a among the toughest for the police.
“What you’re going to have a problem with is if a player’s first cousin twice removed or a friend knows something about injuries to a player or players — or, worse, can affect a player’s performance in some way, such as missed a free throw,” Williams said. “I don’t think anyone is sure we can catch all of these.”
Indeed, legal sports betting is exploding, turning the task of tracking suspicious activity into a game of Whac-a-Mole. Americans will bet nearly $120 billion legally on sports in 2023, according to the American Gaming Association. 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 member states, which is why Mizuhara might have gone to an illegal bookmaker. Either way, Mizuhara is just the latest, and certainly not the last, team or league employee to become involved in gambling.
Last week, Amit Patel, who worked in the finance 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 to buy cryptocurrencies, sports memorabilia and a country club membership.
The NFL, which had gone decades without any gambling violations, punished 10 players last season, including seven who faced season-long suspensions for betting on NFL games. But the league has also disciplined about a dozen league officials, including two fired in the past two years for violating its gambling policies. One of the former employees said the firing was for betting 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 appears to be the possibility of any debt being used as leverage against the employee.
“We have to educate our staff,” Commissioner Roger Goodell said last month in response to a question about people wondering whether NFL games were fixed. “That goes from the owners to the players to the coaches to everybody in the organization, everybody at the league level, to our partners, making sure they understand while people can speculate, people can have perceptions, we have to hold 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 incentive to take money to fix a fight. However, inside information useful for gamblers can still filter through other means
In April 2022, for example, a Professional Fighters League event was pre-taped and released as if it were a live fight. “We’ve had sportsbooks say, ‘I don’t know what’s going on, but it’s like they’re betting on the games as if they knew who won,'” said Matt Holt, the founder of US Integrity, which looks for unusual betting patterns on behalf of sports organizations.
Some sports books and state regulators froze betting on the event, but not before taking significant losses. It was later found that someone within the league had breached the confidentiality agreement and told others the results of the matches. No known punishment, however, was meted out.
Tim Donaghy, an NBA referee, began serving a 15-month prison sentence in 2008 for his involvement in a betting scheme in which he was paid to pick the winners of NBA games and provide players with inside information.
Sportsbooks have also spoken out against what they see as the use of inside information. Three days before quarterback Tom Brady said 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 to win the 2023 Super Bowl at odds as high as 60 towards 1.
The bets were too big to be placed by random people who suspected a team without a clear quarterback would win the NFL title, said Jay Kornegay, vice president of SuperBook, an online gambling company.
Whether that was true or not, it’s clear that the rise of gambling nationwide will lead to more questions about the boundaries between athletes and those who have close access to them.
“I think you’d be crazy to think there’s not going to be some scandal involving someone trying to influence the outcome of an event,” said Williams, the New York gaming commission executive. “There are always people who will try to get an advantage, either legally or illegally.
Rebecca R. Ruiz contributed to the report.
