How The Explosion Of Prop Betting Threatens The Integrity Of Pro Sports
John Affleck does not work for, speak with, own shares in or get funding from any business or organization that would take advantage of this short article, and has disclosed no pertinent associations beyond their academic consultation.
Penn State provides 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 former NBA gamer Damon Jones in connection to federal investigations including illegal gambling, I could not assist however consider a current moment in my sports composing class.
I was revealing my trainees a clip from an NFL game between the Jacksonville Jaguars and Chiefs. Near completion of play, Jaguars quarterback Trevor Lawrence tossed an ideal pass to receiver Brian Jones Jr. to secure a crucial first down. Out of the blue, a student groaned and said that he 'd lost US$ 50 on that throw.
I thought of that moment since it exposed how common sports betting has actually ended up being, how much the kinds of bets have changed gradually, and - offered these patterns - how it's naive to think gamers will not continue to be tempted to video game the system.
The prop bet strikes it huge
I've been following the evolution of sports betting for about a years in my position as chair of Penn State's sports journalism program.
Back when legal American sports wagering was primarily restricted to Las Vegas, the standard bets tended to be connected to choosing 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 protective lineman - and periodic running back - William "Refrigerator" Perry would score a touchdown. The excitement 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 video game but not its outcome. They can often include an athlete's individual efficiency in some statistical classification - for example, the number of lawns a running back will rush for, how lots of rebounds a basketball center will secure, 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 taking a look at a FanDuel account I opened years ago, seeing that, for the Green Bay Packers-Pittsburgh Steelers game presently in development, I can put a wager on which gamer will score a touchdown, the number of yards each quarterback will toss for and much, much more. As the game advances, the odds continuously shift - permitting for what are called "live bets."
Returning to my student who lost the bet on Lawrence's pass conclusion: It's possible he 'd positioned a bet on Lawrence to toss fewer than a set number of backyards. Or he could have belonged to a fantasy league, which is likewise dependent on private player efficiencies.
In any case, a problem with prop bets, from an anti-corruption perspective, is that an individual can typically manage the outcome. You don't require a group of gamers to be in on it - which is what took place during the notorious Black Sox Scandal, when eight 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 specific bettors that he planned to leave a March 2023 video game early - a relocation everybody included understood indicated he would not reach his analytical standards for the game. They could then put bets that he would not hit those marks.
In baseball, meanwhile, Luis Ortiz of the Cleveland Guardians was positioned on leave throughout the 2025 season and is under investigation for perhaps illegally wagering on the outcome of 2 pitches he tossed. MLB authorities are essentially attempting to determine if he intentionally threw balls rather than strikes in 2 instances. (Yes, prop bets have 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 actually experienced explosive development and shows no indication of slowing.
Since the U.S. Supreme Court in 2018 ruled that states might select whether to permit 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 judgment, I wondered whether journalists would welcome sports betting. Nowadays, ESPN not just has a wagering program, but it likewise has a wagering app.
According to the American Gaming Association, sportsbooks collected 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 found that almost half of American males have an online sports wagering account.
But those figures do not begin to touch the worldwide sports betting market, especially the unlawful one. The United Nations, in a 2021 report, reported that up to $1.7 trillion is wagered every year in unlawful wagering markets.
The U.N. report cautioned that it had actually found a "staggering scale, manifestation, and complexity of corruption and arranged criminal offense in sport at the worldwide, regional, and national 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 worths in world sports." Its periodic gatherings bring in experts from around the world who have an interest in keeping sports fair and safe for everyone.
One of the most sobering subjects was illegal, online sportsbooks that feature betting on all levels of sport, from the most affordable levels of European soccer on up.
It sounded rather familiar. This summer at the Little League World Series, which my trainees covered for The Associated Press, supervisors grumbled about overseas sportsbooks providing lines on the competition, which is played by 12-year-old novices.
And with so much prohibited betting in the world, the issue of match fixing was bound to come up.
One session screened a current German documentary on match fixing. Meanwhile, Anca-Maria Gherghel, a Ph.D. candidate at Sheffield Hallam University and senior researcher for EPIC Global Solutions, both in northern England, informed me how she had actually interviewed an expert female soccer player for a group in Cyprus. The gamer explained how she and her teammates were routinely approached with lucrative offers to throw matches.
Put everything together - the huge sums of money at play and the relative ease of repairing a prop bet, let alone a match - and you can not be amazed at the NBA scandal.
I utilized to think that gaming was simply a sector of the larger sports market. Now, I question whether I had it exactly backward.