Leagues have more than just players to watch while gambling
Sports leagues of all shapes and sizes have turned to gambling in the six years since the Supreme Court passed a law limiting gaming betting to Nevada. Despite decades of resistance, professional leagues have taken millions of dollars from casinos and sportsbooks that spend big to lure new customers. Former no-go zones such as Las Vegas are now accessible to everyone; the National Football League even held the Super Bowl there last month.
Yet the leagues, in a nod to the zero-tolerance policy they once advocated in court, continue to argue that their priority in dealing with gambling companies is protecting the integrity of their games. That means players and coaches who bet on their sport, and in some cases on any sport, should be penalized. Betting on the games, the thinking goes, would give them an incentive to influence the outcome in potentially underhanded ways, like shaving points.
However, the greater risk to the leagues may come from people standing next to the players and coaches. On Wednesday, Reports surfaced that the interpreter for Los Angeles Dodgers slugger and pitcher Shohei Ohtani was fired by the Dodgers after he was accused of stealing millions of dollars from the player to place bets with an allegedly illegal bookmaker who was under federal investigation.
The details of the Ohtani 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 have used inside information about Ohtani to benefit his gambling activities. For example, who better to know if the star had a sore knee or shoulder the day he was supposed to pitch?
A spokesperson for Major League Baseball 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 inside information is not only one of the greatest threats to the integrity of sporting events, but also one of the most serious for the police.
“The problem is that a player’s cousin may be twice removed or a friend may know about a player or players’ injuries – or, worse, could somehow affect a player’s performance, such as missing of a free throw,” Williams said. said. “I don’t think anyone has confidence that we can accommodate all of that.”
The number of legal sports bets is exploding, making the task of detecting suspicious activity a game of Whac-a-Mole. According to the American Gaming Association, Americans will legally bet nearly $120 billion on sports by 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 rise to 38 this year.
California is one of the holdouts, which could be why Mizuhara might have gone to an illegal bookmaker. Either way, Mizuhara is just the latest, and undoubtedly not the last, team or league employee to become entangled 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 embezzled more than 22 million dollars of the team. Patel used some of the money to place bets at online gambling websites, as well as to buy cryptocurrency, sports memorabilia and a country club membership.
The NFL, which had had no gambling violations by players for decades, penalized 10 players last season, including seven who were banned for a season for betting on NFL games. But the league also sanctioned a dozen league employees, including two who were fired in the past two years for violating gambling policies. One of the former employees said the firing occurred because less than $1,000 had been bet on the NFL and other sports four years earlier, through a company that is now a league partner. The other employee said one of the main concerns for the league seemed to be the possibility that any debt would be used as leverage against the employee.
“We need to train our staff,” Commissioner Roger Goodell said last month in response to a question about people questioning whether NFL games were fixed. “That goes from owners to players to coaches to everyone in the organization, to everyone at the league level, to our partners, making sure they understand, while people can speculate, people can have perceptions, we have to keep that standard as high as possible . we might be able to do that.”
Some experts argue that the professional athletes in the United States are paid so well that they have little incentive to take money to arrange a competition. Still, inside information useful for gamblers, can still filter out in other ways
For example, in April 2022, a Professional Fighters League event that was marketed as if it were a live fight was pre-recorded. “We had sportsbooks saying, ‘I don’t know what’s going on, but it feels like they’re betting on the fights like they know who won,’” said Matt Holt, the founder of US Integrity, who sought is to unusual betting patterns on behalf of sports organizations.
Some sportsbooks and state regulators froze betting on the event, but not before suffering significant losses. It was later determined that someone within the league had violated the confidentiality agreement and told others about the outcomes of the fights. However, no known punishment was imposed.
Tim Donaghy, an NBA referee, began serving a 15-month prison sentence in 2008 for his involvement in a gambling scheme in which he was paid to pick the winners of NBA games and provide gamblers with insider information.
Sportsbooks have also spoken out against what they consider the use of inside information. Three days before quarterback Tom Brady said he would retire to join the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in March 2022, several large online bets — $10,000 to $20,000 — were placed on the Buccaneers to win the Super Bowl 2023 to be won at odds of up to 60 to 1.
The bets were too big to be placed by random people who thought a team without an obvious 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 wave of gambling on a national level will raise more questions about the boundaries between athletes and those who have close access to them.
“I think you’d be insane to think that there won’t be a scandal involving someone trying to influence the outcome of an event,” said Williams, director of the New York Gaming Commission. “There are always individuals trying to get an edge, whether it’s legal or illegal.”
Rebecca R. Ruiz reporting contributed.