Gambling scandals are as old as professional sports itself—from the Black Sox Scandal, in which the Chicago White Sox intentionally lost the 1919 World Series in exchange for $80,000 ($1.5 million in today’s dollars), to Pete Rose, the legendary baseball star-turned-manager who was caught betting on his own games.
Infamous as these offenses are, they became so because they were rare. For most of American history, it has been difficult and risky for a professional athlete to place a major bet on his own games.
But with the legalization of sports betting in most U.S. states—touched off by the Supreme Court’s overturning of a federal ban in 2018—we are now entering a darker era. With online betting legal and frictionless, athletes need only a few seconds on their smartphones in order to place a bet (or better yet, get a friend or family member to do the same). And they need not do anything as noticeable as throw a game. A professional basketball player, for instance, can simply bet on individual elements of their personal statistics line (called a “player prop” bet), and then subtly alter their play without drawing unwanted attention.
The scandals are now coming so frequently that it is hard to keep track of them. Just last Friday, the NFL suspended Arizona Cardinals executive Ryan Gold for allegedly betting on his team’s games. A few weeks prior, former NBA player Malik Beasley was indicted for allegedly manipulating his play in at least four 2024 NBA games in coordination with a group of bettors.
