The purity of American sports has not been completely lost — albeit damaged, certainly — despite a spate of faith-destroying sports betting scandals.
That said, the bad stuff isn’t over yet, warned Sacred Heart University Sport Management professor Joshua Shuart.
The latest was very bad indeed, with Miami Heat guard Terry Rozier on Thursday among six arrested on charges of wire fraud and money laundering for allegedly manipulating NBA prop bet outcomes.
Trust is repairable, he said. Eventually. But not soon.
“I think it’s going to be a long haul because this has just crushed our trust in everything right now,” he said. “You have major agencies tracking this for a really long time. A bunch of names came out. But you can’t tell me that those are the only people that were approached or involved.
“And it’s, I think, going to be way worse than it’s ever been before it’s going to become better. I think this is going to explode.”
“I think this is going to explode.”
Rozier the latest milepost to oblivion?
The NBA had previously absolved Rozier of gambling wrongdoing years before the Department of Justice unsealed its sports betting indictments, which also included former player and assistant coach Damon Jones. Another investigation into gambling allegations this year vindicated former Detroit Pistons player Malik Beasley, who was not named in the indictments last week.
Questions have understandably arisen about the NBA’s self-monitoring process.
Shuart believes the NBA overestimated its ability to both self-police and weather the fallout. The NBA’s Adam Silver, the first commissioner to support the legalization of sports betting nationally, reiterated on “The Pat McAfee Show” a day before the indictments were announced the league’s stance that certain types of prop bets — like the ones Rozier allegedly conspired to tank — should be banned.
“I don’t know that they are approaching it correctly, at least what I’ve seen so far,” said Shuart, a member of the North American Society for the Sociology of Sport. “I think they’re scrambling. They mentioned cracking down on the two-way players and the 10-day contracts. And I was like, ‘Well, look at the people that are involved in this.’ These are guys that are making $20-something-million.
“These aren’t fringe players that might be willing to break the rules to make a little bit of money. These are high-paid players. So I think there’s a much bigger issue than they anticipated.”
Michael Porter, Jr., the brother of banned former Toronto Raptors player Jontay Porter, said on a podcast in August that everyone has a price. Circumstances can affect that price.
Media scrutiny of Beasley’s finances filled the information void during his investigation by the NBA, and ESPN reported on Tuesday that Rozier faced an $8 million Internal Revenue Service lien on his Florida home in 2023, the same year he is alleged to have sold non-public information to gamblers about his intention to underperform to win prop bets.
Coercion outlined in the rigged, mafia-backed poker scandal case led to the indictment of Portland Trail Blazers coach Chauncey Billups underscores that nuance exists even when the crime is plain.
“For some, it could be the thrill of the whole thing,” Shuart said. “You don’t know what’s going on underneath, and you throw the mob in there and it’s absolutely wild.”
Shuart, like sports fandom in general, was left pondering the impact of sports betting spreading to 41 jurisdictions since 2018.
“I saw [the indictments] and part of me said, ‘Yeah, this was never a good idea,'” he said. “And the other part of me said, ‘Wow, this is way worse than I ever anticipated.'”
MLB, NFL, NBA have time to get it right
No game-manipulation scandals have befallen the NFL and NHL, but MLB’s investigation of Cleveland pitchers Luis Ortiz and Emmanuel Clase has stretched on since July. Clase was recently denied a request to play winter ball by the Dominican Professional Baseball League. If MLB is awaiting the end of the World Series to revisit the case publicly, reckoning time is coming soon.
In his most recent comments about gambling, MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred defended sports betting partnerships before Game 2 of the World Series.
Shuart said any league would be wise to deal with a coming Rozier-level criminal announcement proactively. Silver missed an opportunity with the McAfee show if he knew indictments were coming in days.
“I would think that all those other leagues would be really smart to make some kind of statement proactively before something comes out, because now there’s a spotlight and a magnifying glass on all these [cases],” Shuart said. “Everyone’s second-guessing. Conspiracy theories are running wild with social media videos being posted and people looking super closely [through] a microscope.
“Why not get in front of it and make a definitive statement and say, ‘We don’t suspect anything, but here’s our stance on things.’ So that if and when and probably when something does come out, they’ve put their stake in the ground already, as far as where they stand and how they’re going to deal with it.”
The NBA’s veneer of control is also damaged by the fact that it investigated Rozier in 2023 but found insufficient evidence of malfeasance. Granted, a pro sports league doesn’t possess the policing leverage of the FBI, but the latticework of sportsbook partnerships is counterproductive in these types of cases, too, Matthew Wein, a national security and cyber security advisor, told InGame.
“The financial entanglements of the leagues with the sportsbooks makes it difficult for them to, I think, police the players because the players will say, ‘Look, you’re making all this money from the same thing. Why can’t I participate in it, too?'” he said. “I think it hinders what some of the leagues can do.
“That being said, I think if leagues work together, that would help, especially if the leagues worked not just across the leagues, but with the sportsbooks, with tech companies. I think you could potentially shorten the timeline to fix some of the problems.”
The current fallout includes congressional interest and a memo distributed by the NBA to teams declaring that “this is an opportune time to carefully reassess how sports betting should be regulated and how sports leagues can best protect themselves, their players, and their fans.”
Shuart: All is not lost because we forget
Preventing future sports betting scandals — or perversely, not learning of new ones — might allow an increasing percentage of jaded sports fans to recoup the faith in the teams they adore as well as for disenchanted and increasingly aggressive sports bettors to believe they’re buying into a square deal. Both of them might finally stop seeing every officiating call they question, or woeful play by an athlete, as evidence that the fix is in.
Fans will forgive, said Shuart, whose studies include researching celebrity endorsements.
“Over time, you sort of forget the bad and you reinforce the good,” he said. “You think about the greatness and forget the negative things.”
A poll conducted by Sacred Heart in February that addressed concerns about sports betting corruption and partnerships with leagues found that roughly half of respondents felt Pete Rose should be eligible for the National Baseball Hall of Fame.
“Beyond all that, I think it was in the scope of, ‘Hey, you can now gamble on sports. So is this really that wrong?'” Shuart explained. “O.J. Simpson, similarly, you obviously know his case. But his image would come back and they’re like, ‘Wow, this guy is literally one of the greatest running backs of all time.’ And then, of course, he attacks some guy at a merchandise show trying to steal back his own his own stuff.
“But those people recover from these things over time because they retire or they pass away. And you start looking back at it, like, purely their stats and their accomplishments.”
This is the end of the innocence?
Shuart believes American sports fandom will bounce back. But first it’s going to have to hit bottom. It shouldn’t be long for that to happen, he said.
“You think about how many people now watch sports tethered to something else,” he said. “They’re watching it because they have a bet on it. They’re watching it because even if it’s not hardcore bets, it may just be fantasy sports.
“But I feel like the bottoming-out is coming sooner rather than later before that return to purity. Like ‘I just want to go to a game and sit there and enjoy it, like I used to before all this happened.’ And sadly, I think that day of reckoning is closer than further away.”
