Hi readers, Cameron Peters here! Welcome to Monday — I hope you had a great weekend. Last week, the NBA was rocked by the indictments of three current and former players, including the current coach of the Portland Trail Blazers, in connection with sports betting and rigged poker games.
I talked to my colleague Bryan Walsh, who oversees Vox's Future Perfect, about the crisis the indictments create for the NBA — and the larger crisis of widespread sports gambling in the US. Read on for our conversation: |
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Derick E. Hingle/Getty Images |
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| Cameron Peters What happened in the NBA last week? What were these indictments about? |
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| Bryan Walsh
So on Thursday morning, the FBI, the New York Police Department, and New York state officials announced indictments around a really massive illegal sports betting and illegal poker ring that included several current and former NBA players, among them current guard for the Miami Heat Terry Rozier, as well as the current coach of the Portland Trail Blazers and Hall of Famer, Chauncey Billups.
They were accused of essentially giving gamblers inside information into things that they do in games that would allow them to make bets they knew would win — an insider trading system, only for sports gambling. |
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| Cameron Peters This is not just a problem with the people who were indicted. It’s a big deal for the NBA. Why is that? |
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| Bryan Walsh
This is a huge deal for the NBA, really for all sports leagues, because ever since the door was opened to widespread legalization of sports gambling in 2018, there have been concerns that something like this would happen, that you would have a gambling scandal that involved actual current players doing things to really question the integrity of the games.
And that's really a function of the fact that sports gambling has gotten so massively huge in the US in just a very short period of time. You can go to sports arenas and you will see betting lounges, things that would’ve been impossible to imagine just 10 years ago. The fact that a bunch of new apps, like your DraftKings, your FanDuel, that enable bettors not just to bet on the outcome of the game, but little micro bets, prop bets, like, "How many minutes will a player play? Will he play the whole game?" — these are all things that are much more easy to manipulate for people on the inside.
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| Cameron Peters What does the US appetite for this kind of expanded sports gambling look like? |
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| Bryan Walsh
It's enormous. One survey recently said about 20 percent of US adults had either placed a bet in the last year on sports or had an active online account. I think the latest number is north of $10 billion, and much of that money does flow to the sports leagues through their sponsorships.
Anyone who watches games now will be inundated with ads for DraftKings, FanDuel, every kind of sportsbook. It has become a major pillar of the sporting industry in the US, and it's only set to continue to grow. There seems to be no brakes on this whatsoever. And a big part of it is the growth of these online mobile apps.
When you put people in that sort of frictionless environment with apps that were engineered to get your attention and keep it, and you pile on all the advertising, it's not surprising it's grown like this, and it's also not surprising it's now having a really negative impact on sports leagues. I doubt very much this is the last we'll hear of a scandal like this one. |
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| Cameron Peters Has the league said anything? How are officials responding so far? |
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| Bryan Walsh
The NBA mostly said that they're reviewing the federal indictments. They put Rozier and Billups on immediate leave from their teams. They say they're going to cooperate. They say that they take the allegation very seriously, and that the integrity of their game remains their top priority.
What I would say with that is if the integrity of your game was truly your top priority, you probably would not be involved with betting to the degree they are today. The belief in the integrity of the sport is something where, if there are any small cracks, it can really have long-term effects. For decades, sports leagues were so against the possibility of legalizing gambling because they knew that in the past, there had been major scandals — people might remember the 1919 White Sox throwing the World Series.
In fact, in the run-up to the 2018 Supreme Court decision that led to the explosion of legalization, these leagues were actually against it. They didn't want this to happen. But once the door was opened, it was either join or forgo billions of dollars. |
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| Cameron Peters What kind of impact has this proliferation of gambling had on bettors? |
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| Bryan Walsh
The huge boom in sports gambling has also led to a lot of human carnage. We've seen huge spikes in calls to gambling hotlines. In the years since legalization, we've seen research that indicates that people who are more involved in the gambling world have lower savings rates. It has a real, serious impact on people. And one thing about the way it's done now is that it's essentially inescapable. For someone struggling with a gambling addiction, it's almost like you're an alcoholic and every room you walk into is a bar.
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⮕ Keep tabs
The right’s civil war: Vox’s Zack Beauchamp goes inside the GOP’s antisemitism crisis.
Pepper-spraying a pastor: Rev. Quincy Worthington tells Today, Explained about what he saw ICE do to protesters outside Chicago.
The books that explain the book-banning wars: Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials trilogy once defined the battle over what we should teach children, Vox’s Constance Grady writes. A new spinoff series has more to say.
Yes, Chef: An inside look at what it takes to feed a college football team, an entire athletic department, and even a certain Prime Time coach who likes his steak well-done. [ESPN]
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You can. And ICE's aggressive tactics are inviting legal challenges from protesters. But some recent court rulings will make it hard for them to win. |
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A music recommendation to start your week: Brandi Carlile’s new album, Returning To Myself, is excellent. This live version of the song "Church & State," recorded at Red Rocks Amphitheatre in Colorado, is especially great. |
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Today’s edition was produced and edited by me, staff editor Cameron Peters. Thanks for reading! |
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