“Gambling always leads to corruption,” the late Fay Vincent, former Major League Baseball commissioner, told The Athletic in 2024, just a few months before his death at age 86 in February.
The former commissioner continued, “Corruption always leads to problems that are very difficult to fix. And when you are trying to fix them in the heat of the white light and the stress and the pressure, you are likely to pay a very big price in terms of delay and an overstatement or an over-administration of absurd redress or punishment.”
As scandals have hit Major League Baseball (two pitchers arrested for manipulating pitches for prop bets) and the NBA (a coach and former player arrested), the leagues have placed the matter in the hands of the federal government. Both leagues have said investigations are ongoing. NBA commissioner Adam Silver noted that their investigative ability is limited because they do not have the subpoena power the federal government does.
For those of a certain age, it was widely understood that sports and gambling were the biggest non-mixture around. It simply could not happen. One could violate all kinds of moral standards, but one could not gamble. The leagues did not allow it and were firmly against it. The integrity of the game was on the line. More plainly, it devalued the appeal of the product. The reason we buy sports tickets and watch games on TV was threatened. We watch to cheer on something larger than ourselves, to see skill and strategy on display. If we saw it only as grown adults tossing a leather ball around for two hours, we might not shell out big money to watch it. If we saw it it purely as a money making venture, interest you might expect would wane.
Former Bud Selig would often be quoted as saying that that baseball was a public institution.
“[Baseball is] a social institution with enormous social responsibilities, baseball must do everything it can to maintain integrity, fairness and a level playing field,” Selig once said in a statement.
In years past, anyone who violated the rules and was caught, most famously Pete Rose, would be forever shamed, banned, and linked with gambling. League commissioners were strongly opposed, including Vincent, who expelled Rose from the game.
“In those days, we were very adamant against betting because we had just been dealt, and were dealing with, the Pete Rose case,” Vincent said in 2017.
“We saw the risks and the danger of corruption, and we saw that the mafia was involved in some of the things we investigated. It is dangerous, and it is still dangerous. But I think the American public wants to bet, and it is already betting.”
Paul Tagliabue, NFL commissioner from 1989 to 2006, said, “Gambling is a cancer on sports. We will continue to challenge it wherever it may appear. We fight gambling because we believe it is a threat to the integrity of the game.”
In July 2017, Adam Silver of the NBA said, “Ultimately, as the owners of the intellectual property, we are going to embrace [betting] and also make sure our integrity is protected at the same time.”
In 2025, sports gambling is normalized. Estimates put total wagers at around $100 billion yearly, with revenues near $10 billion. NFL bets alone are expected to total about $30 billion this season, according to ESPN.
So how did we get here?
A 1992 law called PASPA, which banned sports gambling in pro sports, was struck down in 2018 by the Supreme Court. The case was pushed largely by then-New Jersey governor Chris Christie, supported by New Jersey horse racing interests and several state governors.
League commissioners said that once legalization became the law of the land, they had no choice but to form partnerships to protect their data and “help shape the future of sports gambling.”
That shaping appears to have done little to prevent the current state of affairs.
| Major Sports Gambling Scandals in 2025 | ||
|---|---|---|
| NBA | Federal authorities indicted more than 30 individuals — including players and a head coach — in a scheme involving inside information being used for sports betting and a connected illegal poker ring. |
Arrests made; federal charges pending; NBA conducting internal review. |
| MLB | Cleveland Guardians pitchers Luis Ortiz and Emmanuel Clase were placed on leave after suspicious prop-bet activity targeting their appearances triggered a league and federal investigation. |
Investigation ongoing; no final discipline announced. |
| NCAA Basketball | A multi-school investigation revealed at least 13 former men’s basketball players involved in betting violations, including wagers on their own teams and use of proxy accounts. |
Sanctions issued in several cases; broader investigation continues. |
Some in sports saw gambling as a way to increase revenue and engagement. When people have money riding on a game, they watch. The NBA and commissioner Adam Silver were early advocates of legalization, as far back as 2014, and formed one of the first partnerships with a major sportsbook in late 2018.
Rob Manfred has said MLB was opposed, stating that the sport was “dragged into legalized sports betting as a litigant in a case that ended up in the Supreme Court.”
“We did not ask to have legalized sports betting,” Manfred said. “It kind of came, and that is the environment in which we operate.”
In 2018, MLB formed a partnership with its first exclusive betting partner.
It took the NFL three years, but it formed agreements with four major sports gambling operators in 2021. In 2024, it announced three exclusive official sports betting partners.
Roger Goodell, NFL commissioner, testified before Congress in 2017, “We remain steadfastly opposed to legalized sports gambling. It threatens fans’ confidence in the game.”
It took the NCAA longer, but in April of this year it announced a major deal with a distributor of official NCAA championship event data to licensed sportsbooks under an “Authorized Gaming Licensee” program.
This is what league commissioners pushed for and defended, and it may now be too late to reverse course. The Supreme Court in 2018 struck down PASPA, a law MLB commissioner Fay Vincent helped Bill Bradley draft, which prohibited sports gambling in the United States.
Why did this happen? Revenue and engagement.
The tide was already turning through fantasy sports, especially “daily” formats in which participants pick players for one night, place a wager, and win based on outcomes. These contests pushed legal boundaries, and the money steadily grew.
The truth is that almost no one gets ahead gambling. The advertising that suggests huge profits is false. Statistics show that almost everyone loses money, and no one stays ahead. The cards are stacked.
A broad analysis by the University of California San Diego Rady School of Management examined roughly 717,724 online bettors from 2019 to 2023 and found that about 96 percent lost money over that five-year period. Only about 4 percent withdrew more than they spent.
In a radio interview shortly before his death, Vincent put it bluntly shortly when he said something to the effect of, “people who gamble on sports might as well go into the streets and light your money on fire, they will always lose.”
