With the 2024-25 NBA regular season just around the corner, the NBA’s head office has reportedly asked sports books to no longer offer “under” bets on players who are playing on 2-way or 10-day contracts.
Basketball fans will remember last season’s Jontay Porter fiasco, which saw the Toronto Raptors’ player banned for life from the NBA following an investigation into game manipulation for betting purposes. According to that report, Porter disclosed confidential information to sports bettors, wagered on games, and even bet on his team to lose.
Porter ultimately pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit wire fraud on July 10th and is scheduled to be sentenced on December 18th in New York.
While not all sports books have agreed to the league’s request, DraftKings and FanDuel, two of North America’s largest betting services, have reportedly agreed to the NBA’s plea.
“We are pleased that these actions have been taken to help protect the integrity of our games,” an NBA spokesperson remarked after news of the development became public.
The NBA is the first professional league in North America to make such a request, though all 4 of the major sports leagues have faced their share of betting related mishaps over the past few seasons. Such an agreement could have wide ranging ramifications across the sports betting industry as leagues look to crack down on betting manipulation by fans and players alike.
In a recent study released by the Signify Group, instances of in person, and online threats, harassment, and intimidation from bettors towards athletes has spiked dramatically since sports books became mainstream.
According to the report, “Those involved in the men’s and women’s March Madness basketball tournaments received the most abuse by far, receiving 80% of messages identified as abusive, discriminatory or threatening by Signify’s AI service Threat Matrix. Those messages accounted for 73% of all of the sports betting-related messages.”
NBA Commissioner Adam Silver has yet to issue a public statement regarding the development, though it’s widely expected that he will do so once additional details from the sports betting services are confirmed.
Photo: Dietmar Rabich. This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license.