In the wake of Thursday’s revelation of a gambling probe that FBI director Kash Patel characterized as “the insider trading saga for the NBA,” the league and its media partners are gearing up for a stretch of uneasy convergences. As much as everyone involved in the production and distribution of NBA games might prefer to expunge all mentions of sports betting while the story continues to develop, it will be next to impossible to sideline such messaging at the national and regional levels.
Gambling has become fully integrated with the delivery mechanisms of live sports, so there’s no way to put all the various come-ons and promos on pause while the arrests of Terry Rozier, Chauncey Billups and Damon Jones dominate the news cycle. On Friday night, eight of the 13 NBA teams affiliated with Main Street Sports Group will see their games air in their local markets via a FanDuel Sports Network-branded RSN.
If all that onscreen FanDuel signage is likely to conjure up a slew of unwelcome callbacks to Thursday’s indictments, such juxtapositions aren’t even the half of it. Legal sportsbooks FanDuel, BetMGM, Caesars and DraftKings are numbered among the NBA’s 50-plus official marketing partners, and per iSpot data, in-game gambling ads raked up a staggering 1.93 billion household impressions last season. In other words, the elephant in the room is sporting a big neon sign that reads, “Elephant.”
According to iSpot, sportsbooks spent $52.1 million on televised in-game NBA telecasts in 2024-25, a figure that includes $44.4 million in national investments across ABC, ESPN, TNT and NBA TV. (The RSNs accounted for the remaining $7.7 million.) The combined spend was up 29% versus the previous season, when the networks booked $40.4 million, while total impressions for the category were up 14%.
If there’s a force majeure clause in the new rights contracts that allows the NBA’s media partners to temporarily halt running sportsbook ads when an unforeseeable event makes such airings impractical, it’s hidden under a tide of black ink. The sections labeled “Exhibit B” in the NBC and Amazon deals are more blacked-out than Mickey Mantle at a child’s birthday party, although an unredacted paragraph included in both documents serves as a reminder that the outlets must refrain from running ads for any sportsbook that is not recognized by the NBA as an “Authorized Gaming Operator.”
A parenthetical aside cautions that an “Authorized Gaming Operator” needn’t necessarily be an official marketing partner of the NBA. A subsequent paragraph notes that all “sports betting messaging or activity … is subject to NBA rules of general applicability,” a caveat that refers in part to a league-mandated frequency cap. Live integrations, for example, are limited to two executions per game.
Even if the networks elect to tap the brakes on gambling ads in the near term, coverage of the NBA will remain a bit of a contextual minefield as long as Rozier and Billups remain in the headlines. Disney weathered its first collision of scandal and sponsorship during the 9 a.m. ET hour of Thursday’s installment of Get Up, when a chyron touting its ESPN Bet sportsbook materialized at the bottom corner of the screen while host Mike Greenberg discussed the arrests.
The teaser didn’t stay up for long. As Greenberg spoke about how the networks embraced the sports-gambling phenomenon after decades of pretending that it didn’t exist, the entire crawl, including the ESPN Bet banner (“Bet $10, Get $100”) disappeared from view.
As it happens, Silver on Tuesday addressed the necessity of further regulating the sports betting space during an appearance on The Pat McAfee Show. Speaking just hours before the new season got underway with the Rockets-Thunder double-OT duel, the commissioner said the league had asked a number of its media partners “to pull back some of the prop bets, especially when they’re on two-way players, guys who don’t have a stake in the competition.”
While Silver did not come right out and say it, there is no earthly reason why anyone should be booking over/under props on how many points a deep-bench player like Jontay Porter puts up during his brief stints on the court. Porter, who averaged 4.4 points per game in 2023-24, was issued a lifetime ban from the NBA after admitting to having manipulated his performance on two separate occasions during his final season with the Raptors.
Porter pleaded guilty to felony wire fraud conspiracy in July 2024 and faces sentencing on Dec. 10. He faces up to four years in prison.
Silver told McAfee that as much as legalized gambling has helped make it easier to spot a scam—Porter’s malfeasance was spotted after nearly $30,000 was wagered on his individual performance during a Jan. 26, 2024 Clippers-Raptors game—the interests of transparency would be better served if sports betting were regulated at the federal level, rather than state-by-state. Silver added that there needs to be more eyeballs on promotional and advertising activity.
At present, 39 states offer some form of legalized sports betting.
The charges against Rozier, which stretch back to December 2022, are similar to those that brought down Porter, inasmuch as he’s suspected of providing “non-public information” about his playing time to co-conspirators who would then place bets on his projected “unders.” On March 23, 2023, Rozier is said to have informed an associate that he’d be removing himself early from that night’s game against the Pelicans. Despite not having appeared on the pregame injury report, Rozier—a starter—asked to be pulled after nine minutes, citing a sore foot.
While Billups’ name did not appear in the Rozier indictment—the Blazers coach is one of 31 defendants accused of rigging underground poker games for the benefit of four of the five New York crime families—the person listed as “Co-Conspirator 8” under the NBA-related charges is a dead ringer for the 2004 NBA Finals MVP. The anonymous defendant played in the league “from approximately 1997 through 2014,” a span which matches Billups’ run, and has served as “an NBA coach since at least 2021.”
Co-Conspirator 8 is said to have tipped off a co-defendant, Eric Earnest, about the Blazers’ intention to rest some of its star players in advance of a March 2023 home game against the Bulls. Earnest is one of the three defendants who were charged in both indictments; another name common to both cases is Jones, a former Cavaliers assistant.
The Blazers hired Billups as their head coach in June 2021, signing him to a five-year deal. After the conclusion of last season, in which Billups earned a $4.7 million salary, he signed a two-year extension with the team. In the indictment, prosecutors say Billups was involved in rigged poker games in which unsuspecting players were defrauded of “at least $50,000.”
Billups and Rozier were placed on “immediate leave” shortly after the indictments were announced.