The NBA betting scandal continues to reverberate in the sports world, and beyond. Portland Trail Blazers Head Coach Chauncey Billups and Terry Rozier of the Miami Heat were among those arrested in connection with investigations into rigged poker games and illegal sports betting.
Gambling on sports is, of course, legal in most states around the country. And it can be hard to miss commercials for sports betting platforms during games and mentions of the current lines or popular prop bets during the broadcasts.
There’ve been a lot of conversations over the past several days about the relationship between legalized sports betting and the current scandal — whether there is one, and if there is, how big it might be.
With me to talk about this is Shawn Klein, an associate teaching professor of philosophy at ASU and author of the Sports Ethicist website.
Full conversation
MARK BRODIE: Shawn, when you first heard about this sports betting scandal, what were some of the questions or concerns that came to you initially?
KLEIN: Well, the initial response was just the bizarre nature of the story and the names that were involved, the major NBA names, but also the names on the indictment that related to the poker aspect of it. So that added a salacious element to it that made it, I think, a lot more interesting or eye-catching.
But then immediately you start asking yourself questions. OK, how deep does this go? Are there more individuals involved, and are their tentacles in this in every league? And also, how much of an impact does this have on the integrity of the game?
So as a sports ethicist, that's the question that I come to is what is the impact on the integrity of the game? Are games being impacted more so than a player coming out earlier than maybe he would have in other conditions? Does this impact the playoffs? Does this impact the rankings? Does this impact draft status? All these other cascading effects. Is it just one game, or were there a series of games? And apparently according to the indictment, there were a series of games.
And so what sort of impact does this have on other teams and the team itself? And is it a deeper scandal or is this more or less just a one-off kind of thing?
BRODIE: Well, so when you talk about maybe does this impact other leagues, other sports, so much of the commentary after this was announced was this was kind of inevitable because all the sports leagues are kind of in bed with the sports betting. They have sponsorship deals, some teams have sportsbooks in their arenas or in their stadiums, and there's all sorts of betting lines that are part of the broadcast and everything.
Do you see this as something that was inevitable because of that?
KLEIN: I think it certainly was inevitable because it's happened before, and it's happened many times before. It seems every 10 to 20 years, there's a betting scandal in basketball. And so this is something that seems to happen with some regularity. So it's not surprising that it happens again.
The connection to the legal gambling I think is less, from my viewpoint, it seems less of an impact on this making it inevitable, because of course all those other scandals were not under a condition of legalized gambling.
So the question then becomes, I think, does this exasperate the problem? Does it make it worse? And in some ways I actually think it helps make it less worse because I think it helps actually discover it more quickly.
BRODIE: Because there's legalized sports betting.
KLEIN: Because it's legalized, it's transparent. And as I understand it, at least part of what got this investigation going, whether sportsbooks identifying anomalies in the betting with their algorithm sort of saying something's off here, cutting off that line or prop or whatever, and then reporting that to the authorities and to the league. And that kicks off the investigations. Where most of those other scandals in the past were usually connected to other kinds of investigations.
So I think now, with the number of people betting allows for these algorithms and AI and other kind of techniques, that they have to actually identify something off.
Shawn Klein
Deanna Dent
/
Arizona State University
Shawn Klein
BRODIE: Well, so if it's not necessarily a direct connection between legalized sports betting and a scandal like this, I wonder if it maybe goes back to something else you were just talking about in terms of the perception of are the games fixed? Are these legitimate? Are the players doing something kind of off in an attempt to make money for themselves or someone else?
And I wonder if in an entertainment form like sports, that seems like a pretty big problem — even if it's not actually happening — if fans think it's happening.
KLEIN: Yeah, sometimes the appearance of corruption can be as bad as the corruption itself. Maybe not as bad, but it can have the same kind of negative effects. And so if the fan bases — as well as the gaming public, those that might be engaging in the wagering — if they think that games are fixed or that this is being manipulated, I think it will have an effect on the fandom from the sports side, and I think it would also have an effect on people wagering. They're not going to want to wager on something that they think is not on the up and up.
So I think it can have that effect. So that does pull, I think the incentives for the NBA — and other leagues that are certainly probably dealing with similar kinds of problems — and the sportsbooks to make sure that they are policing this, that they are monitoring the betting and making sure that the ways in which the outcomes of the games are totally separated from the gambling, and that there's a firewall that there's arm's length between those that are able to manipulate and control the outcomes of the games and those that are engaged in the wagering.
BRODIE: I wonder if, given the prominence of sports betting and the availability of it, and frankly, the money involved in it, is it harder for people to sort of see the line of what is OK and what is not, what is legal and what is not, what is appropriate and what is not?
KLEIN: Yeah, I think one of the concerns that people raise about legalized gambling is, is it normalizes it, and then just because it's legal, you're going to get more of it. So there's more people gambling, it's more normalized. And so the potential for harms coming from that are obviously increased. So that's something broader that I think society and individuals need to think about.
To what extent you want to start engaging in this, what are the outcomes? What are the consequences more broadly for society? That that's the kind of conversation that we need to have. And what are the best ways to ameliorate those? How do we deal with that? Is it better to treat it psychologically and with some — I don't want to say mercy — but some sense of sympathy. OK, some people, this is a fun thing, people enjoy it, there's going to be some small percentage that abuse it and that it's going to lead to some harm for them and for those around them.
And so we do need to figure out better ways to deal with that. And a lot of the companies do that. They have the gaming hotlines and things like that to try to deal with abuse. And so that is something that we need to be aware of as a society. And what are the best ways to deal with that?
BRODIE: With the assumption that the proverbial toothpaste is not going back in the tube on this, I don't think any of the sports leagues are looking to get rid of their affiliations with the betting companies.
Do you foresee leagues and athletes maybe trying to — and you've alluded to this — take other steps to, if nothing else, try to increase the perception that everything is on the up and up and understand, OK, you can do this, you cannot and should not not do that? Because as we've talked about in many ways, perception is reality here.
KLEIN: Yeah. So for example, I think if you're an athlete and you have in this day and age with social media, athletes have much more of direct access to the public and to their fans. And that's a two-way street, which is a whole other issue that we talk about as well with the gambling side of things.
And so I do think that part of their, for lack of a better word, brand management might be to be clear about that.
BRODIE: Do you expect that there will be more scandals like this in professional sports with legalized sports betting? Or do you think it's going to continue to be, as you've alluded to earlier, kind of every decade or two there's going to be a major thing like this?
KLEIN: I am reticent to make too many predictions on that because even if I think it may happen a little bit more, I don't necessarily know if it's a matter of that it's happening more or that we're discovering it more.
BRODIE: They're catching it more.
KLEIN: They're catching it more. Which might be a good thing, because if we're discovering that and nipping it in the bud, when there's these small incidences, it prevents a bigger one.
KJZZ's The Show transcripts are created on deadline. This text is edited for length and clarity, and may not be in its final form. The authoritative record of KJZZ's programming is the audio record.