Gambling scandals have hit both the NBA and Major League Baseball in recent weeks. And the NFL is taking some steps to ensure they don’t fall in the same category. However, Mike Florio believes it’s not enough.
The NBA was hit with a massive controversy when Portland Trail Blazers head coach Chauncey Billups and Miami Heat star Terry Rozier were arrested in connection to separate gambling operations. Billups was charged in taking part in an illegal, rigged poker game. Rozier is alleged to have exited games early to ensure his under bets were winners.
In baseball, Cleveland Guardians pitchers Emmanuel Clase and Luis Ortiz are facing federal charges over a scheme where they intentionally threw balls in the first pitches of innings to conspire to win bets.
In the wake of those controversies, the NFL released a memo to teams on Thursday saying they were outlawing specific prop bets. As reported by Doug Greenberg of ESPN.com, most of the wagers in question are not offered by sportsbooks in the US.
The memo breaks down these prohibited wager categories as those that are inherently objectionable (i.e. player injuries, fan misconduct), officiating-related (officiating assignments, penalties, etc.), determinable by one person in one play (i.e. a quarterback’s first pass attempt to be incomplete) and predetermined (events that could be determined before a game is played).
Legal sportsbooks in the United States generally have not offered these types of bets in the past anyway and it is not anticipated that Thursday’s memo will force any changes to their offerings.
That’s where Mike Florio wants to see more.
In an article at Pro Football Talk, Florio said the NFL memo was a “largely hollow gesture” to make it look like the league was doing something instead of nothing in regards to the vulnerability that exists to players not throwing games necessarily, but specific plays.
For now, however, it appears that the portion of the memo regarding prop bets is a largely hollow gesture aimed at doing something at a time when many are looking to sports leagues to do anything to address the kinds of wagers that can be directly influenced by one player — and that can spawn inside information that can be misused by those who know whether and to what extent a player is likely to hit the “under” on prop bets tied to his performance.
It’s one thing to legalize, and to profit from, big-picture wagers regarding which team wins (straight up or against the spread) and whether the total points will exceed (or fall short of) the game-by-game magic number. Prop bets, which truly are the crack cocaine of legalized betting (and, when lumped into three-leg parlays, easy money for the sportsbooks), set the stage for misconduct by those who have specific knowledge about players and game plans.
To Florio’s point, there are still prop bets that are live at NFL partnered sportsbooks DraftKings and FanDuel that could be easily manipulated. For the upcoming Dolphins-Commanders game on Sunday morning, DraftKings has a prop bet on whether a team will allow a sack in their opening drive. With “Yes” at +336 for the Dolphins, Tua Tagovailoa could theoretically hold onto the ball for too long and make someone a lot of money. Similarly, FanDuel has a prop asking whether both teams will complete their first pass attempt of the game. A throw in the dirt would easily lead to “No” being a winner at -102.
Prop bets, and specifically same game parlays, are a cash cow for sportsbooks and has quickly turned into a central source of revenue. They are fun to bet and tough to win, as Charles Barkley has displayed on a regular basis. But in the NFL, most of those are made with various yardage thresholds that all incentivize positive performance. The danger remains that players could easily manipulate anything that is an over/under situation and pull themselves from a game as Terry Rozier is alleged to do, or misfire on one given play as Emmanuel Clase and Luis Ortiz are alleged to do.
But the NFL and sports leagues are in far too deep at the moment with their gambling partners to rock the boat too much in terms of what is on offer for fans. So for right now, the NFL can’t do much more than hope that they aren’t next in line for a major gambling scandal.