To this point, former NBA center Jontay Porter is the cautionary tale most people will point to when it comes to the risks of legalized sports gambling and potential game-fixing.
Porter was banned from the league for life last spring, made into an example after allegedly betting more than $50,000 during two NBA seasons. He is facing sentencing this December while a federal investigation continues, looking into alleged game-fixing in the NBA and college hoops led by one of Porter’s accomplices.
While Porter and the people he went into business with have all been arrested, new details emerged this week from a long story on Porter’s career at Toronto Life magazine.
When Porter signed with the Memphis Grizzlies as an undrafted free agent in 2020, he was, according to reporter Anthony Milton, already deep in a habit of Wall Street day trading and cryptocurrency investments. As that habit grew to include sports gambling, Porter was reportedly granted a VIP account by the FanDuel Sportsbook.
Once Porter was getting NBA checks from the Grizzlies, his wagers grew to the size that FanDuel noticed — and gave him special treatment. Milton cites a “former sports betting insider” who explains what it means to be a VIP at a sportsbook:
“Identified by their spending habits and wooed with invitation-only perks, these premium bettors are assigned a dedicated account executive whose job is to ply them with booths at nightclubs, free courtside seats and other benefits designed to keep them playing.”
Before he took the ultimate risk of gambling on his own player props and the results of Toronto Raptors’ games, Porter racked up millions of dollars in bets, according to Milton.
“With his VIP account and public trading ventures, Porter would have been a magnet for predators who try to game the system, looking for an edge wherever they can find it,” wrote Milton. “And there was no better edge than an NBA player who could shape the outcomes of games directly.”
By the time Porter returned to the league, he reportedly switched over to using an accomplice’s phone to make wagers. Soon, according to the Toronto Life story, Porter was fixing his own statistics — going “Under” on his stats by leaving games early with minor maladies — to create massive payouts for the group.
When Porter and the group were caught in April 2024, FanDuel and DraftKings both helped the FBI identify suspicious wagers on Porter’s performance.
Still, it would be extremely concerning if FanDuel gave an active NBA player a VIP account on its app. While 2021 was still the early days of legal sports gambling in the U.S., it wouldn’t be hard to cross-reference accounts with a list of active NBA players. It begs the question of if Porter may have used an alias or separate e-mail account, and what that would mean for tracking other active professional athletes.
Many other players have been caught gambling on sports, including NFL receiver Calvin Ridley, who was suspended for a season for betting on other sports besides NFL games.
We don’t know what the well-publicized relationship between these sportsbooks and leagues like the NBA look like. Both sides effectively acknowledge they are surveilling players.
How did FanDuel initially grant top treatment to Porter before later helping the feds catch him? Any tracking of IP addresses or other means of digital identification would need to be collectively bargained between players’ unions and leagues.
Given that partnerships with pro leagues already offer a guise of protection for companies like FanDuel, it is hard to gauge what is permissible or possible on their platforms before action is flagged. A lot of what happens in the online sports betting marketplace is unknown.
Taken alone, the news of Porter’s VIP account has a thousand reasonable explanations. It also has a few that are worrying for future potential scandals. The total handle in the U.S. was around $150 billion in 2024. With sports betting now a fundamental part of Americans’ daily lives, the effects of a wider scandal could be dire for Americans’ pocketbooks.