The Big Question: Is legalised betting good for sport?
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Miami Heat guard Terry Rozier driving to shoot against the Philadelphia 76ers at Wells Fargo Center last season.
PHOTO: REUTERS
Follow topic:
- NBA betting controversies highlight the risks of legalised sports wagering, with indictments against players and coaches for alleged game manipulation.
- Legal betting boosts sport through funding, like in the UK and Singapore, but North America faces scrutiny now due to ethics and potential corruption.
- NBA commissioner Adam Silver defends legalisation for regulation, but critics fear eroding trust, addiction risks and game integrity amid growing public concern.
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The stakes are high in a thrilling, fast-paced sport like basketball, where every buzzer-beater can swing fortunes.
But as players go all in to score victories on the court, a fresh wave of betting controversies has thrust the National Basketball Association (NBA) into the headlines for the wrong reasons.
Late in October, federal indictments and arrests rocked the league, implicating current and former players and coaches in an alleged scheme tied to insider information and game manipulation
The saga has not only suspended careers – Portland Trail Blazers coach Chauncey Billups and Miami Heat guard Terry Rozier are among more than 30 people charged – but also reignited a broader conversation about the promises and perils of legalised sports betting in North America.
This is no isolated incident. Since the US Supreme Court’s 2018 Murphy v NCAA (National Collegiate Athletic Association) decision struck down the federal ban on sports wagering, legal betting has exploded across the continent, generating billions in revenue and transforming fan engagement.
According to various reports, including ESPN, gambling in sports is currently legalised in close to 40 states, with wagers surpassing US$150 billion (S$195.82 billion) annually.
Yet, as North American leagues like the NBA, National Football League and Major League Baseball deepen ties with betting partners – think in-game ads and prop bets – these scandals underscore a pivotal question: Is legal betting a boon that modernises and sustains sport, or a corrosive force that undermines its essence?
The debate pits economic imperatives against ethical ones in a region where legal betting is still in its infancy compared to Europe.
Betting as a lifeline
One of the strongest cases for legal sports betting lies in its capacity to inject vital funds into the sporting ecosystem, a model proven across continents.
In the UK, where it has been entrenched since the 1960s, betting operators contribute substantially to football’s infrastructure, from grassroots development to elite competitions.
The English Premier League, for instance, has long benefited from sponsorship deals with bookmakers.
According to a Bloomberg article in August, “11 out of 20 (teams) will have gambling company names emblazoned across players’ chests for the second year in a row. No other industry has been so ubiquitous since the league’s inception in 1992.”
The BBC also reported that figures from GlobalData show the combined value of shirt sponsorship deals involving Premier League clubs and gambling companies in the 2024-25 season is £101.1 million (S$172.5 million).
While the top-flight teams benefit from this, they have other revenue streams like TV deals and the Champions League income to boost their growth.
Lower-tier clubs, often operating on shoestring budgets, are the ones who really need huge financial resources to cover expenses such as player salaries, daily operations and community programmes.
Over in North America, the sports betting industry posted a record US$13.71 billion in 2024 revenue, up from 2023’s mark of US$11.04 billion, according to the American Gaming Association’s annual report.
It is no small amount and direct sponsorship deals between various legal sports books and the top American leagues are “clearly very important” to the finances of sports teams, said Victor Matheson, an economics professor at the College of the Holy Cross and an expert on the business of sports and gambling.
The gambling sponsorships are “not something that anyone wants to turn down” no matter how rich leagues are, he told CNN.
Channelling money into the community
Closer to home, proceeds from legal betting directly fuel societal pillars like sports and the arts.
Singapore Pools, a state-owned, not-for-profit company and the only legal betting operator here since 1968, had a record $12.7 billion in turnover
The Tote Board then disburses these funds as grants across key areas like sports, arts and culture, and charities and social services.
Sponsored by the Tote Board Group, the Major Games Award (MAP) programme gives cash incentives to Singaporean athletes for medals at the SEA, Commonwealth and Asian Games and Olympics.
Payouts are tiered and mandatory amounts (20 to 50 per cent) are returned to the respective national sports associations for future training and development.
Olympic swimming champion Joseph Schooling banked in $1 million for his 100m butterfly gold at Rio 2016. In 2018, 53 medallists shared $2.57 million
When Singapore’s professional football league (originally the S-League) started in 1996, Singapore Pools contributed $9.7 million between 1995 and 1997 and the company continues to support the Singapore Premier League.
Regulation as a safeguard
At its core, the pro-legalisation stance rests on pragmatism – betting persists regardless of laws, so why not govern it?
NBA commissioner Adam Silver, who penned a 2014 New York Times op-ed advocating decriminalisation, has long championed this view.
“There is an obvious appetite among sports fans for a safe and legal way to wager on professional sporting events,” he said then. “I believe that sports betting should be brought out of the underground, and into the sunlight where it can be appropriately monitored and regulated.”
A decade on, Silver reiterated his position, telling ESPN: “I’d say when it comes to sports betting, I certainly don’t regret writing that op-ed piece and being in favour of legalised sports betting.
“If we don’t legalise sports betting, people are going to find ways to do it illegally.”
Legal markets enable real-time monitoring – apps can flag suspicious patterns, and partnerships with firms like Sportradar detect anomalies before they fester.
The New York Times reported that American gambling firm DraftKings said in a statement – following the October arrests – that online sports betting was the best way to monitor suspicious behaviour.
Earlier this week, Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) chief executive Dana White told TMZ that his promotion was in close contact with the Federal Bureau of Investigation
According to Reuters, White said IC360, UFC’s betting integrity partner, “alerted the UFC hours before Dulgarian’s featherweight fight against Yadier del Valle that the underdog was drawing plenty of betting action to win along with first-round prop bets”.
The UFC said IC360 “is conducting a thorough review of the facts surrounding the Dulgarian v del Valle bout” and is taking the allegations seriously.
When bets betray the game
Yet, for all its allure, legal betting can cast a shadow over sport’s sanctity, as the NBA’s latest turmoil illustrates.
Such scandals erode fans’ trust that results on the court or pitch are genuine contests of skill and will, and not scripted for profit.
The Pew Research Centre released a report in October that said 43 per cent of US adults believe that legal sports betting is a bad thing for society, up from 34 per cent in 2022. Narrowing it down to the sports industry, 40 per cent said that it was detrimental, an increase from 33 per cent.
Beyond the pitch, legal betting can also reshape spectatorship, fostering cynicism instead of wonder.
Increasingly, fans perceive games as gamified spectacles – less about sporting narratives and more about odds fluctuations.
An Atlantic podcast series titled The Devil’s Bargain Of Sports Betting said that “gambling is sold as a harmless thrill”, but has since evolved massively.
“The two industries (gambling and sports) have rapidly become tied together in a way they’ve never been before in America,” said an excerpt.
“And we’re still scrambling to understand what that means for both fans and athletes.
“Sports leagues, of course, are always trying to make more money, but what they don’t want are headlines about the ills of gambling addiction, and they especially don’t want people thinking that bets are affecting how athletes themselves perform.”
For North America’s nascent market, this cultural shift risks alienating generations raised on untainted sporting heroism, as the continuing fallout from the NBA’s scandal shows.
The lure of the quick buck
Athletes face unprecedented pressures in a betting-saturated landscape, where a single prop bet – a wager placed on specific events or occurrences within a game – can eclipse a season’s salary.
Anti-gambling advocates note that legalisation, while regulating operators, normalises wagering culture and heightens addiction risks.
It can even hit a top player or coach who earn millions in just one season.
For example, Rozier was reportedly paid US$24.9 million during the 2024-25 season and is now in the final year of a four-year, US$96.3 million deal.
The Inside The NBA crew of former NBA players Shaquille O’Neal, Kenny Smith and Charles Barkley weighed in on the scandal on Oct 23.
O’Neal said that those implicated “knew what was at stake” and yet they put themselves and the NBA in this position, with Smith adding that “we have to realise gambling is an addiction” and that this is “what makes you make illogical decisions”.
Calling Rozier “stupid”, Barkley said: “Why are they stupid? Under no circumstances can you fix basketball games. Like, Rozier makes US$26 million. Him betting, giving people information or taking himself out of games – how much is he going to benefit taking himself out the game to get unders?”
Current NBA players share differing views on betting, with Golden State Warriors star Stephen Curry saying he remained confident “the integrity of the game is fine”.
But the Boston Celtics’ Jaylen Brown has urged the league to help players navigate the new landscape, adding: “It creates a negative discourse around the game and players when people have money involved.”
Likewise, Mark Conrad, professor of law and ethics at Fordham University’s Gabelli School of Business, believes that something has to be done quickly so that the public can trust that games are fair.
“The leagues have to look themselves in the eye,” he said. “They’ve gone to bed with the big gambling companies, seeing the monetary advantage. This is the downside of it.”
Balancing the scales – what is next?
The NBA’s betting controversy put the league at a crossroads – double down on safeguards, as Silver urges, or dial back to preserve the essence of the game?
Other models around the world, like Singapore’s, show funding’s upside, and similarly in the UK there are positives from legalised betting that contribute to the sustainability of a sport. Though it should be noted that match-fixing scandals have also hit sports leagues in both countries.
North America’s scandal highlights gaps in enforcement and ethics.
As debates rage on in boardrooms and bars, one truth endures – legal betting can fund an entire sporting ecosystem, but only if it does not finance its doom.
As tedious as it may be, the NBA has to now jump through hoops to get its next move right.
