Sports betting is legal and will remain so. It will never be banned because of the money that pours in, but something must be done about prop bets. They are a poison, and sports commissioners need an antidote to save the integrity of their leagues. (Yeah, good luck with that.) These individual-centered bets shouldn’t simply be regulated — they should be rooted out.
Prop bets are an uncomplicated entry point to easy manipulation, and they are easy ways for people to lose money. They are advertised as casual fun, but they are sucking the joy out of sports. And they are too tempting for some of the compromised or compulsive athletes who are motivated by greed.
They, too, are legal, but that doesn’t make them any less lethal to the health of sports. And when a diagnosis becomes this dire, surgery is needed. Whether it’s on the commissioners or lawmakers to cut it out of American sports, the hard work must be done.
Prop bets should be banned.
The NFL wrote in a memo to all teams today that it has “actively engaged with both state lawmakers and regulators, as well as with our sports betting partners, to limit–and where possible prohibited altogether–prop bets in the NFL.”
— MarkMaske (@MarkMaske) November 14, 2025
Last week, the NFL sent a memo to its teams regarding its efforts to combat prop bets. The memo stated that the NFL is working with state lawmakers and its sports betting partners, of which there are many, “to limit — and where possible [prohibit] altogether — prop bets in the NFL.”
In listing four “prohibited wager categories,” including the kind of micro-betting determined by a single player on a single play, the NFL is trying to avoid the messes seen in MLB and the NBA. But online sportsbooks listed plenty of prop bets on individual players ahead of that night’s matchup between the New England Patriots and New York Jets.
So what’s the big deal with micro-bets? Yes, only a handful of modern-day pros have been snagged in betting scandals — for now, at least. And prop bets, by their nature relying on an individual and often on one play, can be less consequential to a game’s outcome. But they are becoming more and more damaging to the athletes and their ability to be free from online threats and to the leagues that need fans to trust they’re witnessing the wonderful randomness of sports — and not some fraud scripted by an obsessive gambler disguised in a Miami Heat jersey trying to hit the under. Or an all-star who hasn’t actually lost control of his fastball; he just wants to make a cool $400,000 for rigging pitches.
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On Thursday, Cleveland Guardians closer Emmanuel Clase surrendered to FBI agents at a New York airport. He has been accused of receiving bribes and kickbacks to rig bets on pitches he threw in games dating from May 2023. According to the federal indictment, Clase threw many pitches “in the dirt, well outside the strike zone” to benefit co-conspirators who placed wagers on the pitches’ outcomes.
After his arrest Thursday, Clase appeared in a Brooklyn courtroom. He very much looked the part of a wealthy, star baseball player: diamond-encrusted necklace, sharp suit, dyed hair extensions. And he said he was not guilty — the same plea entered by Luis Ortiz, the other Guardians player accused of rigging pitches.
It would be easy to see how an athlete, lured into a prop betting scheme, might justify his actions. He might say the act is just one ball thrown in the dirt here and there. So what? What’s the worst thing that could happen? A professional pitcher, paid handsomely for his talent, would fall behind in the count and have to use his actual stuff to get the batter out. It’s a victimless crime, the rationale would be.
But it’s a victimless crime until it’s not. Someone may have bet that the pitch Clase bounced would be a strike. And that’s the rub: Fans, bros, anyone who watches games purely for the outcome of their own wagers are the ones who stand to lose, in real time, when an athlete performs in a disingenuous manner. It might be difficult to care about these “victims,” but someone here lost when they thought the game was being played fairly.
The victimless crime angle is more ominous when you think of the focus that an athlete has to have — and has to surrender — to go into a game knowing that he’s about to bounce a pitch or, in the NBA, fake an injury and leave the court. Are we really seeing that athlete at his best? An earnest fan in attendance loses out when they thought the game was being played honestly.
And to pretend the situation is victimless ignores every player in every sport going into every game as a possible target of social media vilification because DraftKings said they would score eight points but they managed just seven.
The verbal abuse has grown so out of control that the NCAA had to launch its “Don’t Be a Loser” campaign, which is designed to stop fans who lost bets from attacking college athletes online. Also, the NBA players union supports some regulation on prop bets, saying in a statement to ESPN earlier this year: “[Players] are concerned that prop bets have become an increasingly alarming source of player harassment, both online and in person. If tighter regulations can help minimize that abuse, then we support taking a closer look at them.”
Then again: NBA telecasts are littered with micro-bet odds, the league is in bed with 14 gaming companies, and the King himself, LeBron James, is a pitchman for DraftKings.
By financially aligning with sportsbooks and gambling companies, leagues are inviting the abuse of their athletes. If leagues want to limit prop bets to low payouts, that might keep an NBA veteran such as the Heat’s Terry Rozier or Portland Trail Blazers Coach Chauncey Billups from getting snared and indicted in gambling investigations. Or a pro ballplayer, such as Clase or Ortiz, might think a scheme that would generate a few hundred bucks is beneath him.
But that doesn’t solve the problem of micro-betting among the people, a demographic heavy on young men. Dollars from their bank accounts drive engagement in sports leagues and on betting sites. And if they lose, it’s their harassment most often spewed across social media.
This past week, a high school kid named Angel had an impossible task. He sat alone in front of Massachusetts lawmakers, some amused to see a teenager about to testify before their joint committee on economic development and emerging technologies, and he had two minutes. Just that brief window to describe how the tendrils of sports betting have spread throughout his Fenway High hallways and to express his support for a proposed state bill that would ban in-game and prop bets.
Two minutes on a Thursday afternoon — not enough time. But give the kid kudos. Angel Benitez, sporting the kind of patchy mustache and chin music that make a boy look fresh-faced, somehow showed more guts than many of the grown-ups in sports as he spoke the hard truth. End prop bets now.
The post Individual prop bets are corrosive to sports. Ban them now.
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