There’s no denying it anymore: The arrests last week of an N.B.A. player and a head coach after allegations of insider sports betting and poker-game rigging aren’t isolated scandals. They are what we should expect in an industry in which the oddsmakers are calling the shots.
Gambling doesn’t just sponsor sports games. It shapes them, deciding which matchups are worth watching and how players are covered. Gambling doesn’t just buy ads. It owns sports networks, producing shows that prod fans to bet ever more.
This didn’t happen overnight. Gambling has long been a staple of sports bars, college dorms and office pools, but professional sports still treated it as an existential threat. That changed roughly a decade ago, when the leagues — scrambling for a way to recapture some of the viewers they had lost — convinced themselves to embrace their longtime enemy.
Today, athletes are getting sucked in, their reputations and even their mental health increasingly damaged by the markets that profit off them. A 2025 survey found that 21 percent of sports bettors say they’ve verbally abused an athlete, in person or online. “We call ourselves zoo animals,” said the Boston Red Sox pitcher Lucas Giolito, who says he has been threatened and told to kill himself.
Allegations of athletes betting on games in their own leagues are multiplying. Six in 10 Americans now express skepticism about the integrity of sport, wondering whether players, referees and coaches are throwing games.
All the while, gambling addiction is quietly growing, leaving a trail of financial ruin, debt and shame. Thirty-seven percent of American adults — and 60 percent of avid fans — say they have placed a bet on sports. Nearly half of men ages 18 to 49 report having an online sports betting account.
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