Adam Roarty is a journalist covering sports betting, regulation, and industry innovation for CasinoBeats. His coverage includes tax increases in the UK, covering breaking stories in the ever-evolving landscape of US betting such as the...
Read Full BioThere has been a recent surge of betting scandals in the US, engulfing current and former NBA players, MLB pitchers, and UFC fighters. Some of the stars are on multi-million-dollar contracts, which has led many to ask, “Why would they risk it?”
Terry Rozier, who earns over $25 million a year, has been arrested for allegedly faking an injury to exit a game early, allowing bettors to profit. However, prosecutors say the wagers on his “under” statistics are in the thousands, and at most hundreds of thousands, of dollars.
Similarly, Emmanuel Clase was arrested for conspiring with bettors in his home country, the Dominican Republic, to wager thousands of dollars on rigged pitches. Prosecutors highlight bets made over the last two years that totaled $400,000 on his pitches.
Clase and teammate Luis Ortiz are accused of accepting bribes of $5,000 and $7,000 to throw pitches outside the strike zone deliberately. In 2022, Clase signed a five-year, $20 million contract extension with the Cleveland Guardians. He earned $4.5 million last season and was in line to make $6 million in 2026. Ortiz, while on a lower salary, was still paid over $780,000 last year.
UFC fighter Isaac Dulgarian was undoubtedly on a lower salary than Rozier and Clase, but he has effectively ended his own career after allegedly fixing a fight. UFC President Dana White said he spoke to Dulgarian before the fight, warning him that suspicious bets had been highlighted. After Dulgarian’s first-round submission, White immediately called the FBI and canceled the fighter’s UFC contract.
While the cases are ongoing, the athletes are presumed innocent until proven guilty; however, as evidence surfaces, the questions persist: Why would they risk their multi-million-dollar careers, sponsorship contracts, and post-career media earnings for what seems like a trivial amount? Additionally, now facing criminal prosecution, their punishments could extend far beyond losing earnings.
We spoke with economist Dr. David Forrest from the University of Liverpool to explore the reasons behind why athletes engage in such high-risk behavior for little reward. Forrest has extensively studied the efficiency of betting markets, regulatory issues, problem gambling, and match fixing for betting gain.
He has regularly worked on anti-match fixing policy with organizations such as the UK Gambling Commission, UEFA, Interpol, and player unions, as well as co-authoring a report for the American Gaming Association on how states could best protect sporting integrity when legalizing sports betting.
The Misperception of Risk
Dr. Forrest stated, “We do know that in the general case, across sports, the level of salary is an important determinant in fixing. From an economist’s view, the reward of committing the crime, the potential loss itself, is based on both the remaining salary in your career and the chance of being caught. Now generally, that would tell you that in low-paid leagues, fixing would be much more common than in high-paid leagues.”
This is the case in the recent betting scandal in Turkey, where the majority of players who came from the lower leagues have been suspended for betting violations. However, in high-profile NBA and MLB cases, players have risked multi-million-dollar salaries.
Dr. Forrest continued, “So that indeed poses a problem for understanding because we don’t think it’ll be common for those who make $5 million a year to be tempted into the relatively small rewards from fixing.”
“It could, of course, be that they don’t think they’ll get caught. They have an incorrect perception of the risks, because if you think that no one is looking, then you might say, ‘Well, I’ll take the extra money.’ If you don’t get caught, you don’t lose anything. So people who have a low moral threshold and who are ill-informed as to the chances of being caught may take part.”
In the unregulated betting world, or in certain countries, players can gamble anonymously. With legalization spreading across the U.S., that veil is gone — every wager leaves a digital trace.
“Naïve players may act as if they’re still in an unpoliced jurisdiction,” he said. “Now they gamble legally, but they don’t grasp that with legal comes surveillance of how much is being bet on particular outcomes, the location of the people who are doing the betting, and so on.”
Obsession & the Gambler’s Mindset
Another factor is the link not just between betting in sport, but also in the prevalence of problem gambling among professional athletes. Forrest noted, “One feature of professional sportsmen is that they have extraordinarily high rates of problem gambling. They rank with the military in terms of occupational risk.”
He added, “The problem is that most professional athletes are obsessive personalities, because you will never get admitted to the professional ranks unless you have devoted your late childhood and teenage hood to obsessively practicing. You don’t do anything else; otherwise, you’ll never make it into the pro ranks. So they’re inherently people who, once they do something, they get carried away with it, and that will also make them at risk of being problem or pathological gamblers, this obsessive streak.”
Former NBA player Damon Jones has been indicted in the NBA sports betting scandal and the rigged poker scandal. It has emerged that, despite earning $20 million in his career, he has filed for bankruptcy and was unable to afford his own attorney when appearing in court.
He was released on bail on the condition that he did not gamble. The prosecutor stated, “We ask that he refrain from gambling, including online games. He has a very serious gambling problem.”
This is common among professional athletes, says Forrest. He recalls the case of Dietmar Hamann, a former Liverpool footballer who revealed losing hundreds of thousands of pounds on a single bet. “Even with super salaries, if they’re problem gamblers, they can end up short of money,” Forrest said.
Organized Crime & Long-Term Leverage
Forrest also points to longstanding ties athletes may have to criminal groups. He cited the example of Hansie Cronje, the South African cricketer, who infamously fixed a high-profile match against England.
Forrest said, “He was being paid extremely little to fix matches compared with the rewards he was getting from his cricket career. But when the police delved into the history, the gang had first recruited him when he was playing junior cricket. They paid him a trivial amount to do a trivial thing, and after that one lapse, it was held over him for the whole of his career.”
In the NBA scandal, members of Mafia criminal families have been indicted along with the players and coaches. Jontay Porter is awaiting sentencing after pleading guilty to wire fraud, and it emerged that he was targeted by criminal groups due to his known gambling problem. A combination of several of these factors may therefore be at play in the recent scandals.
“There can be all sorts of individual stories,” said Forrest.
How to Mitigate Fixing
We asked Forrest for recommendations on how regulators, sports leagues, and betting companies can mitigate the risks of match-fixing. He answered, “I would definitely stick with the legal model, and I don’t think it would do any harm if these minor micro propositions were banned, like the speed of the pitch.”
While MLB has introduced a stake limit on micro bets, this will only be effective if bettors do not turn to unregulated markets, said Forrest. He added, “You would want to investigate whether the same markets were available in the illegal sector, as I give a lot of priority to trying to channel as much of the market as possible through the legal offer.
“The reason is that if you look at the offshore operators, then they’re not stupid either, and there’ll be some limit to the size of bet they’ll take. The total market amount being wagered has to be large to accommodate bigger bets.”
Critics of prohibiting bets and limiting stakes argue that it has the risk of sending players to unregulated platforms, which is the main thing to avoid, says Forrest.
He stated, “The less money swirling around in the offshore space, the more difficult it is to place a big bet. I see taking liquidity out of the offshore market like starving it of oxygen.
“If there aren’t many other people betting on a particular type of bet, the bookmaker is not going to take a big bet. He can’t lay it off onto the other bettors who take a different view. So before banning, you have to consider whether it’s feasible for the offshore market to offer the same bet.”
Legalize Betting, Don’t Treat it as a Tax Vehicle
Does that mean betting should be legalized across the US? Forrest says yes, but only if it is regulated correctly.
“It wouldn’t be good if it were a very lax regime across the whole country,” he said.
Legalization can help expose fixing and offer protection for problem gamblers. At the same time, Forrest says that states must be wary of losing sight of controlling the market in favor of generating tax revenue.
He stated, “I thought the biggest risk to legalization was always that states would be very tempted to treat it as a tax vehicle, maximizing revenue, rather than taking a wider view.”
In the UK, operators have been rallying against looming tax hikes on gambling, arguing that it will send bettors to unregulated markets. Lawmakers must consider these factors going forward to devise a framework that regulates and taxes betting, while also offering value to keep bettors engaged on legal platforms.
As soon as bettors turn to the offshore, black market, then risks multiply considerably, warns Forrest.
