Layer Ø Lanny Brannock lives just outside Lexington, Kentucky, which makes him partial to Cincinnati sports. And as the co-host of a podcast in which he wagers tiny sums on sporting events, he is hyper-engaged on outcomes. It just isn’t always as a sports superfan.
“It does take some of the joy out of watching the game,” he says. “You’re not just watching it for the sheer athletic ability anymore because you’re financially involved.”
Brannock has no plans to stop betting, but thanks to a wave of recent athlete gambling scandals, he’s growing concerned about the integrity of the onscreen product — and what it means for sports.
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“If you start to lose a segment of your fan base because people believe with some reasoned certainty that there are predetermined outcomes, or players are going into business for themselves, then it will hurt sports overall,” he tells me.
While the sports industrial complex has largely been immune from America’s trust crisis, new concerns over betting’s influence on game integrity are not only worrying fans like Brannock, but also league officials. “It’s on everybody’s mind,” says John Kosner, a former ESPN executive.
Each of the United States’ four biggest leagues — the NFL, NBA, MLB and NHL — has investigated its personnel for suspicious betting activity in the past 12 months, causing some spectators to consider whether sports are morphing into WrestleMania. “The nightmare scenario for the leagues is that people see professional sports as professional wrestling,” says Jonathan D. Cohen, the author of Losing Big: America’s Reckless Bet on Sports Gambling.
Plenty of people still watch WWE, even after Vince McMahon had to admit its staging in 1989, but its revenues are dwarfed by rival three-letter leagues. That’s because content companies are willing to shell out major bucks to air live, anything-can-happen matches, which tend to draw bigger audiences than scripted fare. But fans’ growing distrust of airtight competition could threaten to puncture sky-high media rights.
NBC News found that 70 percent of Americans believe betting “lessens the integrity of the game,” according to the December poll. Meanwhile, a recent Ipsos poll revealed that almost half of all Americans are concerned that games are “rigged” due to betting.
It’s contributed to the rise of a police force for sportsbooks. There are now a number of betting monitoring companies eagle-eyed on spotting suspicious wagers. Integrity Compliance 360 is one of the biggest in the space. In 2023, IC360, as it’s also known, cut a deal with UFC to identify shady bets. “These guys are really good at seeing weird betting patterns, and they literally reach out to you and say, ‘Hey, there’s some goofy stuff going on with this fight,’” UFC impresario Dana White told CNBC’s Andrew Ross Sorkin in July.
White dialed the FBI in November after his company hosted a potentially rigged fight in which Isaac Dulgarian, the cage match’s favorite, lost by first-round submission. Dulgarian was subsequently suspended by the Nevada State Athletic Commission.
Isaac Dulgarian (left) battled Christian Rodriguez in their featherweight fight during the UFC Fight Night event at UFC APEX on March 16, 2024, in Las Vegas. Dulgarian lost in the first round, leading to accusations that he took a dive. Jeff Bottari/Zuffa LLC/Getty Images One of IC360’s most popular products is ProhiBet, which launched in 2023. It offers secure transfer of a list of prohibited bettors from sports leagues (think: players, coaches, even equipment managers) to betting sites. That allows companies such as Caesars Sportsbook, which uses the product, as well as leagues to stamp out potential corruption in games.
Of course, there are ways to circumvent cybercops. Athletes could use offshore sportsbooks, for example, or have others place bets on their behalf. But organizers such as the PGA Tour and NCAA are using the IC360 tool as a means to at least reduce the chances of corruption.
One of the biggest threats to sports integrity stems from prop betting, which allows for betting on non-final-score events, such as an athlete’s free-throw percentage or number of receptions. These types of wagers have grown alongside the rise of prediction markets, which constantly spin up micro-event contracts. “If you’re a sports commissioner, you might want to see them eliminated or really sort of buttoned up more vigorously,” says Kosner of same-game parlays, which often involve multiple prop bets in one game.
It’s often these small-event wagers driving unfortunate headlines. Emmanuel Clase, a baseball closer who pitched for the Cleveland Guardians, reportedly rigged individual pitches across three seasons. He is facing trial later this year. Terry Rozier, who played for the Charlotte Hornets, allegedly faked an injury in 2023 to leave a game early in order to benefit “under” prop bettors. He is scheduled to face trial next year. Jontay Porter, who played for the Toronto Raptors, was banned for life from the NBA for placing bets on himself.
Cleveland Guardians relief pitcher Emmanuel Clase is facing trial for allegedly rigging pitches across three seasons in an attempt to illicitly profit from so-called prop bets. Frank Jansky/Icon Sportswire/Getty Images These granular event contracts are different from betting scandals of yore, when athletes like former Reds player Pete Rose and ex-NBA referee Tim Donaghy — to say nothing of the notorious Chicago “Black” Sox of 1919 — benefited from mostly betting on final outcomes, not player performances.
They also mean more athletes have the opportunity to make serious dough betting on their efforts. “The line you hear from gambling companies all the time is like, ‘Oh, we need to offer all this stuff because it’s already being offered in the illegal market,” says Cohen. “I don’t think anyone in the illegal market was gambling on Jontay Porter under rebounds.”
Whether fans end up growing frustrated with integrity issues or not, gambling still threatens to morph devoted fandoms into dispassionate audiences. “I think this whole thing is just a Faustian bargain for the sports leagues, where in the short term it’s driving interest in their product, and maybe is increasing their media rights deals,” adds Cohen. “But over the long term, you’re not creating NBA fans. You’re just creating a bunch of people who like gambling on the NBA, and they might as well be gambling on Malaysian badminton.”
Jontay Porter, formerly of Toronto Raptors, was banned for life from the NBA for placing bets on himself. Mark Blinch/Getty Images This story appears in The Hollywood Reporter’s August 2026 Sports issue. Click here to read more.
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