Sports are worried about fighting the fix

OCEANPORT, N.J. » It’s early in a college basketball game and Team A, playing methodically and using up most of the 30-second shot clock, falls behind 10-6. Scattered around the bleachers, several fans staring at their smartphones celebrate silently: they have bet on Team B to be the first to reach 10 points and even promised two Team A starters a cut of the winnings.

With dozens of states rushing to capitalize on the U.S. Supreme Court lifting a federal ban on sports gambling, will fixed scenarios like the one above become more common?

The four major pro sports leagues and the NCAA think so, and have argued for years that expanding legal betting will lead to more game-fixing. The pro leagues have sought, unsuccessfully so far, a cut of state gambling revenues to increase monitoring.

Meanwhile, architects of New Jersey’s successful legal challenge to the sports gambling ban say those fears are overstated and that bringing sports betting out of the shadows will make it easier to detect illegal activity. They point to the Arizona State basketball point-shaving scandal in the 1990s, which was uncovered after legal bookmakers in Las Vegas noticed unusually large sums being wagered on Sun Devils games.

Yet the prospect of easy, legal access to sports gambling for athletes and others has many in sports concerned.

“They’re going to create a bigger pool for more kids and for more money to get involved,” said Jamall Anderson, a running back on the 1996 Boston College football team whose players were found to have bet against their own team. “It’s really going to create a big mess, I think.”

“They’re going to create a bigger pool for more kids and for more money to get involved.” — Jamall Anderson, former college football player