As of this publication, sports betting has been left in the hands of the states, but two members of Congress recently proposed the SAFE Bet Act, which would get the feds involved in a range of sports betting and iGaming guardrails.
Trump Talks Tough
Shortly before winning the 2024 election, President-elect Donald Trump was a featured guest on the “Let’s Go!” podcast hosted by former New England Patriots coach Bill Belichick and celebrated sports journalist Jim Gray. It was a wide-ranging interview, but the topic of corruption in sports due to its inextricable connection to betting was raised.
“Well, there’ll be corruption, and the only question is, will it be massive corruption or will it be, you know, regular, standard corruption?” Trump stated. “It’s very interesting that they’ve gone from one extreme to the other. They kept Pete Rose out of the Hall of Fame for, I mean, like a ridiculous – in my opinion – a ridiculous situation. It was – I mean, I grew up watching that guy. He was great. But, no, I think you’ll have – you’re gonna have corruption. When you have gambling, you have a lot of it.”
The legendary Pete Rose was banned from baseball for life in 1989 due to gambling on the sport, and his controversial exclusion from the National Baseball Hall of Fame has spawned much debate considering he is the game’s all-time hits leader. Rose played the majority of his career for the Cincinnati Reds and vehemently denied ever betting against his team. After an investigation concluded he had bet on baseball, he ultimately confessed, writing, ”My actions, which I thought were benign, call the integrity of the game into question.”
The SAFE Bet Act
Sports betting in the US became legal in 2018, due to the Supreme Court’s ruling to overturn PASPA, and now 39 states offer either mobile or retail sports betting, or a combination of both. The leagues have imposed strict guidelines on sports betting for not only players but officials and anyone associated with the league.
Former NBA player Jontay Porter is the most recent and glaring example of a player running afoul of the guidelines as he and his co-conspirators engaged in rigging his player props on at least two occasions in which he pulled himself out of those games early so the props peculiar to him like scoring, rebounds and assists would go under the posted totals. Porter has been banned from the NBA for life and has already pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit wire fraud on July 10th, and his sentencing hearing is scheduled for December 18th.
U.S. Congressman Paul Tonko of New York and Senator Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut co-sponsored the Supporting Affordability and Fairness with Every Bet, or the SAFE Bet Act, which would impose federal guidelines that would supersede any state regulations. “This relationship between the gambling industry and sports has reached intolerably dangerous levels, and it’s well past time for Congress to just step up and make a difference,” Tonko said at a press conference.
It is unclear how much support the SAFE Bet Act will have, but it is already receiving backlash from the industry and some members of Congress. Chris Cylke, the American Gaming Association’s senior vice president of government relations, called it a “slap in the face” to state regulators and gaming operators, while Nevada US Representative Dina Titus deemed the SAFE Bet Act “outdated” and “unwarranted.”
