For more than 100 years fear of professional athletes fixing games was the existential fear of all professional sports leagues. Indeed it was 1919's Black Sox scandal in baseball that led to the creation of the office of Commissioner and most of the administrative structures of each of America's sports leagues grew up to prevent a loss of public trust. However, in 2018, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down a federal statute- Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act of 1992 sometimes called "The Bradley Act"- that prohibited the expansion of legal sports betting beyond a small handful of states that already allowed it in Murphy v. NCAA.
Immediately after Murphy, states raced to expand and allow sports betting and this time all the professional leagues and major broadcasters partnered with them and the various betting operators. There are credible arguments that legalized sports betting offers both more assurance of game integrity because state regulators and operators can monitor sudden changes in game lines and look for anomalies in bets being placed.
On October 23, 2025, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) announced that six individuals including Basketball Hall of Famer and current Portland Trailblazers Head Coach Chauncey Billups and Miami Heat player Terry Rozier who had earned more that $125 million dollars where indicted as part of a complicated sports betting scheme involving Italian mafia, underground poker games and the tipping of insider information on NBA games. Many observers say that this may simply be "the tip of an iceberg," that may involve many others across the landscape of all major professional sports.
This CLE course will explore the current legal status of betting across major sports, limitations of players, coaches, and team personnel around sports betting and the impact of these rules, the challenges created by widespread legalized betting now permitted in 39 states and available in 4 more in Tribal casinos and sports books.
