Last week marked the sixth anniversary of the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision clearing the way for legal sports betting outside of Nevada. Since the time of the ruling, sports betting has exploded across the country and has been legalized in 38 states, Puerto Rico and the District of Columbia, with more states expected to follow suit.
A new Outside the Lines segment examines issues associated with a popular aspect of sports betting: prop bets. In recent months, several incidents in sports betting have raised questions about safeguards, including the NBA banning former player Jontay Porter for violating the league’s gambling policies – an incident related to prop betting. Porter also bet on NBA games.
The segment debuted on SportsCenter over the weekend and is now available on the ESPN BET YouTube page.
OTL producer Robbin Dunn said that reporter John Barr and associate producer Ajay Atayee interviewed Ohio governor Mike DeWine, who recently banned player-specific prop bets on collegiate sports.
“He told us why he felt the decision needed to be made – to protect players who were being harassed,” she said. “Governor DeWine said he would love it if the federal government banned prop betting.”
Viewers also hear from NCAA president Charlie Baker, who has also called for banning prop bets on all collegiate sports, and with University of Dayton men’s basketball coach Anthony Grant, who called out gamblers who had harassed his players.
Additional interviews in the segment are with Matt Schuler, the director of the Ohio Casino Control Commission, and Joe Maloney, the senior vice president of communications for the American Gaming Association.
Earlier this year, OTL presented a multi-part series on the state of sports betting in the United States.
“This new segment is a continuation of that series,” Dunn said. “With new state and federal sports betting legislation being introduced and the gambling landscape continuing to change, we knew there would be more topics to cover.
“Since there have been several sports betting scandals (Jontay Porter and MLB star Shohei Ohtani’s former interpreter Ippei Mizuhara) and concerns about the integrity of sports, we decided to focus this segment on prop bets,” she said. “Players are getting harassed, there are calls to ban prop bets, and leagues are considering making changes with their betting partners.”
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