Betting scandals unlikely to prompt changes at Nevada sportsbooks

Sports betting scandals have stained the NBA, NCAA, MLB and UFC in the past month alone, prompting a U.S. Senate inquiry into what lawmakers called “a new integrity crisis” facing American sports.

The alleged gambling schemes also brought about a national $200 betting limit on MLB prop bets on individual pitches and spurred the NFL to reaffirm its stance on certain types of prop bets.

But no changes appear to be on the horizon at Nevada sportsbooks, and the men in charge of two of the state’s most respected books — Circa sportsbook director Chris Bennett and Westgate vice president of race and sports John Murray — don’t think any are necessary.

“I think operators should be allowed to decide what markets they want to offer and what the prices and limits are going to be on those markets,” Bennett said. “The problem of the integrity of games or some component of a game will never go away as long as there is an incentive strong enough to compromise them.

“That means there have to be counter-parties offering enough liquidity to make it worth the effort to compromise the market. In the competitive sportsbook operator landscape, I don’t see that getting solved any time soon.

“Imposing wagering limits and restrictions can help curb the behaviors we’ve seen, but it is also limiting the freedom of the operators to compete.”

MLB announced an agreement with its sportsbook partners to cap wagers on pitch markets and exclude those bets from parlays the day after Cleveland Guardians pitchers Emmanuel Clase and Luis Ortiz were indicted on charges they took bribes from sports bettors to throw certain types of pitches to ensure winning wagers.

The in-game prop bets on whether a pitch would be a ball or a strike are known as micro bets, which are prevalent outside of Nevada at sportsbooks such as industry leaders DraftKings and FanDuel. But they aren’t prevalent in Nevada, and they’re not on the wagering menu at the Westgate SuperBook or Circa.

The Westgate has dealt with allegedly fixed sporting events, most recently Nov. 1, when it took the UFC fight in Las Vegas between Isaac Dulgarian and Yadier del Valle off the board after spotting suspicious betting activity.

“That’s where it really behooves you to have an experienced team that can catch that stuff quickly and compile all the information and get it over to the appropriate people,” Murray said. “I think as long as you have a team that knows what they’re doing and knows how to catch these things and knows how to get the right information to the right people, there’s really no reason to make adjustments to your betting board.”

MLB commissioner Rob Manfred said Wednesday during the owners’ meetings that he did not anticipate any further restrictions on baseball prop bets.

“I think that the most important undertaking and really the bedrock of our relationship with the sportsbooks is the ability to monitor betting activity,” he said. “The ability to discern inappropriate patterns is really, really important.

“We understood the prop bet issue from the very beginning. I’m glad we’ve done something about it. But the rest of the program, right now, I think we’re generally prepared to move forward under the rules that we have now.”

Props to NFL

In an NFL memo sent to team officials Nov. 13, the league said it has worked with state lawmakers, regulators and its sports betting partners to limit and, where possible, prohibit prop bets in the NFL.

NCAA president Charlie Baker praised the league on X above a post of the memo.

“Very glad to see the NFL take this issue on,” he wrote. “The NCAA has been working to put an end (to) prop bets for two years. They’re integrity risks and lead to abusive behavior toward student-athletes.”

The NFL memo lists four prohibited wager categories: inherently objectionable (e.g., player injuries, fan safety, misconduct, etc.), officiating-related (e.g., officiating assignments, penalties, replays, etc.), pre-determined (e.g., Will quarterback start this week? Will team’s first play from scrimmage be a run or pass, etc.) and determinable by one person in one play (e.g., kicker to miss field-goal attempt, quarterbacks’ first pass to be incomplete, etc.).

Despite the memo, Murray said, “We haven’t been told by any regulatory bodies that we need to change anything.”

The Nevada Gaming Control Board gave a vague answer to the Review-Journal when asked if any of the major pro sports leagues had requested a restriction on the types of in-play wagers or prop bets the state’s sportsbooks can offer, and if it had any plans to restrict certain types of wagers.

“We are in regular and direct communication with many different professional sports leagues,” NGCB public information officer Jennifer Morton wrote in an email. “We will continue to work cooperatively with them to ensure the fairest, safest and most secure betting opportunities for our licensees’ sports wagering patrons.”

‘Wouldn’t expect anything major’

Bennett said he thinks the markets most likely to see intervention in the future are player specific at the college and amateur level.

“Those are the participants that get paid the least and ought to be the most vulnerable,” he said. “We may see restrictions for professional leagues and participants for markets that can be decided by one person on one play, like the first pitch markets for MLB, but beyond that, I wouldn’t expect anything major.”

Murray said that banning prop bets will only push the action to illegal books and doesn’t anticipate any changes to NFL props, which account for more than 60 percent of the money wagered on the Super Bowl.

“We were operating the SuperBook in Iowa for a couple years, and they had rules where you couldn’t do something that was deemed negative, like, ‘Will this player throw an interception?’” he said. “We’re obligated to follow any regulations that the state sets, and we will, of course. But I don’t see that happening.

“For one thing, an interception could be a play where a quarterback could make a perfect throw, and it could go through the receiver’s hands and be deflected up in the air and picked off. Sometimes there’s an interception because the receiver runs the wrong way. Whose fault is that? And there are missed field goals sometimes because they get blocked.

“I think that’s a little bit too vague. I hope we don’t have to implement any changes like that. I don’t think it’s the right thing to do. But whatever instructions we get, we’ll go with them.”

Bottom line

Whether certain prop bets are restricted or banned in the future, Murray said it won’t make a major impact on the industry.

“Some of these books have so many hundreds of betting options that if someone was, like, ‘You guys can’t take first pitch ball-strike anymore,’ would it really make any difference to their business?” he said. “It would just be one less offering on a betting menu that has hundreds and hundreds.

“I think, at the end of the day, the average person wants to parlay together all the favorites or parlay together all their favorite players to score a touchdown, and I still think that’s where the bulk of your handle is always going to come from.”

Contact reporter Todd Dewey at tdewey@reviewjournal.com. Follow @tdewey33 on X.