The NBA betting scandal comes at a time where sports betting has reached an all-time high in the United States.
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NBA player Terry Rozier is accused of gambling on games he played in
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and it comes at a time when sports betting keeps getting more popular. Rozier allegedly tipped off bettors before a March 2023 game that he would leave early due
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to an injury. That allowed bettors to cash in on Rozier's lackluster performance
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and Rozier allegedly received $200,000 for the tip. That's despite Rozier making more than $160
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million in his NBA career. All it takes is one or one or two sort of athletes to sort of get greedy
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and to have an incident like this. Sports betting is now legal in some fashion in 39 states
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The industry posted a record $13.7 billion in revenue last year. That will only go up if large
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states like Texas and California join in. California is like the golden goose. The industry
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is going to double in size once California and Texas legalize. The big players in the industry
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are DraftKings and FanDuel, who make up 77% of the market share
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There are a couple other sort of smaller companies around the fringes
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and many of them are sort of well-known casino properties in places like Las Vegas. For those living in states where it isn't legal, there's a way around the law
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The first is illegal sports betting, which landed Dodgers star Shohei Ohtani's interpreter in trouble
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Otherwise there a new player in the sports betting game prediction markets Cal Xi and Polymarket which are places places nominally for betting on things like elections but over the last few months have basically become sports books themselves
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There's also daily fantasy sports games like Prize Picks and Underdog. It's basically sports betting in disguise
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but you're betting on sort of individual player performances rather than team performances
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and there's some other sort of niches to it. Meanwhile, Rozier's arrest comes at a time when sports leagues are embracing gambling
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This regulated structure of legalized betting, we can monitor it in ways that were unimaginable years ago
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However, Rozier's alleged point shaving happened in 2023, and the FBI bust didn't happen until this year
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If your system is so good, why did it take two years for the FBI to catch these people
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especially when the NBA already conducted its own investigation of Tara Rozier and by all accounts cleared him of any wrongdoing
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It's not just the sports leagues embracing sports betting, but sports broadcasters as well
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I'm staying away from the point spread, and I'm going Alabama team total over 29 and a half
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It's commonplace for segments during sports broadcasts to be sponsored by the betting sites
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It's even more common to see full-on commercials for them during timeouts
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I see it as a problem for the children who are watching these games and heard sort of being fed gambling material without context and without understanding, for example, that gambling addiction exists
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For Straight Arrow News, I'm Lauren Keenan. If you want more on this story, download the Straight Arrow News app or visit SAN.com
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