NCAA President Charlie Baker said on Wednesday that his business did ask authorities in states that permit proposition bets on school sports to ban them in the most recent advancement in a turbulent week for the sports betting business. The investigation will encounter the difficulties of lobbying on a state-by-state basis and may also give Congress a purpose to join the troubled world of sports betting legislation.
Prop bets are wagers on particular activities or outcomes in a game that are known as clip bets or in-play bets. They may contain mysterious events like whether a quarterback kicks for a specific number of yards in a third or whether a golf player wins a game within a fit by a specific rating.
Proposition bets are viewed by some as more dangerous to the integrity of games ( and to consumers ) because a player can manipulate the outcome in ways that are difficult to detect and do n’t necessarily have an impact on the final score. Some people worry that outlawing imagine sorts that are widely available on black business websites will only serve to draw customers there and away from regulated, legitimate sportsbooks. One added pucker for school athletes: their lack of formal settlement. According to statistics, athletes are more likely to commit betting scams in the lower reaches of a field where there is less monitoring and players are paid less.

The NBA announced on Monday that it is looking into Toronto Raptors ahead Jontay Porter for possible illicit ball betting, wherein he may have placed an underpayment on his own play in sports. Kayshon Boutte, the wide receiver for the New England Patriots, was charged in Louisiana earlier this year with laptop fraud and interfering with gambling. He is accused of betting on opponents while attending LSU. Pro teams and the NCAA forbid athletes, coaches, and other parties involved in activities from placing bets on their own games ( as well as many other types of bets ) even where permitted by law.
State regulations vary widely on activities betting, a direct result of the turbulent rush to allow sports betting following the U. S. Supreme Court’s 2018 selection in Murphy v. NCAA. In Murphy, the Supreme Court upheld the Court’s ruling that it was unlawful for Congress to urge state to deny sports betting without the existence of a related federal standard through the Professional and Amateur Sports Betting Act of 1992.
Thirty- eight states plus Washington D. C. and Puerto Rico now allow sports betting, but as Sportico just explained, least betting ages and what counts as a lawful bet depends on the authority. According to Forbes, 27 states and D. C. allow sports betting on college sports and 25 ( plus D. C. ) allow March Madness player prop bets while 13 other states including Massachusetts—where Baker served as governor from 2015 to 2023—explicitly forbid March Madness prop bets. A dozen states, along with D.C., that permit sports betting on college sports are prohibited bets on in-state college teams.

In recent years, the NCAA has had to work with statehouses and Congress to pass NIL legislation. The association attempted to stop states from passing NIL statutes in the late 2010s and early 2020s that prohibited college athletes from breaking the law that they already had by allowing them to enter NIL deals. Legislation was still passed in states, frequently with overwhelming majority of Republican and Democratic lawmakers voting yea.
The NCAA has also been unable to persuade Congress to pass federal NIL legislation despite numerous prominent congressional hearings and assurances from U.S. representatives and senators that they support NIL bills. The association has faced even greater opposition when lobbying Congress on contentious issues like whether the NCAA should be granted an antitrust exemption to protect amateurish rules or whether college athletes should be declared ineligible for employment recognition.
The existence of state-specific rules and practices for controlling gambling poses a major challenge for the NCAA’s lobbying efforts in sports betting. Now that six years have passed since Murphy, sports betting is no longer a “new” topic in most states. Additionally, given the diverse state sports betting laws, individual states do n’t seem particularly concerned about how to handle sports betting from other states. They operate independently under the direction of their own staff, who consult with their own governor and lawmakers.
Baker implies that his request to statehouses will be narrowly targeted. In order to “draw the line on sports betting,” he wants to prevent the integrity of the game by removing college sports prop bets. He also takes into account the increasing harassment of college athletes by those who lose money on their games. This kind of anger is more likely to be directed at the bettors if they can place bets solely on the player’s performance rather than the overall performance of the team. Baker noticeably does n’t intend to seek outright bans on college sports betting, which would likely encounter greater resistance.
Still, expect to see counterarguments to Baker’s objective. Consumers who enjoy placing prop bets could argue that they should have a “right” as law-abiding adults to wager on what they want. Sports betting companies could also criticize Baker’s proposal, arguing that it is preferable to legalize and regulate than to impose illegality, and to encourage a black market to fill the void and accept bets. This has been used as the defense in those dozen of the states that forbid wagering on regional college teams.
Congress could also play a role. Murphy forbade the federal government from robbing states of their rights to legalize sports betting without the existence of a separate federal standard. Instead, Murphy foreclosed the possibility of Congress passing federal sports betting legislation. Given the rising concerns about prop betting and the high-profile sports betting controversy involving Los Angeles Dodgers superstar Shohei Ohtani, perhaps Congress will consider whether some particular bets should be deemed illegal in the coming months or years.
It would n’t come without potential legal fights.
States may contend that Congress is unable to veto state betting laws. Congress would refute that claim by claiming that interstate commerce is impacted by sports betting and that it falls under federal law.
Sports betting is not a new concept under the control of Congress. Adam Silver, the NBA commissioner, suggested the idea as a wise way to oversee the sector in 2014.
A decade later, Silver’s idea might have more traction.