In the latest development in a tumultuous week for the sports betting industry, NCAA president Charlie Baker Wednesday said his organization will ask officials in states that allow proposition bets on college sports to ban them. The pursuit will run up against the complexities of lobbying on a state-by-state basis and might also provide Congress a reason to reenter the untidy world of sports betting law.
Proposition bets, also called prop bets or in-play bets, are wagers on specific events or outcomes in a game. They can involve obscure occurrences, such as whether a punter kicks for a certain number of yards during a quarter or whether a tennis player wins a game within a match by a certain score.
Proposition bets are regarded by some as more dangerous to the integrity of games (and to consumers) since a player can rig the outcome in ways that are hard to detect and that don’t necessarily impact the final score. Others worry that banning bet types that are widely available via black market sites will only serve to push consumers to those sites and away from regulated, legal sportsbooks. One added wrinkle for college athletes: their lack of formal compensation. Data shows that betting fraud perpetrated by athletes is more likely to occur in the lower rungs of a sport where there is less oversight, and players are paid less.
On Monday, the NBA confirmed it is investigating Toronto Raptors forward Jontay Porter for possible unauthorized prop betting, wherein he may have bet the under on his own play in games. Earlier this year New England Patriots wide receiver Kayshon Boutte was charged in Louisiana with computer fraud and prohibited gaming. He is accused of making prop bets while playing at LSU. Even where permitted by law, pro leagues and the NCAA prohibit players, coaches and others connected to games from betting on their own games (along with many other types of bets).
State laws vary widely on sports betting, a direct result of the chaotic rush to legalize sports betting following the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2018 decision in Murphy v. NCAA. In Murphy, the Court ruled it was unconstitutional for Congress, through the Professional and Amateur Sports Betting Act of 1992, to compel states to deny sports betting when there was no accompanying federal standard.
Thirty-eight states plus Washington D.C. and Puerto Rico currently allow sports betting, but as Sportico recently explained, minimum betting ages and what counts as a permissible wager depends on the jurisdiction. 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. Of states that allow sports betting on college sports, a dozen along with D.C. forbid bets on in-state college teams.
On X, NCAA senior vice president Tim Buckley said, “the NCAA started this effort [to urge states to ban college pro bets] several weeks ago.” Since that time, Buckley said, three states—Maryland, Ohio and Vermont—have acted to ban college prop bets by way of regulatory changes.
The NCAA has generally struggled in recent years to lobby statehouses and Congress on NIL legislation. In the late 2010s and early 2020s, the association tried to dissuade states from enacting NIL statutes that made it illegal for the NCAA and member schools to restrain college athletes from exercising a legal right they already had—the right of publicity—to enter into NIL deals. States nonetheless moved forward and passed legislation, often with overwhelming majorities of Republican and Democrats lawmakers voting yea.
Likewise, despite many high-profile Congressional hearings and confident assurances by U.S. representatives and senators of their support for NIL bills, the NCAA has been unable to persuade Congress to pass federal NIL legislation. The association has experienced even more resistance when lobbying Congress on more contentious topics, such as whether the NCAA should be granted an antitrust exemption to save amateurism rules or whether college athletes should be declared ineligible for employment recognition.
One major challenge for the NCAA with sports betting lobbying is that states have developed their own practices and regulations to oversee betting. Now that six years have passed since Murphy, sports betting is no longer a “new” topic in most states. Moreover, given the diversity of state laws on sports betting, individual states don’t seem especially concerned about handling sports betting differently from other states. They do it their own way, led by their own staff who are in consultation with their own governor and lawmakers.
Baker implies his request to statehouses will be narrowly tailored. He seeks the removal of college sports prop bets as a sensible way to draw “the line on sports betting … to protect the integrity of the game.” He also notes the growing harassment of college athletes from people who lose money on their games—anger that can be more targeted at an individual if bettors are able to wager directly on his or her performance, and not that of the team overall. Baker noticeably doesn’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 like placing prop bets could assert they should have a “right” as law-abiding adults to bet on what they wish. Sports betting operators could also urge against Baker’s plan on grounds that it is better to legalize and regulate than to render illegal and invite a black market to fill the vacuum and take bets. This has been the argument used against those dozen states that don’t allow wagering on local college teams.
Congress could also play a role. Murphy didn’t foreclose the possibility of Congress passing federal sports betting legislation; it forbade the federal government taking away the autonomy of states to legalize sports betting when there is no accompanying federal standard. Given rising concerns over prop betting and given the high-profile sports betting controversy involving Los Angeles Dodgers superstar Shohei Ohtani, perhaps Congress in the coming months or years will consider whether certain types of bets ought to be deemed illegal.
It wouldn’t come without potential legal fights.
States might argue Congress lacks the authority to preempt state betting laws. For its part, Congress would rebut by insisting sports betting impacts interstate commerce and thus falls within the purview of federal law.
The idea of Congress regulating sports betting is not new. NBA commissioner Adam Silver proposed the idea in 2014 as a sensible way to oversee the industry.
A decade later, Silver’s idea might have more traction.
(This story has been updated in the seventh paragraph to include a statement by Tim Buckley).