North Carolina professional sports are in the best spot they’ve been in in years. The Carolina Panthers have a renewed sense of hope. They may even have a shot at the NFL playoffs, sitting at 6-5 this season after the late-2024 emergence of QB Bryce Young and a solid offseason. The Carolina Hurricanes are coming off their second Eastern Conference Finals appearance in three years with a significantly improved roster. The Charlotte Hornets are a basketball team.
The Panthers, as I mentioned, have a solid shot at making the NFL playoffs. But how solid? Vegas will tell you their odds are +500, meaning that for every hundred dollars you bet on them making it, you’ll earn an additional $500 if they do. Vegas will also tell you that Panthers wide receiver Tetairoa McMillan has +200 odds of scoring a touchdown in next Monday’s primetime game against the San Francisco 49ers. And that said game has +280 odds of ending with a Carolina Panthers victory (Yahoo Sports, 2025).
I could list countless other props for you to give yourself a chance at earning a few bucks while you watch the game, but I don’t have to. All you need to do is turn on the match itself on any network at any time. You will be given endless props, parlays, and pluses, between every play, every quarter, all the time.
Yet, this is a fairly recent development. In the United States, betting on games was allowed exclusively in the state of Nevada between 1949 and 2018. It wasn’t until May 14, 2018, that the Supreme Court voted 6-3 to determine that the federal government had no right to regulate state-level gambling laws (Murphy v. National Collegiate Athletic Association, 2018).
Since then, sports betting has been gradually legalized across the United States, now allowed in all but six of the 26 states with an NHL, MLB, NBA, or NFL team (Carbonaro, 2025). For gambling companies and for the major leagues themselves, this has been incredibly profitable. In 2024, Americans legally gambled a record 150 billion dollars on sports! (State of the States 2025, 2025). But for the fans and players, it’s harmful.
Before the 2023-24 NHL season, Ottawa Senators forward Shane Pinto was suspended for 41 games, half of the season’s length. This suspension wasn’t over a dangerous hit or dirty slash; Pinto was caught “proxy betting” (having other people place bets for him that he himself was legally prohibited from making). This was a “big no-no” to the NHL, even though none of the aforementioned wagers were actually on hockey matches. But Pinto still took the longest (non-indefinite) ban in NHL history (NHL Suspends Pinto 41 Games for Violating League’s Sports Wagering Rules, 2023).
Less than two years later, on October 23, 2025, a similar scandal rocked the NBA. Multiple current and former players, including the coach of the Portland Trailblazers, Chauncey Billups, were among the 34 names convicted of placing or contributing to illegal wagers. These figures have all been arrested and are likely to face legitimate legal consequences (Nerkar et al., 2025).
The controversy saw these figures using information like injury reports and starting lineups before they were released to the public to gain an unfair advantage. For example, in a 2023 game, then-Hornets player Terry Rozier had over $200k placed on him underperforming projected statistics after informing bettors he would leave the match early (Current and Former National Basketball Association Players and Four Other Individuals Charged in Widespread Sports Betting and Money Laundering Conspiracy, 2025).
This illegal betting lasted for multiple years and ultimately made over $10 million in profits for its participants. It has already eroded confidence in the integrity of the NBA among both fans and executives. NBA Commissioner Adam Silver noted that he was “deeply disturbed” by the scandal, and Indiana Pacers coach Rick Carlisle commented that “it’s a world that’s a different world than it was a few years ago with the advent of legalized gambling” (ESPN, 2025).
The risk of this illegal trading will always remain as long as sports betting remains as prominent as it is today, and as long as that risk remains, the credibility of all professional sports is in peril. This is compounded by the fact that young men, the same ones who form America’s most popular professional sports leagues, are more likely than any other demographic to engage in sports gambling. Around half of men aged 18-49 have at least one online sports betting account, compared to just a fifth of the general population (Siena Research Institute, 2025).
Gambling not only harms players by serving as an addictive, potentially career-ending trap that destroys the integrity of their leagues and careers, but also by being an active threat to their safety. More than ever, the prominence of gambling in the sports world has led to a massive increase in threats of injury or death towards players: among both men and women in the NCAA, over a third of star athletes have struggled with gambling-related harassment or intimidation (Purdum, 2024).
Professional players have also been faced with constant abuse; MLB pitcher Kyle Hendricks, NBA Guard Jalen Brunson, and NHL goaltender Stuart Skinner are just a few names among the dozens who have faced threats to their lives from bettors (Edwards, 2025; Pankiw, 2025). One player, Astros moundsman Lance McCullers, had to answer questions from his five year old daughter after she overheard his wife discussing threats on his life over the phone (Press, 2025). This harassment isn’t a fluke, but a frequent occurrence. In the 2024 Athletic NHL player poll, nearly 70% of those asked agreed that they are seeing more and more frequent heckling messages since the legalization of sports gambling (Powers et al., 2024).
But this isn’t just a problem for the athletes. For fans, sports betting ruins not only broadcasts, but lives. First, it is impossible to avoid. Even for people who want to watch games without gambling, it is an active fight against the broadcast itself. In January of 2024, A CBC analysis found that up to 20% of the duration of any given sports broadcast was spent talking about or advertising gambling (McMillan et al., 2024). For a hockey game, which is generally broadcast for 3-4 hours, this means that on average, 60-80% of the actual time spent playing is matched by gambling adverts. In an NFL game, where only about 11 minutes are active play, you are spending upwards of three times as long looking at parlays as football plays (Seward, 2013).
This isn’t something networks try to hide. In fact, some stations, including the Carolina Hurricanes’ very own Fanduel Sports Network, are named after gambling companies. Oftentimes, the focus of the coverage seems to be more on any bets relating to a game than the game itself. For many fans who simply want to watch their favorite teams play, it’s a nuisance. But for others, who are encouraged by the broadcasts to take up gambling, it is outright dangerous.
One man, Harry Lavant, was sentenced to eight years in probation after using his job as a lawyer to steal nearly $2 million from clients and pay off his immense sports gambling debt (Koppel, 2025; Thomson, 2023). Today, he is participating in rehab and on the path to recovery, but many aren’t so lucky. In any given year, approximately 20% of problem-gamblers will consider suicide, and nearly 5% make an attempt on their own life (Marionneau, et al., 2022). This was a problem far before widespread sports betting, but it has been significantly exacerbated by the industry. Since the recent introduction of easily accessible online sportsbooks, searches for gambling help in the US have increased by over 33% (Ono, 2025).
The inescapable sports betting epidemic has fundamentally changed how people view games. Almost no broadcast can be escaped without being force fed nearly constant gambling ads and doomed parlays. For some fans and players, this is an extreme annoyance that actively changes the focus of and hampers the enjoyment of the game. For others, it has been life-destroying. Gambling on athletics has gone too far, and it is fundamentally ruining sports; what happens in Vegas should stay in Vegas.
If you or someone you know is struggling with betting addiction, help is available. Please call the national problem gambling hotline at 1-800-522-4700.
Works Cited
22% of All Americans, Half of Men 18-49, Have Active Online Sports Betting Account – Siena Research Institute. (2025). Siena.edu. https://sri.siena.edu/2025/02/18/22-of-all-americans-half-of-men-18-49-have-active-online-sports-betting-account/
Carbonaro, G. (2025, October 28). Map shows states where sports betting is legal after major NBA arrests. Newsweek. https://www.newsweek.com/map-shows-states-where-sports-betting-is-legal-after-major-nba-arrests-10932258
Current and Former National Basketball Association Players and Four Other Individuals Charged in Widespread Sports Betting and Money Laundering Conspiracy. (2025, October 23). Justice.gov. https://www.justice.gov/usao-edny/pr/current-and-former-national-basketball-association-players-and-four-other-individuals
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