Billups, Rozier Arrested in FBI Gambling Probe

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00:00Adam, as soon as this headline crossed, it quickly became the most read story on the Bloomberg.

00:05In many ways, it feels like it's not totally surprising, given that the NBA has had some

00:09problems with gambling scandals. What is your first thought here as you took stock of the

00:14headlines? You know, ironically, I think it does show us that the system that the NBA wants is

00:20working. I mean, one of the reasons why the Rozier case and prior to it, one with a player by the

00:29NBA collaborates with the sports books and with integrity agencies to see where these sports bets

00:36are going. If they see suspicious activity and they're constantly tracking it, they flag it.

00:41And in these instances, it looks as if they were able to flag some, you know, unsavory activity by

00:48a player. I mentioned that the NBA has had its own gambling scandals. We know that Toronto Raptors

00:55forward, Jonte Porter, was banned for life for conspiring with gamblers to fix his performance

01:00in NBA games. Is there anything about the National Basketball Association or the sport of basketball

01:06that makes it a little bit more susceptible than other sports or other leagues to this?

01:11Yeah, well, it's all about what's called the prop bet. So, you know, a lot of people,

01:14if they're not regular gamblers, they think of a bet as betting on a game outcome. But what's

01:19most profitable and these days most popular is the idea of betting on specific outcomes or non-outcomes

01:26within a game. So, for example, you could bet on the number of rebounds a player would get,

01:31the number of points a player would get, perhaps the number of minutes a player would play.

01:35If a player wants to use that information to help fix a bet, it's not hard for him to do. And that's

01:44one of the things that's been alleged in this case. Terry Rozier, it's alleged, pulled himself out of a

01:48game early in 2023 and let bettors know it ahead of time so that they could put, allegedly, around

01:57$200,000 of money in a sports book, I believe, in New Jersey. As we've said, the NBA is playing

02:03its role in helping support this investigation. What do you think the other professional sports

02:07leagues are doing? How are they making sure that these are not things that end up ensnaring them as

02:13well? Well, again, they have been ensnaring them. Major League Baseball has had scandals as well.

02:21You've seen warnings by the NFL to its players. So there's concern all around. And one of the ways

02:26they deal with this, again, is they actually actively collaborate with the sports books and

02:31with these integrity agencies so they can track this kind of activity. And will they catch it all?

02:37Well, they probably won't. But at least in this case, they have. I mean, the greater concern that

02:42the leagues are expressing now is the expansion of prediction markets, Cal-She, Poly market, which

02:48don't have partnerships with leagues except for the NHL. And in those cases, you would not be as capable

02:54as a league of tracking this kind of activity.