Terry Rozier gambling controversy comes as sports betting parlaying popularity

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00:00NBA player Terry Rozier is accused of gambling on games he played in,

00:04and it comes at a time when sports betting keeps getting more popular.

00:10Rozier allegedly tipped off bettors before a March 2023 game that he would leave early due to an injury.

00:16That allowed bettors to cash in on Rozier's lackluster performance.

00:21And Rozier allegedly received $200,000 for the tip.

00:24That's despite Rozier making more than $160 million in his NBA career.

00:30All it takes is one or one or two sort of athletes to sort of get greedy and to have an incident like this.

00:36Sports betting is now legal in some fashion in 39 states.

00:40The industry posted a record $13.7 billion in revenue last year.

00:45That will only go up if large states like Texas and California join in.

00:49California is like the golden goose.

00:51The industry is going to double in size once California and Texas legalize.

00:56The big players in the industry are DraftKings and FanDuel, who make up 77% of the market share.

01:02There are a couple other sort of smaller companies around the fringes,

01:07and many of them are sort of well-known casino properties in places like Las Vegas.

01:10For those living in states where it isn't legal, there's a way around the law.

01:14The first is illegal sports betting, which landed Dodgers star Shohei Ohtani's interpreter in trouble.

01:21Otherwise, there's a new player in the sports betting game, Prediction Markets.

01:25Cal Shee and Pauly Market, which are places nominally for betting on things like elections,

01:30but over the last few months have basically become sports books themselves.

01:33There's also daily fantasy sports games like Prize Picks and Underdog.

01:37It's basically sports betting in disguise, but you're betting on sort of individual player performances

01:41rather than team performances, and there's some other sort of niches to it.

01:45Meanwhile, Rozier's arrest comes at a time when sports leagues are embracing gambling.

01:50This regulated structure of legalized betting, we can monitor it in ways that were unimaginable years ago.

01:56However, Rozier's alleged point shaving happened in 2023, and the FBI bust didn't happen until this year.

02:03If your system is so good, why did it take two years for the FBI to catch these people,

02:08especially when the NBA already conducted its own investigation of Tara Rozier

02:11and by all accounts cleared him of any wrongdoing?

02:13It's not just the sports leagues embracing sports betting, but sports broadcasters as well.

02:18I'm staying away from the point spread, and I'm going Alabama team total over 29 and a half.

02:24It's commonplace for segments during sports broadcasts to be sponsored by the betting sites.

02:29It's even more common to see full-on commercials for them during timeouts.

02:34I see it as a problem for the children who are watching these games

02:36and are sort of being fed gambling material without sort of context

02:40and without understanding, for example, that gambling addiction exists.

02:44For Straight Arrow News, I'm Lauren Keenan.

02:46If you want more on this story, download the Straight Arrow News app or visit san.com.