How the simple prop bet morphed into the epicenter of sports’ gambling scandals: MoneyCall – The New York Times

Sports Business
MLB pitcher Luis Ortiz arrives for his arraignment Wednesday. Michael M. Santiago / Getty Images
Welcome back to MoneyCall, The Athletic’s weekly sports business cheat sheet. (Was this email forwarded to you? Subscribe here.)
Name-dropped today: Emmanuel Clase, Arthur Blank, the ESPN phone, JJ Watt, Brandon Dwyer, Pope Leo, Cole Palmer, Carolyn Tisch Blodgett, JuJu Watkins, Eli Manning and more. Let’s go:
How a single pitch can shake an industry
Let’s talk prop bets, a defining feature of sports gambling markets and the epicenter of this current scandal-ridden moment.
Advertisement
Oversimplified, a prop is a bet on a hyper-specific result, either yes/no or over/under a defined number:
• Will the Super Bowl national anthem singer finish in over two minutes and three seconds?
• Will Terry Rozier record fewer than four rebounds?
• Will that next pitch from Emmanuel Clase be a ball or a strike?
When combined into a package of bets — a parlay — they carry longer odds, the thrill of a potentially bigger payout and the enduring appreciation of sports gambling companies, which will be happy to take the other side against your self-assurance that multiple individual outcomes will all definitely happen. (You lose the bet if any single component of your parlay is wrong.)
Prop bets can be fun. Prop bets move fast, by design. Prop bets can give you the feeling of having an edge, if you think you know ball. And prop bets are ripe for chicanery, which is how we ended up in a reality where Rozier, Clase and other folks are facing the prospects of prison time. (Get caught up here.)
This is how a single pitch becomes both an opportunity to make a buck or two (or $10,000) and the fulcrum of how pro and college athletes (and leagues) get caught up in gambling scandals — a very specific outcome, with many tens of thousands of dollars (or more!) riding on it.
That single pitch — or that one rebound or that first-half point spread in a low-major college game not even on TV — doesn’t necessarily change the result of the game; however, it can be incredibly valuable to a gambler who has a relationship with an athlete and the means to lock in the result.
But as a marketing hook, prop bets are helpful for traditional sports gambling companies, not to mention a lucrative new frontier for the nationally available, loosely regulated “prediction markets” that are currently subsuming the standard, state-regulated brands you know from nonstop TV ads.
So what next?
Advertisement
Eliminating prop bets entirely is unrealistic. Under pressure from this past week’s scandal, MLB has moved to *limit* prop bets on balls and strikes or velocity to $200 (which still seems like … a lot to bet on a single pitch?!). But keep in mind: That’s a cap, not a ban.
There will be more prop-specific league requests and maybe even state-by-state rule changes, but if you aren’t an official league partner (and the prediction markets aren’t, save for this odd new NHL deal), the leagues and states have limited ability to influence or impact these markets. (The Athletic has a commercial partnership with BetMGM.)
I have one idea in mind that I’m still formulating: My hypothesis is that one meaningful solution can come if the leagues and their “integrity monitoring” partners make all that data available to *everyone,* in real time.
If the integrity monitoring system works so well — as leagues and books insist — it shouldn’t be unrealistic to simply let everyone see what’s happening for themselves.
This is the second time in three weeks that we’re leading off with gambling. And it is a pretty safe bet* that it will remain one of the biggest sports-business storylines as we flip to 2026. For more evidence, see some of the news items just below.
(*Not gambling advice.)
NWSL picks 17th team. Plus: ESPN’s latest pivot
Big talkers from the sports business industry:
Atlanta gets NWSL expansion team: As the NWSL heads toward its 2025 championship game next week in San Jose, Calif., nothing — not TV ratings, sponsor dollars or fan attendance figures — says more about the health of the league than Falcons owner Arthur Blank paying $165 million for Atlanta to get an NWSL franchise. (Context: The most recent expansion team, Denver, paid $110M, and, just before that, Bay FC and Boston Legacy paid a little over $50M each.) The team will debut in 2028.
Advertisement
Turkish football betting scandal: 1,024 players suspended. (Not a typo.) Tom Burrows’ explainer is (very) helpful.
The end of ESPN Bet: If you’re not old enough to remember the ESPN phone, just know that 20 years ago, the company tried (and failed) to own a platform that was a wee bit too far away from its core competencies. This time around, the marketing deal replacing the in-house Bet — to simply promote DraftKings as the network’s official gambling partner — makes a lot more sense.
FIFA’s next way to squeeze fans: Exorbitant 2026 World Cup parking fees. If there’s a way to separate you from your money next summer, FIFA is working on it.
PWHL “Takeover Tour” returns: Last season’s version smashed women’s pro hockey attendance records all over the country, and this year’s expanded version should outdo those. One of the most brilliant marketing ideas any early-stage league has executed.
Other current obsessions: Texas Tech football spending its way to success … JJ Watt calling NFL games … The dramatic conclusion for the viral college basketball sensation Brandon Dwyer aka “Road to 1 Point” … Sports card shops turning into experiential spaces … Pope Leo rocking a No. 14 Bulls jersey …
Is a YouTube TV-Disney deal close?
At its heart, the YouTube TV-Disney standoff over access to ESPN is a story about leverage: YTTV is backed by a multi-trillion-dollar behemoth whose business doesn’t depend on a streaming platform; Disney has the most valuable sports content, but a fraction of the market cap to withstand a long-term impasse.
Who has leverage, who doesn’t — that changes even day to day. To wit: Tomorrow, Disney has its fourth-quarter earnings call with Wall Street analysts, who intensely dislike uncertainty, making the following hypothetical exchange a problem:
Analyst: So when will the standoff end?
Advertisement
Disney CFO: 🤷
Disney is already losing millions of dollars a week from the absence of its usual fees from YouTube TV; a stock price dive could be much more costly. What I’m wondering: Is that enough to get a deal imminently?
I asked my colleague Andrew Marchand, who has been at the center of The Athletic’s reporting on this story for the past two weeks.
💬 “We can only hope. However, YouTube TV and Disney have already blown through two pseudo-deadlines with college football weekends and ‘Monday Night Football.’ Maybe this is what causes a deal, but that would likely mean Disney acquiescing, which it hasn’t done yet.”
Data Point: $20
If you’re a YouTube TV subscriber, that’s your credit for the past two weeks of missed ESPN and ABC games. The catch: It’s not automatically applied; you have to log in to your account (via web, not on the app) and claim it.
That’s not entirely consumer-friendly, but the process to claim was easy: Go to your account, then Settings, then Updates (look at the list on the left, at the very bottom), then click “Claim Credit.” We put together a full “how to” here.
Trademark Mania: Cole Palmer’s ‘shiver’
The Chelsea star, who’d already trademarked the term “Cold Palmer,” joins other soccer heavyweights who have trademarked their goal celebrations, including Cristiano Ronaldo, Kylian Mbappe, Gareth Bale and Erling Haaland.
New Series: “Suite Level”
NWSL owner profiles from my colleague Asli Pelit:
• Carolyn Tisch Blodgett (Gotham FC)
• John Neace (Racing FC)
• Lisa Bhathal Merage and Alex Bhathal (Portland Thorns)
• Angie and Chris Long (KC Current)
Investor of the Week: JuJu Watkins
Not even out of college, already an investor in the NWSL’s Boston Legacy.
One more: The Houston Texans’ owners bought LOVB’s Houston franchise. I’m so bullish on women’s volleyball, for all the reasons pointed out in this story.
Advertisement
Beat Dan in Connections: Sports Edition
Puzzle: #415
Dan’s time: 00:23
Try the game here!
NEW! Beat Dan in … Wordle?
Like Eli Manning, I’m a huge Wordle fan. It’s one of the few daily habits I have that I never skip. The New York Times’ Games team just released “make your own Wordle,” so I obviously had to create a MoneyCall-themed one for all of you. Give it a try! (Hint: The word is found in today’s lead item!)
Update: Club 🏐 Dad, Week 1
The emails over the past week about my new role as first-time club volleyball dad were helpful. Appreciate valued MoneyCall subscriber Bob W. from Maryland for the hard-earned advice: “Buy a good chair!” for hours in the gyms with no seating.
Great business-adjacent reads for your downtime or commute:
“I’m under no illusion that I’ve obliterated the Streameast brand off the face of the earth.” Check out “The Athletic FC podcast’s” special episode: “The Underground World of Illegal Streaming.” Great detail into how the Streameast takedown unfolded.
Two more:
(1) Flag football remains a fascination here. Should NFL players take the Olympic spots of the players who built the national juggernaut?
(2) The results of last week’s MoneyCall poll surveying 8,000 fans about their/your attitudes about the YouTube TV-ESPN standoff.
Back next Wednesday! Text your colleagues this link so they can get MoneyCall every Wednesday for free. And check out The Athletic’s other newsletters, too.
Spot the pattern. Connect the terms
Find the hidden link between sports terms
Play today's puzzle
Dan Shanoff is a Managing Editor for The Athletic, focused on Sports Business. Before joining The Athletic, he held editorial and content-development roles at a range of companies including ESPN, USA Today Sports, Monumental and Quickish, a sports-news start-up he founded. He is a graduate of Northwestern’s Medill School of Journalism, has an MBA from Harvard Business School and was an award-winning adjunct instructor in Georgetown’s Sports Industry Management program. Follow Dan on Twitter @danshanoff

source