Despite scandals that have engulfed the sports betting industry over the last month, Chris Christie still believes the system is stronger by allowing Americans to wager legally on sports.
Christie, a former New Jersey governor, served as the lead plaintiff in the 2018 PASPA case, one that led to the largest expansion of legalised sports betting in US history. Following 2017 oral arguments before the Supreme Court, Christie argued on the famed steps that the federal government overstepped the Constitution with its 1992 ban of sports gambling.
Now, as players from the NBA and MLB are facing a slew of criminal charges in connection with match manipulation, Christie contends that the system is working. The players are among more than three dozen defendants charged by the US Attorney’s Office of the Eastern District of New York in a sweeping illegal poker-sports betting case. Last week, Christie went on a media blitz to double down on his position.
In stating his claims, Christie wrote in a guest essay for The New York Times that when it comes to “ensuring the integrity of sports”, legal betting has achieved more in seven years than “prohibition did for decades before”.
Concerns about sports betting integrity
Last month, two days after the start of the NBA regular season, prosecutors from the Eastern District named 38 defendants in the comprehensive case, including three figures from the NBA. Among them are Miami Heat guard Terry Rozier, who is accused of deliberately underperforming in several statistical categories to ensure the outcome of a prop bet. Interim US Attorney Joseph Nocella Jr. described the case as the largest investigation of the sports betting market since the PASPA decision.
The Rozier case and others are not signs of a “system in crisis”, Christie wrote, but rather confirmation that proper mechanisms are in place to “catch the cheating”.
In response to the indictments, the US House Committee on Energy and Commerce wrote a letter to NBA Commissioner Adam Silver seeking information on the actions the league plans to take to limit the “disclosure of non-public information” for betting purposes. The committee is examining allegations of illegal gambling and sports rigging that resulted in “tens of millions of dollars in fraud, theft and robbery”, according to the letter.
The allegations raise “serious concerns about sports betting and the integrity of sport in the NBA, which harms fans and legal sports bettors”, stated the letter from congressmen Brett Guthrie of Kentucky and Frank Pallone Jr of New Jersey.
Tonko: Voluntary self-policing has failed
Since PASPA’s repeal, leading proponents of the regulated markets have called on the US Justice Department to crack down on betting in the offshore black market, where Americans still wager billions per year. Still, some argue that offshore sites maintain guardrails on betting that legal apps do not offer.
One insider, who spoke with iGB on Monday, said the limits for player props, if offered at all, are very low on the offshore sites. By comparison, the defendants in the current case allegedly placed five-figure wagers on a litany of props.
Representative Paul Tonko of New York has also contacted the NBA to express his discontent with the uptick in criminal allegations. Tonko, co-author of the Supporting Affordability and Fairness with Every Bet (SAFE Bet) Act, has sought to establish a federal framework for the legal sports wagering market. Alarmed by the criminal accusations, Tonko contends that professional sports leagues have prioritised commercial partnerships with gambling operators over integrity.
“Claims of prioritising integrity ring hollow when leagues have sold credibility to gambling operators, integrated betting content into broadcasts, normalised wagering for teenagers, glorified it in advertising, and then failed to prevent criminal conduct from taking hold within the sport,” Tonko wrote in a series of letters to Silver and six other commissioners.
Tonko took it one step further, contending that the reliance on “voluntary self-policing” in the legal sports betting industry has failed. If the integrity of professional sports depends on federal law enforcement alone, the current system is already broken, Tonko mused.
“The choice before you is now explicit. Either engage directly with Congress to establish mandatory federal guardrails that restore integrity and protect the public, or stand in opposition and accept responsibility when the next scandal breaks and more families and lives are destroyed,” he wrote.
Pitch-by-pitch wagering
However, Christie countered concerns about integrity in his pointed op-ed piece, as he enumerated the detection capabilities at the disposal of sportsbook operators. In using sophisticated high-tech software, several sportsbooks detected unusual betting patterns in recent cases and flagged them to regulators, Christie wrote.
The former New Jersey governor also discussed the transparency of the regulated market in an interview on ESPN with Stephen A Smith. In the poker matter, three New York mob families backed the rigged games, then took a cut of the action, prosecutors allege. If an organised crime family detects illegal sports betting activity, it is foolish to believe that they will “pick up the phone” and call NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell, or his counterparts at the NBA and MLB, Christie argued.
After the NBA case broke, a judge unsealed further indictments that resulted in the arrests of two pitchers from the Cleveland Guardians. The MLB pitchers, Emmanuel Clase and Luis Ortiz, are accused of conspiring with gamblers to rig the outcomes of pitch-by-pitch betting props. The bettors won approximately $450,000 on the wagers in question, including roughly $38,000 on a single pitch from Clase, according to prosecutors.
“Regulated betting didn’t create these integrity issues, it has revealed them,” Christie stated.
NBA launches internal investigation
One defendant in the recent NBA sports betting case, former guard Damon Jones, has ties to the Los Angeles Lakers. A close friend of LeBron James, Jones served as an unofficial assistant on the Lakers’ bench in 2022-23. Jones is accused of disseminating non-public information of a James injury to a bettor, who capitalised on the inside info. Jones has pleaded not guilty to several felony charges related to the gambling probe.
The NBA has hired an independent law firm to investigate the allegations in the indictment. Multiple teams have been approached by investigators, including the Lakers, ESPN reported. In addition, a Lakers assistant trainer and an executive administrator voluntarily gave up their phones to investigators, according to The Athletic.
“As is standard in these kinds of investigations, a number of different individuals and organisations were asked to preserve documents and records,” the NBA wrote in a statement. “Everyone has been fully cooperative.”
Former college player admits to point shaving
On Monday, former University of New Orleans guard Cedquavious “Dae Dae” Hunter admitted that he manipulated the outcome of several games in the 2024-25 season. Appearing on ABC’s “Good Morning America”, Hunter explained that he devised code words with a teammate to indicate that they planned to shave points.
Hunter also admitted that he previously lied to NCAA investigators about his participation in the scheme. Investigators from the NCAA also determined that players from Arizona State and Mississippi Valley State allegedly took part in separate point-shaving schemes.
“I just had a child, and the school wasn’t paying me money,” Hunter said. “ I was trying to get money to actually take care of my child.”
While several defendants from the federal case based in Brooklyn have reportedly been tied to the college point-shaving scandal, Nocella said his office is not investigating the college probe.
Christie, meanwhile, appears to discourage the federal government from intervening in the legal sports betting market.
“New Jersey has built a system that doesn’t just collect taxes, it builds trust,” he wrote. “There’s no denying that sports betting is more visible than it was a decade ago – that’s by design. Legal markets bring sunlight, they create standards and they bring better accountability.”
Former New Jersey governor credits the legal industry with catching irregular betting patterns that the unregulated market would not identify.