Match-fixing Crisis: What the NBA Can Learn from Sports Leagues Around the World

Fans and sports betting have become so inextricably linked in the modern world that professional leagues are now subjected to a level of scrutiny and vulnerability never seen before; and the National Basketball Association is having to learn this lesson the hard way. 

The league is currently faced with a number of challenges after a series of 34 illegal gambling arrests, including high-profile figures like Chauncey Billups, Terry Rozier, and former player Damon Jones. This showed the loopholes and insufficiencies in the current measures while also highlighting the bitter truth that the NBA has perpetually favoured problem resolution over proactive prevention.

Comparable sports leagues around the world, most notably the MLB, the UEFA European soccer ecosystem, and the NFL, have long been at the forefront of tight, educative, and technologically advanced systems to ensure integrity in betting. The experiences of these bodies, scrutinised in this article, show what a developed integrity system entails and the extent to which the NBA still has to progress to curb its match-fixing problem.

National Football League

The National Football League (NFL) is considered the North American league with the most effective integrity strategy. To ensure accountability in every situation, the league places a firm belief in the importance of providing education to all employees at every level. 

Rather than providing one-off training sessions, the National NFL considers education to be a practice that should be carried out as a daily aspect of professional life. Over the course of several years, there has been a significant increase in the number of players, coaches, and staff educated on the rules, risks, and potential consequences of participating in sports betting, especially since the emergence of legal sports betting. This is made possible by the monitoring technology responsible for providing live updates on betting markets. 

On the other hand, licensed sportsbooks do not have just solely a financial relationship with the NFL but also function as significant conduits for the exchange of data. It is the responsibility of these operators to provide information to the league, which allows integrity teams to quickly and accurately identify questionable patterns. 

In contrast to the approach of awaiting danger before undertaking action, the NFL model is viewed today as a standard approach to taking proactive measures to identify threats.

European football

The Union of European Football Associations (UEFA) has made significant efforts to guarantee that its member associations adhere to the principles of integrity. At the heart of this is the Betting Fraud Detection System, which runs data analysis on bets placed on approximately 30,000 games annually. A most comprehensive surveillance like no other, its sole purpose is to timely identify anomalies to prevent them from developing into fixed match crises. 

But even with this advanced technology, UEFA’s educational framework is what distinguishes it from other organisations. Through the UEFA Academy's compulsory anti-match-fixing and anti-doping programme, players are imbued with an understanding of integrity at a young age, which in turn continues to develop as they mature. Referees, officials, and young emerging talents are subject to the same rule. Rather than an additional characteristic, integrity is presented as a fundamental skill of the highest importance. 

Additionally, projects like the UEFA Certificate in Football Management – Players' Edition demonstrate that fair play is necessary for tactical development and physical skill training, with both reinforcing each other.

Major League Baseball

Despite being plagued by integrity issues, Major League Baseball has been quite pragmatic in its approach to handling a certain kind of betting unique to the sport that has presented a significant threat. With extremely detailed level gambling becoming increasingly popular, bets made on individual pitches have been observed to offer significant opportunities for manipulation. 

The league, understanding the infeasibility for any kind of oversight to cover all of these extremely small markets in their entirety took the straightforward yet brave action of restricting or even banning these kinds of bets earlier this November. 

As there will always be markets prone to risk irrespective of the level of technology applied, this move is aimed at a deliberate decrease in the number of exposed betting types. Removing areas susceptible to exploitation reduces the likelihood of the MLB getting exploited and diminishes chances of game interference by corrupt players.

Contrary to this approach, the NBA has shown a willingness to embrace all kinds of prop bets, as this significantly boosts its market value but also leaves it susceptible to match fixing. 

The Lessons for the NBA

After a number of embarrassing incidents, the NBA has acknowledged the need for improved monitoring and security systems. The officials of the league have emphasised plans to upgrade surveillance tools, with a particular focus on potentially utilising artificial intelligence to comb through betting data and discover irregularities. 

This technology holds a great deal of potential since machine learning systems are capable of analysing and interpreting enormous quantities of data at extremely fast speeds, a capability out of reach for human beings. They have been successfully deployed in technology-related fields, such as the identification of problem gamblers. 

However, it's concerning that the NBA appears to be putting all its eggs in the technology basket at the moment and lacks the comprehensive cultural foundations of the NFL or European football. 

The league might be already well-versed in the art of data analysis when it comes to player performance and tactical strategy, but guaranteeing integrity with sophisticated innovations is still in the infant stages. 

The status quo for now is that the NBA tends to wait until a breach of ethics goes public before taking any action, relying on investigations and statements of facts only after the damage has already been done.