Five of the biggest professional sports leagues in the United States have joined forces with their players’ unions to demand tougher action against bettors who threaten or abuse athletes, calling for permanent betting bans and common enforcement standards across regulated states.
The NFL, NBA, MLB, NHL and MLS, together with their respective players’ associations, sent a joint letter dated 15 September to gambling regulators in 35 states and Washington, D.C. The initiative represents an unusual coordinated effort by leagues and unions to address betting-related abuse as legal sports wagering continues to expand across the country.
At the centre of the proposal is a requirement for licensed sportsbooks to permanently remove betting privileges from anyone verified to have abusively harassed or threatened professional or amateur athletes, coaches, officials, team staff or their families.
The organisations also want exclusion decisions to extend across state borders rather than allowing a bettor banned in one jurisdiction to continue wagering elsewhere.
Ohio, West Virginia, Louisiana and Wyoming already have mechanisms for excluding bettors over this type of conduct. The leagues are now seeking a more consistent nationwide approach in the remaining regulated jurisdictions.
Leagues want common reporting system
A second part of the proposal calls for a standardised reporting framework through which leagues, teams, athletes and players’ associations could securely submit verified evidence of threats to regulators and law enforcement.
The leagues also want sportsbook operators to take greater responsibility for identifying abusive customers. Under their proposal, monitoring, flagging and removing accounts linked to harassment would become part of operators’ regulatory obligations.
Legal Sports Report said the requested framework would combine three elements: permanent exclusions, a cross-operator system for reporting threats and stronger operator accountability. The proposal also calls for states to recognise exclusions imposed elsewhere, creating a more coordinated system rather than separate state-by-state protections.
The Sports Betting Alliance, whose members include DraftKings, FanDuel, Fanatics and bet365, told iGamingBusiness that operators are already investing in technology and partnerships designed to identify problematic individuals and exchange information with leagues and other stakeholders.
Betting-related abuse remains a persistent problem
The push follows several high-profile cases involving athletes being targeted after wagers failed.
One of the most serious involved California bettor Benjamin “Parlay” Patz, who sent threatening messages to professional and college athletes. Federal investigators linked him to hundreds of targeted social-media accounts. Patz later pleaded guilty in 2021 to transmitting threats in interstate or foreign commerce.
Former North Carolina basketball player Armando Bacot also became an example of how individual betting markets can intensify abuse. During the 2024 NCAA tournament, Bacot said he received more than 100 hostile social-media messages after his rebound total fell short of the line some bettors had wagered on.
The problem has remained particularly visible in college sports. NCAA research published earlier this year found that 36% of Division I men’s basketball players surveyed reported harassment from someone with a betting interest. The organisation has separately pushed states to restrict individual player proposition bets, arguing that such markets can increase the pressure and abuse directed at specific athletes.
The NCAA was not among the organisations that signed the new professional leagues’ letter, although the requested protections explicitly cover amateur athletes as well.
Sports betting scrutiny expands in Washington
The joint initiative also comes as betting integrity and athlete protection receive greater attention at federal level.
The NFL previously raised the prospect of a comparable information-sharing system in comments submitted to the Commodity Futures Trading Commission as part of the debate over sports prediction markets. Lawmakers have also discussed whether the growth of event-contract platforms could create additional integrity and harassment risks.
Meanwhile, Senate Commerce Committee chairman Ted Cruz and Senator Maria Cantwell have been advancing the Protect College Sports Act. The proposal includes restrictions designed to prevent student-athletes from trading on prediction markets, although it does not establish specific national standards for bettor harassment.
Cruz and Cantwell have previously sought information from major sports leagues about their relationships with integrity-monitoring companies and how suspicious wagering is detected.
For the leagues and players’ associations, however, the immediate goal is focused on state regulation: creating uniform rules that allow threatening bettors to be identified, excluded from regulated sportsbooks and prevented from simply moving their wagering activity to another legal jurisdiction.