Organized sports must cut off EVERY tie to gambling — or their brands are toast

With the gambling scandals spreading to Major League Baseball, all organized sports need to move fast or see corruption overtake their brands.

News that two MLB pitchers were indicted in a pitch-rigging scheme that allegedly let gamblers win hundreds of thousands of dollars in prop bets followed the prior week’s NCAA announcement that six former men’s college basketball players had allegedly rigged games and provided illegal information to bettors.

Last month saw three NBA stars — including Hall of Famer Chauncey Billups — busted along with various mafiosi in schemes involving crooked poker games and a massive prop-betting operation. At least one ex-NFL star was named in the poker capers.

NBA president Adam Silver and league officials are reviewing betting guardrails with their partner sportsbooks amid the current gambling scandal. AP

Heck, the clearly best player in baseball, Shohei Ohtani, got caught up in illegal betting, even if the interpreter who committed the crimes also robbed the star.

The NCAA imposed lifetime ineligibility on nine players ensnared in betting-related illegal activities, and its president, Charlie Baker, is calling to eliminate player prop bets on gambling apps and at casinos — yet the college org sent a contrary message when it recently OK’d pro sports betting by college athletes and athletic department staff. 

MLB says it’s working with all authorized gaming operators to limit bets on pitch-level plays to $200 and to exclude these bets from parlays; the NBA is also reviewing rules with sportsbooks, asking its partners to exclude wagers on the most easily-manipulated plays.

But no one seems willing to face how deeply intermeshed pro sports have gotten with gambling, with every broadcast replete with “gaming” ads.

Indeed, the ads are everywhere. Pro athletes (retired and active) hawk online gaming sites with enticements such as discounts, “free” first-time offers, and fun prop bets — wagers on a single play, or a single player’s performance in one game.

A February Siena/St. Bonaventure poll found that nearly half of American men ages 18 to 49 have an account with at least one online sportsbook.

Meanwhile, 48% of all respondents said online sports betting will corrupt organized sports, and this rush of scandals sure suggests they were right; everyone knows that the stuff that’s made the papers is only the tip of a far larger iceberg of corruption.

Not to mention how obsessive gambling is turning sports from something that inspires and elevates to something that corrupts fans themselves, including teens increasingly addicted to “gaming” — whether they can afford it or not.

We don’t see anyone getting the sports-betting genie back in the bottle anytime soon, but the leagues and the college officials need to do far more than impose ethics rules on players, or ask their bookie buddies to restrict prop bets.

For starters, they should ask for a complete ban on prop betting, even if they know the sportsbooks won’t drop such a lucrative source of income.

So the leagues need to look at other ways to insulate themselves from this mortal risk to their brands: The obvious route is to draw a hard red line between the sport and any gambling.

No betting by any active player, coach, manager, or executive on any human contest: You can play the horses (or the greyhounds, if you’re that crazy), but any bet on any sport (pro, college, or amateur — and that absolutely includes the fights) means a lifetime suspension, Hall of Fame included.

Active-duty players and personnel can cut no gaming ads, take on no sponsorships.

Teams, too: No arena sponsorships, no sportsbook ads in the parks — nothing that brings gambling revenues to the franchise or any of its owners.

Law enforcement alone will never clean up this mess: The leagues must lead the way in cutting out the cancer before it kills them.