Just over a year ago, multiple former and current NBA players were arrested and charged with crimes related to alleged illegal gambling.
In one of these instances, then Milwaukee Bucks guard, Malik Beasley, allegedly underperformed on purpose in order to make sure some bets hit.
In an ongoing investigation into former UFC fighter, Isaac Dulgarian, it was found the athlete allegedly let his opponent beat him to allow bets placed against him to win.
It came after his odds of winning dropped from -250 to as low as -150 just moments before his fight began, meaning enough people placed large bets on his opponents to win just before the fight started to swing the entire market.
One of baseball's biggest stars, Shohei Ohtani, was in a similar spotlight after it was revealed that his former close friend and interpreter stole $17 million from him to pay for illegal gambling debts.
Player and staff gambling is not the only problem either, with coverage of Jai Arrow’s 100th league game switching to an ad for New Zealand betting app, Betcha, just as Arrow began to walk out.
Arrow has been the centre of NRL’s most heartwarming story of the season, as the rugby star was diagnosed with Motor Neuron Disease earlier in the year.
None of these are one off instances in their respective sport.
Over 30 people involved in the NBA have been arrested for illegal gambling and there are multiple ongoing investigations into UFC fighters from the last few years alone.
According to a Forbes article from July, online prediction markets like Kalshi and Polymarket have reached $24 billion in monthly trades, a near $20 billion increase from 2025.
This statistic is in the United States alone, a country with over 2 million people displaying behaviour representative of a severe gambling addiction.
Online prediction markets have exploded in the last few years, with incredibly easy access and a wide variety of betting lines contributing to what some users view as a simple alternative to traditional sports betting.
A Common-Sense Media analysis of gambling in teenage boys found that 36% of boys aged 11 to 17 report gambling in the past year, this number rising to 51% of 16-year-olds alone.
The biggest and perhaps greatest NBA player of all time, Lebron James, signed an endorsement deal with Polymarket a month ago, worth $15 million annually.
Technically the deal does not break any rules within his organisation, as he is signed to specifically promote American Football markets, but it sets a poor precedent all the same.
In a world where dopamine-maxing is as easy as it has ever been, it should not be surprising that online betting has been the newest craze.
Where someone might have laid on a couch with reels in one hand and a vape in the other, they can now have their laptop open to quickly bet on almost anything they like.
By almost anything, it really is almost anything.
“Will Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce get engaged this year?” Or “Will the US confirm that aliens exist by December 31st?” have been some popular markets on either Kalshi or Polymarket in the past.
But I am not just talking about the incredibly harmful and addictive nature of these quick-hit online platforms in general, rather the consequences they have had on global sports.
Obviously I understand that gambling is nothing new, and likewise I recognise that there is no harm in throwing a few dollars on the All Blacks to win on a Saturday.
But when sports become so heavily intertwined with the world of gambling that some people literally cannot watch a game without placing a bet, there is a problem.
Seriously, I had a coworker scoff at me when I said I did not have a bet on the boxing match we were watching, explaining that he finds sports unwatchable without any money on it.
I have found that it is easy to break down the ways gambling is ruining sports into three different styles.
Firstly, you have the sports themselves, and this is usually seen through a player intentionally chasing different statistics in order to let some bets hit.
Then you have the constant promotion of gambling that has now spread to every corner of the world.
It is impossible to watch any sport nowadays without one betting app or another being thrown at you.
Whether it be more intentional, like pregame TAB tips in Super Rugby, or more discrete examples like gambling sponsors placed on the outskirts of Football fields, it has become impossible to miss.
But this extends outside of the games themselves, and actually outside of sports altogether.
Social Media, especially TikTok and Instagram have been plagued with a never-ending stream of influencers promoting different gambling sites.
This is not just with sports focused accounts either. People who might have once just posted skits now somehow find a way to slide a Kalshi shoutout into their videos.
One example that irked me the most is a TikToker with the username @fishingarrett who has accumulated over 7 million followers on the platform.
Despite posting videos that show him interacting and finding different animals in the wild, most commonly large snakes, he has featured advertisements for online gambling platforms on several different occasions.
Finally, this all begins to brainwash viewers who are so deeply accustomed to the idea of something as simple as an app or their phone allowing them to play thousands of instant win games and bet on even more sports markets.
Like I said, I am not trying to say that gambling as a whole is wrong.
But the power different gambling organisations now hold over almost every major sports league across the world is undeniable.
The focus of sports has now changed from highlighting the incredible talent of the world's greatest athletes, to an outlet for people to gamble their last few dollars on a potentially rigged match.
Fans and players of sports will and have already suffered as a result of the legitimacy of professional sports continuing to decrease.