Front Burner - Ohtani, Porter and sport’s gambling problem

Episode Date: April 2, 2024

 At a time when major sports leagues are embracing online betting, the MLB’s biggest star and a player for the Toronto Raptors are now involved in gambling investigations.So what do we know about Shohei Ohtani and Jontay Porter? How could gambling partnerships be impacting fans and athletes? And have these leagues opened a Pandora’s box of betting culture that could threaten the future of their sports? Declan Hill is an associate professor of investigations at the University of New Haven, an expert on match fixing and corruption, and the author of CrimeWaves on Substack.

In the Dragon's Den, a simple pitch can lead to a life-changing connection. Watch new episodes of Dragon's Den free on CBC Gem. Brought to you in part by National Angel Capital Organization, empowering Canada's entrepreneurs through angel investment and industry connections. This is a CBC Podcast. Hi, I'm Jamie Poisson. The L.A. Dodger Shohei Ohtani is the biggest star in baseball. In December, Toronto lost its collective mind just over rumors that he was signing with the Blue Jays. John Rossi tweets out Shohei Ohtani is en route to Toronto.

A private flight from Anaheim to Toronto has just popped up on Flight Tracker. Who rides around in a Bombardier Global 5000? Oh my gosh, the dots are really connecting. Apparently, Usai Kikuchi has booked out the entire restaurant of Akira back on Blue Jays' way. It's a sushi restaurant. But over the last two weeks, Ohtani's squeaky clean image has collided with a scandal that's really all too familiar in sports. We found out that there were millions of dollars in wire transfers from Otani's bank account to an illegal gambling outfit. And while Otani's camp has blamed it on his longtime friend and translator, the explanations have split on some key details and left people

with a lot more questions than answers. Just to kind of just go over the result, in conclusion, Ipe has been stealing money from my account and has told lies. Last week, we also found out that the NBA is investigating Raptor John Tate Porter because of irregularities in bets that have been placed on him. These are two huge gambling controversies at a time when leagues have embraced sports betting and are plastered with ads for betting apps. So what is really going on with Otani and Porter?

And have these leagues opened this Pandora's box of betting culture that could threaten the integrity of sports? Declan Hill is here to weigh in. He's an associate professor of investigations at the University of New Haven, a leading expert on match fixing and corruption in international sports,

and the author of the sub-stack, Crime Waves. Declan, hey, thank you so much for coming on to FrontBurner. It's a pleasure. It's an honor. Thank you so much. So I'm hoping we can actually start with why the Shohei Otani scandal is such a big deal, even beyond him just being this ridiculously good baseball player. Why are he and his famously clean image so important to Major League Baseball right now?

Well, because baseball's dying. I mean, baseball is the sport of the elderly in North America. It used to be America's pastime. It used to be, you know, apple pie and mom and baseball, but that's really been supplanted by a whole bunch of things, including e-sports with the younger generation. And baseball has slowly killed itself off. So they've responded, they being the major league baseball officials, by two ways. One is by trying to expand globally, specifically into Japan, South Korea, and China. Two, they've sold off everything that moves in baseball to bookmakers and gambling companies. And they're trying to really revenue generate by turning it over to gamblers. Thus, it's an exact sweet spot attack because you have

a superstar, really, really good baseball player, arguably one of the best in a century from Japan. really good baseball player, arguably one of the best in a century from Japan. So a great, you know, allegedly clean cut guy in that new rapidly growing market. And now he's embroiled in a sports gambling scandal. And lay out the facts for me here. What do we actually know about what's happened here so far about the transfers from Otani's account to this illegal bookmaker? What we know is that four and a half million dollars of his money lands up in this guy's account. That's the statement of fact. Then there have been a version of official stories. I don't know how many official stories we've had. So one, it was just the translator working by himself. Then it was the translator going to the baseball player and getting a loan. Mizuhara first told ESPN that Otani made the

payments to cover his friend's debts. But he later shifted his story, saying Otani knew nothing about his gambling. And then now it's that he stole the money from the baseball player over the course of years. Otani says that he is the victim in this story. I'm very saddened and shocked that someone who I'm trusted has done this. I never agreed to pay off the debt or make payments to the bookmaker. Which begs two firings. First, the translator's got to go. And then second of all, anyone connected with his finances has to be fired because you didn't

notice over two years that four and a half million dollars was going from your client's accounts? Like a whole bunch of people have to be fired if that particular current official story is true. So as you mentioned, there's lots of details that we still don't know. As an expert, though, I'm curious, like what questions have these explanations left you with? So many. I mean, it's difficult to go through them because there's just so many. For a start, which story is true? because there's just so many. For a start, which story is true? What kind of steps is the league doing about addiction, about access? The illegal bookmaker was supposed to have met the quote translator in a team hotel in a poker game with other players. And again, this happened two years

ago. Is this regular? Do you regularly have poker games with players in their teen hotels featuring illegal bookmakers? Oh, and the problem is the translator? Like, hundreds of thousands of our listeners are falling out of their chairs laughing now. Like, this story is so weird that somebody has to investigate it properly, or they have to change their story yet again. I want to talk quickly about the other scandal that's happening around the Toronto Raptors right now and sort of a semi-regular player for them named Jonte Porter. We found out last week the NBA is investigating irregularities around bets on him. And give me the facts with this case. What about these bets seem so strange? OK, so for all the people who haven't been to a bookmaker site, legal or illegal, there's

up to 60,000 sports events a day they can bet on. And I'm talking like golf played by under 15-year-olds, women's soccer, fourth division in the Netherlands. I mean, 60,000 of the smallest professional sports events all the way up to National Football League games. But within those games, you can bet on up to 20,000 different points, data points. So in cricket, for example, you can bet on whether the umpire is

wearing an hat or not. So what was concerning was that you can now bet on people's underperformance, whether they will perform less well than they usually do. And again, we're not talking about illegal bookmakers. This is a legal bet, but it's just a door wide open to fixing because you're not betting on somebody who's going to win. You're going to bet on somebody who's going to underperform their usual standard. And that is what happened to John T. Porter. And not only did it happen, but a bet on John T. Porter's underperformance that he wouldn't match his usual standards was the most profitable bet in the NBA that week. And that's saying a huge amount, Jamie, because hundreds of millions of dollars per week are bet

on the NBA. So if he's like the most profitable bet, and I'm not saying that he was connected with this, but it is clear and extremely curious that on January 26th, this occurred, and then exactly the same thing happened on March 20th. So you could kind of see maybe what happened maybe once, but twice. And it also indicates that not only did this bet occur, but there was a lot of money placed on it, i.e. a lot more money than usual. So these are red flags in the betting monitoring industry, significantly higher than usual profits, so that someone somewhere knew something, whether it was an entourage or maybe John Tate Porter had gone to the hairdresser and said, I'm not feeling great. Bam, somebody's on the mobile phone doing those bets saying, hey, I've just had John Tate Porter.

Those are the kind of things that can happen. Players, along with all league employees, are prohibited from betting on any NBA events. That's including, of course, prop bets. Tim Legler back here with us. Right. And I guess I'll just note here that, you know, the Raptors, the NBA and Porter have all been really tight lipped about this. Porter's brother did speak out. He said he loves basketball too much to get involved with gambling and risk his career.

But obviously, this is the subject of an investigation right now. Declan, you know, you have written about how athletes are exceptionally prone to gambling, but also about how they're very, very bad at it. And I wonder if you could just expand on that for me. Yeah. So key fact number one, sports gambling is addictive, hugely addictive. Gambling has changed since an older demographic like a wizard in Declan Hill knew gambling in the 20s. In that case, I would have had to go to a racetrack.

I would have had to go to a casino. I would have had to find an illegal racetrack. I would have had to go to a casino. I would have had to find an illegal bookie at the back of some bar. And we would have had to have some human interaction where I take cash and place it down in front of them and they gave me chips or something. So there was a human interaction that in some way would have checked and slightly slowed down my potential gambling addiction. Now, with mobile phones, gamblers and potential gambling addicts are walking around with the equivalent of a bar in their back pocket for an alcoholic. It's just there. And all you're doing when you're placing bets is you're just

clicking buttons. And it's built in, they social engineer these gambling sites, again, legal and or illegal, to make them deeply addictive. There's research coming out of Sweden that recognizes that this new form of, quote, frictionless gambling is up there with heroin in terms of addictive qualities or capacities. And it's particularly addictive for one demographic, and that is young males between the ages of 14 and 35. And I'm not misspeaking there. There is now well over 55,000 teenage pathological gamblers, i.e. teenage gambling addicts in the United Kingdom. You know, basically, if you took the Sky Dome in Toronto and you could fill it up with young teenagers between 14 and 18, that would be the number of addicts. But the gambling

researchers unconnected with the bookmakers say the figure is far, far higher, three, four times higher than that. And it's all because of this frictionless gambling at pushing and pushing and pushing. Inside that critical target demographic of young males between the ages of 14 and 35, athletes are particularly susceptible to gambling addiction for a couple of reasons. One is that, again, the sport like gambling has changed dramatically in the last 15, 20 years. Again, back in my day, when I played soccer and all my sports, it was frequent that we would go out for beers afterwards. If you were a high-level athlete in any professional

sport now, alcohol is almost impossible to drink at any level because the demands on these guys is just so high. It's just cigarettes, bogeys, very, very rare. Much more is the figure of, you know, say a Tom Brady who's now embracing, I don't know, whatever he's embracing this week, veganism, yoga, whatever. That's the lifestyle of a professional athlete now, is incredible consciousness on their physical body. So they still have the same amount of stress. They still have tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of people screaming at them if they don't perform their job well. So they have to handle that stress. And what they do is they turn to gambling and gaming. And this is the new addiction. This is the really powerful addiction that very, very few people in the sports media are talking about. That's really interesting here. I guess I'll just note there's

restrictions, but most of the big sports leagues do let players bet on other sports as long as it's through the right channels, like legal channels. But it seems kind of intuitive that there might be something in an athlete's personality that would make it easier to get addicted to gambling, right? Because what makes someone a really good athlete is like never giving up and never letting go. And don't, you know, when you're gambling, don't you have to do that often? Well, the best gamblers, many of my contacts, my professional contacts are professional gamblers. They're the one in 200,000 people who can actually beat a bookie over a long run. And they are absolutely the opposite of athletes. They're ice cold, emotionally constipated math nerds. They have no emotion in the game. In fact, anytime they look at a sport with any emotion, they immediately stop

betting on it. They're not interested in those kinds of things. They look at it as a way of beating bookies and they just don't do it. Athletes on the other hand are incredibly obsessive. In their professional life, they can overturn odds. They are never going to give up. They're going to keep playing until the final minute, no matter what the score is. They hate being beaten. To be beating them is to make sure that they go on and go on and go on. And that is a recipe. That's the carbon profile picture of a gambling addict. a life-changing connection. Watch new episodes of Dragon's Den free on CBC Gem. Brought to you in part by National Angel Capital Organization, empowering Canada's entrepreneurs through angel investment and industry connections.

Hi, it's Ramit Sethi here. You may have seen my money show on Netflix. I've been talking about money for 20 years. I've talked to millions of people and I have some startling numbers to share with you. Did you know that of the people I speak to, 50% of them do not know their own household income? That's not a typo, 50%. That's because money is confusing. In my new book and podcast, Money for Couples, I help you and your partner create a financial vision together. To listen to this podcast, just search for Money for Cups.

You layer on top of that what you have talked about a little bit in this interview so far, what's happening with the culture of gambling and sports in recent years, and how we've seen sports leagues cozying up more and more with betting outfits, right? Yeah, they've really started to dance with the devil. And I've seen a graveyard of sports around the world that have been killed off by two close links with gambling. Right across the continent of Asia are just a myriad of sports leagues have just collapsed. Like the fans just don't pay any attention anymore to Singaporean or Malaysia or Thai or even Chinese soccer. I think the Chinese soccer, the president is just being kicked into jail. I think that's the fourth of their senior executives

in the last 10 years, like the fourth of their CEO presidents that have been put in jail for corruption and matchmaking. And so what happens in Chinese soccer is that Chinese sports fans aren't stupid. They're looking at the product out on the field and it's like, forget about it. And the same thing is really in danger of happening here in North America because we've had an employee of the Jacksonville Jaguars who stole $22 million from his team to do online betting. The attorney for Amit Patel says his client

will plead guilty to the charges of wire fraud and making illegal transactions, and that he checked into a rehabilitation center this spring. Patel is accused of spending company money to fund his lavish lifestyle. We've had similar scandals out of Temple and Loyola. We've had a wave of athletes, coaches, and officials being threatened, really quite seriously. Death threats by gamblers. of athletes, coaches, and officials being threatened, really quite seriously, death threats by gamblers. So we've really entered into this storm of gambling and betting,

and the leagues are far too close to it. They have official sponsors, their little DraftKings fan duel, blah, blah, blah, linkages with various of the sports leagues and it's just too much a sports fan needs to see clear blue water between the product sports league and the gambling company there has to be distance otherwise they start looking at the game and just going is that for real right they won't necessarily believe it's really happening can you just you mentioned those death threats like death threats for what i just want to get a few more details on that. Sure. Look, there was a player in the NCAA, played for Texas Christian University, and his team was losing above the spread. So I think it was four and a half points was the spread.

And the kid grabs the ball in the final 0.7 seconds of the game. So he's on the losing team and he takes it and he hits a fantastic three-pointer. Doesn't win the game, but he narrows the betting spread from four and a half down to two. So people lost their bet. And the guy was unindated on social media with attacks with like, you're a jerk. You did that deliberately, blah, blah, blah.

All kinds of stuff cleveland cavaliers coach you know his his mobile phone got out to sports gamblers and they were phoning him up and saying not just that we're going to kill you we know where your kids go to school we're going to ensure that i personally have had my own instances with um you know some of the sports gamblers um where you know, they got my telephone number and were sending me, you know, crazy messages about, you know, where I live and my kids and all that stuff. So it is a dangerous game. And so he's, you know, he's saying in press conferences, as many athletes and coaches are saying, but our sports media is refusing to

discuss this, saying, hey, we're in a really dangerous game. What are we doing as a sports league? What are we doing as a sport when we've got this kind of relationship going on? Right, because it's no longer about enjoying the game for the game. It's also so much more now about money that's put on the game or something that may or may not happen in the game. You've referred to this as gambolization. Yeah, it's an academic term. I hate using it, but I think it's a good one. And it's a fairly accurate one.

So I'll throw it in. What it means is that when a sport is gradually being transformed from a sport that one enjoys and follows the narrative, follows the points, really gets caught up in the morals and ideals or lack thereof and values of the up in the morals and ideals or lack thereof and values of the coaches and the athletes and starts looking at it as a vehicle for gambling, very much like horse racing. So very, very few people go to the horse races because they love horses. They go to the races because those horses are vehicles for their bets. And we're seeing the same thing now with athletes, the discussion. So I invite

any of our listeners to tune in to one of the sports networks. And you'll see many of the conversations, many of the actual screen is divided up with betting lines. And people are saying, oh yeah, so-and-so's got a hamstring that's going to bet a betting spread, blah, blah, blah. What? Betting spread? And that's where we're getting into. We're getting into that world where our professional sports are simply vehicles for gambling. And that is going to be a death. People are going to be looking at it going, I just don't believe this anymore. This is too much theater. I'm going to turn this off. You mentioned, well, when we started this conversation, that this was one of the big things that the MLB was doing because they basically need it for survival, right? So, we're talking about big, big money here. There's a lot of incentive for the leagues to want to do

this. Look, there's a lot of short-term incentives for the leagues to do this. I don't think it's survival. I think they're actually jeopardizing their survival. I think they're dancing with the devil. They've made a deal with Satan, and at first it seems really good. Oh my gosh, we're going to get all this cash things. But the problem is when listeners, and this will happen to many of the listeners to this podcast, next week, next month, next season, they're going to be watching a sports event and this will happen to many of the listeners to this podcast, next week, next month, next season, they're going to be watching a sports event and something will happen, whether it be this miraculous, fantastic play, or whether one of the brilliant sports stars makes

such an obviously glaring mistake or the referee doesn't call something they should. And our listeners will go, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, what's happening here? What am I watching? And our listeners aren't stupid. They're not conspiracy theorists. They're not nuts, but that's going to happen as soon as that happens to enough people about a sports. And once you lose that credibility and the integrity of your product as a sports league, it's over. So what do you think should happen here? league, it's over. So what do you think should happen here? Very, very easy thing for in Canada. Two years ago, Justin Trudeau's liberals legal and sports gambling across the country.

Provinces and territories will be able to offer single event sport betting products like wagering on the Grey Cup, Game 7 of the Stanley Cup Finals, or the Super Bowl. But they didn't amend the criminal code. So match fixers move to Canada because it's like an arrest-free zone. You don't even get arrested, let alone investigated or prosecuted or convicted of match fixing in this country. Okay, a 20 minutes of a legislative session and just amend Canada's criminal code, just one paragraph, it's not like a major thing you have to do, saying underperformance in a professional sports event is illegal. And if more action isn't taken, like take me a couple of years down the line here, what do you think is going to happen? What are the professional sports leagues will die.

Why wouldn't it? And again, we haven't mentioned the $100,000 fine on the NBA basketball player that he made towards the referee because he was saying, you're taking bribes. You're taking bribes from gamblers. Among athletes, among players, among coaches, among officials. They're talking about this. Our listeners, they're going to pick up on this and they're going to start tuning out one of the major sports leagues. I don't know which one, but one of them is going to, if this carries on, one of them is going to be killed off. All right. Declan, thank you so much for this. This was

really fascinating. Thank you. Thank you. Jamie, anytime you need to discuss it, I'd be honored to come back on. All right. That is all for today. I'm Jamie Poisson. Thanks so much for listening. And we'll talk to you tomorrow.