Joint letter sent to 36 regulators
The five major North American leagues have come down hard together. The NFL, NBA, MLB, NHL and MLS, along with their players unions, sent a letter on Tuesday to gambling regulators in 35 US states and the District of Columbia. Their ask is simple: lifetime bans from legal operators for any bettor who harasses or threatens an athlete.
The net is wide. Professional players, amateur athletes, coaches, referees, team staff and family members would all be covered by the measure.
“Too often, people who lose sports bets send threatening and abusive messages to players, coaches and their families on social media and in face-to-face interactions,” the leagues wrote. They added that threatening an athlete’s safety over a wager “crosses a clear ethical and criminal line”.
Try it for $0.99.
The system being pushed rests on two pillars. First, a simple reporting channel that would let evidence be passed to regulators and law enforcement. Then a shared exclusion list, passed from state to state, to stop a banned bettor from opening an account somewhere else.
Four states already have similar rules in place: Louisiana, Ohio, West Virginia and Wyoming. Operators are moving too. DraftKings and Fanatics teamed up this summer with Integrity Compliance 360 to roll out a tool that flags abuse on social media and tracks it back to the source.
“Threats and harassment in sport continue to rise, putting the safety of participants and the integrity of the ecosystem at risk,” says Scott Sadin, co-president of IC360.
The McCullers case looms large
The incident that really brought the issue into focus came in May 2025. Lance McCullers, then a pitcher for the Houston Astros, said he had received messages threatening to “find my children and kill them” after a poor outing against Cincinnati. Houston police later concluded the threats came from an overseas bettor who was drunk at the time.
Fred VanVleet, point guard for the Houston Rockets and president of the NBA players union, summed up the mood among athletes. “We carry all the burden, all the risk and all the danger that comes with being tied to gambling,” he said in July. “It landed on us, and everyone’s still trying to adjust.”
Discover the rest of the sports news on our mathodds website and app!
in your pocket.
Real-time notifications & alerts
Leave a Reply