Mark Cuban: ‘Betting Isn’t the Problem’
These wagers have been behind the recent MLB and NBA gambling scandals.
Pro sports has been rocked by gambling scandals and the rise of prediction markets, but Mark Cuban says the real problem isn’t sports betting itself—it’s the explosion of prop bets and the culture of scrutiny and abuse they have fueled. “Sports betting is not the problem,” Cuban told Front Office Sports during the latest episode of Portfolio Players . “Whether it’s Kalshi or traditional sports betting, it’s the prop bets that are the problem.
” Prop bets involve putting money on specific outcomes, often tied to an individual player—like how many points Victor Wembanyama will have in Game 2 of the Western Conference Finals or the number of strikeouts Shohei Ohtani will have in a given game—but also including wagers on who will win a series MVP award or even the outcome of a single pitch or at-bat. These sorts of wagers have been behind the recent gambling scandals in the NBA and MLB. In the former, Jontay Porter was banned from the league for life after admitting to manipulating his own stats for bettors and Terry Rozier was indicted for allegedly doing the same ; in the latter, Guardians pitchers Emmanuel Clase and Luis Ortiz were both indicted over charges that they rigged individual pitches to benefit gamblers.
“I don’t think we fully considered all the permutations of betting that would be created, and the simplicity of betting online,” Cuban told FOS. There have been no sports-related scandals on that level related to bets placed on prediction markets, although Polymarket’s offshore platform was used by a U. S.
soldier who last month was indicted over claims he used inside information to make more than $400,000 trading on when the U. S. military would capture Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro.