Sept 15 (Reuters) – Five major U.S. professional sports leagues and their players’ associations called on state regulators on Tuesday to permanently bar sports bettors who threaten or harass athletes, coaches, officials and their families.
In a joint open letter, the National Football League, Major League Baseball, Major League Soccer, the National Basketball Association and the National Hockey League said the growth of legalized sports betting had brought increased abuse from bettors angered by losing wagers.
“Threatening the safety of an athlete or their family members over a sports bet crosses a bright ethical and criminal line,” the organizations said in the letter.
The groups asked state gaming commissions to require licensed sportsbooks and mobile betting operators to permanently revoke wagering privileges for anyone verified to have issued violent threats or engaged in abusive harassment.
They also called for a standardized reporting system that would allow them to submit verified evidence of threats to regulators and law enforcement for possible inclusion on statewide exclusion lists.
The letter said that states like Ohio, West Virginia, Louisiana and Wyoming already have exclusion processes that can prohibit certain individuals from using licensed sportsbooks and mobile betting applications.
“Exclusion in one state should be reciprocated in other states,” they added, calling on other states to adopt similar safeguards.
They also urged regulators to require sportsbooks to identify, flag and ban accounts tied to abusive conduct as a condition of retaining their state operating licenses.
The request follows public accounts from athletes across several sports of receiving hostile messages from bettors, particularly over player-proposition bets that can hinge on an individual’s performance rather than a team’s result.
Sports betting has expanded rapidly across the United States since the Supreme Court struck down the Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act, or PASPA, in 2018.
The court ruled that PASPA’s central provision was unconstitutional because it prevented states from changing their own laws to authorize sports wagering, violating the Constitution’s anti-commandeering principle.
The decision left individual states to decide whether and how to legalize and regulate betting, fueling the growth of state-licensed sportsbooks and mobile wagering apps.
(Reporting by Angelica Medina in Mexico CityEditing by Toby Davis)
Comments