The NBA has ordered its sportsbook partners to stop offering a list of player-prop bets and parlays for the 2026-27 season, a move that follows a string of gambling scandals that have rattled the league over the past two years. The directive, sent in a memo to sportsbooks on Friday, bans wagers on things like who wins the opening tip-off and bars under bets on players expected to log fewer than 12 minutes in a game.
According to France 24, the league directed authorized gambling partners, including FanDuel and DraftKings, not to offer bets on areas such as the winner of a game's opening tip-off, players missing specific shots, or unders involving players not expected to see much court time. Sportsbooks will also be banned from offering lines with larger payouts on under wagers, and from bundling unders on the same player's statistics into a single parlay, per the Las Vegas Review-Journal, which reported the agreement cited in an ESPN account of the memo.
Why the League Drew the Line Now
NBA executive vice president Scott Kaufman-Ross framed the restrictions as a balancing act rather than a crackdown on legal betting broadly. “There's a balance between ensuring that we are removing problematic bet types but also ensuring that we don't just move activity into the illegal market,” he said, according to France 24. Kaufman-Ross also said past issues inform the league's assessment of which bet types count as problematic, per the same report.
The Review-Journal's reporting ties the new rules directly to two recent betting scandals. Jontay Porter was banned from the NBA for life in 2024 after admitting he removed himself from games to benefit bettors, leaving two games early with injuries to ensure under wagers would cash. Federal prosecutors said one bettor wagered $80,000 on the under for six statistical categories for Porter in a Toronto Raptors game during the 2023-24 season, a parlay that would have paid out $1.1 million before a sportsbook canceled it.
A Las Vegas Guilty Plea Adds Urgency
That bettor, identified by the Review-Journal as Shane Hennen, pleaded guilty Wednesday to charges in basketball betting schemes in Las Vegas. Prosecutors said Hennen also bet more than $200,000 on Miami Heat guard Terry Rozier to finish under his points, rebounds and assists props. Rozier was charged with accepting a bribe to tell bettors he would leave a 2023 Charlotte Hornets game early with an injury, the outlet reported.
On the sportsbook side, Caesars Sportsbook confirmed to the Review-Journal that it collaborated with the NBA on the memo and has eliminated markets the league deems problematic. Caesars and BetMGM are both NBA-authorized gaming operators in Nevada, while FanDuel and DraftKings, which do not operate in Nevada, are official NBA gaming partners elsewhere in the country. A DraftKings spokesperson said the company supports the NBA's efforts and will keep collaborating to maintain game integrity through appropriate betting-market limits, adding that the new restrictions are already reflected in its existing practices.
New Monitoring Tools and a Wider Industry Reckoning
Alongside the betting restrictions, the NBA announced integrity measures that include sports-betting training led by former NFL player and retired FBI agent Charles Tillman, as well as enhanced artificial intelligence designed to flag unusual betting patterns involving the league, France 24 reported.
The NBA is not alone in reassessing prop bets. As Sports Business Journal notes, player props have become central to sportsbooks' offerings, especially when bundled into parlays, but the ease with which some props can be manipulated — along with a rise in online harassment of players by bettors who lost money on them — has pushed leagues to take a harder look. The outlet also reported that the FBI charged Rozier with conspiring to help a childhood friend rig prop bets by intentionally underperforming, that MLB placed two Cleveland Guardians pitchers on paid leave in July amid a probe into suspicious bets on individual pitches, and that the NCAA stripped three Fresno State basketball players of their eligibility in September for rigging prop bets.
The NFL has been moving in a similar direction. Per iGaming Business, that league is working with sportsbook partners, legislators and state regulators to limit or outright prohibit certain prop bets on regulated betting sites, with particular attention to bets tied to events one player can control on a single play, such as a kicker missing a field goal or a pass falling incomplete.
