The NBA's Integrity Problem Is a Cultural Issue—Regulating Sports Betting Won't Fix It

Plus: World Cup ticket prices and more government meddling in soccer

Hello and welcome to another edition of Free Agent! Happy Halloween week, it's a great time to put on a mask and go undercover.

Hope you enjoyed your annual sports equinox day. We covered the NBA betting scandal and what it means for gambling last week, but today we'll discuss what it means for the NBA. Then we'll move on to soccer: How Zohran Mamdani's complaints about World Cup ticket prices don't make sense, and separately, how government officials in Spain stepped in to stop a game from happening in America.

Locker Room Links

• Should Gov. Jeff Landry (R–La.) have been involved in the firing of LSU Coach Brian Kelly? Probably not, although Kelly was the state's highest-paid government employee.
• Meanwhile, Rep. Michael Baumgartner (R–Wash.) introduced a bill that would cap college coach salaries at 10 times a school's tuition and fees (which is not very much money!).
• A great National Review column on how "basic economics" is why concert ticket prices are rising, with applications to sporting events too: "Blaming Ticketmaster for people willingly purchasing more expensive concert tickets is like Elizabeth Warren blaming the 'sandwich mafia' for forcing lunchgoers to pay more at Subway."
• Pray for Free Agent editor Jeff Luse: For the second year in a row, the government has kept him from running the Outer Banks Marathon. (I'll get you an aluminum foil medal, Jeff.)
• New research paper: "How Bad Sports Betting Research Can Lead to Bad Sports Betting Regulations"
• A.J. McCarron, the former Alabama quarterback who lost the Kick Six game, is running for lieutenant governor as a Republican. 
• Detroit bans tobacco products in sports stadiums, and even players and coaches could get a $100 fine for popping a Zyn in.
• Michelle Wie says you don't need to think of women's sports "like a charity."
• Elsewhere in Reason: "Michigan Mom Fights School District Rule That Says 7-Year-Old Can't Walk 3 Minutes Home From the Bus Stop"
• The NBA betting scandal could be worse!
  

  Turkish football has been rocked by a massive betting scandal: A probe revealed that 371 of 571 active referees had betting accounts, and 152 of them were actively gambling ???? pic.twitter.com/dYBEGX3wJL

  — CBS Sports Golazo ⚽️ (@CBSSportsGolazo) October 27, 2025

Tipped Off

Last week, I covered the implications of the NBA betting scandal on legalized sports betting, writing that having the bets placed with legal sportsbooks probably helped uncover the alleged schemes (for more, I mostly agree with what Nate Silver wrote, especially the point about offshore gambling and crypto money). This week, let's consider what all this means for the NBA.

The scandal is, obviously, a terrible look for a league that some people already claim is rigged.

On the one hand, discussion about the scandal is largely focused on just one player in one game—the March 2023 game where Rozier took himself out early. But the sports betting indictment also mentions six other suspicious games—including one where Trail Blazers coach Chauncey Billups allegedly told someone the team was tanking and would be sitting star players in a certain game, and another where someone allegedly found out early that LeBron James would be sitting out (the indictment does not name Billups or James by name but it's easy enough to connect the dots when the teams and dates are mentioned). Having that many suspect games raises questions about how many other games might come up when more evidence is brought to light, or how many skewed games are flying under the radar.

There were already plenty of complaints that the NBA is rigged because it's a sport where officials frequently have to make subjective, high-leverage calls at the end of a game—calls they sometimes admit getting wrong, and sometimes they don't. Then Tim Donaghy came along and admitted to making bad calls to help his own bets. Fast forward to Jontay Porter and now Terry Rozier and it's no wonder that some people think the fix is in.

Maybe I'm a chump to still believe in sporting integrity, but I still think every basketball game (except for a handful) still feature two teams trying their best to win, especially in big games. Conspiracies that enlarge beyond a few bad people tend to unravel. Plus, there's more monied interest on the side of integrity when you consider the league, the sportsbooks, and the special firms focused on betting's credibility.

The NBA will have a problem going forward as further developments come in the Rozier case. But I actually think the bigger scandals for the league's integrity and competitiveness are deliberate tanking (as Billups seems to have admitted) and salary cap circumvention. What good are the draft lottery and the salary cap if they're not working?

Every sports league has lingering questions about enforcing their rules and ensuring integrity (a couple MLB pitchers are in trouble), but the NBA seems to have more questions than most—even with the highest median salary of the four major professional sports leagues in the country (the most shocking aspect of the Rozier allegations is that he was making $21.5 million the same season he got involved in this scheme). Now Congress wants to haul Commissioner Adam Silver in for a "briefing" by Thursday (which doesn't seem like it should count as "essential" work during a government shutdown). 

The NBA has a cultural problem that is making its players disproportionately susceptible to, or interested in, flouting the rules. Fixing that problem will require looking inward and making some difficult changes. Regulating sports bets won't fix it.

Ticked Off

Zohran Mamdani, who in a week will likely win the election for New York City mayor, is a big soccer fan. But just because I too love Arsenal (top of the table!) does not mean I'm going to give Mamdani a pass for being incoherent on World Cup ticket prices.

Should World Cup tickets be cheap because of a price cap, or should they be distributed in a simple and clear way? It can't be both. "I've spoken to a number of New Yorkers who tried to buy tickets, and it wasn't only an issue of just how unaffordable the tickets were, but also just the mess of that system," he told The Athletic's Adam Crafton.

If prices can't float freely, then FIFA has to deal with excess demand via a lottery or some other kind of system (perhaps Mamdani wants the return of the old-school in-person box office). FIFA, to be fair, is making a bit of a mess by changing the system in the middle of the process with multiple lotteries spread over several months. But at least dynamic pricing allows them to adjust on the fly according to remaining supply and current demand. Eventually tickets will hit the resale market and prices will adjust accordingly. After the teams are drawn into groups, prices will spike for group-stage games with heavy-hitters. They might drop if the match is between Qatar and Cape Verde.

Mamdani also can't decide whether the World Cup is for world travelers or locals. Having attended the 2010 World Cup in South Africa, Mamdani says "I know what this tournament represents, which is the most popular tournament in the world, and also what it could be, which is a celebration of the world's game." But he also wants locals to get a guaranteed portion of tickets at a discount (FIFA should take him up on this in the funniest way possible—by giving away tickets to a few of the 10,000 residents in East Rutherford, New Jersey, where MetLife Stadium is). 

The only thing Mamdani is consistent on is his love for price controls. In the same breath, he connects World Cup tickets with necessities, saying: "In our fight for making the most expensive city in America affordable, it's a fight that is not limited just to housing, childcare and public transit. It also extends to the moments that give New Yorkers such joy, which will be the World Cup next year." But price controls only make things worse, whether that's housing, childcare, public transit, or a luxury entertainment option like World Cup tickets.

Game Off

Subscribers who pay close attention to the Locker Room Links section may have noticed my amusement at European soccer fans freaking out that one of their team's 38 regular season matches might happen in the U.S. instead of at home. Meanwhile, NFL teams frequently do this and, perhaps other than a few season ticket holders raising an eyebrow, no one really protests.

Spanish La Liga teams Barcelona and Villarreal were controversially set to play on December 20 in Miami instead of at Villarreal's home stadium, Estadio de la Cerámica. On October 6, La Liga was given formal approval to play the game in Miami. But on October 22, La Liga canceled the plans. This was celebrated by many as a sign of the power fans hold, but actually we now know it was the result of political meddling.

"Multiple sources told The Athletic that [Real] Madrid's two official complaints to the Spanish government's Higher Sports Council (Consejo Superior de Deportes, CSD), which alleged that La Liga did not have the right to take a domestic game overseas, and raised the possibility of [La Liga President Javier] Tebas even being suspended from his position, was the most important factor in the ultimate decision to cancel the game in Miami," writes The Athletic's Dermot Corrigan.

Real Madrid getting cozy with the authorities to get what they want is nothing new, unfortunately. That should be the real scandal in Spanish soccer, not a couple of teams trying to make extra money by playing one game abroad.

Replay of the Week

I had planned to put a great hockey fight here, but when I woke up and saw alerts about an 18th-inning World Series walk-off home run, I knew I had to change the clip.

FREDDIE FREEMAN WALK-OFF HOME RUN IN THE 18TH INNING! #WORLDSERIES pic.twitter.com/wD1xbRxDbC

— MLB (@MLB) October 28, 2025

That's all for this week. Enjoy watching the real event of the weekend, the NASCAR Xfinity Series Championship race (Saturday night on The CW).