The five major professional leagues in the United States and their respective players’ associations have asked state regulators to permanently bar from betting anyone who threatens or abusively harasses athletes, coaches, officials, team personnel or their families. The National Football League -NFL-, Major League Baseball -MLB-, Major League Soccer -MLS-, National Basketball Association -NBA- and National Hockey League -NHL- submitted their request to authorities in 35 states and the District of Columbia following an increase in hostile messages linked to losing bets.
The initiative seeks to introduce a common consequence within the regulated market, but leaves a broader problem unresolved. Exclusion can close access to legal US sportsbooks, although it cannot prevent people from using illegal or overseas operators and does not replace police action when a possible crime has been committed. The leading women’s competitions were also not involved in developing the proposal, while the letter does not suggest changes to bets based on individual player performance — one of the products that places responsibility for a financial loss on a specific person.
Exclusions shared between states
The organisations want sportsbooks and mobile betting applications to permanently revoke the wagering privileges of any user found to have issued violent threats or engaged in verified abusive harassment. They also propose a standardised system through which athletes, unions, teams and leagues could submit verified evidence to regulators and law enforcement. Operators would be required to identify, flag and remove accounts linked to such conduct as a condition of retaining their licences. “Threatening the safety of an athlete or their family members over a sports bet crosses a bright ethical and criminal line,” the letter states.
Regulation has remained fragmented since the Supreme Court struck down the central provision of the Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act -PASPA- in 2018 and allowed each state to decide whether to authorise sports betting. Ohio, West Virginia, Louisiana and Wyoming already have procedures for excluding certain users from licensed operators, but the leagues want a ban imposed in one jurisdiction to be recognised elsewhere. The need for coordination has grown alongside the market: $166.94 billion was legally wagered on sports across the country in 2025, an 11% increase from the previous year, according to the American Gaming Association.
Women’s competitions were left out
The Women’s National Basketball Association -WNBA-, National Women’s Soccer League -NWSL- and Professional Women’s Hockey League -PWHL- are not among the participating organisations. Neither are their players’ unions. Women’s National Basketball Players Association -WNBPA- executive director Terri Carmichael Jackson called the exclusion “deeply disappointing” following publicly reported incidents of betting-related harassment involving her members over recent seasons. She told ‘Front Office Sports’ that “the NBA determined that WNBA players did not warrant inclusion in a joint position statement intended to address this very issue”.
The omission is particularly significant because of the institutional relationship between the two basketball competitions: the NBA owns approximately 42% of the WNBA and the organisations share offices in New York. The National Women’s Soccer League Players Association -NWSLPA- said it learned about the initiative through questions from the media. The union supported its purpose but expressed disappointment that it had not been consulted. The women’s organisations did not oppose the proposed bans; they asked to participate in a response intended to protect professional sport. The letter also includes college athletes among its potential beneficiaries, although the National Collegiate Athletic Association -NCAA- is not a signatory.
What a ban could achieve
Within regulated platforms, a shared exclusion list could prevent someone removed by one operator from immediately opening an account with another or moving their activity to a different state. The reporting system could also preserve evidence, connect a threatening social media profile to a betting account and pass the information to the authorities. Its implementation will have to establish who verifies each incident, what behaviour reaches the threshold of “abusive harassment”, how personal data is shared and what process an excluded individual can use to appeal a permanent ban.
Its reach becomes more limited when the offender operates outside the legal US system. The individual who threatened baseball player Lance McCullers was located overseas, meaning that a state exclusion would have been unlikely to prevent the messages. Benjamin ‘Parlay’ Patz was accused of threatening more than 300 professional and college athletes; he pleaded guilty in 2021, received mental health treatment and was ordered to abstain from gambling, but was not sent to prison. These cases show that removing an account can restrict an offender’s commercial activity, but cannot replace police and judicial investigations when threats may constitute a crime.
The risk of individual player bets
Bets on personal actions or statistics — points, rebounds, shots, passes or any other measure — create a direct relationship between an athlete’s performance and the money lost by a bettor. The player is no longer simply part of a collective result, but becomes the visible reason why a particular wager has failed. An editorial in ‘The Washington Post’ has called for these products to be banned, arguing that they increase individual harassment, facilitate possible manipulation and particularly expose college athletes or professionals on lower salaries.
All five signatory leagues have commercial agreements with betting companies and have not proposed restricting these markets or reducing the integration of odds and promotions into their competitions. A lifetime ban would therefore act against the user’s final conduct rather than the product that may fuel their frustration. Its effectiveness will depend on states recognising one another’s exclusions, operators sharing information, women’s leagues being incorporated into the system and authorities intervening when harassment moves beyond the regulatory sphere. The proposal creates a barrier within legal sports betting, but does not by itself provide a complete response to threats.
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