Major Pro Leagues and Unions Urge State Regulators to Enact Lifetime Bans on Abusive Sports Bettors

Five major North American pro leagues and their players associations sent a letter dated Sept. 15 to state gaming regulators calling for a unified response to harassment and threats against athletes from sports bettors. The letter, obtained by SBC Americas, was co-signed by Major League Baseball and the MLB Players Association, Major League Soccer and the MLSPA, the NBA and the National Basketball Players Association, the NFL and the NFLPA, and the NHL and the NHLPA.

The signatories described the expansion of legal sports betting as having introduced negative consequences, chiefly the frequency and intensity of abuse directed at players, coaches, officials, and their families. “Too often, individuals who lose sports bets direct threatening and harassing messages toward players, coaches, and their families via social media and in-person interactions,” the letter states. “Threatening the safety of an athlete or their family members over a sports bet crosses a bright ethical and criminal line, and it is entirely unacceptable.”

Core Demands for Regulatory Action

The letter requests explicit rules to permanently ban any user confirmed to have abused or threatened professional or amateur athletes, coaches, officials, team personnel, or their families. It calls for a standardized cross-operator reporting framework so leagues, teams, and players associations can submit verified evidence to regulators and law enforcement for placement on statewide exclusion lists. The groups also seek a system for states to share banned bettor lists, excluding abusive users across jurisdictions.

The correspondence places the onus on regulators and sports wagering licensees. It recommends conditioning gaming licenses on operators proactively monitoring, flagging, and banning accounts linked to abusive behavior. The letter notes that various states already maintain exclusion lists and that operators have taken steps such as BetMGM’s zero-tolerance policy announced in February and the June launch of the Bad Actor Program by Fanatics Sportsbook, Integrity Compliance 360, and Signify Group. It urges uniform rules and legislative guardrails.

Where Uniformity Must Prevail

All signatory leagues maintain commercial relationships with sportsbooks, including official partnerships granting use of intellectual property, data, and marketing rights. MLB, MLS, and the NHL also hold prediction market partnerships with entities such as Kalshi and Polymarket. Those arrangements have attracted scrutiny from federal lawmakers including Sen. Richard Blumenthal.

The joint letter highlights a clear limitation in the current patchwork of state safeguards. Without shared lists and consistent standards, abusive bettors can evade consequences by shifting operators or jurisdictions. Regulators and operators should treat this coordinated request as a prompt to align integrity measures with the scale of legal sports betting now in place. Uniform adoption will determine whether athlete protection keeps pace with commercial expansion.

Reporting: SBC Americas

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