Should Professional Athletes Be Allowed to Bet on Their Own Sports? The WNBA Controversy Raises Bigger Questions

The WNBA Social Media Bet That Sparked a National Conversation

Why the Angel Reese and Paige Bueckers wager drew attention

One of the more interesting stories that came out recently involved a $400 lighthearted bet made between Angel Reese and Paige Bueckers during the WNBA All Star game that the league joyfully posted on social media and then almost immediately took down. While the bet was initially thought to be on the All-Star game itself, it turned out to be a wager on an upcoming game between the Atlanta Dream and Dallas Wings. The league took the post down and then went into damage control issuing a statement for the media:

“While the social media post was intended to be lighthearted, WNBA players are well aware of the league’s policies prohibiting betting on WNBA games and receive training every year reinforcing those policies,. We recognized that the post missed the mark, removed it shortly after it was published, and addressed the matter internally.

We will also use this as an opportunity to reemphasize with the players involved that conversations about wagering on WNBA games, even when intended as a joke, can have negative consequences.”

The league emphasized the players would receive no punishment for the bet but it also brought up the reality that athletes like to place friendly wagers with each other and that some bets are just immaterial.

How Gambling Rules Have Changed for NCAA Athletes

From "Don't Bet on It" to "Draw the Line"

The NCAA was the first league to effectively threaten athlete’s careers with their "Don’t Bet on It" education campaign launched in 2005, but they softened it over the years, especially after the Supreme Court overturned PASPA and in 2024. Then they changed it to the "Draw the Line" education campaign which just tells athletes to not go overboard and know which sports they can and can’t bet on.

Why the NCAA now allows betting on many professional sports

In 2023 the league allowed student athletes to bet on sports that the NCAA has no affiliation such as NASCAR, F1 or Cricket and in 2025 they allowed student athletes and executives to bet on professional sports too, including sports the NCAA offered, such as Football, Basketball, Hockey, Baseball and Golf, among others. The caveat was that players or executives couldn’t wager on anything they had inside information for and they were still barred from betting on college sports. The reasoning given by Dr. Deena Casiero, the NCAA chief medical officer for allowing players to now bet on professional sports as stated in a press release was as follows:

"This harm-reduction approach gives schools an opportunity to help student-athletes make informed decisions, prevent risky behavior, and seek professional help.”

The truth is that the NCAA realized that athletes bet and that with gambling so prevalent in the U.S. these days, and in many ways encouraged, they were fighting a losing battle trying to ban it, anymore than abstinence campaigns didn’t stop students from having sex.

Professional Sports Have Always Had a Complex Relationship With Gambling

So what about the pros?

Pete Rose and baseball's most famous betting scandal

Prior to PASPA being passed by the courts in 1992, the leagues went out of their way to ignore betting that came to light by star players with one notable exception, Pete Rose. On August 24, 1989 Rose was banned from baseball, including eligibility for the Hall of Fame, after the Dowd report proved that Rose bet on baseball games, including those involving the Cincinnati Reds while serving as player-manager for the team. Commissioner Bart Giamatti deemed the misconduct so severe it necessitated a lifetime ban. Rose admitted to betting on games but insisted he never bet against the Reds. He fought for years to clear his name and actually set up a table outside Cooperstown during induction ceremonies, selling autographs, taking pictures with fans and getting signatures to try to get his Hall of Fame ban lifted. Rose’s ban stayed in place until May 2025 when Pete Rose posthumously had his ban lifted by MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred, after President Donald Trump insisted he was wronged and should be in the Hall of Fame. As of now Rose is not in the Hall, but likely will be inducted in the next couple of years.

What was not said by Manfred, but is clearly implied by the lifting of the ban, is that sports leagues are between a rock and a hard place. MLB and all the other professional leagues are in bed with the gambling companies, so any suggestions of concern about athlete’s betting is viewed as almost a joke. They scream “don’t bet” out of one side of the mouth but also encourage fans to bet on games so they can make more money out of the other side. It’s hypocritical and is reminiscent of the movie Casablanca when Captain Renault shuts down Rick’s Café and when Rick asks why Renault says he’s “shocked to find out that gambling is going on here” while a croupier hands Renault his gambling winnings.  

Michael Jordan, Charles Barkley and other high-profile wagering stories

But, as stated earlier, professional players have been betting on games including in their own sport for years, they just haven’t made it public and if there is no proof, the leagues have no desire to look for it voluntarily. Michael Jordan, for example, is a notorious large bettor and has admitted to betting considerable amounts on golf, poker and card games. He also famously wrote a $57,000 check to a convicted felon and NHL player Jeremy Roenick admitted he made a friendly wager with Michael Jordan on how many points Jordan would score in an upcoming Bulls game while they were golfing together. When it came to light the NBA was silent, but if they said anything they would have  just dismissed it as a friendly lighthearted wager similar to the one between Reese and Bueckers. Similarly, Charles Barkley has admitted to betting millions of dollars but insisted he never bet on basketball although there is much speculation that he in fact did. And most notably Phil Mickelson is known to have made friendly wagers with golfers on non-PGA sanctioned events and was heard at some events betting with others whether a golfer would hole out a bucker shot. Again these are ignored because they are friendly wagers that do not affect the outcome of the event. But in his book, Billy Walters said that Mickelson approached him asking Walters to place a $400,000 in a Ryder Cup event he was playing in. There’s no evidence that he made the bet, however, and the PGA was certainly not going to launch an investigation into their second biggest star at the time.

The Shohei Ohtani investigation and public perception

More recently when there was suspicion that Shohei Ohtani may have wagered on games, it seemed that MLB didn’t want to know. They launched an investigation but it wrapped up very quickly compared to similar investigations and many people still feel it was too convenient that the interpreter took the fall and the matter was simply closed with no further inquiry. Make no mistake, there is no proof whatsoever that Ohtani wagered on baseball, but it does raise the question how far the league would have gone to look into it considering Ohtani is the face of the game?

When there was clear and obvious evidence of players betting on their own games like Jontay Porter of the Toronto Raptors, Tucupita Marcano of the Padres, and both Luis Ortiz and Emmanuel Clase of the Cleveland Guardians, then the league had no choice but to suspend them and eventually charge the players. But what is notable is that in all those cases, with the exception of Clase, the players were far from big names. I spoke to a gambling analyst about the WNBA bet and suspensions of players over the years and he said that if it’s a real star the attitude is hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil. He said that he is convinced that had Pete Rose’s gambling come to light while he was in his prime, MLB would have done its best to sweep it under the rug because losing his bat would have lost destroyed the Big Red Machine that dominated the game throughout the 1970s. At the end he was just a disposable manager who hit in a few games. I’m not sure that’s accurate, however since Bowie Kuhn, who was MLB commissioner in the 1970s and early 1980s suspended both Willie Mays in 1979 and Mickey Mantle in 1983 for taking jobs as casino ambassadors, although it is notable that the only active player Kuhn suspended was Denny McLain who was suspended three months for bookmaking. It’s hard to believe that at least some MLBers bet on sports during Kuhn’s reign.

Why Sports Leagues Face a Gambling Double Standard

That brings us back to Reese and Bueckers. Aside from Caitlin Clark these are two of the biggest names in the WNBA so one has to wonder if it would have been treated the same by the league if it was two lesser players in the league who were making a wager on a game? Chances are the response would have been different and without question if it was Caitlin Clark making a wager with another player on a game, the WNBA would have done everything possible to quickly dismiss her of any wrongdoing.

Promoting sportsbooks while discouraging player betting

But the real question that has to be asked is whether the gambling ban on players is realistic or whether it’s time to put in rules that allows for gambling even on their sports while at the same time protecting integrity?

Why a $400 wager may not threaten game integrity

Let’s be honest, is a $400 bet between two star WNBA players or a $100 by Phil Mickelson dangerous to the sport? Of course not.  Reports show that Angel Reese makes about $350,000 a year plus up to $9 million in endorsements while Paige Bueckers makes around $500,000 a year and millions more in endorsements. And Mickelson when he made the bet was worth over a hundred million dollars. So who really cares if they did indeed make a friendly wager with each other? The fact the WNBA originally highlighted the bet on social media believing it could actually make them look cool with fans is indication enough that the amount was so irrelevant that no one would view it as athletes making an illegal wager but rather a bet that friends make with each other all the time.

So, the gambling analyst and I talked it over and agreed that leagues could save themselves a lot of frustration if they put in rules that made sense. Here were some guidelines we thought were realistic for professional sports. Note we both agreed that student athletes should not be betting on NCAA sports under any circumstances since as students there is a far greater chance of being corrupted, particularly if they are in debt.

Should Friendly Bets Between Professional Athletes Be Allowed?

The difference between friendly wagers and illegal gambling

But for professional athletes we feel that they should be able bet on games in their own sport, including games they are involved in as long as it’s a friendly wager as outlined below:

 - Friendly wagers are capped at $500 and can only be made with a player on the opposite team and must be on their own team winning.
 - Wagers can only be on the winner of the game and not on total points or any props. This applies to for any bets on games in their own sport they aren’t playing.
 - Wagers must be made transparently and cannot involve any gambling sites or bookmakers
 - Any bets using insider information are strictly prohibited.

Ironically this rule has been used in horse racing for decades. Owners and trainers can bet on their own horses to win and while jockeys are banned from wagering, everybody in the sport knows it happens all the time - usually with the jockey using a proxy to place the bet. The industry just turns a blind eye to the wagering and will only call a jockey to task if he’s dumb enough to admit he wagered on a horse. Horse racing authorities are usually far more concerned with jockeys that cheat to win races or if they are acting cruelly to the horse by such things as using the whip unnecessarily or too hard.

So, the WNBA has egg on its face and it really only has itself to blame. Instead of the self-righteous comments they made after the social media post was taken down, the league probably could have said something like “this was a friendly wager of an insignificant amount between friends on their own teams to win. While we will never condone players making large wagers, or betting on props, we have to realize there is a difference between a friendly wager and a bet that could influence the outcome of the games.”

Is that too far? Many traditionalists will say yes. But the reason sports betting is so prevalent in the United States today and so widely accepted is because in 2014 Adam Silver had the guts to print an op-ed piece in the New York Times titled "Legalize and Regulate Sports Betting."  In the piece he said that it’s time to face reality. People bet, so why don’t we do something that is realistic while also protecting the integrity of the sport. It seems to apply here as well.

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