On Wednesday, April 17th, 2024, NBA player Jontay Porter was issued a lifetime ban from the league following an investigation that confirmed the Toronto Raptor’s forward-center was involved in illegal sports betting. There have been many instances in which a player gets suspended from their sport for involvement in sports betting, however this is one of the few cases where a player has been permanently banned from a sport.

How does “sports betting” work?

Many different sites like PrizePicks, DraftKings, and Chalkboard allow users to bet on whether a player will go under or over a certain statistic. For example, one can bet on Jaylen Brown getting more than four rebounds throughout a game. When making bets, you can put multiple different people in the same entry which will result in a higher payout if all bets are correct. This method, called a parlay, is very popular amongst sports betters. Users rely on information like injury news, past statistics, and the other teams lineup to make decisions for these bets.

Porter’s illegal betting method consisted of many different components. Firstly, he was not able to create an account under his name on DraftKings so instead, he used an associates name. Then, he disclosed confidential information regarding his own health to big sports betters so they knew for sure that their bets would be correct on the game. Knowing his condition, Porter would purposefully ask to be taken out the game in order to ensure that he would not go over any statistic that sports books had him at for the day.

It did not take long before DraftKings caught on to Jontay Porter. They noticed very unusual activity during certain games that Porter would play in. The site observed that many users were betting the under on all statistics for the player these nights. Coincidentally, Porter would only play less than five minutes before being taken out the game for “illness”. It was not hard for DraftKings to see the suspicious activity. Porter, under his associate’s name, made an 80,000 dollar bet that had potential to make him 1.1 million dollars. The bet was correct, but was frozen by the site in order to further investigate these out of the ordinary plays. After a full investigation, it was confirmed that Porter was violating the league’s rules involving sports gambling and he was issued a lifetime ban from the NBA.