Spread betting is any of various types of wagering on the outcome of an event where the pay-off is based on the accuracy of the wager, rather than a simple "win or lose" outcome, such as fixed-odds betting or parimutuel betting.
In organized sports, match fixing is the act of playing or officiating a contest with the intention of achieving a predetermined result, violating the rules of the game and often the law. There are many reasons why match fixing might take place, including receiving bribes from bookmakers or sports bettors, and blackmail. Competitors may also intentionally perform poorly to gain a future advantage, such as a better draft pick or to face an easier opponent in a later round of competition. A player might also play poorly to rig a handicap system.
Cornelius Lance "Connie" Hawkins was an American professional basketball player. A New York City playground legend, "the Hawk" was inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in 1992.
Sports betting is the activity of predicting sports results and placing a wager on the outcome.
A sportsbook is a venue where a gambler can wager on various sports competitions, such as golf, football, basketball, baseball, ice hockey, soccer, horse racing, greyhound racing, boxing, and mixed martial arts. The method of betting varies with the sport and the type of game. In the US, the Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act of 1992 allowed only Nevada, Oregon, Montana, and Delaware to legally wager on sports other than horse racing, greyhound racing, and jai alai; the law was ruled unconstitutional on May 14, 2018, freeing states to legalize sports betting at their discretion.
Stevin L. "Hedake" Smith is an American former professional basketball player, who is also known for his involvement in the 1994 Arizona State point-shaving scandal.
Ralph Milton Beard Jr. was an American collegiate and professional basketball player. He won two NCAA national basketball championships at the University of Kentucky and played two years in the National Basketball Association prior to being barred for life for his participation in the 1951 point shaving scandal.
Jacob Louis Molinas was an American professional basketball player, playing first for Columbia University, in New York City, and later briefly in the early National Basketball Association (NBA) with the Fort Wayne Pistons. He also played for multiple minor league franchises and teams after his brief NBA stint during the 1950s and early 1960s. During that period of time, he supposedly became an associate of the Genovese crime family due to his association with a couple of people there, and he later became a key figure in one of the most wide-reaching point shaving cheating scandals in college basketball history.
Eugene "Squeaky" Melchiorre was an American basketball player. A point guard, he was drafted by the Baltimore Bullets and was the first overall pick in the 1951 NBA draft. Melchiorre never played an NBA game due to his lifetime ban from the league for point shaving when he was a college player.
The 1978–79 Boston College basketball point-shaving scandal involved a scheme in which members of the American Mafia recruited and bribed several Boston College Eagles men's basketball players to ensure the team would not win by the required margin or win by the required margin, allowing gamblers in the know to place wagers against that team and win.
Timothy Francis Donaghy is a disgraced former professional basketball referee who worked in the National Basketball Association (NBA) for 13 seasons from 1994 to 2007 until he was caught in a gambling scandal. During his career in the NBA, Donaghy officiated in 772 regular season games and 26 playoff games.
The CCNY point-shaving scandal of 1951 was a college basketball point-shaving gambling scandal that officially involved seven American colleges and universities in all, with four of these schools being in the New York metropolitan area, two of them occurring in the Midwest, and one of them being in the South. However, at least one other player from the Ivy League in New York would also be considered involved in the scandal retroactively. Furthermore, it was alleged that the reach of this scandal went as far as the West Coast of the United States out in California and Oregon through attempts to fix games out there. While the starting point wasn't from the CCNY nor did that college have the most implicated players involved from the event, the scandal became notable and infamous during that period of time due to the number of players in the scandal being players of the collegiate dual tournament champion 1949–50 CCNY Beavers men's basketball team. It was also seen as the biggest tipping point that threatened the integrity of college basketball's very existence at the time.
The 2007 NBA betting scandal was a scandal involving the National Basketball Association (NBA) and accusations that an NBA referee used his knowledge of relationships between referees, coaches, players and owners to bet on professional basketball games. In July 2007, reports of an investigation by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) were made public, which alleged that during the 2005–06 and 2006–07 NBA seasons, referee Tim Donaghy bet on games in which he officiated. Donaghy later admitted to betting on games he officiated in each of the 2003–04, 2004–05, 2005–06, and 2006–07 seasons.
Irwin Dambrot was an American basketball player, best known for his college career at the City College of New York.
William Edwin Spivey was an American basketball player. A 7 ft 0 in (2.13 m) center, he played college basketball for the National Collegiate Athletic Association's (NCAA) Kentucky Wildcats from 1949 to 1951. After his high school career, Spivey was recruited by the University of Kentucky. During his time with the Wildcats, he led the team to the 1951 NCAA tournament championship. When a point shaving scandal was revealed that year, Spivey was accused of being involved, which he denied. He left the Wildcats in December 1951, and the university banned him from the squad in March 1952.
Sherman White was an American basketball player at Long Island University (LIU) who is best remembered for being indicted in a point shaving scandal that resulted in him being stripped of numerous honors and awards, having to serve an 8-month jail sentence, and being prohibited from ever playing in the National Basketball Association (NBA). As a college senior in 1950–51, White was the nation's leading scorer at 27.7 points per game and was only 77 total points shy of becoming the National Collegiate Athletic Association's (NCAA) all-time single season leading scorer when he was caught, thus forcing him to prematurely quit and never getting to finish his college basketball career.
Norman Clifford Mager was an American professional basketball player who played in the National Basketball Association for the Baltimore Bullets during the 1950–51 NBA season. Mager is also notable as a key member of the 1949–50 CCNY Beavers men's basketball team, the only team in NCAA history to win both the National Invitation Tournament and NCAA tournament in the same year.
During the 1960–61 NCAA University Division men's basketball season, a major gambling scandal involving a former NBA All-Star basketball player and many members of organized crime syndicates broke through which had ultimately been years in the making. The scandal involved 37 arrests of students from 22 different colleges, as well as at least nine players that received money from fixers or gamblers that were never convicted of crimes, eight go-betweens being prosecuted for their efforts in the scandal, and two players being shown to have received bribe offers without reporting them to proper authorities. Not only that, but close to fifty people who had associated ties with the scandal were reported to have been permanently banned from the NBA as well as a result of this case, including future Hall of Fame players Connie Hawkins and Roger Brown, thus making this case more infamous in terms of results and impact than the CCNY point-shaving scandal from a decade prior. However, it is slated that hundreds more players alongside 43 other college basketball games were controlled throughout the scandal by comparison.
Jontay Porter is an American professional basketball player who last played for the Toronto Raptors of the National Basketball Association (NBA). On April 17, 2024, after four seasons playing in the NBA and in the NBA's developmental G League, Porter was banned for life by the NBA for violating their gambling policies. The scandal would later result in him facing criminal charges. He played college basketball for the Missouri Tigers. Porter was previously listed as a recruit under the Class of 2018 before reclassifying up a year to join his older brother, Michael Porter Jr., at Missouri.
Kevin Pendergast is a former American football and soccer player. He was the most valuable player for the Notre Dame soccer team before Coach Lou Holtz recruited him to play for the football team as a placekicker. In 1998, he pleaded guilty to conspiring with players from Northwestern University's basketball team to engage in point shaving in three games.
