What Is Official Betting?
Official betting is bets placed at sportsbooks based on statistics, results and other information provided by the governing body of a given sport. These bets are popular in the US, where legal sports betting has quickly grown since the Supreme Court struck down PASPA. The push for official data has replaced the leagues’ quest for integrity fees as a key front in their struggle to shape US state and federal policy on sports gambling.
While some states have enacted laws mandating the use of official betting data, others are avoiding such restrictions. For example, Tennessee and Illinois only require the use of official league data for Tier 2 sports wagers, which are bets not based on the final score or outcome of a game. Tier 1 wagers can be graded without official data, so this requirement is essentially an artificial constraint on the marketplace.
In MLB, a number of rules exist to govern official betting. For example, inning bets will only be void if the game is called in that inning and the official result reverts to the previous one. This rule is meant to protect the integrity of the game.
Moreover, any player or employee of the NBA may not place bets on any NBA-related property, including the NBA, G-League, Basketball Africa League and NBA2K League. Additionally, players and employees are only permitted to bet on non-NBA events if they are outside of team facilities and on NBA teams if they are at home.