Matthew Wein is a former government security official who worked at DHS and the U.S. Committee on Homeland Security. He now writes the Secure Stakes Substack Newsletter and owns Wein Security Lab consulting.
At the end of May Olympic Gold Medal sprinter Gabby Thomas was heckled and harassed at a track meet by a man who had bet against her. Following her exit at the French Open, Jessica Pegula detailed the threats she receives via social media from gamblers. Earlier this spring, Houston Astros pitcher Lance McCullers and his family were on the receiving end of death threats from what turned out to be a drunken gambler who lost his wager. Liam Hendrinks also received death threats via social media connected to his play this season.
More and more athletes are starting to go on the record saying that there is a correlation between sports gambling and the threats they receive. To borrow a phrase from the national security world—it seems the lights on the alarm are all blinking red right now. The problem is that no one seems to be paying attention.
To be clear, I think anyone who has been courtside at an NBA game or been in the stands at an SEC football rivalry game knows that fans are passionate. Fans can get into a back and forth with players on the bench. Fans can use harsh, even personal language.
That is not what I’m talking about though. As a former intelligence and security professional I am talking about bettors who either take out the frustrations of their loss on players regardless of whether the player actually performed well or not. Or even worse, bettors who try to distort fair play to cash in on their wagers. Either way fans and athletes are put in harms’ way and the integrity of the game is called into question. This will eventually pull at the fabric of a key thread of our social fabric– sports.
The arc of this story is not necessarily a unique one. We’ve seen it in the political arena play out over the last decade or so, where the temperature of the rhetoric between politicians, political operatives, pundits, and everyday Americans has risen to include violent language and threats.
Since 2017, according to data compiled by the University of Nebraska at Omaha’s NCITE, threats to public officials has risen each year—and two out of every five of those threats were directed at elected officials. There were several instances of actual violence that followed, but the two most high profile examples are certainly the attempt on President Donald Trump’s life in the summer of 2024, and the attack on then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s home in Oct 2022.
Given that we’ve seen how this story can end, and given that we are seeing a tremendous amount of growth both in terms of the number of people gambling on sports and the amount they are wagering, I think there are enough data points now to say that there needs to be some structural changes in how we protect athletes and the public spaces where they compete.
Giving every athlete across the globe his or her own security detail is not a serious solution, nor does that do anything to protect fans who are there to enjoy the competition. Further, that step does not do anything to maintain the integrity of sports that might be affected by an athlete looking to gain an advantage for their bet by disrupting fair play.
This issue is not a simple one though. Sports are a key part of our social fabric. People start playing sports and watching sports as little kids. Fan affinities are passed down through generations. Teams are important economic engines to communities to say nothing of what they can do to bring people together.
I bring this up because I don’t think it is sufficient to keep the public the bay and claim that security needs must be planned and implemented behind closed doors in order to preserve operational security. Fans need to be able to trust that when their teams or their favorite athletes take the field that games are on the level. They also need to be able to trust that when they go to a game that the person next to them isn’t there to intimidate a competitor with threats (implied or explicit) of violence. So, they need to see what steps are being taken—that there is a strategy and a vision to maintain fair play and a safe environment.
Beyond these emotional connections the variety of stakeholders including teams, leagues, betting platforms, players unions, law enforcement, stadium owners and operators and social media companies make this a complex problem to solve. But none of those stakeholders can afford to pretend the problem doesn’t exist. If they do, they risk violence leaving a stain on sports gambling that will be difficult to erase. There is an opportunity now for teams, leagues, and players to work together with law enforcement to lay out deterrents, highlight prevention, and coordinate across lines of business to keep everyone safe.
