The “fraudulent” betting scandal that recently rocked the NBA has regulators in Virginia rethinking whether the state’s sportsbooks should be offering certain markets for wagering.
- Following an NBA insider-betting scandal, Virginia regulators are reconsidering which sports betting markets should be allowed in the state.
- The Virginia Lottery Board discussed potential restrictions, particularly on NBA-related wagers, despite no evidence of suspicious betting occurring locally.
- Lawmakers in Virginia and other states may soon tighten regulations on certain betting markets amid growing integrity concerns across professional sports.
Members of the Virginia Lottery Board met on Thursday and received an update from executive director Khalid Jones that touched on the recent NBA betting controversy and the regulator’s plans in the wake of that scandal.
The controversy, according to U.S. law enforcement, involves former and current NBA players and allegations of using “non-public” information to make “fraudulent” wagers with sportsbooks.
Jones said on Thursday that the Virginia sports betting regulator is already talking about measures it might put in place following last week’s news.
Measure twice, cut once
While there is no evidence any of the suspicious wagering happened in Virginia, it happened in betting markets and on platforms that are available in the state, the director said.
The Virginia sports betting regulator doesn’t plan on waiting for an incident to happen in its backyard first before acting. However, it will conduct more research on the subject before a potential crackdown on certain sports betting markets.
“When we feel like we have good information on it, and that's going to happen quickly, this research, we will move to … potentially restrict certain markets from a sports betting standpoint, particularly with respect to NBA,” Jones told the board members.
Given the explosiveness of the latest betting-related scandal, legislative and regulatory action of some sort of action (or attempted action) may have been inevitable.
Virginia may not be the only state where regulators are thinking along the lines of further restricting what people can bet on, either.
In Ohio and New Jersey, for example, some lawmakers have proposed banning “microbetting” markets. Lawmakers in other states and in Washington, D.C., may be eyeing potential action as well, especially with Congressional committee members pushing the NBA for more information.
A move to restrict more betting markets could also be welcomed by the leagues, particularly the NBA, which recently sent a memo to teams saying that “proposition bets on individual player performance involve heightened integrity concerns and require additional scrutiny.”
In the wake of the NBA betting scandal, the league and its partner sportsbooks continue to review what types of bets are most vulnerable to manipulation and how much bettors should be allowed to wager on such bets.https://t.co/OEc5VGvhsy
— David Payne Purdum (@DavidPurdum) October 30, 2025
So, there could be more to come from the leagues and states about what they believe should be offered by sportsbooks and bet on by customers. That said, there are other things states are worrying about at the moment, namely unauthorized, unregulated, or unwanted online gambling.
Jones told the board that they do not have the same enforcement powers as some other state regulators do. However, he also said that they are beginning to draft letters to unlicensed gambling operators regarding their activities in the commonwealth.
The Virginia Lottery is also keeping an eye on the rise of prediction markets, even if the state regulator may not have enforcement tools to directly go after those federally regulated exchanges.
“We are monitoring to make sure that we're protecting our legal marketplace,” Jones said.
