Professional sports leagues using mob techniques on Las Vegas sportsbooks

For many decades, the existence of regulated sports betting in Las Vegas was used as a reason to prevent the city of Las Vegas from having any professional sports teams. Having a team in a town that offered gambling would simply be too enticing to organized crime, which would almost certainly use their influence to fix games. That’s what the American sports leagues (NFL, MLB, NBA, NHL, and NCAA) argued anyways.
As it turns out, those leagues learned a thing or two from the Mob that they’re using to shake down Las Vegas sportsbooks for the, so-called, integrity fee (or cut of the action) they’ve been unable to legally get from sportsbooks in any US State. According to a report on Sportshandle.com, the leagues are threatening to cut off sportsbooks from Sportsradar – their official data stream – unless they’re paid a .25 percent royalty on each wager made. Coincidentally, this is the same amount they’ve been unsuccessfully demanding as an integrity fee from US State’s that are legalizing sports betting.
Robert Walker, Director of Sports Book Operations for Nevada-based bookmaker USBookmaking told Sportshandle that sportsbook operators are reluctant to go on record about the shakedown but added, “My sources tell me the demand is coming from the data provider, Betradar. I don’t know if the leagues actually reached out themselves. I think they’re strong arming Betradar, who is coming back and saying this is what we have to get.”
The good news is that, apparently, the leagues have been threatening to shut off the flow of information for over a month, and even set an April 13 deadline, but haven’t had any operators cave to their demands.
Are the leagues using their Las Vegas shakedown as a laboratory for extorting fees from regulated sportsbooks in other states? Is this a case of, “That’s a real nice live betting setup you’ve got there. It’d be a shame if something bad happened to it…”? Time will tell, but despite their use of the term, “integrity fee”, the professional sports leagues have, time and time again, proven themselves unworthy of the term.