On November 4, when New Yorkers were flocking to the polls to choose a new mayor, a former college assistant volleyball coach received a two-year show-cause order. For the next two years, if he gets a job, Brett Agne is required to attend meaningful sports betting education and provide training for his peers. He is not allowed to coach for 10 games in 2026 or talk to any other coaches or athletes.
Agne committed the crime of gambling on sports in 2023 or before. He placed 700 bets totaling $327,000; none of the bets were on his team, though some were on teams in other sports at his college, Indiana University.
Over the previous weekend, sportsbooks in Las Vegas refunded bets on an Ultimate Fighting Championship event. The books noted unusual wagering activity and termed the bets and the contest invalid for their purposes. The UFC responded, “Like many professional sports organizations, UFC works with an independent betting integrity service to monitor wagering activity on our events. Our betting integrity partner, IC360, monitors wagering on every UFC event and is conducting a thorough review of the facts surrounding the Dulgarian vs. del Valle bout on Saturday, Nov. 1. We take these allegations very seriously and along with the health and safety of our fighters, nothing is more important than the integrity of our sport.”
In today’s world, no athlete, team, or league wants to be caught in the crosshairs of illegal gambling on sports. But that has not stopped the incidents from occurring and recurring. There is some bright news in these revelations: There is a system in place that works. Unusual betting patterns are discernible and send an alert, one that bookmakers heed. That does not stop a coach in Indiana from betting when it is against the rules or a fighter losing on purpose, but it does offer some safeguards against gamblers distorting the outcome of an athletic contest.
These recent events will have no impact on the “Operation Nothing But Bet” and “Operation Royal Flush” investigations. The fallout from those will continue until it runs out of steam, a low bar in a world of 24-hour news cycles. Politicians don’t have long attention spans; regulators do, but regulators depend on lawmakers to change courses. The news media, too, will tire of the issue as soon as they smell fresh blood somewhere else.
What about in the long term? Are sports betting and the business of sports fixed and permanent? That is not a question we can answer from here. In fact, the final answer will probably not be available in my lifetime. That does not prevent me from thinking about it. In a recent conversation, a friend told me of another friend who is a fierce sports fan, but his children do not share his passion. That simple statement suggested a line of thought that is far beyond 2025. If that friend’s children are not very interested in watching sports with their father, then their children might have absolutely no interest.
Where would that leave sports? It would mean a slow decline in the popularity of sports, with fewer players, fewer fans, and fewer bettors. Could sports be just a fad that lasts 100, 150, or even 200 years? That is inconceivable to us, because we are rooted in our time and place.
The planet is littered with the skeletons of civilizations lost, hidden beneath the dust and dirt of history. Some have been found, thousands have not. When modern scientists find one, they always ask the same question: What happened to it?
The answers are related to the training, place, time and worldview of any given scientist. Was it war, climate change, volcanoes, fires, a tsunami, economic collapse, a plague, or something as yet unknown? We never know for sure. We know they were there and thriving and then they were not, but the whys are hotly debated. Could it be their children lost interest in watching football games with their fathers and went on a walk, read social-media posts, or traveled to Egypt to the new museum?
It is possible that the current betting flurry is short-term and will fade. The growth rate of betting is hardly sustainable. Sustainability of any growth trend is more than a challenge, it is impossible. Mathematic progressions can, in theory, be without end, but not so in practice. A runner can train properly and improve, slowly and steadily, but there is a limit to that progression. The runner comes up against the limits of his body and the process of aging. Las Vegas is up against one of those limits. The revenue has gone up and up and up and up. But it will not continue forever; the city and its host desert will not sustain a $3-billion-a-month industry, one with a million hotel rooms and 100 million or 150 million visits a day.
The gaming industry may be approaching a tipping point, a transition from one state to another. The change could be driven by gambling crooks, futures markets, demographics, internal factors, or the natural limits imposed on gaming corporations; they are not Google, Apple, Microsoft, or Amazon. They have a limited audience and financial resources. If it is a problem, it is only in the very long term. Today, it is just the case of an imagination gone wild.
