It has become a postgame ritual in the biggest professional sports leagues: A player finishes a game, grabs their phone, scrolls past messages from loved ones and checks to see if any of the death threats from sports bettors seem credible.
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The abuse has become common enough that on Tuesday, the NFL, MLB, MLS, NBA and NHL — along with their respective players’ associations — sent a letter to gaming regulators in 35 states and D.C. regarding what it calls an “escalating threat facing professional players, coaches, and officials: the continued harassment and violent threats from sports bettors.”
The signatories call on regulators to require sportsbooks to ban users who harass athletes or team personnel, to create a better reporting mechanism for threats and to require sportsbooks to monitor and flag accounts linked to abuse.
Since sports betting became a state issue in 2018 — and most states legalized the practice — the industry has exploded: Americans legally bet $166.94 billion on sports in 2025, an 11 percent increase from 2024, according to the American Gaming Association.
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The leagues and unions deserve credit for trying to solve a problem, but they also deserve some blame for helping to create it: All five leagues have signed deals with sportsbooks.
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