Ontario’s chief gambling regulator claims ‘system is working’, as OPP opens investigation into Jontay Porter scandal

The head of Ontario’s provincial gambling regulator said on Wednesday that the sports betting scandal that ensnared the former Toronto Raptor, Jontay Porter – which the Ontario Provincial Police disclosed this week it was investigating – and other high-profile incidents are proof that “the system is working” to help ensure the integrity of games and gambling.

“We will unfortunately see more and more of these,” said Karin Schnarr, the CEO of the Alcohol and Gaming Commission of Ontario, in an interview with The Globe and Mail. “To me, that shows me we’re actually catching them.”

But industry veterans say much more government action is needed before sufficient safeguards are in place to protect the integrity of pro sports, and athletes themselves, from the sort of predatory behaviour that Porter is alleged to have fallen victim to.

In a statement to The Globe on Wednesday, the OPP confirmed it is looking into two Raptors games played in Toronto, for which Porter shared information about his personal health, enabling others to bet on his performance.

“I am able to confirm that the OPP is conducting a criminal investigation into online betting irregularities arising from the January 26, 2024, and March 20, 2024, Raptors games in Toronto,” said a statement sent to The Globe by Sergeant Robert Simpson. “The OPP will conduct a complete and thorough investigation into all circumstances surrounding the events and any suspicious activity arising from those two games.”

Earlier this month, New York State authorities charged four men with conspiring to defraud a sport betting company, using information that is believed to have come from Porter. (Porter himself was not charged.) In the criminal complaint, an unidentified basketball player believed to be Porter, who had “significant gambling debts,” agreed to “do a special” – provide information about his health and pull himself out of games to ensure a bet about his performance would succeed. In a text, the player said to one of the men that he believed if he didn’t do as he was told, “you’re coming to Toronto to beat me up.”

In April, the NBA banned Porter for life after a brief investigation.

The Porter incident is only one of many such black marks that have been mushrooming across the landscape of professional sports, with players in all four North American major leagues implicated.

The baseball season opened under a cloud after the long-time interpreter of Shohei Ohtani was charged with stealing millions of dollars from the star player to pay off his sports gambling debts. This month, Major League Baseball banned the San Diego Padres infielder, Tucupita Marcano, for life after discovering he had bet on hundreds of baseball games, including ones in which he had played last season as a member of the Pittsburgh Pirates.

“If we look at what’s going on in sports betting and player wagering, you look and you say, ‘Oh that’s terrible, players are wagering on their own sports games,’” said Schnarr, in comments during a panel discussion at the Canadian Gaming Summit in Toronto.

“We have a system now, because of independent integrity monitors, because of our operators reporting it to us, that we’re catching these things. Leagues take action, players are banned. If we didn’t have a regulated market, with all of this data that we’re now seeing from operators which allows you to catch these things, I think the sports betting would stay in the grey zone. So, I’m encouraged by that. The system is working.”

But industry experts say the case highlights how much more still needs to be done. When the Porter scandal broke in April, Jeremy Luke, the president and CEO of the Canadian Centre for Ethics in Sport, told The Globe that match manipulation needs to be confronted with a similar force and strategy as doping in professional sports, by educating athletes on the associated risks and developing legal mechanisms that can grapple with the international nature of the problem.

In March, the CCES called on the federal government to become a signatory to the Macolin Convention, a multilateral treaty that aims to prevent, detect, and punish match fixing. “In Canada, that would mean regulations within provinces, communication between provinces, communication between betting operators and regulators and law enforcement, and potentially criminalizing match fixing within the criminal code,” Luke said.

Still, he acknowledged that, like doping, match manipulation would likely continue to be a fact of life in sports. “It’s a risk that I don’t think will ever ultimately go away,” he said. “I think the goal … is to mitigate that risk as much as we possibly can.”