Over/Under/Suspended: Gambling Suspensions Need A Closer Look

In October 2023, a gambling scandal shook the soccer world: Sandro Tonali, Newcastle’s brand new, €70 million centerpiece had been found in breach of Italian gambling rules and received a ten-month world-wide ban from playing soccer for anyone anywhere.¹ The news of Tonali’s suspension came on the heels of fellow Italian international, Nicolo Fagioli, being found guilty of breaching the same rules and receiving a seven-month ban. Tonali was found to have bet on his own team while playing for them, while Fagioli did not place bets on his own team, which factored into his suspension.² But they are not the first soccer stars, let alone players, to have been found guilty of these breaches. Earlier in 2023, Ivan Toney, an Englishman playing for Brentford in the English Premier League, was found guilty of violating the English Football Association’s (FA) gambling policy and was suspended for eight months.³ Athletes gambling is not a new phenomenon, however, nor is it limited to Europe or soccer.

Many Americans know about the “Black Sox” scandal in the 1919 World Series, or how Pete Rose’s gambling habits led to his eventual permanent ban from baseball in 1989.⁴ These incidents caused harm to the athlete’s image, the integrity of the game, and the League itself. Since then, sports betting has become more prevalent and even legalized in various states.⁵ In 2018, the Supreme Court decided Murphy v. NCAA and allowed each individual state to establish its own sports betting laws.⁶ To protect the integrity of the game, professional American sports leagues have enforced gambling policies to discourage players from gambling. Unfortunately, that has not stopped athletes from placing bets. A recent example is NFL wide receiver Calvin Ridley, currently playing for the Jacksonville Jaguars, who placed a few bets during the 2021 season while with the Atlanta Falcons. Ridley was away from the Falcons for personal reasons at the time and did not play for the remainder of the 2021 season.⁷ After the NFL’s investigation, Ridley received an indefinite suspension which lasted for all of the 2022 season.⁸ He has since been reinstated.⁹

Taken at face value, these suspensions seem pretty similar. Professional athletes, who are subject to rules or laws to not gamble on their sport (or any sports), broke those rules and consequently were suspended. Yet the quantity and quality of the bets pose some interesting questions about the variation in punishment. Toney was charged with 232 breaches of English gambling rules over four years, thirteen of which included bets placed on his current team to lose!¹⁰ That is exactly the type of activity that these rules were created to stop because they directly threaten the integrity of the sport, harming fans, sponsors, the clubs, and the leagues. Yet Toney only received an eight-month suspension, a penalty that was mitigated because he cooperated with authorities and pleaded guilty to the allegations.¹¹ Compare that with Ridley’s suspension, which, while “indefinite”, was in effect a one-year suspension. He placed a few bets over a couple days while he was away from his team, not playing, some of which were not even bets on football. Even with cooperation and remorse, Ridley still was kept out for an entire year.¹²

It is important to acknowledge that to a certain extent, we are comparing apples and oranges; gambling regulation varies by state, country, league, governing body, international organization, and cultural forces. There is a lot more behind why a player is suspended than just how many bets they placed and who they bet on. But there is an important lesson in the European soccer cases that transcends these differences. In each case, the players’ were addicted to gambling.¹³ Addiction has no borders, it does not play within the rules, and without help and treatment it is not likely to go away.

The Italian FA has the ability to suspend players for a minimum of three years, yet they chose to give Tonali an 18-month suspension and further reduced it to 10 months, with the eight reduced months being used for treatment.¹⁴ Fagioli, just twenty-two years old, had racked up almost €3 million in debt and was borrowing money from teammates to avoid the people he owed money to from “break[ing his] legs.”¹⁵ His addiction even impacted his performance; as he got substituted off during a match in April 2023, Fagioli was seen crying on the sideline, not because he had been subbed off, but because he was thinking about his debt.¹⁶ He came clean to the Italian FA and worked to reduce his suspension from three years to twelve months and then to seven months, with the five-month reduction being “alternative requirements” fulfilled via treatment and other engagements.¹⁷

In Commissioner Goodell’s statement suspending Ridley, he harped on how Ridley’s actions “put the integrity of the game at risk, threatened to damage public confidence in professional football, and potentially undermined the reputations of … fellow [NFL] players[.]”¹⁸ Nowhere in his statement did he discuss or address concerns for Ridley’s well-being or mental health. And while Ridley was adamant he did not have a gambling problem, he did openly discuss his mental health struggles.¹⁹ The league should have done more to address the cause of Ridley’s actions, not just punish him for taking them.

This is not to say that punishment for breaking the rules of a governing FA or a collective bargaining agreement should be ignored, but rather those doling out suspensions and fines should also look at the underlying cause of the behavior. Just because it’s been over 100 years since the Black Sox does not mean that gambling is no longer a threat to the integrity of sports. In those 100 years we have been able to better understand and treat addiction and mental health. Punishment and treatment are not mutually exclusive; used together they can effectuate real change for both the sport and the player. So next time a commissioner of an American professional sports league has to fine or suspend a player for violating the league rules, they should consider what the player may need to get better, rather than simply suspending the player from playing.

Written By: Evan Glatt
Evan is a Brooklyn Law School Student, Class of 2025