NASCAR Sports Gambling Policy Gets Drivers' Attention; Enforcement a Challenge
NASCAR requires all of its employees, drivers, and crew members to undergo an online tutorial every two years about gambling and the penalties.
NASCAR drivers and team members face stiff penalties if caught gambling on NASCAR races.
All sports leagues, however, are still tying to figure out how best to monitor their participants' gambling activities to make sure they aren’t violating policies.
NASCAR drivers agree with the sanctioning body that legalized gambling is a way to attract new fans, but the competitors know that maintaining the sport’s integrity is critical.
NASCAR champion and RFK Racing co-owner Brad Keselowski said everyone must be “really careful” as a team and abide by the rules.
A pitfall of sports betting came to the forefront this year when it was learned the former longtime interpreter for Los Angeles Dodgers star Shohei Ohtani allegedly stole more than $16 million from the Japanese athlete to cover gambling debts. Federal authorities have charged Ippei Mizuhara with federal bank fraud, alleging he set up a bank account for Ohtani’s baseball salary, and then lied to the bank to gain access to the account so he could take money to pay for his own sports betting.
In an effort to head-off such an issue, NASCAR requires all of its employees, drivers, and crew members to undergo an online tutorial every two years about gambling and the penalties. The online tutorial was created for NASCAR by Sportradar, a company based in St. Gallen, Switzerland, that NASCAR Managing Director Sports Betting Joe Solosky described as “NASCAR’s integrity partner.”
Sportradar has conducted seminars for NASCAR drivers and team owners about match fixing and the unique susceptibility that NASCAR has for potential match fixing due to the fans’ access to the sport.
“This session was intended to make our drivers aware … here’s some things to be on the lookout for if anyone is asking you any questions that seem out of the norm around anything that’s competition related … and what to do in those circumstances if that does happen,” Solosky says.
Solosky said the seminars also covered such items as the difference between an illegal offshore book and a legal onshore book, and potential career or personal ramifications of being involved in a betting scandal. Sportradar conducted the first seminars for drivers and team owners prior to last year’s Busch Clash at the Los Angeles Coliseum. NASCAR would like to expand the seminars to crew members.
This year NASCAR worked with the teams, and its Daytona Beach, Fla., and Charlotte, N.C., offices around a reinforcement of NASCAR’s sports gambling policy since online sportsbook betting was launched in North Carolina and Florida. The March 11 memo that was distributed stated:
“In short, employees cannot bet on NASCAR or NASCAR-owned properties/sanctioned events (IMSA, NASCAR-sanctioned short-track races). Members (think drivers, crew, team front office) cannot bet on NASCAR or NASCAR-sanctioned events. Employees and members can play fantasy games, but the prizes for the year cannot exceed $250.
Otherwise, employees or members can bet on any sport.”
Martin Truex Jr. said he normally doesn’t pay attention to the betting lines shown before each race. Sometimes he’ll see them if he’s watching the Fox Sports show “Race Day” and they show the odds or talk about the event’s favorites, or sometimes the lines appear on Instagram.
“I think there’s a lot of people that like to bet on things that probably had never watched a race before,” Truex says. “If they can put money on it, they’re going to be interested, they’re going to be watching, and they’re going to be involved. Generally care about what’s going on and try to pay attention and learn about the sport. Maybe five out of 10 people that do that it hooks them, and they like it.”
Las Vegas native Kyle Busch says he views betting on NASCAR “as being a positive for our sport and for the world in general.”
“The opportunity for people to go out there and place bets on their favorite drivers or their favorite scenarios throughout the week, I think it’s really awesome,” Busch says. “I think it brings more attention to our sport. I think it brings more attention to drivers’ names, so the more notoriety the better.”
The tutorial, which is about 20 minutes, is refreshed annually. A person must take the online tutorial when he/she gets their NASCAR annual credential (hard card) and again in two years from that designated date. NASCAR’s competition team maintains a spreadsheet database that tracks those who have taken not only the gambling online tutorial, but anything else that’s competition related and required by a member possessing a hard card. If a person doesn’t pass the required items in a designated period of time, their NASCAR membership (hard card) will be revoked.
Even though drivers are independent contractors and crew members are employed by the teams, anyone violating NASCAR’s Sports Gambling Policy can be fined and/or face indefinite suspension, or membership revocation.
However, Solosky admitted all of the sports leagues are tying to figure out how best to monitor their participants' gambling activities to make sure they aren’t violating policies.
“To monitor that in real time, there would have to be personal information shared from the governing body—NBA, NHL, NFL or NASCAR—to the sportsbook operators, which then have to share with the leagues,” Solosky says. “Then there would have to be this encrypted database where people would be comfortable having that information shared. That system does not exist yet.
“If there’s any sort of suspicious activity that we think is going on, there are ways that we could work with an operator to see if betting on NASCAR is happening. Fortunately, thus far, we haven’t had to exercise that.”
