On Wednesday, the NBA announced that Jontay Porter, a center for the Toronto Raptors, was banned from the league for life. An investigation found that the bench player disclosed confidential information to gamblers, exited a match early to influence an “over/under” wager on his stat line, and bet on games using a friend’s account.

Porter’s actions shouldn’t be trivialized. Sport is an important part of our culture – and fair competition and the integrity of results are essential to it. But the real threat to sports and the livelihoods of billions of fans lies with the leagues, special interests and media outlets integrating addictive gambling with the games we love. The profit-seeking corporate encouragement of this behavior needs to be countered with strict federal regulation before an emerging public health crisis gets even worse.

In the 2010s, the Democratic governor, Phil Murphy, and the state of New Jersey challenged the Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act (Paspa), which prohibited new state-sanctioned sports gambling. Legal books were limited to a few grandfathered states, like Nevada. At the time, the scope of illegal sports gambling was unclear, with some putting the number at $50bn.

The US supreme court took on the case in 2018, ruling that Paspa was unconstitutional. Today, 38 states and the District of Columbia have made sports betting legal, with legislation pending........

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