Im somewhat confident that at least the NBA (not the teams but the actual governing body) is waist deep in gambling and match fixing.

The increase in amount of gambling ads has been insane in every sport, and there’s a massive financial motive for leagues to be promoting gambling and also steering results in certain directions.

The NBA governs a sport which its ruleset is so easily influenced by refereeing. Because a single players ability to influence games is so great, a couple calls (or non calls) can drastically affect the score of a game and be incredibly, if not impossible, to detect wrongdoing.

It has already been proven that referees in the NBA blatantly steer(ed) the outcome of games for personal reasons (monetary or simple team/player preference). For more on this see Tim Donaghy and his comments about the Suns and Spurs series from 2007.

There’s also very strong indications that the league “nudges” or “massages” games by influencing their referees (through selecting certain referees or informing them of calls they want) to call games in ways that would more likely result in preferable outcomes. I recommend the whistleblower podcast for more on this type of fixing in the NBA.

The NBA gets money through great ratings on TV and longer series and popular stars playing more brings in huge money. But I think there also may be a case where these games are being bet on not only by referees (if at all still), but actual league higher ups and shareholders, or even other shady associates.