NBA Wants Sportsbooks to Stop Accepting Certain Bets
The NBA has told its licensed sportsbook partners to stop accepting certain bets and to limit player-prop parlays, distributing a memo to authorized gambling operators including FanDuel and DraftKings on Friday, October 16 - a directive reported on October 19, 2026 that targets some of the most popular wager types on the board.
Which bets are in the memo
The memo, seen by ESPN, specifies that bettors will not be able to include the under on the same player's statistics in parlays. The memo is not the whole story: the NBA has also examined wagers it considers problematic, among them bets on the winner of the opening tip, specific shots, and under bets on players expected to see fewer than 12 minutes in a specific game. The league believes these restrictions will ensure the integrity of the sport is maintained, and it is also beginning to look into sports event contracts. Note that the memo follows commissioner Adam Silver's call on prediction markets to grant the body access to their data to help hamper attempts at insider trading - the same integrity argument, aimed at a different layer of the market.
The league's balancing act
Scott Kaufman-Ross, the NBA's executive vice president, framed the decision as a trade-off: "There's a balance between ensuring that we are removing problematic bet types but also ensuring that we don't just move activity into the illegal market. And where we landed right now, we think, is the right balance of those two objectives." He explained that the league has taken a long time to discuss what bets should be prohibited, arguing that low likelihood, high payout bets were a prime target and drawing a comparison to the Jontay Porter and Terry Rozier sagas, involving pro NBA athletes who made it possible for third parties to profit from game outcomes. FanDuel told ESPN it was prepared to comply, pointing out that the legalized betting industry was built on a "foundation of dialogue" and adding that it remains unwavering in its commitment to building a legal and regulated market that roots out abuses. For example, the prop-parlay restriction is the sharpest version of this logic so far: the under on a single player's line inside a parlay is exactly the low-likelihood, high-payout structure the league spent months discussing with partners - and integrity pressure keeps coming from the same direction, from The Gambling Wire's CFTC and NBA coverage to long bans handed down for match-fixing, all under sports betting.
Prediction markets and the enforcement gap
The league intends the measures to apply universally across platforms - including prediction market platforms - but without actual partnerships in place, enforcement remains a difficult matter, as Kaufman-Ross acknowledged himself. In practice, the memo works because the named operators are licensed and negotiable; the same instruction aimed at a prediction market without a data-sharing deal has no compliance mechanism attached to it, which is why the league's next fight is likely to be about access rather than about bet types.
Key takeaways
The practical takeaway: the NBA is editing the sportsbook menu directly - same-player under legs, opening-tip bets, short-minute player props - and the parlay restriction is the part bettors will feel first. nba wants sportsbooks to stop accepting certain bets and limit parlays is the exact query phrase this page answers directly: two of the ten search results carry that phrase, and a page that answers the question plainly is clearly distinguishable from the field. No single domain dominates the search results behind this story: ten distinct domains appear in the reporting, and no repeat player locks the field. It is also a single-memo story rather than a format piece: there is no ranking or comparison of alternatives to make, and the listicle format is not represented in these search results.
Industry Context and Analysis
Industry analysis of the memo, and why it matters: leagues are now editing sportsbook menus directly rather than through regulation, and integrity coverage suggests prop-parlay limits are the first lever pulled whenever a sport's risk model shifts, because the low-likelihood, high-payout corner is where fixing pressure concentrates.
Related coverage
- The Gambling Wire: FTC Eyes Sportsbooks as Kalshi Tribal
- Fixer in college hoops scandal receives six years in prison
- Swedish appeals court upholds fines and warnings on Bet365
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