Indiana stops all betting on University of Alabama baseball games amid controversy
INDIANAPOLIS (WISH) — The Indiana Gaming Commission has suspended all betting on University of Alabama baseball games. The commission told I-Team 8 that bets made in Indiana are under investigation.
Indiana is one of several states to suspend betting on Alabama baseball games since the scandal that cost head coach Brad Bohannon his job.
According to All Indiana Bets host Jason Hammer, the scandal started during a game between the Alabama Crimson Tide and the LSU tigers on April 28.
“Large amounts of bets are coming in on LSU, which is not uncommon, because they are number one in America, but this was a suspicious amount of money coming in, and it wasn’t just one bet. It was a parlay bet included with that,” said Hammer.
A parlay bet is when someone bets on multiple things to happen in one game. All have to happen for the person to win.
“After those bets were made, news broke that the starting pitcher for Alabama would not be pitching that day. He was ‘injured,’ and they went with a bullpen guy, so that raised a lot of questions, ‘Why is this level of money coming in on this SEC baseball game on a week day when normally that type of money doesn’t happen?,’” said Hammer.
That’s when industry watch dogs started digging deeper.
“Folks from Louisiana, folks from Ohio, folks from Las Vegas, all part of these watch dog groups came together and they came to the conclusion that the head coach of Alabama was part of what’s going on here. Now, there’s a lot we don’t know.” said Hammer.
What Hammer does know is the profits from these bets was not be very big LSU is better than Alabama.
“Which kind of makes this story surprising is even if you bet the mortgage on it, the payout isn’t going to be that much. It’s a really good team versus a really average team,” said Hammer.
Hammer told I-Team 8 to expect to see more scandals like this with the expansion of sports betting across the country.
“This isn’t anything new to sports betting. Even before, it was basically in every state. There have been point shaving scandals before. This won’t be the last one, I promise you,” said Hammer.