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Indiana lawmakers and regulators have long demonstrated a thoughtful, balanced approach to gaming policy. When the state legalized sports betting in 2019, it did so with a clear objective: bring an activity that was already widespread into a transparent, regulated environment where consumer protections, integrity monitoring and accountability could thrive.
Now, as the Indiana Gaming Commission considers potential restrictions to certain NCAA wager types, including common in-game and first-half markets, policymakers should pause and consider a critical question: Will narrowing the legal product truly enhance integrity — or will it undermine it?
Indiana’s experience offers a powerful answer.
Integrity in sports betting does not come from banning mainstream wager types. It comes from oversight. It comes from real-time data analysis. It comes from compliance teams trained to detect suspicious patterns. And most importantly, it comes from keeping betting activity inside the regulated market.
When a legal operator in Indiana takes a bet, that transaction is recorded and monitored. Advanced analytics flag irregular activity. Compliance professionals review patterns. Suspicious activity reports are generated and shared with regulators and, when appropriate, law enforcement and sports governing bodies.
That infrastructure exists only because Indiana chose regulation over prohibition.
If the state removes common betting options that remain widely available in illegal and unregulated settings, consumer demand will not disappear. Sports fans who want those markets will still find them, just not within Indiana’s regulated ecosystem. They will turn to offshore websites or local bookies that operate outside state oversight.
Those operators do not share suspicious activity reports. They do not provide robust age verification. They do not offer responsible gaming tools. And they certainly do not coordinate with regulators or law enforcement.
That is not integrity. That is exposure.
Recent events in college basketball underscore this point. It was not illegal bookmakers who exposed wrongdoing in the NCAA betting scandal. It was legal, regulated operators whose integrity monitoring systems detected irregular betting patterns.
Legal markets shine light on misconduct. Illegal markets conceal it.
The notion that banning common wager types inherently strengthens integrity misunderstands how modern compliance works.
Indiana has built one of the country’s most stable and respected regulatory frameworks. That stability matters. Abrupt or incremental narrowing of the legal product sends the wrong signal. It also creates a slippery slope.
If common NCAA markets are restricted today, what prevents future calls to eliminate additional offerings tomorrow?
The health of Indiana’s regulated sports betting ecosystem depends on its ability to attract bettors into a safe, accountable marketplace. The state cannot monitor betting activity that migrates elsewhere. It cannot protect consumers who wager offshore. And it cannot detect threats to game integrity if those wagers never pass through systems designed to flag irregularities.
None of this is to suggest that integrity concerns should be dismissed. To the contrary, regulated operators welcome data-driven conversations about risk. If there is concrete evidence that a particular wager type presents a demonstrable and unmitigable threat to competition, regulators and industry should examine it together. We’ve seen examples of the market iterating on several wager types, from the NFL and its official sportsbooks working with state regulators to update betting catalogs on missed field goals to the MLB and sportsbooks agreeing to cap wagering.
But policy decisions of this magnitude should be guided by facts, not by the assumption that fewer legal options automatically equals greater integrity.
Indiana chose regulation because it works. It works to protect consumers. It works to generate transparency. And it works to expose bad actors.
Protecting integrity means strengthening the regulated market — not shrinking it.•
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Maloney is president of the Sports Betting Alliance, which represents legal and licensed sportsbooks.
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