Major sports leagues seek regulatory action against threatening bettors

As legal sports gambling has woven itself into the fabric of American professional athletics, the leagues that embraced it most eagerly now find themselves confronting an uncomfortable consequence: athletes threatened and harassed by bettors who transform financial loss into personal rage. Five major leagues and their players' unions have jointly asked regulators to establish mechanisms to identify and ban abusive bettors, marking a moment when the industry must reckon with the human cost of the revenue it courted. The petition is less a reversal than a reckoning — a recognition that normalizi