Famous Athletes That Love Betting on Sports

Sports wagering has long been a thrilling pastime for millions of individuals worldwide. And athletes have not been immune to the allure of this pastime. In this article, we explore five globally known sportsmen who have made headlines due to their love for betting, though not always in a positive light.

Floyd Mayweather Jr.

Pretty Boy turned Money Mayweather is likely the main boxing attraction of the past two decades, and he often gets called one of the best defensive boxers ever. He is also one of the few combat sports athletes who have retired undefeated, boasting a record of fifty wins and no losses. After a brilliant career as an amateur that ended in a controversial semi-final decision loss in the 1996 Olympics to Bulgarian Serafim Todorov, Floyd turned pro a few months later, retiring in 2017, at the age of forty, following a TKO win of then UFC champion Conor McGregor. Mayweather is still fighting in his mid-forties. However, he only participates in exhibition bouts, against primarily celebrities, ex-athletes, or MMA fighters.

Money’s betting activity is primarily not a secretive affair because Floyd has made a habit of posting his slips and wins online on his social media profiles. A few years back, he tweeted images that showed that he allegedly won $827,272 on a $350,000 bet in four days, wagering on three NBA games and a Golovkin fight. His $1 million win on an Oregon Duck spread bet and a $626,000 loss incurred when the Denver Broncos failed to capture Super Bowl XLVIII have been well documented. Some have aggregated his NFL winnings as being close to $5 million. Yet, we cannot verify if this total is accurate, and god knows how many unpublicized wagers the former four-weight class champion has made.

Phil Mickelson

In the world of golf, there are several names that stand head and shoulders as the sport’s best players and most popular ones. Jack Nicklaus, Arnold Palmer, Tiger Woods, and Bobby Jones are golfers that should be on anyone’s top five list. If one were to expand this list to ten, we are sure that Phil Mickelson, famously nicknamed Lefty, will make most experts cut. He has won forty-five PGA Tour events (tied for 8th all-time), including three Masters, two PGA championships, and a single Open Championship.

The California native, allegedly, as stated in gambler Billy Walter’s book – Gambler: Secrets from a Life of Risk, Phil has wagered over $1 billion over the past three decades, losing around $100 million. He chiefly preferred to bet on basketball, football, and baseball during this period. According to reports, Phill even tried to lay down a $400,000 wager on the Ryder Cup in 2012 (he participated in) on Team USA. Walters also claims that many bookmakers refuse to take Mickleson’s action or limit how much he can wager. Thus, he usually gets forced to partner with other bettors who have relationships with bookies that offer them more substantial limits.

Jaromir Jagr

The Ageless Wonder, or Jags, Jaromir Jagr is a hockey icon, a player with the second most points (behind Wayne Gretzky) in the history of the National Hockey League. He entered the NHL in 1990, two years after starting his pro career, playing for several NHL teams. In his fifties, Jagr is still active in the Czech Extraliga, his country’s national competition, where he plays for the club he owns – Rytíři Kladno.

At the peak of his playing career, Jagr began betting at off-shore gambling sites, racking up a staggering debt of $950,000 at two platforms, which would amount to around $1.5 million in today’s money. The writer of Bets, Drugs, and Rock & Roll, Steve Budin, a noted trailblazer in the offshore-sports-gambling sector, claims that Jagr called in mainly NFL bets with non-US bookies from his NHL locker room and was notoriously bad at picking winners.

Charles Barkley

The Bread Truck is definitely one of the best, if not the best, NBA player to never win a title. He played in the National Basketball Association from 1984 to 2000, entering the league as a 76er before moving to the Phoenix Suns and ending his career with a four-year term in Houston. Barkley participated in eleven All-Star games and got named the NBA regular season MVP in 1993. Some of his other accolades include being the league’s rebounding leader in 1987 and making five All-NBA first teams. Following the end of his time as a player, Barkley has maintained himself in the mainstream thanks to his role in TNT’s highly-awarded show, Inside the NBA, where he gives his opinion on games along with host Ernie Johnson, and fellow NBA Alumni, Shaquille O’Neal, and Kenny Smith.

Like his friend, Michael Jordan, His Airness, Barkley is also an admitted avid gambler. And like Jordan, he also has a love for twenty-one fun. On a recent Club Shay Shay podcast, Barkley admitted to losing over $25 million via gambling. Even though he has spoken out against NBA betting, Charles does not hide the fact that he has bet big on NFL games, and recently, Barkley noted he had made a $100,000 wager on himself finishing in the top seventy rankings (he finished seventy-sixth) at a golf tournament for celebrities-only. At the start of 2023, he also revealed his intention of making a $1.5 million wager on that year’s Super Bowl.

Rick Tocchet

Older NHL fans likely remember Tocchet playing for the Flyers, Penguins, Kings, Bruins, Capitals, and Coyotes throughout the 1990s, and new ones now mainly recognize him as the head coach of the Vancouver Canucks. Yet, something that many new NHL followers may not know is that Tocchet got implicated in financing a New Jersey-based nationwide sports gambling ring in 2006. Initially, Tocchet proclaimed that the allegations made against him were false. Nonetheless, in May 2007, he pleaded guilty to promoting gambling and conspiracy, getting a two-year probation sentence as a first-time offender.

Going by official documents, Tocchet’s ring accepted $1.7 million in bets in the forty days before it got closed, with most wagers getting made on the Super Bowl and college football. In 2008, Rick agreed to forego any betting-related activities so that he would not get banned from the NHL and could continue to have a career in pro hockey.

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