Patriots’ Kayshon Boutte Arrested For Illegal Sports Betting
Boutte Bet On Himself (And Others) While At LSU
It’s good when athletes bet on themselves in the general sense because it shows how much faith and self-confidence they have in their own abilities. But, current New England Patriots and former LSU Tiger Kayshon Boutte took that a bit too far. He was arrested last week for allegedly placing thousands of online sports bets between April 2022 and May 2023. While that’s a staggering amount of wagers, the biggest takeaway from the Kayshon Boutte arrest is that he reportedly bet on his own games during his junior season at LSU.
The information from the arrest report is downright staggering. Boutte allegedly made at least 8,927 bets over a 13-month period when he was under 21 years old. So, he was charged with felony computer fraud and a misdemeanor for placing sports betting online while underage. The report further notes that 17 of Boutte’s bets were on college football games and at least six were on LSU games that he himself played in. Boutte even bet on his own props on at least one occasion. Not good.
Now, he’s under investigation by the NFL in addition to the charges he faces in Louisiana. At present, there’s nothing to suggest that Boutte was involved in game-fixing of any kind but, when such a large amount of bets are placed by an athlete for such large sums of money in total, the question of whether Boutte’s on-field performance was affected by his betting habit is a reasonable one to ask.
The Numbers
From April 6, 2022, to May 7, 2023 — which includes the 2022 LSU football season, which was Boutte’s last before he was drafted in the 6th round of the 2023 NFL Draft by the Patriots — Boutte placed nearly 9,000 bets. He wagered over $450,000 in 2022 and roughly $186,000 in 2023. However, he lost around $80,000 during that time span. While there are no current allegations of Boutte betting on games since he entered the NFL, it’s likely he will not be one of the New England Patriots players for long based on how the NFL’s investigation goes.
If this story itself wasn’t crazy enough, Boutte didn’t appear to put much effort into concealing his identity on the sports gambling sites he used to place his bets. He even bet under the usernames “kayshonboutte7” and “kayshonboutte01” to make things about as obvious as possible.
The Trend
One major question with the Kayshon Boutte arrest is whether or not he truly did anything wrong, not in the legal sense but in the spirit of sports integrity. As mentioned above, while his actions broke the laws of Louisiana and violated both the NCAA and NFL’s policies on betting, it does not appear as if Boutte was rewarded for negatively affecting the play of his LSU Tigers. If anything, Boutte was even more incentivized to play his best and have his team win because he actually wagered on himself and on LSU.
It is obviously a huge concern when a college athlete bets so much money on sports over such an extended period of time. Yet, With sports gambling becoming legalized in more and more states — and with many college athletes newly flush with NIL funds — the Boutte case could be just the tip of the iceberg in terms of higher-profile players being caught for betting large sums on games in general, but also specifically ones they themselves are participating in.
There was a big story from earlier in the year in which multiple Iowa State and Iowa athletes made — while underage, like Boutte — hundreds of sports bets, including one instance in which a former Iowa State quarterback bet on an Iowa State football game once. However, Hunter Dekkers did not play in that game and there didn’t appear to be other instances in which the players charged bet on games they played in.
What’s Next
Of course, the Kayshon Boutte arrest is much different in that he did bet on games in which he played and he bet so often — and for such high stakes — that his losses measured in the tens of thousands. Those facts elevate this situation to an even higher level and make it seem likely that similar stories regarding other young NFL players who were in college during the NIL era exist.
It’ll also be difficult for the NFL to determine how exactly, if at all, to punish Boutte. He placed the bets before he played a down in the NFL and mostly bet on non-college football games. The league could choose to make an example out of him and levy a harsh punishment — like the suspensions faced by the Detroit Lions‘ Jameson Williams and other players for betting on NFL games — or could make the distinction between betting as a college athlete and betting as a professional athlete. It will be very interesting to see what happens with Boutte.
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