NFL Rigged? Study Finds Refs Favored Mahomes, Chiefs: A Sports Marketing Fix

I’m standing in front of a seminar of college seniors flabbergasted. It’s not that a majority of them appear to believe the NFL is somehow manipulating games, it’s the indifferent certitude with which they believe it. Like I asked them if they thought football players used painkillers or college students (not them, of course) used Chat GPT. Almost like I was Kay and they were Michael in that fateful scene from The Godfather: “Now who’s being naive, Dr. Steiner?”

Despite the seemingly catastrophic consequences for the National Football League if it were found to be match-fixing, a growing number of fans believe that, in the words of Barstool sports founder Dave Portnoy, the NFL is a “#rigged” league.

Screengrab of a Dave Portnoy post on X dated January 26, 2025. The image captures a controversial call in the 2025 AFC Championship game between the Kansas City Chiefs and the Buffalo Bills, which the Chiefs won 32-29.

Dave Portnoy

And he’s not alone. Suspicion that the NFL and other leagues are scripting outcomes and/or colluding with sports books has been on the rise since sports betting became legal in 2018.

Topping the social media conspiracies this week was the resurfacing of an Opening Day post by the NFL on X that appears to depict Drake Maye and Sam Darnold in front of 30 other players approaching an image of Levi’s Stadium, site of Super Bowl LX. Maye and Darnold are QBs for the New England Patriots and the Seattle Seahawks, who coincidentally, are playing each other in in Super Bowl LX on February 8.

Despite the near impossibility of covertly manipulating the outcomes of 285 regular season and playoff games since September 4, “It’s all scripted” became the refrain from incredulous commentors. Fervor over this fantastical Super Bowl fix did not go unnoticed by the League. On Monday, Brian McCarthy, NFL VP of Communications, tersely rebutted on X “Re: the ‘controversy’ over this image – no.”

The “controversy” is so ridiculous that addressing it seems closer to marketing than damage control (more on that later). Yet less bizarre suspicions that the NFL and other sports organizations manipulate games for ratings and/or to protect the sports books that sponsor them are widely held. Kayfabe aside, there are actual infringements on sports’ ultimate ethos–always trying your best to win–such as point shaving to manipulate bets (illegal), tanking for draft picks (frowned upon), and the evermore common tactic of resting starters in preparation for the playoffs (legal, frustrating, and often ineffective).

Betting Heightens Doubt

Since sport betting was legalized nationwide in 2018, 39 states have passed laws making it available online and/or in-person. In less than eight years, wagering on games has gone from shady vice to league sponsor. Over 50% of men aged 18-49 have active sports betting accounts according to a 2025 Siena College poll. With all that action there are bound to be bad beats, fluke calls, and terrible bounces that cost legal bettors billions. And why should they blame themselves for losing?

Social media was already the outlet for venting anguish, and its technology, which allows blown calls to be slowed down and replayed in high definition, is a powerful catalyst for outrageous speculation. Then 2025, dubbed by Front Office Sports the “Year of Sports Gambling Scandals,” happened. Suddenly an avalanche of malfeasance across sports betting buried high profiles players, teams, interpreters, coaches, even the mafia. As 2026 begins, conspiracy theorists and their fringe suspicions no longer seem quite as crazy.

The heightened doubt may be affecting public opinions about sports betting, if not changing the public’s behavior. A recent study from Pew found that Americans are increasingly opposed to sports betting including “40% of adults [who] now say it’s a bad thing for sports, up from 33% [in 2022].” Anecdotally, my students have moved from gung-ho libertarians on the issue in 2019 to cautious skeptics in 2025, describing to me how gambling has altered their fandom and their friends who have struggled with addiction. And while incremental regulation may happen, the leagues and networks are so enmeshed with sportsbooks that hitting a 1000-leg parlay may have better odds than an outright prohibition on sports betting. At least for now.

Rigging for Ratings?

Blown bankrolls notwithstanding, the belief that leagues thumb the scales to increase drama at key moments abounds. While pro football remains the undisputed champion of U.S. television ratings, ever-increasing broadcast/streaming rights fees necessitate continued audience growth. The NFL banks on the excitement of close games, and 2025 did not disappoint. In October, there were six double-digit comebacks in one week, for first time since 2013. “Games didn’t used to feel so close,” as one of my students told me. Fans of football know that one flag tossed (or picked up) at a crucial moment can turn a 4^th quarter kneel-out to a potential hail Mary walk-off.

While drama-juicing has never been proven, sports leagues know the value of marquee/large-market teams making the playoffs and championships. It’s not just teams but also players. From Shohei Ohtani to Caitlin Clark, superstar athletes reliably draw viewers and drive engagement. In the NFL over the past decade, no team and player have been bigger draws than Patrick Mahomes and the Kansas City Chiefs, (with a huge assist from Taylor Swift).

The popularity and success of the Chiefs prior to the 2025 Super Bowl, led to countless complaints of favorable officiating and League coddling from disgruntled fans and hot take pundits. While that may have sounded like sour grapes, a trio of researchers recently uncovered evidence that confirms such suspicions aren’t entirely imagined.

Their peer-reviewed study, published in The Financial Review, found “postseason officiating disproportionately favor[ed] the Mahomes-era Kansas City Chiefs, coinciding with the team’s emergence as a key driver of TV viewership/ratings and, thereby, revenue.” The authors, Drs. Spencer Barnes, Ted Dischman, and Brandon Mendez based their findings on a quantitative analysis of “13,136 defensive penalties from 2015 to 2023” concluding “that financial reliance on dominant entities can alter enforcement dynamics.”

Finance professors rarely research NFL officiating, but the authors’ interest in regulatory capture—when regulators are corrupted by the entities they’re supposed to be regulating—led them to a trove of useful data. It’s a “fox in the hen house type of deal,” according to lead author Spencer Barnes, Assistant Professor of Finance at The University of Texas at El Paso, who cited examples like Enron and bond rating agencies in 2008. “This is a really important thing in the finance and economics world, but it’s really hard to measure empirically because it’s often delayed disclosure.”

The three football fans put their heads together and realized that the NFL might be an ideal laboratory to test how financial incentives (i.e. refs being paid and promoted) affect decision making: “It’s transparent, it’s in real time, it’s in front of millions of people, and it has real effect outcomes on the end product.”

They “document[ed] a clear increase in television ratings for Chiefs games following Mahomes’ arrival,” in 2017 through the NFL signing its $110 billion TV rights deal in 2021. That ratings increase coincided with a “broader recovery in NFL viewership” after “controversies surrounding player protests during the national anthem generated political backlash and may have caused some fans to disengage.” Using fixed-effect models over that period, Barnes and his team were able to find statistically significant over-calling of defensive penalties against the Chiefs’ opponents during the postseason. Interestingly, they did not find similar treatment of Tom Brady and the Patriots, long the League’s most successful and hated dynasty prior to Mahomes.

While their article, titled “Under (Financial) Pressure,” shows compelling quantitative evidence of potential Chiefs favoritism by refs, Barnes is quick to point out that “we’re not claiming anything is explicitly rigged, but just sort of in the back of these refs’ minds, you know, finance matters, and these decisions on the margin matter.”

Sports journalists and media scholars who I’ve spoken with and shown their article remain skeptical. The NFL is the world’s richest sports league, generating revenue greater than the GDP of dozens of countries. Why would it or its employees risk all that and face potential fraud charges from its casino partners to get a bump in ratings?

“It just doesn’t make sense,” sports betting analyst Ed Barkowitz told me. He pointed out that increasing calls for Mahomes and the Chiefs during that period might be the result of them being better than everyone else. “If a team is tearing you up, then it can feel like the only way to stop them is to bend the rules.” And yet the Chiefs favorable treatment was limited to the playoffs. During the regular season, the data indicates that refs may have under-called penalties against defenses trying to stop Mahomes.

Every study is limited by its design, and a largescale quantitative analysis cannot reveal the motives of individual referees. Nonetheless, Barnes’s findings seem so compelling because they speak beyond the numbers to a widely held inkling so many fans feel. As he explained to me, “if you’re finding this in the data, and you’re also seeing it anecdotally while you watch games, then yeah, you will naturally start to question what am I watching here? Is this actually true?”

That tantalizing uncertainty and the subjective nature of sports officiating instigate doubt accelerated and amplified through social media. Sports have always been as much reflection of society as escape from it. If 21^st century America feels like an ontological donnybrook, can we expect sports to be much different?

Research on mediated conspiracy theories has shown that their allure is two-fold. First the explanatory power from seeing the big picture once hidden. That “aha moment” when the study of coincidental data points constellates a pattern revealing a secret story you had already suspected and, maybe privately hoped was true. “I didn’t really lose that bet; the game was fixed!”

Second is the perceived power from traversing the looking glass or, in social media lingo, “red-pilling.” According to historian Richard K. Popp, conspiracy theories are “emblematic of a perceived fiat of powerful groups to transgress the moral and logical bounds that structure everyday reality.” They play the internal symphony we compose. By entering the know, we are no longer being duped; we hear the music (be it Piper’s call or Siren Song). This is also why disabusing new believers of such opinions can feel like plucking shell fragments from a cooking omelet. Before too long they’re set.

Marketing Suspicion

What if rigging sports wasn’t the poison pill it once was, but more of a viewership and betting enhancement drug? As upside-down as that may sound, remember that in 2026 you can bet on the outcome of scripted professional wresting matches and even which celebrities will appear in prerecorded Super Bowl commercials. A recent New York Times article noted that following the FBI’s October indictments against NBA players and coaches for illegal betting, the Association had its “most-watched opening week since 2017.”

Perhaps stoking conspiracy theory flames, or at least acknowledging that they are out there, as in the case of McCarthy’s post, might drive attention to a Super Bowl featuring New England and Seattle, the ninth and 13th ranked U.S. media markets. As The Ringer podcaster Van Lathen told The Times, sports controversies stoke engagement in teams and players. Even point shaving can increase viewership. The trick may be keeping the audience suspecting, without them being able to prove the match is manipulated.

According to a recent study of Gen Z sports fans by market research firm The Harris Poll, the perception of competitive fairness is the most important factor in sports. “The mandate is a game that feels real,” and yet such fairness was not favored by a majority of respondents. Only 43% rated it as the most important factor, meaning that 57% of those Gen Zers polled cared more about other things, including pace of play, interactive features, and emotional storytelling. Is our understanding of integrity changing?

The Harris Poll study, titled “The Joy Rematch: How can sports leagues increase Gen Z’s joy?,” suggests a liminal sweet-spot of excitement, fan agency, and kayfabe. The game cannot be obviously scripted, but a little controversy drives social media conjecture that builds engagement around a trending topic, while broadcasts show a blown call from every angle as the spectacle grows. The real game then becomes a highwire act of professional sports tiptoeing between WWE and Banana Ball. As Barnes pointed out “sports companies are classified as entertainment companies; if there’s a clear financial incentive for entertainment, then it’s not too crazy to think that maybe they try to maximize that entertainment value.”

All conspiracies aside, we have not reached a point where manipulating the outcome of sporting events would be advertised and accepted. But the guardrails of fairness and integrity are being tested. What does this tell us about our faith in institutions more broadly? When even shared reality feels negotiable, it’s not surprising that sports—our last refuge of outcomes we once believed to be unknown—starts to feel negotiable, too. There may be satisfaction, however short lived, in red-pilling, but does it change behavior? Bettors may believe the fix is in, but sports betting continues to grow. Even though a majority of my students may suspect sports scripting, none of them are willing to stop watching sports, at least not yet.