Brandon Brown
Recreational sports gambling continues to grow and is firmly entrenched as a dominant component of sports fandom, as prominent as NCAA Tournament Brackets and fantasy sports. Last year, we wrote about how Major League Baseball is trying maintaining its integrity while engaging in the game with the fans’ experience and also trying to avoid ostracism from fans who are against the game.
In light of the Shohei Ohtani interpreter scandal, in which Ippei Mizuhara was accused of stealing millions of dollars from the two-way superstar and using it to illegally gamble in sportsas well as questions NBA and college sports, MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred was asked Monday at the 2024 Associated Press Sports Editors commissioner meetings if the league has decided to change its stance on gambling.
Specifically, prop bets are an area of concern, where fans can bet on individual outcomes of specific events, such as a hit. In the worst case scenario, it would be much easier for an individual player to be compromised. For example, if you bet that a hitter will hit at least twice in a game, he could, in theory, easily hit twice on purpose. Convincing an entire team to miss a World Series to fulfill a preseason bet would be much more difficult.
“We’ve been in prop bets since the beginning. When we lobby in the states, there are always certain types of bets that we lobby against – I mean, on the first play of the game, we really don’t want that to be available as a prop bet,” Manfred said.
In the Ohtani scandal, Mizuhara, the interpreter, was making illegal bets, Manfred reminded the room, “We had no gamblers involved.”
“When you have problems in our sport or other sports, it causes you to redirect your efforts, but we really believe that our integrity program – in terms of monitoring and available data – protects the sport,” he said.
MLB has employed a full-time integrity and compliance team for years. Players are allowed to legally bet on other sports, but are not allowed to bet on any diamond sports. This obviously includes Major League Baseball, but also any level of baseball or softball. In 2015, then-Marlins pitcher Jarred Cosart was fined for illegal gamblingbut it turned out he didn’t bet on baseball.
Manfred noted that the University of Alabama baseball scandal, which cost the coach his job, came to light because the betting took place at an MLB stadium; The $100,000 bet was placed at the BetMGM sportsbook at Great American Ball Park on someone connected to Alabama coach Brad Bohannon. To Manfred, this was a testament to MLB’s integrity system in place, detecting suspicious gaming activity and all.
Manfred also made a curious quote about MLB’s legalized gambling.
“We were kind of dragged into legalized sports betting as litigants in a case that ended up in the Supreme Court,” he said with a laugh. “That said, I recognize – probably better today than when we were involved in this litigation – that one of the advantages of legalization is that it is much easier to monitor what is happening than in an illegal operation. ”
The case Manfred is discussing is Murphy x National Collegiate Athletic Association as of 2018. The court essentially ruled that a federal law that prevented states from legalizing sports gambling was unconstitutional. In the following years, a large number of states legalized gambling and we saw the explosion happen.
At the time, MLB issued the following statement:
“Today’s ruling by the United States Supreme Court will have profound effects on Major League Baseball. As each state considers whether to allow sports betting, we will continue to seek appropriate protections for our sport, in partnership with other professional sports. Our The most important priority is to protect the integrity of our games. We will continue to support legislation that creates airtight coordination and partnerships between the state, casino operators and sports governing bodies to that end.
Still, it’s remarkable to hear a sports commissioner say “we were dragged into” this. It’s true that the league didn’t have much of a choice in terms of the public being able to bet on it, but there are gambling advertisements all over the place and you can see that the league is embracing it. There are betting offices located in several stadiums.
The rest of what he’s saying makes a lot of sense, though. He is right in saying that legalized betting is much easier for authorities to monitor than an underground system of bookmakers. Remember, Mizuhara’s problem was with an illegal bookie.
“I also think that the consequences of that, in terms of pressure being put on athletes and other things, if they get into trouble, the potential for that is much lower when you’re talking about a legalized operation than when you’re talking about an illegal one.” , said Manfred.
“We’re in this world and you could argue from an integrity standpoint that we’re in a better position.”
