Say What?
MLB Commissioner Says Baseball Was "Dragged" To Sports Betting. Who Dragged Whom? PointsBetting Goes to the Pine Barrens
Major League Baseball commissioner Rob Manfred says his league was “dragged” into this whole legal sports betting thing.
Whereas his entire quote circles around the Supreme Court case that made legal sports betting a national possibility, the over-arching sentiment is odd. Because even though MLB is the most gambling-stigmatized of the United States’ top four sports, it’s hustled into sports betting partnerships like a batter watching a liner rattle around in the corner.
Active players can endorse sportsbooks. Only one has: Charlie Blackmon. And that sportsbook, MaximBet is out of business.
More than a hundred years ago, owners condoned betting to the point that bookmakers had their own sections in the grandstands. The 1919 Black Sox Scandal was sufficient and enough of a threat to public spending confidence to prompt owners to bleach the whole thing white again under tyrant commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis.
Baseball remained puritanical enough about gambling to ban former Hall of Famers Willie Mays and Mickey Mantle for working as greeters - Chuck E. Cheese and Ronald McDonald, in effect - for an Atlantic City casino that didn’t have sportsbooks. They didn’t even have official jobs in baseball at the time.
Reinstated in 1985, they were welcomed back with a Sports Illustrated cover. Mays is now an assistant to the president with the San Francisco Giants.
Mays’ 93rd birthday this week reminds us not only of the on-field excellence of the “Say Hey Kid” - and it was truly excellent - but the different epochs of MLB’s relationship with gambling.
The apparent exoneration and concurrent victimhood of Shohei Ohtani in the gambling scandal surrounding his former interpreter is a save for baseball. Being forced to banish the most popular player in the sport could have inflicted generational damage.
This is baseball in the legal sports betting era. It wasn’t dragged here. The quest for profit balanced with public perception has been a calculus since Charlie Comiskey gave out cheap champagne as World Series bonuses.
Says Jacob Pomrenke, head of the Black Sox Scandal Research Committee at the Society for American Baseball Research:
“I think interpreting the decision as "we were dragged into it" is a little devious to say. But the landscape has changed and it behooves all the professional sports leagues to have a plan not only for gambling and the promotion of it and all that, but the integrity side of things as well.”
FULL-LENGTH PODCAST COMING SOON
AP Photos; Brant James illustration
Porter Fallout: Books May Ban NBA Props
From Dan Holmes:
The NBA is in talks with BetMGM, DraftKings, and FanDuel to potentially prohibit certain types of wagers on its games in light of the Jontay Porter gambling incident.
According to reporting by ESPN, the NBA may appeal to its sports betting partners to ban bets on two-way players who are signed to play between the G League and the league. Porter was on such a contract and was banned permanently last month for influencing his own prop bets and wagering on his games and performance.
ESPN reports that NBA commissioner Adam Silver may ask the league’s three sports betting partners to remove player props for two-way contract players, who earn less money and may be more tempted to cash in via wagering schemes. The NBA prohibits players, coaches, officials, and other league employees from betting on games they are directly involved in, as Porter did, which results in permanent ineligibility.
Mystik Dan!
AP Photo
Mystik Dan, at odds of 18-1, paid $39.22 to win, $16.32 to place and $10 to show in the Kentucky Derby on Saturday after a photo finish that took about as long as NFL referees deciding where to spot a ball on first down.
NHL Playoffs
From Dave Bontempo:
New York, New York is proving to be the bettors’ kind of town.
The New York Rangers are the biggest futures liability for DraftKings as the NHL Stanley Cup playoffs hit full second-round stride.
NBA Playoffs
The Bet Man Went to Dave & Bettors
Sports betting has become the avocado of 2024. A lot of people think it goes with everything. But for every avocado toast, there’s an avocado pie.
Dave & Buster’s and Betting on the Wedding are the latest to gamble that a country where 40 states and jurisdictions have legal sports betting wants what they’re cooking. State politicians and regulators are finding it increasingly distasteful.
These companies aren’t getting the reaction they wanted.
PGA Championships Aligns with ESPN BET
ESPN BET finally got some good news on Tuesday.
After being buffeted by a poor quarterly earnings report and quasi-mocked by ESPN personality Pat McAfee on his popular national show, PENN Entertainment’s online sportsbook brand was announced as the “Official Sports Betting Sponsor” of the PGA Championship through 2026.
The event will be held at Valhalla Golf Club in Louisville, Kentucky from May 16-19. Mobile sports betting is legal and underway in Kentucky.
RELATED: ESPN BET alternate telecast slated for PGA Championship
Fanatics Live in New Jersey
(That’s a funny headline if you read ‘live’ the other way)
Fanatics completed its acquisition of PointsBet’s U.S. operations on April 3 and on May 8 assumed control of its final state: New Jersey.
Meet them tonight in Atlantic City (or anywhere using your phone).
So here’s to you, PointsBet, the Australian interloper that was going to change sports wagering in the Americas with its ostensibly ingenious points-betting system. But didn’t.
Said an industry insider who spoke anonymously:
“It was pretty much doomed from the start. Trying to promote and market such a high-margin product (~70%) was next to impossible, particularly in the early stages of the regulated industry when basic bettor education (which remains a hurdle for operators to this day) represented one of the biggest challenges when it came to acquiring and onboarding users.
“Which is to say nothing of the massive swings inherent to the product and extremely high-risk appetite thus required to engage with it.
“The reality was only a tiny segment of users was able to understand the mechanic of PointsBetting to begin with, and of that segment only a fraction had the stones to give it a try. Having a unique offering is all well and good but if it’s not scalable it becomes an albatross from a tech/trading/risk management perspective.
“That pretty much sums up the lifespan of PointsBetting.”
Underdog Adds Dating-App Function
Aaron Judge over 2.5 Hits+RBIs+Runs?
That’s hot.
Responsible Gambling Group Debuts. We’re In It
The Responsible Gambling Affiliate Association unveiled its first membership program at the SBC Summit North America conference this week. The organization is the largest group of companies dedicated to the “promotion and advertisement of sports betting and gaming.”
Gambling affiliates include vendors in the gaming industry, as well as media companies devoted to sports betting, iGaming, lottery, and other gaming topics. Catena Media, which owns Gaming Today, is an RGAA member.
Odds …
… and enders
As the English Premier League phases out gambling partnerships at the end of the 2025-26 season, the Scottish Professional Soccer League is reportedly about to name William Hill as its title sponsor
LendingTree: Tax from sports betting revenue popped 34% last year
Mississippi “mobile” sports betting remains on casino property
Call 1-800-GAMBLER if you have a gambling problem. 21+: All content herein is intended for audiences 21+.
Gaming Today Senior Writer