In an exclusive interview with the Dallas Morning News on Wednesday, MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred discussed the expansion of legalized sports betting and the challenges — and benefits — it represents to the league.
MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred stated, “…the single thing on which there is no compromise is the integrity of the game on the field,” calling it the league’s No. 1 issue.
MLB was a longtime opponent of legalized sports betting. In fact, MLB was a litigant in a lawsuit, opposing New Jersey’s effort to legalize sports betting. The case went all the way to the Supreme Court, which ruled in favor of New Jersey. The 2018 decision forever changed the US sports betting landscape.
While Manfred acknowledges the profound challenges of upholding the integrity of the game in the wake of sports betting’s expansion, he also acknowledges that you can’t put the genie back in the bottle.
In fact, in May — just months after the translator for the MLB’s AL MVP Shohei Ohtani, Ippei Mizuhara, was ensnared in a sports betting scandal — Manfred hailed the monitoring enabled by sports betting’s legalization.
Speaking at the 2024 Associated Press Sports Editors Commissioners Meetings in May, Manfred discussed the double-edged sword of legalized sports betting.
“We were kind of dragged into legalized sports betting as a litigant in a case that ended up in the Supreme Court,” Manfred said. “Having said that, I recognize — probably better today than when we were involved in that litigation — that one of the advantages of legalization is it's a heck of a lot easier to monitor what's going on than it is with an illegal operation.”
Manfred reiterated that theme with the Dallas Morning News. “Right now, because most sports betting is legal, we have extensive monitoring in place. And in fact, those monitoring systems resulted in [resolving] all the incidents we’ve had this year. Our ability to monitor is one of the positives that comes with legalization.”
Manfred doesn’t wax nostalgic about the pre-legalization era. He understands the appreciates the transparency legalization has provided.
“In the old days, you didn’t have gambling scandals. It didn’t mean they didn’t have gambling. You just didn’t know about it.”
MLB is hardly the only professional sports league contending with gambling issues, nor is it the only league benefiting from the monitoring and regulation that sports betting legalization has provided.
For instance, just this week, former NBA player Jontay Porter pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit wire fraud. The charges stemmed from unusual betting activity regarding prop bets associated with Porter, first flagged by the online sportsbook DraftKings.
