Major League Baseball is considering becoming the second major American professional team sports league to partner with prediction platforms.
MLB commissioner Rob Manfred said on Thursday that the league is mulling teaming up with increasingly popular platforms such as Kalshi and Polymarket.
Key Takeaways
- The league did not say it was actively engaging in negotiations.
- MLB is in the middle of an illegal sports betting investigation involving teammates and a three-time All-Star.
- Partnership with prediction platforms could allow MLB to help with integrity monitoring.
ESPN’s Jeff Passan reported that MLB team owners were informed during their quarterly meetings that the league could ingratiate itself with the prediction industry.
Manfred conceded that he only learned about platforms such as Kalshi and Polymarket a few months ago. The NHL is the only other American professional team sports league to have prediction partners, both of which are listed above.
UFC also has a partnership deal with Polymarket.
Enjoying Covers content? Add us as a preferred source on your Google account“We thought it was important for the owners to be updated on why prediction markets are different than sports betting – why we might want to consider being in business with prediction markets in an effort to protect our integrity, to get the kind of protections we need,” Manfred said. “The regulatory framework, very different. Obviously, state by state on the sports betting side, federal on the other.”
Protecting integrity
One of the primary concerns in the modern era of sports gambling and prediction market trading is the potential for illicit manipulation.
The MLB is currently experiencing that with an ongoing case involving Cleveland Guardians pitchers Emmanuel Clase and Luis Ortiz, who were charged with manipulating their performances in games for the benefit of sports bettors. Clase specifically was accused of rigging pitches in 48 games, or roughly one-fourth of his appearances in a two-year span.
Despite that precedent, Manfred said that teaming up with prediction platforms would allow the league to be in greater control of threats of nefarious manipulation.
“There's obviously an opportunity to work with the markets themselves to get the kind of integrity protections you want,” he said.
In the interest of preserving integrity, Kalshi announced earlier this month a slew of overhauls designed to increase consumer protection. That included banning insider trading, hiring former Under Secretary of the Treasury for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence, Brian Nelson, as an adviser on market integrity, and integrating responsible trading and iMarket integrity pages on its platform, among others.
What’s the big deal?
Prediction platforms offer similar services to sportsbooks, but their operational and regulatory frameworks are completely different.
Whereas legal sportsbook users compete against the house with pre-determined odds, prediction users buy and sell contracts related to various outcomes. Prices are dictated by real-time consumer demand, influenced by updates and current events.
State gaming regulators are in charge of monitoring sportsbooks. Prediction apps operate under the watchful eye of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission.
A growing collection of state regulators have expressed a form of concern related to prediction markets being allowed to operate without their approval. In response, the platforms have claimed that their federal regulation supersedes state-level decisions.
