Baseball's gambling scrutiny raises game integrity concerns

The major sports leagues are confronting a potentially costly reality in sports gambling: If you embrace it, problems will come.Why it matters: Recent investigations of pro baseball and basketball stars have raised fears about the integrity of sports, and whether certain plays, or even whole games, are being manipulated.Driving the news: One of Major League Baseball's star relief pitchers this week became the latest athlete to be ensnared in a sports gambling scandal.State of play: For decades, the major sports leagues spurned betting in part because of fears it would invite questions about the integrity of the game. But since the Supreme Court overturned the effective federal ban on sports betting in 2018, more than half of U.S. states have legalized it — and the major sports have embraced it, creating a windfall for leagues, players, media, sportsbooks and state governments.Americans legally bet about $150 billion on sports in 2024, driving a 24.8% increase in revenue for the industry compared with a year earlier, according to the American Gaming Association.Threat level: Easy mobile access to legal betting is leading to growing suspicions of players conspiring with gamblers to fix outcomes.Cleveland Guardians closer Emmanuel Clase on Monday was placed on non-disciplinary paid leave through Aug. 31 "while MLB continues its sports betting investigation," the league said in a statement.He's the second Guardians pitcher to be placed on leave as the MLB examines gambling this year, joining starter Luis Ortiz. Efforts to reach both players through the Guardians and the Major League Baseball Players Association were unsuccessful. They have not been accused of any wrongdoing.The scrutiny comes after former NBA player Jontay Porter was accused of disclosing confidential information about his health to a bettor and then limiting his participation in a game — information the league claimed was used to bet against him.Porter was banned from the NBA and later pleaded guilty to wire fraud in connection with the scandal. The NBA did not respond to a request for comment.The risk for the leagues is that fans start to tune out, leading to lower ratings, merchandise sales and ticket revenue, says Erik Gordon, a business professor at the University of Michigan."None of the major sports leagues wants to be viewed by the public the way the public used to view staged television wrestling," Gordon says. "They want the games to be viewed as honest games with players trying their best."Inside the room: State policymakers are weighing a crackdown.In sports gambling hotbed New Jersey, for example, state lawmaker Dan Hutchison introduced a bill last week that would ban "microbets" — that is, live wagers on individual plays.That could include balls and strikes in baseball games — the category of bets that social media sleuths have flagged as a potential issue with Clase and Ortiz."We're likely to see more calls for regulation in this space," gaming law expert Stephen Piepgrass, partner at law firm Troutman Pepper Locke, tells Axios. Gambling industry consultant Dustin Gouker said the advent of regulated sportsbooks has made it easier for authorities to flag irregular activity that otherwise might've stayed in the shadows via illegal offshore betting apps."Do we need to be able to bet on what the next pitch is, whether it's a ball or strike? Arguably, not," Gouker, of Closing Line Consulting, tells Axios. "But if you start banning lots of things that are in game and make the product worse, you're going to send that offshore.""Bad actors are going to be bad actors," but " we have companies and sportsbooks working together to make sure that if something untoward is happening in the market, we find out," Gouker says.While professional athletes are richly compensated, they are just as susceptible as the public to problem gambling, says Richard Daynard, president of the Public Health Advocacy Institute at Northeastern University."The temptations are just very, very great," Daynard tells Axios. The bottom line: Game integrity concerns are becoming real.

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