Less than a week out from a new MLB season, the league is entering the gambling industry’s most controversial corner.
What happened: MLB signed a licensing deal with Polymarket, a pact that will allow the league to monitor suspicious bets placed on the prediction market platform. The NHL signed a similar deal with both Polymarket and Kalshi in October.
Polymarket will work with MLB to flag any “event contracts” (a.k.a. sports bets) that pose integrity risks, like large wagers placed on the actions of an individual player that could be easily manipulated.
Catch-up: MLB is happily profiting off of the betting boom, but it's worth noting that all of the major sports leagues fought for decades to stop legalized sports betting, primarily out of fear that it would spark a game-fixing epidemic (a good hunch, as it turns out).
Now that the cat’s out of the bag, MLB and the other leagues argue they have to work with the sportsbooks to access their data and ensure games aren’t being manipulated, or catch the culprits when they are.
In fact, it was an Ohio sportsbook that told MLB there were two players on the Cleveland Guardians allegedly manipulating their performance to benefit sports bettors.
Why it matters: The sportsbooks — and now prediction markets — ultimately hold the cards. As one former ESPN reporter put it,“The betting apps are in charge now, and everyone knows it. The leagues are hostage to the forces they unleashed.”—LA