MLB Cedes Its Remaining Moral Ground On Gambling As It Takes Polymarket's Money

Hey, have you gotten in on this hot new market? "Yes or No: will Rob Manfred and MLB ever express shame about being nakedly greedy and hypocritical?" Trick question --- no one would put that prop online, because the percentage for "No" would never get below 100.

That goes double for any outfit that signs a partnership agreement with baseball. Like Polymarket, the bookmaker that's cleverly disguised as a sports options contract broker. This week, it agreed to pay MLB $150 million to $300 million over three years (per Front Office Sports) to be the league's official prediction market exchange. In return, MLB will lavish data and licensing rights upon the company. That means there's a 98 percent chance Polymarket will display all of the correct club logos whenever MLB betting lines --- sorry, contracts --- go live this season.

Polymarket should celebrate this deal because it strengthens its business. Baseball, on the other hand, should be ashamed for partnering with an operation that openly skirts the law, and also for showing no appreciation of its history.

For decades, baseball was virulently opposed to the establishment or expansion of legal sports betting. The commissioner's office is a direct legacy of baseball's most corrupt period. The first commissioner, Judge Kennesaw Mountain Landis, was hired to clean up the sport after Chicago's Black Sox fixed World Series games in 1919. When A. Bartlett Giamatti banned Pete Rose from baseball for life 70 years later for wagering on games, many involving his own team, the rule was ironclad: No betting allowed. 

In 2018, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled the Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act (PASPA), which severely limited the scope of legal sports betting, unconstitutional. The decision opened up sports betting to all 50 states. Baseball could have led by example and refused to make marketing deals with sportsbooks, but the money was just too good. In 2023, MLB made FanDuel its official sports betting partner. Now, the league has joined the NHL, the UFC, and MLS in selling access to a company that has been accused of illegal activities.

A number of state regulators consider Polymarket, Kalshi, and other exchanges illegal bookmakers. But the exchanges have a champion in the federal Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), the Trump administration-influenced body that oversees these companies. The CFTC regards sports prediction markets as being similar to securities traders. That means the exchanges are staying. MLB and the CFTC will share information under an agreement completed in conjunction with the Polymarket deal.

"I hope that it goes without saying that our primary concern, always first in our minds, is protecting the integrity of the game," Manfred said in his announcement of the agreement (per ESPN). "I think in today's world, it is really important not to be chasing developments but try to be involved and in front of those developments because our world is so fast-moving."

On Friday, the league and the players' association reminded people of the sport's sordid past. The parties announced that the administrative leaves of former Guardians pitchers Emmanuel Clase and Luis Ortiz for allegedly fixing games had changed from paid to unpaid. The two men are accused of intentionally throwing pitches out of the strike zone to help bettors win in-game prop wagers. The league will wait for the legal cases to wrap up before it administers discipline, which could be as severe as a lifetime ban.

Last year, Manfred reinstated Rose and "Shoeless" Joe Jackson, one of the Black Sox's "Eight Men Out," from MLB's ineligible list posthumously. He erased the hard line that he and his predecessors had drawn for people who took part in gambling scandals. Maybe Clase and Ortiz will suffer similar fates in time. But after the Polymarket deal, baseball has ceded the moral high ground for good when it comes to gambling. Its integrity is gone because too many bucks are to be made.