At least five players facing lifetime ban for betting
- Thread starter DeadlySplitter
- Start date
I believe the difference is that Marcano was found to have bet on his own team's games and the others bet on games that they were not directly involved in. Of course, that could be due to the fact that they were in the minors at the time. Their saving grace may just have been that they were not good enough to be called up.
As players they're literally never told to do it, there's no mixed message. There's zero chance every one of these players didn't know what they were doing was 100% not allowed and their careers would be fucked if they got caught.
I don't know. I think a year's suspension for betting on games when you're in the minors sends some mixed messages.
The calculation here might be that you don't really have not to bet until you're in the majors or are appearing in a game. But meanwhile, if you want to lateral some juicy detail to a friend or family member. . .I mean, it's not like you're betting, and you're not even on the team, technically.
PEDs basically drove me away from following cycling.
Betting scandals are just more volatile.
Who to blame when people do drugs? Those using or those pushing the drugs?
You have to blame the people doing the drugs, right? But at the same time, when people push it and make it so easy to get them, they have to shoulder the part of this that's their responsibility as well.
I'm not sure exactly what you're going for here. I'm don't think that"blame" is the right word to use here as I'd argue someone with a chemical dependency is not really to "blame" as their addiction is an illness. Besides that I don't think that drug use is an issue of morality, so for me the issue of blame is not on the table.
But to use your word, if you want to assess "blame" for addicts, I'd say that everyone has their own choices to make and the person starting to take drugs is probably the one who receives the lion's share. However chemical addiction is not that cut and dried, there's a million other reasons that can push a person into serious drug use.
I'm not sure how this is relevant to betting though. I've never seen Dan Plesac on MLB Tonight telling the audience about the time he got an 8-ball after a Brewers game and where those kids can score the same stuff.
This is a mildly different opinion, but I think something in society really needs to be done to give better avenues for our young male population to not be shitheads.
There's been a lot written in recent years about males being behind girls in academics, both in secondary and post-secondary.
There's gambling, but there's all the incel culture with losers like Andrew Tate. There's a bunch of men throwing money on fire with fandoms of either online streamers, or onlyfans, or whatever.
We have a culture in America right now that just promotes a lot of men to be losers in their twenties and thirties. Is that the reason people like Groome are throwing away hundreds on parlays? No, but it doesn't help.
I almost feel like a prude saying this, and I'm not, but I feel like the state of affairs for young men in the country is grim.
There's been a lot written in recent years about males being behind girls in academics, both in secondary and post-secondary.
There's gambling, but there's all the incel culture with losers like Andrew Tate. There's a bunch of men throwing money on fire with fandoms of either online streamers, or onlyfans, or whatever.
We have a culture in America right now that just promotes a lot of men to be losers in their twenties and thirties. Is that the reason people like Groome are throwing away hundreds on parlays? No, but it doesn't help.
I almost feel like a prude saying this, and I'm not, but I feel like the state of affairs for young men in the country is grim.
Like a lot of things over which they get fucked, people do them anyway. But I dont think "personal responsibility" is either the point of this discussion or something that *anyone* has questioned. The players can be (and are) responsible for what they've done. (IMO, most of them know its "wrong," just as they know the needles in the ass are wrong). And the owners can be responsible when some players start fucking around with the actual integrity of the game. It's just a matter of time. And it doesn;t have to actually happen. Just the wondering if it did happen on *that* weird play is a problem for the owners.
The biggest message is from the league not to bet, especially on baseball. There is no mixed message as a professional player. It’s maybe the one thing MLB makes crystal clear in policy.
This is ridiculous. They need to exercise the minimal amount of self control to not bet on baseball. Thats why we’re talking about a handful of players across MLB/MiLB.
Of course they did. There’s still no “culpability” here for MLB, who have always made clear what the line of the rules is.
They’ll live with it and hope they don’t have to make a stay or go decision on a huge star like Ohtani. But the money faucet is probably still “worth it” for the league even if that happens. These players are no loss to them, so easy to send a message.
What would you have them do? Monitor phone activity? At what point have they made clear enough what’s against the rules for the players to own the responsibility?
I'm not any more comfortable with sports leagues being in bed with gambling outlets than most here. However I think what's being overlooked in criticizing the relationship is that Marcano was caught because the sportsbook he was using flagged his bets and reported him to MLB. I have my doubts this would have happened if the gambling outfit and the league weren't doing business together.
I think it cuts both ways. The ubiquity and ease of online betting might make it easier for players to give in to the temptation of betting, but it also seems to make it more difficult to "get away" with betting on baseball.
I think it cuts both ways. The ubiquity and ease of online betting might make it easier for players to give in to the temptation of betting, but it also seems to make it more difficult to "get away" with betting on baseball.
Why are the owners responsible if a player fixes a game? Because they told fans "hey you should bet on our league"?
You can’t apply attractive nuisance doctrine to non-property, non-child torts, right? Right? It has the same undertones. (Advertising gambling in the manner done)
You guys make it sound like it wasn't possible to fix games or try to help out a buddy who has a bet on something. Come on...if someone was stupid enough to gamble on the sport they are prohibited from gambling on based on their employment, then in the other way, they are smart enough to find a way to gamble on it, advertising or not.
Literally no one is saying after they were busted that "they didn't know the rules". No, they know they are doing wrong and no amount of advertising in their face every single day is going to change that it was clearly prohibited...and even if it wasn't I'd argue it might be one of the most obvious unsaid baseball rules out there.
This is like putting the blame on video game developers for school shootings.
Literally no one is saying after they were busted that "they didn't know the rules". No, they know they are doing wrong and no amount of advertising in their face every single day is going to change that it was clearly prohibited...and even if it wasn't I'd argue it might be one of the most obvious unsaid baseball rules out there.
This is like putting the blame on video game developers for school shootings.
I think the fact that all commentary, old media and new, is tied in with gambling -due to the sports' tie in with gambling -- makes such fixing more likely.
The players may not see as much of it as their friends, relatives and hangers-on do, but when Uncle Schmendrick comes to you, a marginal player, and hes 5k in the hole and looking for help/inside info, maybe you want to help him.
Were gamblers fucked forever? Yes. But not nearly on this scale.
"Responsible" may not be the right word. But when someone walks a guy late in a game to make sure his buddy can pay the mortgage, i will say the owners in all sports helped to bring it upon themselves by helping to significantly raise the profile of easy gambling.
"Blame" may not have been the best word choice for me. I'm just talking about who is responsible, that's all. And drug use was just an illustration. Every person has his or her own choice to make whether to start drinking or doing drugs or vaping or gambling or whatever other behavior it is we're focusing on. Gambling is the issue in this thread. But we all know that it's harder to say no to something when it's pushed in your face constantly.
You want to lose weight and not eat cookies? Your doc says that if you eat those cookies it will threaten your health? Don't eat the cookies then. But when someone constantly pushes the plate of cookies at you, it's a lot harder to say no to those cookies.
The players who gamble are "at fault", or "to blame", or "are responsible" for their gambling, for their betting on baseball. They made the choice to do so. But baseball - and pro sports now - pushes gambling (sports gambling in particular) in everyone's face almost nonstop. They're not making it easy for these guys to say no, let's just put it that way.
I don't know. These dudes are hanging by a thread (Kelly is 31, Groome, once a top 50ish prospect has never reached the majors, Saalfrank is 26 and has had a cup of coffee) and a year off when they are scrapping to get a big-league paycheck in return for a $15 parlay paying $200 doesn't seem all that smart.
This analogy feels needlessly provocative.
No one is arguing that the players aren’t responsible. Rather, people are pointing out the massive hypocrisy of the sports leagues deciding to form a partnership with gaming companies to promote the very actions they had previously identified as a danger to the integrity of the game.
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It's a poor analogy. It's more like:
Hey kids, don't do drugs. Also, there's a cabinet full of edibles in the kitchen. They're super yummy and everyone around here loves them! Don't eat any of those. And while you're here, put on this shirt advertising a new vaporizer. It's great. Anyway, definitely don't use it! Especially not with all your free time and that big pile of cash we gave you. And if you do, we'll end you, because we don't want anything stopping us from lining our pockets.
It feels like you and I are on the same page here.
This is what I'm saying. The players are ultimately responsible but at the same time, MLB (and all pro sport leagues) was given a dump truck full of money to get in bed with gamblers (something that has been absolutely verboten since 1920) and they didn't really look more than a foot down the road as to how this will affect anything other than their wallets. Every few weeks we're hearing about another athlete getting in trouble with their league for gambling. The only tool that these leagues use is a hammer. I don't think that that's going to work.
Simply saying, "Don't do it" is not good enough. Saying that if you do it, you'll be banned is not a deterrent in the same way that the death penalty hasn't stopped all murders. People do things that they're not supposed to do because they don't think that they'll get caught. The after effects don't usually enter into the equation and MLB hasn't done a good enough job in making sure that players understand why it's not good to bet on games. There needs to be some sort of incentive for all players not to gamble on the games that they play in.
Of course there is. When you have constant gambling commercials--I mean content--running in pregame, postgame and during the games "Hey fans it's the FanDuel Funky Fifth inning parlay brought to you by the fine folks at Draft Kings and MGM, just log on to your phone and make a bet -- it's super simple!" and then you have maybe one or two club house meetings during the year with someone telling you not to gamble, which message do you think is going to be heard more?
Basically the Supreme Court gave every person who has a phone the ability to have this really cool toy to make extra money. Only athletes--who would really know how to use this toy--can't use it. Their friends can. Their family can. Every time they watch a sport from the league that they play in, they're being told how easy it is to use and make money. Only they can't. Becuase of reasons. Oh yeah, their bosses got filthy rich(er) off these toys. How is that not a mixed message?
Who got caught yesterday. There's going to be more. A lot more. Let's flip it around, how much self control would it have been needed for Manfred and the owners to put together a well-thought out plan as to how to introduce legalized gambling into baseball? A plan that would include the players as partners so that they're not tempted to gamble. But they didn't because they saw the dollar signs and forgot about everything else. This is the same short sighted, profits before anything, bullshit that the Manfred administration is infamous for. Just put it on the pile with the reduction of the minor leagues, the reduction of the draft, ads on uniforms, letting the A's move to Las Vegas, the NIke/Fanatics redesign and the countless other things that he and his cronies have pushed through.
Baseball should have learned its lesson 20 years ago when steroids came on the scene and they turned a blind eye to it. Or in the 80s when cocaine was running rampet. Or in the 60s when amphetamines were all the rage. But they were reactive to all of those things, so I guess it's not a shock that they're reactive to this too.
Okay. So instead of being proactive, it's better to be reactive. Like I said, the EPL has already gone down this road and it's not pretty for either the players or the fans. But as long as the money faucet is pumping out that green stuff, it's all worth it.
I don't know. This isn't my area of expertise, but I can tell you what they're doing right now is not right and there appears to be no foresight in anticipating and handling this inevitable mess. And it's only going to get worse. But Fisher and Henry and the Steinbrenners and everyone else got paid.
And for the fifth time in this thread, I never said that they players have no responsibility in this mess.
This no proof Ohtani bet on baseball, while I'm willing to bet FanDuel or DraftKings has accounts where these guys either used their real name or were not very good at covering their tracks.
No one was being caught or penalized for any of those things. Then baseball reacted and started penalizing players, and some players kept doing them anyway. Catching and harshly penalizing players for gambling on baseball early on in this era of gambling seems the exact opposite to being reactive. But I suppose they should have had a plan to partner with the players to convince them not to gamble or whatever it was you suggested without giving even the slightest hint of what this imaginary plan could possibly look like to mean anything.
There hasn’t been proof that Ohtani bet on baseball.
But if he did…. Do we really think people with billions of $$$ on the line would not go out of their way to keep that information quiet?
I think that holding the players accountable is the right thing to do. They are adults, violated the rules and deserve their punishment.
I am still grossed out by major professional sports pushing gambling the way they are. Gambling can become an addiction and ruin people's and their families' lives, and causes real harm. I also think that it is even grosser in light of all four leagues being very anti-gambling (or at least "very anti-facilitating gambling") within the last decade and a half. Their sudden alignment with sports betting mega-companies was a serious shift from their previously held "moral beliefs" (if there really is such a thing when money is involved), and is clearly selling out their sports in the name of money.
I don't believe that these are mutually independent beliefs, and both can be to blame for the current situation.
I am still grossed out by major professional sports pushing gambling the way they are. Gambling can become an addiction and ruin people's and their families' lives, and causes real harm. I also think that it is even grosser in light of all four leagues being very anti-gambling (or at least "very anti-facilitating gambling") within the last decade and a half. Their sudden alignment with sports betting mega-companies was a serious shift from their previously held "moral beliefs" (if there really is such a thing when money is involved), and is clearly selling out their sports in the name of money.
I don't believe that these are mutually independent beliefs, and both can be to blame for the current situation.
I don’t disagree, but beer and sports and more recently all alcohol and sports have been intertwined for generations, is that also a problem?
Yes. I believe so. Maybe I am a prude.
I wish alcohol advertising would go the way of cigarette advertising. Same with gambling.
Gambling, like drinking, is something that can lead to addiction. Which, in turn, can lead to compulsion and all sorts of self-destructive behavior. So, in that sense, they are very similar.
Where they are different - and MLB has explicitly recognized this difference since 1920 - is that the problems associated with gambling can lead to players/coaches/managers being compromised, which threatens the integrity of the game itself.
When MLB decided to form a partnership with gaming companies, they explicitly normalized the very behavior they have warned players about for 100 years. The logical disconnect is obvious and the consequences are completely predictable.
That doesn’t lessen the responsibility of players one bit. But it’s a damning indictment of the league’s greed.
I am more concerned about the audience than I am about the players, like @LogansDad said. The Players, *should* be able to be controlled by clear rules regarding gambling and if they can’t abide the penalties are clear. It’s the advertising of addictive products like gambling and alcohol and making it seem “cool” or ”easy to get rich quick” that bothers me about the advertisements.
As @LogansDad also said, when we were young, cigarette ads were all over TV, radio, and magazines, and then they were successfully and seemingly permanently banned, and yet the tobacco companies seem to be doing ok. I am not sure how they got banned but alcohol advertising has only expanded (remember when it was beer only?) and gambling ads are all over the place. I am totally fine with all these things being legal but the advertising can be regulated.
I am also in favor of legal weed, but I don’t think it should be advertised on TV, either.
As @LogansDad also said, when we were young, cigarette ads were all over TV, radio, and magazines, and then they were successfully and seemingly permanently banned, and yet the tobacco companies seem to be doing ok. I am not sure how they got banned but alcohol advertising has only expanded (remember when it was beer only?) and gambling ads are all over the place. I am totally fine with all these things being legal but the advertising can be regulated.
I am also in favor of legal weed, but I don’t think it should be advertised on TV, either.
The difference I see between advertising alcohol vs gambling during a game is that the broadcast team isn't talking about drinking every inning and they aren't saying, "This inning is brought to you by Ketel One Vodka and here are tonight's personal vodka cocktail recipes from each of us in the broadcast booth". It's really that it's being incorporated into the broadcast itself and aggressively pushed that's so repulsive to me.
Is there any evidence that MLB refusing marketing dollars from sportsbooks would make stories like this one less likely to happen?
The dramatic expansion of legal, online/mobile sports betting is (imo) not great for society, but that’s beyond MLB’s ability to influence. Players just need to follow the rule that’s been in place for over 100 years, even though there are more temptations now than before.
The dramatic expansion of legal, online/mobile sports betting is (imo) not great for society, but that’s beyond MLB’s ability to influence. Players just need to follow the rule that’s been in place for over 100 years, even though there are more temptations now than before.
Perhaps not this one but future ones.
Meaning, suppose that MLB goes a decade with kids watching the sport and seeing gambling normalized and promoted by their favorite MLB team's broadcast crews. Those kids will also be exposed to gambling-hooking games and activities pushed by the major US gambling companies. When they hit 18 they can gamble on fantasy sports. Maybe earlier if they're from abroad or the laws change in the meantime. For a chunk of them it will be 100% normal to gamble on the sport they're interested in and think about and hope to excel in. Because all the adults do it.
It's then that the chickens will come home to roost. Normalizing something is just that. Players will start to view the baseball gambling rules as archaic, or not really in the spirit of things, and my goodness, it was only a small bet when I was on the IL anyway.
Players speak out about gambling-related threats received
https://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/mlb/columnist/bob-nightengale/2024/06/09/mlb-players-starting-to-fear-for-their-safety-from-gamblers/74028741007/
https://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/mlb/columnist/bob-nightengale/2024/06/09/mlb-players-starting-to-fear-for-their-safety-from-gamblers/74028741007/
True! The legality of sports gambling is on the state legislatures. Full stop. Everything else you say here is also true.
But the leagues and broadcasters could decide whether they wanted clear moral boundaries that would allow them to unequivocally condemn bad behavior when it happened, or whether they wanted to accept money and become complicit and leave us all second guessing their motivations.
Does this mean we should get rid of fantasy sports too since the same thing has been happening for years?
Not sure you're ever going to find a controlled experiment that would give you the answer to your question.
But kids growing up watching sporting events see those ads. At first they don't quite understand, and ask their parents or guardians "what's a Draft Kings?". Later it becomes "When can we do FanDuel?" And while the number of people in that cohort that become professional athletes is tiny, the reality remains that the athletes grow up under the same influences.
Prohibiting online gambling would be putting toothpaste back in its tube. It's too easy for dedicated gamblers to get around state restrictions, and that is not something that can just be "fixed" via legislation. And legal sports betting has existed for decades in some states. But it was an unforced error for MLB and other professional leagues to take huge amounts of sponsorship money from the online casinos, and then allow constant advertising of parleys and other bets during the broadcast.
None of the above absolves the players involved in knowingly violating the bylaws of their league, which they know is something that the league takes very seriously.
To be fair, who among us has not at one point speculated about driving a bus over Bo Bichette?
More seriously:
I'm more than half-convinced that the best ways to handle this are either a) a universal ban, or b) a regulated industry with rules and penalties for the participants. If you threaten players, you lose access to the gambling platform for some way/time. That can run parallel with stand-alone criminal deterrents.
In that type of scheme you could also limit legal gambling so gambling addicts aren't sucked dry. You get yellow, then red flags, then no access if your losses are a certain % of your capital/collateral or something. Sure, some could go on to gamble illegally, but it might help in many cases.
Neither are perfect fixes, but the problem with amping things up on the back-end (criminal/civil/bankruptcy) is that you're often just capturing the most vulnerable in the general societal population. Meaning you'll always have a certain number of unstable/at-risk people being processed through the gambling system and reacting badly to it. Back-end fixes after they've imploded won't work, because the harm has already happened.
As a career marketing person, my answer is yes.
To begin with, it is an established fact that advertising and promotion drive consumer trial. Which means - because MLB sponsorships are a key part of the marketing plan for sportsbooks - we know the MLB affiliation is driving consumer trial.
Here’s another important consideration from a marketing perspective - research has shown consumers (of all types) are generally rational. Specifically, they are able to filter mixed messages in a fairly sophisticated manner, even if they do so on an unconscious level.
This is a critical point because, from a communications standpoint, MLB had total alignment on the “no gambling” message for over 90 years: neither teams nor players were allowed any involvement. Even retired legends like Mantle and Mays were disqualified from MLB employment because they accepted $$$ from casinos. And teams simply wouldn't dare go near gaming.
Once this changed and teams started actively promoting gambling, the communications disconnect became profound. And if you are a player, your incentive to follow the rules is far less clear. (Especially if you are a minor-leaguer or a marginal MLB player.)
Is there a definitive study that proves this? No, but only because I haven’t modeled the research study on this specific issue. But the fundamentals are so compelling that I have zero doubt that I’d be able to do so quite easily.
So, yes, I can say with an extremely high degree of certainty that MLB’s decision to end the prohibition on being in business with sports gambling companies is a significant contributor to the stories we are seeing now. And my guess is that the true number of players involved is probably much, much higher than we’d like to believe.
I think the same thing I think about all the guys recently caught in other sports.... the move to partner with gambling hasn't increased the number of players gambling... it's increased the rate at which the dumbest of them get caught. Marcano got caught, just like Porter in the NBA and a bunch of NFL guys, because they used legal sportsbooks who report to both the states and the league. 15 years ago Marcano would have placed his bet via a website in the Canary Islands and the league never knows because they weren't looking.
MLB can't even go a week without more gambling problems. This time an umpire:
Whoopsie doodles.
https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/5565735/2024/06/14/mlb-umpire-pat-hoberg-disciplined-gambling/
Whoopsie doodles.
Mlb ump in trouble for gambling now too
https://www.cbssports.com/mlb/news/mlb-umpire-pat-hoberg-disciplined-for-violating-gambling-policy-reportedly-denies-betting-on-baseball/amp/
https://www.cbssports.com/mlb/news/mlb-umpire-pat-hoberg-disciplined-for-violating-gambling-policy-reportedly-denies-betting-on-baseball/amp/
I love that MLB has been repeatedly put into a position where they say, "Don't worry, this person of low moral character who violated our bright line rule did so in a way that didn't compromise any games. Because their character, while low, wasn't exactly quite that low."'
How long do they think that works?
How long do they think that works?