Is Tarnished MLB Desperate Enough To Embrace Live Wagering?

Let’s get in the turbocharger forward-time machine and travel to Denver in July this year. MLB is celebrating its midsummer All Star Game, shanghaied from Atlanta for sins against the new corporate orthodoxy (translation: not following Woke narratives on ID for voting). 

Announcers are gingerly avoiding the subject of the move to placate black militants and their corporate Gepettos by transferring the game from a city with 50 percent black population (Atlanta) to a city with nine percent black population (Denver). Or that the Democratic Party that urged this move realized— too late— that the move would devastate black businesses in Georgia disproportionately.

In their plucky praise for costing Atlanta an estimated hundred million in business impact the talking heads will be instructed not to cite President Joe Biden’s hyperbolic comparison of Georgia’s democratic voting law to Jim Crow. It will be all sweet diversity as MLB commissioners Rob Manfred pretends that he acts independently of sponsors such as Delta and Coca Cola who yanked his strings. 

(In case you missed it, there was a first-of-its-kind call held this weekend among more than 100 top corporate leaders on how to respond to proposed changes in state voting laws. Participants included top execs of airlines, media, law, investment.)

Manfred will explain that, sure, baseball employs single-digit black players, but it is really tapped into a community whose young people choose other sports by a massive proportion. Don’t know about you, but we can’t wait to see this pusillanimous performance. Maybe they can get Colin Kaepernick to throw out the first pitch. His throwing arm should be fresh after four years of bitching that he’s not allowed to  throw in the NFL.

Speaking of the NFL, it could probably withstand the hurricane of hypocrisy MLB has invited with this move. Its national corporate brand— even after Kaepernick— is strong enough to take an own goal of this magnitude.  Perhaps the NBA, which withstood its own embarrassment, taking a knee to Chinese running-shoe manufacturers over Hong Kong could also absorb the blowback.

Not baseball. Despite MLB’s pretensions to a national platform it has become a regional sport, defined by strong rivalries but absent any compelling national voice. While there are wonderful players like Mike Trout and Mookie Betts, none have a national profile à la LeBron or Tom Brady. Its population base is greying at a rapid clip.

The slow-moving sport had earlier been saved from obscurity in the late 20th century by its early adoption of fantasy sports (Rotisserie baseball etc.) and its development of sports analytics via the pioneer Bill James. But now, as the pandering to politicians on Georgia voting proves, it’s floundering to find a voice with younger Woke fans.

While Manfred and his Manhattan-based minders rack their brains for SJW stands to placate their principal sponsors, it’s fair to ask what the future might be post-Covid. To wrest a segment of the population from the NFL, NBA and NCAA brands it will have to be bold.

One answer might be complete integration with the legalized gaming industry which is growing exponentially in the U.S. since legalized sports wagering was approved by the Supreme Court in 2018. Make baseball a sport that is followed as much by bettors as the loyalty of its aging population base. 

We know what you’re saying. Isn’t baseball the sport of Kennesaw Mountain Landis and the Black Sox scandal of 1919? Wouldn’t this be— at long last— Pete Rose’s “get out of jail free” card for his gambling expulsion in 1989? What about those warnings in every MLB clubhouse stating that gambling on baseball equals an automatic ban from MLB?

Yes, yes and yes. All true. The facts also show that only 40 U.S. states are open to legalized gambling, so there will be pushback as non-participants slow the adaptation of any universal standard. But the lost revenues from gambling income will eventually convince most that it’s a necessary evil. (Canada is glacially converting to single-event betting on its government lotteries.)

Society has also come a long way since star player Shoeless Joe Jackson and his teammates were banned for fixing a World Series in 1919. The integrity of the results is more secure because the game’s stars— who can affect outcomes— make such fabulous amounts that they’re beyond bribing. The sophistication of in-game betting has taken the results out of the hands of underworld figures like Arnold Rothstein (who engineered the Black Sox scandal). 

If you have an online connection to a betting website you can follow the game pitch by pitch, at-bat by at-bat. Limits are imposed to prevent million-dollar results of many of the wagers.  MLB needs to integrate this flow of data into its game casts to allow viewers at home to participate with an online site on their laptop or tablet. Stadiums can be retrofitted to allow in-seat wagering.

Lord knows, there are enough pauses in an MLB game broadcast to allow time for bettors to make a selection. Little, if any, of the time is currently devoted to anything meaningful. Announcers prattle on about events that informed viewers can see are clearly incorrect and misleading. 

Betting of this kind can take fans out of the narrow regional silos that dominate MLB and encourage baseball fans to venture to other markets to see how their wagers on games outside their area code. While MLB dummies up on the odds, the PGA Tour has allowed some betting lines and propositions into telecasts at selected events. The interactivity is ideal for the younger population who have grown up knowing nothing but online access. 

For a tattered MLB, gaming is a bet on its future.

Bruce Dowbiggin @dowbboy is the editor of Not The Public Broadcaster (http://www.notthepublicbroadcaster.com). The best-selling author of Cap In Hand is also a regular contributor to Sirius XM Canada Talks Ch. 167. A two-time winner of the Gemini Award as Canada's top television sports broadcaster, his new book Personal Account with Tony Comper is now available on http://brucedowbigginbooks.ca/book-personalaccount.aspx