If any sport should feel at home with proposition bets, it’s Major League Baseball. The game lives on the minutiae of statistics, from the speed of a runner to first base to how many times a batter swings at the first pitch. It’s a treasure trove of in-play wagers waiting to be foisted on bettors.
That fact has not escaped the MLB’s Kenny Gersh, who sees prop bets as part of the future. Gersh, whose says-it-all-title is executive vice president, gaming and new business ventures, spoke at the recent Vegas Sports & Information Betting Summit at South Point Casino.
Like other major sports, baseball opposed the legalization of sports betting, but felt conflicted over fantasy baseball. “Is it gambling?” Gersh asked. Yet, baseball has had a long history with fantasy games pre-dating DraftKings and FanDuel, through rotisserie leagues.
Once the Supreme Court said it would hear the New Jersey case for legal sports betting, baseball knew what the future held. “We had to get comfortable with gaming,” said Gersh, a lawyer who got involved with fantasy baseball through his work with CBS-owned site SportsLine.com. “We knew it wasn’t going to go away.”
He visited London and other European cities to see how sports betting worked. In Europe, there were betting shops on corners in and around stadiums. “It was educational seeing the challenges they had with sports betting,” Gersh told summit attendees. “The owners were receptive to hearing from us. There was little pushback.”
The MLB has three main goals moving forward:
- Leverage for incremental revenue
- Drive engagement with baseball
- Protect the integrity of the game
Will baseball enthusiasts accept the new future? “With so many fans, it’s possible that some will resent any change, but as long as it does not interfere with game play or intrude on game coverage, adverse reactions may be isolated,” said David Schwartz, a gambling historian with the University of Nevada Las Vegas.
To allay fans’ concerns, MLB has to insure the game does not profit from sportsbooks. “There’s no sharing in direct revenue,” Gersh said. “There is no concern over players altering their performance.”
Baseball may allow sportsbook commercials during game broadcasts, he added. “We’ll loosen things up every year. We might allow some commercials during games.”
The change to in-play prop bets could begin with the introduction of free-to-play, which focuses more on storylines as opposed to betting opportunities, such as the chances a player will hit a home run, said Gersh.
“The free-to-play game will allow people across the country, regardless of what state they’re in, to engage in a baseball game and allow us to show people what’s possible with our data,” he told summit attendees. “We can use that free-to-play game to talk about the odds of this or that happening as a storyline instead of a betting opportunity.”
This gives casual fans something to do during games without betting. “It’s important to fans to go where they can win prizes, interacting in a digital fashion. We have a long way to go to where it could be.”
Baseball offers opportunities for in-play bets on the whole game, half innings, and at-bats. “I would expect to see a range of props, from individual player performance to more unusual ones (will team A use more pitchers than Team B hits home runs),” Schwartz said.
MLB already offers a smartphone app called “Beat the Streak,” which asks users to pick two players per day who will secure a hit. The free-to-play game, in partnership with MGM Resorts, features a $5.6 million prize for the first person who’s able to extend his or her run of hits by 57 straight days, thereby eclipsing Joe DiMaggio’s famous hit streak.
One of the biggest concerns for the future is dealing with sports betting state by state, Gersh said. “It’s harder to an operator to have scale and launch products” then if it was federally approved. But we take what we can get.” The political process can be frustrating, as is protecting casinos and the role they play in local economies. Some states have the added impact of tribal gaming.
“Every state has its own dynamics to deal with,” Gersh said.
MLB sees sports betting as a way to entice a younger generation to follow baseball. “It will change the way people see baseball. We want to see what happens, see how it plays out. It will all look different in five years.”
