Federal authorities indicted Cleveland Guardians pitchers Emmanuel Clase and Luis Ortiz in November on charges they conspired with bettors to throw certain pitches outside the strike zone, ensuring large payouts to gamblers who had tens of thousands of dollars riding on those outcomes. Both pitchers have pleaded not guilty. Days later, MLB and the country’s largest sportsbooks agreed to the new $200 cap on wagers on individual pitches.
MLB said the cap, along with a ban on including such wagers in parlays — which are essentially a series of linked prop bets — will protect the integrity of the sport by reducing the incentive for players to deliberately throw their performance.
Harry Levant, director of gambling policy at Northeastern University’s Public Health Advocacy Institute, said the betting limit is designed primarily to protect the business model for the league, which sells statistical data to sportsbooks, and the gambling industry, which is on the hook for big payouts from rigged plays.
Levant, a recovering gambling addict, said the limit still allows bettors to quickly lose large amounts of money on microbets.
“Consider 20 pitches per half inning. People can lose $4,000 per half and $8,000 per inning. With a nine-inning game, that is $72,000 per game,” he said. “With 15 games most nights, people can lose nearly $900,000 each night” just on pitch-by-pitch prop bets.
Sports betting industry representatives pushed back, calling the criticism a red herring. The new limits weren’t designed to deal with problem gaming, which the industry does in other ways, they said.
“It is important that we recognize this as an integrity-focused initiative, separating it from the robust customer protection programs operators have instituted that empower customers to manage their play through tools and allow them to identify and intervene when a customer may be experiencing harm,” said Conor Yunits, spokesperson for the Sports Betting Alliance.
Stephen Miraglia, a spokesperson for Boston-based DraftKings, one of the two largest sportsbooks in the country, emphasized that sportsbooks are better positioned to expose rigged play because the industry is legal and regulated. That wasn’t possible when gambling operated in the shadows, he said.
“Unlike the pre-legalization era — when integrity threats were far more difficult to detect — the regulated environment provides increased oversight and accountability, enabling the identification of potentially suspicious activity,” Miraglia said. “Separately, our mission is to provide an entertaining gaming environment that players can enjoy responsibly.”
DraftKings provides players with responsible gaming tools, information, and resources while using technology to “detect signs of potentially problematic behavior, allowing our team to proactively engage with players where appropriate,” Miraglia said.
FanDuel, DraftKings’ top competitor, echoed the argument that protecting sports integrity and protecting gamblers are separate matters. Spokesperson Alex Pitocchelli pointed to tools the sports betting company uses to identify and slow down people who are gambling more than usual, such as analyzing how much time they spend on the site or how many bets they make in the wake of losses.
“Once flagged, individuals are reviewed manually by a team of trained professionals (a team of approximately 30) who have set criteria to determine if a customer is at risk of gambling harm,” he said.
Massachusetts lawmakers are considering banning all forms of prop bets, which range from microbets — say, on the speed of a pitch, who will score the next basket, or whether the next snap will be a run or a pass — to bets on an individual player’s performance or whether the game will go to overtime.
These kinds of bets are big moneymakers for the sportsbooks, particularly when bundled together into same-game parlays. DraftKings executives have consistently told investors those same-game parlays are important revenue boosters, according to the company’s investor presentations and calls.
Levant and the Public Health Advocacy Institute are advocating for the new restrictions, saying they would properly regulate a highly addictive product. The legislation is pending in the State House.
Joey Flechas can be reached at joey.flechas@globe.com. Follow him on X @joeflech.