MLB on Monday said its authorized gaming operators would cap bets on individual pitches at US$200 and exclude them from parlays, a day after two Cleveland Guardians players were indicted and accused of rigging pitches at the behest of gamblers.
MLB said the limits were agreed to by sportsbook operators representing more than 98 percent of the US betting market.
The league said in a statement that pitch-level bets on outcomes of pitch velocity and of balls and strikes “present heightened integrity risks because they focus on one-off events that can be determined by a single player and can be inconsequential to the outcome of the game.”
Photo: Reuters
“The risk on these pitch-level markets will be significantly mitigated by this new action targeted at the incentive to engage in misconduct,” it said. “The creation of a strict bet limit on this type of bet, and the ban on parlaying them, reduces the payout for these markets and the ability to circumvent the new limit.”
MLB said the agreement included Bally’s, Bet365, BetMGM, Bet99, Betr, Caesars, Circa, DraftKings, 888, FanDuel, Gamewise, Hard Rock, Intralot, Jack Entertainment, Mojo, Northstar Gaming, Oaklawn, Penn, Pointsbet, Potawatomi, Rush Steet and Underdog.
Cleveland pitchers Emmanuel Clase and Luis Ortiz were indicted on Sunday in US District Court in Brooklyn, New York, on charges they took bribes from sports bettors to throw certain types of pitches. They were charged with wire fraud conspiracy, honest services wire fraud conspiracy, conspiracy to influence sporting contests by bribery and money laundering conspiracy. The indictment says they helped two unnamed gamblers in the Dominican Republic win at least US$460,000 on bets placed on the speed and outcome of certain pitches, including some that landed in the dirt.
Ortiz’s lawyer, Chris Georgalis, said in a statement that his client was innocent and “has never, and would never, improperly influence a game — not for anyone and not for anything.”
A lawyer for Clase, Michael J. Ferrara, said his client “has devoted his life to baseball and doing everything in his power to help his team win. Emmanuel is innocent of all charges and looks forward to clearing his name in court.”
The US Supreme Court in 2018 ruled the Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act of 1992 was unconstitutional, allowing states to legalize sports betting.
Ortiz on Monday appeared in federal court in Boston. US Magistrate Judge Donald L. Cabell granted Ortiz his release on the condition he surrender his passport, restrict his travel to the Northeast US and post a US$500,000 bond, US$50,000 of it secured.
Ortiz was ordered to avoid contact with anyone who could be viewed as a victim, witness or codefendant.
Last month, more than 30 people, including Portland Trail Blazers head coach and Basketball Hall of Famer Chauncey Billups, and Miami Heat guard Terry Rozier, were arrested in a takedown of two sprawling gambling operations that authorities said rigged poker games backed by mafia families and leaked inside information about NBA athletes.
Billups’ attorney, Chris Heywood, issued a statement denying the allegations.
Rozier’s lawyer, Jim Trusty, said in a statement his client is “not a gambler” and “looks forward to winning this fight.”
ANFIELD BLUES: Kylian Mbappe arrived at Anfield on a run of 21 goals in 17 games, but he managed just three attempts in the match, none of them hitting the target Kylian Mbappe has been nearly unstoppable this season, but he hit a roadblock in their UEFA Champions League match at Anfield on Tuesday. For the second year running, the Real Madrid forward had a night to forget at Merseyside as Liverpool won 1-0. Mbappe looked a shadow of the player who has been tearing defenses apart all season. “We were lacking that threat in the final third,” said Madrid coach Xabi Alonso, without naming Mbappe individually. The FIFA World Cup winner for France rarely looked capable of finding a breakthrough against a Liverpool team who have been so defensively fragile for much of the
For almost 30 minutes, Vitomir Maricic did not take a breath. Face down in a pool, surrounded by anxious onlookers, the Croatian freediver fought spasming pain to redefine what doctors thought was possible. When he finally surfaced, he had smashed the previous Guinness World Record for the longest breath-hold underwater by nearly five minutes. However, even with the help of pure oxygen before the attempt, it had pushed him to the limit. “Everything was difficult, just overwhelming,” Maricic, 40, told reporters, reflecting on the record-breaking day on June 14. “When I dive, I completely disconnect from everything, as if I’m not even there.
An amateur soccer league organized by farmers, students and factory workers in rural China has unexpectedly drawn millions of fans and inspired big cities to form their own, raising hopes China can grow talent from the ground up and finally become a global force. The nation of 1.4 billion people has about 200 million soccer fans, more than any other country, but it has failed to build world-class teams, partly due to a top-down approach where clubs pick players from a very small pool of prescreened candidates. The professional game is marred by a history of fixed matches, corruption, and dismal performances,
Amanda Anisimova on Wednesday pulled off a stellar comeback to get the better of Iga Swiatek 6-7 (3/7), 6-4, 6-2 and book her spot in the last four of the WTA Finals in Riyadh, while Taiwan’s Hsieh Su-wei won in the doubles at the women’s year-ending event. Making her tournament debut this week, the fourth-seeded Anisimova secured the runner-up spot in the Serena Williams Group behind Elena Rybakina. Rybakina completed round-robin play with a perfect 3-0 record, thanks to a 6-4, 6-4 success against Russian alternate Ekaterina Alexandrova earlier in the day. Anisimova improved her three-set record this season to an impressive
RSS