MLB Goes All In with Polymarket

[endaround]

Hey what can go wrong?

https://www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/id/48248176/mlb-reaches-agreements-polymarket-federal-commission

I am so old I can remember players getting banned for life for gambling like last year

[Frisbee Slider]

Is a player getting banned for life for gambling something we can wager on in Polymarket? 🙂

[igor67]

Ugh

[MoreTrife]

Disgusting. Says it all that with the Amercian people so divided on most issues, a strong majority of people are against online gambling. Yet it plows ahead anyways because $$$

[Cool Hand Lucroy]

This can only be justified by short-term market logic, and it's long-term bad for society and the game.

I'm no fan of the sports books (it's fine for gambling to be 10-20% of our relationship to sports, but it's become so much more), but at least they a) are restricted to sports and b) have a deep and vested in ensuring that markets are insulated from insider trading and bet-rigging.

Obviously, there are deep concerns about part B, but nobody WANTS game fixing, and the entire business is predicated on some foundational level of trust in the bet menu.

Polymarket not only lets people literally bet directly on mass death, but it's incredibly hard to police. Anybody can trade on insider info all the time, and the regulatory space is super ill-defined. Why MLB wants to open that door, I have no clue, other than some oversimplified intro business course some commish crony took once as an undergrad.

Bad deal for everybody. 

[endaround]

The thing about this, is what can this even mean to a team? Maybe it's $100 million per year from Polymarket? That's what $3 million or so per team? So this is being done so a team can pay for one signing bonus or a utility infielder?

[RightFieldCoder]

No, it's being done so the owners get an extra $3m.

[SeaBass]

On 3/20/2026 at 5:52 PM, RightFieldCoder said:

No, it's being done so the owners get an extra $3m.

Yearly fees to operate yachts and private jets is expensive.