Im pretty sure Im in the minority on this board but its my opinion

[Can_of_corn]

3 minutes ago, Sports Guy said:

We have a winner!

Now, take this a step further and really apply this to baseball. It brings eyeballs to the sport and, even more importantly, younger eye balls.

When you embrace the gambling and you bring in new rules that increases the pace of play, you get more viewers and more long term viewers.

This is all very important and really, your own personal feelings about it mean far less than growing the game and making it appealing to the younger generation.

Baseball has a marketing problem. It has an age problem. This may be something that can fix that..or at least help fix it.

I think that 95% of it is immediate paychecks and 5% is how it might grow the sport.

[Sports Guy]

2 minutes ago, blid said:

This is all well and good until you have a massive scandal that demolishes the integrity of the sport.  It's only a matter of time.

Why? It’s not like you weren’t allowed to bet before. There have already been scandals across sports.

That said, the leagues are willing to risk this and they are right for doing so.

[Can_of_corn]

2 minutes ago, blid said:

This is all well and good until you have a massive scandal that demolishes the integrity of the sport.  It's only a matter of time.

 

 

 

 

I know MLB is held to a higher standard than other sports but still....

[Sports Guy]

1 minute ago, Can_of_corn said:

I think that 95% of it is immediate paychecks and 5% is how it might grow the sport.

Ok.  It’s all of it. There are many layers to it and they are right for doing it.

[Moose Milligan]

1 minute ago, Sports Guy said:

We have a winner!

Now, take this a step further and really apply this to baseball. It brings eyeballs to the sport and, even more importantly, younger eye balls.

When you embrace the gambling and you bring in new rules that increases the pace of play, you get more viewers and more long term viewers.

This is all very important and really, your own personal feelings about it mean far less than growing the game and making it appealing to the younger generation.

Baseball has a marketing problem. It has an age problem. This may be something that can fix that..or at least help fix it.

I don't disagree with any of it.  I'm a capitalist too, a business owner...I like making money.  

It's important to make money and to advance the sport.  But to ignore the other issues that surround gambling because baseball has a marketing problem and a problem with attracting young fans is selective ignorance.  Mind you, I just hate the gambling stuff because I find their ads to be tacky and predatory and I know it's not going anywhere, but I also can't ignore the other issues that can crop up.  

There are no solutions for problems, there's only tradeoffs.  And so if one of the tradeoffs to trying attract viewership and younger fans is bringing along problems that are associated with gambling, those need to be examined, too.

[Sports Guy]

2 minutes ago, Moose Milligan said:

I don't disagree with any of it.  I'm a capitalist too, a business owner...I like making money.  

It's important to make money and to advance the sport.  But to ignore the other issues that surround gambling because baseball has a marketing problem and a problem with attracting young fans is selective ignorance.  Mind you, I just hate the gambling stuff because I find their ads to be tacky and predatory and I know it's not going anywhere, but I also can't ignore the other issues that can crop up.  

There are no solutions for problems, there's only tradeoffs.  And so if one of the tradeoffs to trying attract viewership and younger fans is bringing along problems that are associated with gambling, those need to be examined, too.

I don’t think people are ignoring potential issues..they just don’t care about them as much.

[blid]

2 minutes ago, Sports Guy said:

Why? It’s not like you weren’t allowed to bet before. There have already been scandals across sports.

That said, the leagues are willing to risk this and they are right for doing so.

Why?  It's happened before and it's always been a risk that it would happen again.  That's why MLB took such a hard stance against the Black Sox and then Pete Rose.  The massive proliferation of gambling is only going to compound the pressures that lead to this sort of thing, making it basically inevitable.

4 minutes ago, Can_of_corn said:

I know MLB is held to a higher standard than other sports but still....

Tim Donaghy is proof that yes this can and does still happen.  Yes, it's actually pretty incredible how well the NBA swept that under the rug, since it likely was more widespread than just Donaghy, but I don't think any league could get away with something like that today with all the social media and general societal distrust.

[Sports Guy]

1 minute ago, blid said:

Why?  It's happened before and it's always been a risk that it would happen again.  That's why MLB took such a hard stance against the Black Sox and then Pete Rose.  The massive proliferation of gambling is only going to compound the pressures that lead to this sort of thing, making it basically inevitable.

Tim Donaghy is proof that yes this can and does still happen.  Yes, it's actually pretty incredible how well the NBA swept that under the rug, since it likely was more widespread than just Donaghy, but I don't think any league could get away with something like that today with all the social media and general societal distrust.

MLB took those stances because they happened within the sport.

MLB isn’t risking more of that, within the sport, by doing this. This is all for the fans. The players can bet on games if they choose whether or not MLB advertises for it.

It would happen either way.

[Can_of_corn]

3 minutes ago, blid said:

 

Tim Donaghy is proof that yes this can and does still happen.  Yes, it's actually pretty incredible how well the NBA swept that under the rug, since it likely was more widespread than just Donaghy, but I don't think any league could get away with something like that today with all the social media and general societal distrust.

I think our collective attention span is even shorter and we are even more jaded as a society.  If anything I think it would be easier to recover from.

Except of course Baseball is held to a weirdly higher standard and that might come into play.

[blid]

Maybe... I don't know though.   I see your point but if you don't trust the outcomes of games anymore to be legitimate you might quit watching.  People love to righteously boycott things now.

4 minutes ago, Sports Guy said:

MLB took those stances because they happened within the sport.

MLB isn’t risking more of that, within the sport, by doing this. This is all for the fans. The players can bet on games if they choose whether or not MLB advertises for it.

It would happen either way.

Players, managers, umpires all live in the same world we do. They are increasingly likely to have been exposed to gambling in their lives which will leak into the game.

Edited April 20, 2023 by blid

[Can_of_corn]

3 minutes ago, Sports Guy said:

MLB took those stances because they happened within the sport.

MLB isn’t risking more of that, within the sport, by doing this. This is all for the fans. The players can bet on games if they choose whether or not MLB advertises for it.

It would happen either way.

It's not for the fans.

It's for the owners.

If the owners could make more money selling Penis Pills they would.

[Moose Milligan]

2 minutes ago, Sports Guy said:

I don’t think people are ignoring potential issues..they just don’t care about them as much.

Lol, SG, your stance for gambling is pretty much, like , "This is great, it's bringing viewership and attention to the sport, I don't care about anyone's problems, they're not my problems and if you have a gambling problem, I don't feel sorry for you, you should have known to not gamble."

[Can_of_corn]

3 minutes ago, Moose Milligan said:

Lol, SG, your stance for gambling is pretty much, like , "This is great, it's bringing viewership and attention to the sport, I don't care about anyone's problems, they're not my problems and if you have a gambling problem, I don't feel sorry for you, you should have known to not gamble."

I feel that way but I don't feel that way about the guy with a gambling problem children.

[Sports Guy]

9 minutes ago, Moose Milligan said:

Lol, SG, your stance for gambling is pretty much, like , "This is great, it's bringing viewership and attention to the sport, I don't care about anyone's problems, they're not my problems and if you have a gambling problem, I don't feel sorry for you, you should have known to not gamble."

Well all of this is true. 
 

But growing the game and bringing in younger viewers is more important than potential gambling issues for individual degenerates.

Everything that a league, a company or an individual does has pluses and minuses. This is all about weighing the pluses and minuses and the league feels the pluses outweigh the minuses and I agree with them.

 

[Sports Guy]

12 minutes ago, Can_of_corn said:

It's not for the fans.

It's for the owners.

If the owners could make more money selling Penis Pills they would.

Sure..but the fans love to gamble. They love fantasy sports. 
 

On this board, we love baseball. Nationwide, people don’t care about baseball. There is a reason that talk about the NFL draft is 80% of sports shows and they quickly go through baseball highlights.

Baseball is trying to change that and embracing this helps with that.

Of course the end game is making money. That’s obvious and doesn’t need  to be said.