By Maury Brown | Forbes
Earlier this week, Major League Baseball notified the media, managers and PR for the teams that from now on, team lineups for games would need to go to the Commissioner’s Office first. The reason? Baseball’s new relationship with legalized wagering on the sport. That had more than one beat writer upset, saying: “Great. Now Las Vegas gets the lineups before we do.”
That wasn’t the case, but how information is controlled is going to be forever altered with the addition of wagering on baseball.
In a statement, the league said: “We are updating a number of our procedures to reduce integrity risks associated with the expansion of sports betting in light of the Supreme Court’s ruling last May. One new procedure is that we now ask Clubs to submit starting lineups in a uniform fashion in order to reduce the risk of confidential information being ‘tipped.’ This approach mirrors those of international sports leagues in more developed betting markets.”
When you think about this, it suddenly becomes apparent that even the most mundane of activities, such as the lineups, can be leveraged to insider advantage for the purposes of wagering on games. To thwart that possibility,
