As part of Craig Carton’s Commissioner Summit on WFAN Wednesday, MLB commish Rob Manfred joined Craig for about a half-hour and had this to say when asked about Shohei Ohtani becoming a face of baseball:
“It really is amazing what he has accomplished. He has been an amazing performer. It was years and years ago that we started hearing about how special he was, well before he was a pro, and whomever was talking about him like that, they turned out to be right.”
That led Craig into a discussion about how baseball seems to lag behind when it comes to making some of their biggest local stars into transcendent entities and marketing the game to younger fans, and this was Manfred’s response:
“Some of this we have to take responsibility for, and it’s something we’ve worked really hard at. People look at the relationship with Nike and think the Swoosh on the uniforms is just about the revenue, but it’s more about that national marketing engine being available to our players. And then, our social media program – one of the things we sell is highlights, and we’ve signed up hundreds of players to provide clips to them and make them more accessible.
It’s about marketing the game to a younger generation where they live. What’s the limiting factor? Our strength economically has always been local; fans are engaged with their local team, and that’s great and important, but it also makes it more difficult to sell a particular player across the entire league.”
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With all that, Craig then rolled into an issue that might be the biggest elephant in the sports room: gambling and betting on games, and how that’s one way to increase fan engagement. Craig, who admits he is a compulsive gambler who cannot do it responsibly, knows there is worry that as the industry proliferates sports, more will unfortunately fall into the same issues – but the MLB commish is hopeful that the way the gambling aspect has evolved will naturally help prevent that.
“It can be a great source of fan engagement, and we want our involvement with it structured in a way that always protects the integrity of the sport – but messaging is important, and we will always be above and beyond on the topic of taking responsibility to make sure that people who are betting are doing so responsibly,” Manfred said. “As a result of the Supreme Court decision, there will be more sports betting in the US; however, it’s always existed and you could find ways to do it, but the problem was those avenues were illegal and unregulated – so in some ways, that market is much safer and better today, and the legislation is designed to help the 10 percent who can’t do it safely.”
And within that, Manfred noted, messaging is important, but so is availability.
“There’s another piece to that: the kinds of bets we allow and how far you go down that road,” Manfred said. “It speaks to the integrity and the responsible gambling issue. What types of bets you make available to people can have a big influence on them.”
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One thing that won’t change, however, in regards to MLB’s bigger involvement with daily fantasy and sports betting: Pete Rose is still not going to be eligible for the Hall of Fame anytime soon.
“I see that issue completely separately. No matter what we do on the gambling front in terms of fan engagement and marketing, it will always be against our rules for anyone involved in the game on the field to be betting on baseball.”
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