L.A. Dodgers gambling controversy begs the question: Is Vegas a good fit for MLB?
On Wednesday, news broke that shocked the baseball world. It was reported that the interpreter of the biggest star in the game had been fired for gambling. The story is that Ohtani helped pay $4.5 million for interpreter Ippei Mizuhara's gambling debts. While some people are trying to sleuth their way through the news and come up with some differing narratives, we know that Ohtani was involved in paying a large sum of money to get rid of debts related to betting.
This news comes the same day on the first game of the baseball season, which is usually meant to be a day of celebration. Ohtani and the Dodgers are even being showcased in this two-game set against the San Diego Padres in South Korea. Yet, nobody is going to remember the series when all is said and done.
Yet, MLB seems perfectly fine with moving an entire franchise into the gambling capital of the country, Las Vegas, Nevada.
Of course there are new revenues that can be explored if MLB enters the Vegas market, but the league is already exploring those opportunities by affiliating with companies like DraftKings. They also tried to get in on the crypto boom just a few years ago by partnering with FTX, but that deal was terminated after the founder of the company was found committing fraud, conspiracy, and also money laundering.
Baseball was so eager to have a new stream of revenue that they apparently did no research into the FTX partnership, which lasted one year.
With Rob Manfred at the helm, it doesn't seem like there will be any soul searching or any shift in opinion when it comes to the A's potential relocation to Las Vegas. Yet, with the news from yesterday and the lack of checks and balances in the league's recent past, this would be an opportune moment to take a step back and really analyze the situation.
This isn't to say that Vegas can never have a team. In fact, they'd probably be a great market if they were granted an expansion franchise instead of one run by John Fisher. Instead, this is a chance for MLB to really look in the mirror. Moving to Vegas in a hurry has the potential to be disastrous for baseball. Not only would they be providing the people of Nevada with a team they don't seem to want, but there don't appear to be any safeguards in place to protect the players and the integrity of the game.
This would be a great time to say that the A's need to figure things out in Oakland because the Commissioner's Office is going to need some time to really plan for the arrival of a team in Las Vegas. This way, Vegas could get an expansion team, which is likely what they'd prefer anyway, and it gives Manfred an easy out to reverse course after nearly a year of bad headlines concerning the A's move.
Will any of this happen? Probably not. This is the same Commissioner that didn't suspend a single player from the Astros cheating scandal. But that doesn't mean that fast-tracking a team to Sin City is without some concerns.