Has sports betting gone too far?

NBC's Rory O'Neill reports on Guardians' pitchers Emmauel Clase and Luis Ortiz, who were charged with a number of felonies due to tipping off their pitches to benefit betters

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Six forty seven, Tuesday Morning, Mike Elliott, Columbus's Morning News
to spend a couple of minutes with Roory O'Neil on
the NBC NBC News and on the Legacy Retirement Group
dot com phone line. Rory, we had this story yesterday
the Cleveland Guardians pitchers Class A and Ortiz and the
sports betting. Sports betting gone too far with these these
rigged prop bets.

Speaker 2 (00:20):
Well that's the question now, and does it erode the
confidence that people have that, hey, if I'm going to
place a bet, I at least got to have a
fair chance at winning this thing, right? You know? Now
Baseball says and it's authorized gaming operators now will tap
bets on individual pitches at two hundred bucks and exclude
them from parlays. So this is one step they're trying

(00:42):
to essentially make it not worth the time of the
picture to get involved in these kind of cons According
to the indictment that was unsealed over the weekend, as
you said, the two pitchers had friends and the Dominican
Republic who were placing prop bets that netted them almost
half a million dollars in these opera And now these
two pitchers are facing a long list of federal charges.

Speaker 1 (01:03):
I mean, it's it's just a matter of time when
you can start betting on individual pitches. And then, of
course the NBA scandal from a couple of weeks ago,
when you can start betting on individual players, you give
it's too tempting for those players. I think it gives
them way too much power to affect maybe not the
outcome of the game, but their individual performances.

Speaker 2 (01:24):
Well, and it's too tempting for their circles, right, you
know it's oh, because it's this kid I went to
high school with and it comes at me, and since
you need some money and all, I want to help
them out. And he helped me on my homework that
one time. And now I got to see, it's just
one pitch. What difference could it make? You know, that
kind of a thing, Right, you can see how that
can weigh on a player who suddenly gets caught up
in these things. Let alone what we saw in the

(01:46):
NBA when it was like flat out you know, organized
gambling operations and now now they early got you by
the you know, so that was a whole different kind
of smell to it. But yeah, I think this is
a problem is these professional sports get more and more
in bed with these online gamers.