MLB has sent a letter to the Commodity Futures Trading Commission lobbying for exchange-based platforms to have the same “integrity” controls as sportsbooks. 

The letter, which was first reported by Dustin Gouker’s Substack page The Closing Line, was sent to CFTC acting chair Caroline D. Pham Friday by Bryan Seeley, MLB’s EVP of Legal & Operations. 

The letter noted that exchanges—which label their betting markets as “event contracts”—don’t currently offer lines on player props or single-game events that could be manipulated by bettors with inside information, but that the league expected those wagers to “arrive soon.”  

“As the resemblance between sports event contracts and traditional sports betting markets continues to grow, so too does the need to replicate the integrity and consumer protections that exist at the state level,” the letter said. “Currently, those protections are lacking.

For example, MLB is not aware of anything that would require exchanges and brokers to notify leagues of potential threats to game integrity, cooperate with league investigations into player, umpire, or employee misconduct, or share data for integrity purposes. MLB has been advised that some exchanges and brokers take the position that they are not even permitted to share information with MLB under current CFTC regulations.”