Microbets, prop bets, and the future of gambling scandal coverage

A real-time hypothesis based on the past week's news

News of two gambling related scandals broke in the past week. 

The first involves Malik Beasley of the Detroit Pistons, whom last week Shams reported is under federal investigation for gambling related to games in the 2023-24 season. Investigators are looking into unusual betting around Beasley’s rebounding stats. Essentially, people were betting on how few rebounds they thought Beasley would get in a given game.

The second involves Cleveland Guardians pitcher Luis Ortiz, whom David Purdum and Jeff Passen reported is being investigated for unusual activity around individual pitches he threw in games in June that were bet on in what are called “microbets.” Essentially, people were betting on the outcome of Ortiz’s first pitch of an inning.

The “sports gambling” results on the search function here are not that robust. Photo by Stéphane Mingot on Unsplash

As I’ve written before, it seems like sports journalism is covering gambling-related scandals as isolated actions of individuals and ignores the greater context of legal and accessible sports gambling. You’re seeing it with these stories. The Detroit News is reporting that Beasley has had major financial problems. Joe Noga of Cleveland.com said recently that he believes Major League Baseball will make an example of Ortiz, if the allegations are true, in order to send a message to players.

Again and again. Individual actors making bad decisions, without any interrogation of the system that created the opportunity for those bad decisions.  

But there’s a common theme in the Beasley and Ortiz allegations that I think may become an immediate focus of sports journalism about legal and accessible gambling. 

Prop bets. 

The allegations about Beasley are about how many rebounds he would get in a game. The Ortiz allegations are about whether or not he would throw a ball or strike on a given pitch. 

If I had to formulate a real-time hypothesis, I think prop bets is going to be the focal point of gambling scandal coverage going forward. It wouldn’t surprise me to see stories calling for an abolition of prop bets, or at least more rules and regulations around them. You’re already seeing this around prop bets in college sports, and I think stories like Beasley and Ortiz are going to increase coverage of this. 

I think this is especially going to be true of the “microbets” that are at the center of the Ortiz allegations. Microbets capture all of the excess of this era of legal and accessible gambling. It’s betting on a small, insignificant thing that’s really only possible because of the accessibility brought about by mobile gambling. It just feels gross and degenerate to be able to bet on something as granular as the first pitch of the third inning. Microbets are giving big “you know you’ve got a problem when” vibes. 

In The Athletic’s baseball newsletter last week, this was how they wrote about the Ortiz story (emphasis is mine): 

Why would two specific pitches trigger a red flag? Buddy, there are essentially an infinite number of ways you can bet on sports these days. One of them is a micro-bet about what the first pitch of a given inning might be: ball, strike, swinging strike, etc.

Paradoxically, in the hierarchy of gambling scandals, prop bets and microbetting are far below fixing games (the biggest sin) and shaving points (the second biggest sin). On the face of it, they don’t attack the integrity of sports the way that fixing games or shaving points does. Who cares if Luis Oritz throws a first pitch ball in the second inning of a June game? Betting on it feels so small, so insignificant and almost meaningless that it can’t be that big a deal. 

Thing is, this is true when the prop bet is something like what color Gatorade will be dumped on the winning coach at the Super Bowl. When it involves play on the field, of course it matters. The fundamental foundation that sports is built on is the idea that what we are watching is really happening. That it is a fair contest between teams or individuals, that everyone is playing by the same rules, trying to achieve the same goal. That it’s on the level. That’s what makes sports special. As Bomani Jones said on his podcast last week, this is the difference between pro wrestling and pro sports. Pitchers throwing away pitches because of microbets, or trying for fewer rebounds than they normally would¹, is an erosion in that fundamental foundation that makes sports sports. 

Prop bets and microbets are also a way for sports journalism and sports media to cover gambling but avoid the larger systematic issues involved with the legalization and accessibility of sports betting. 

1.  According to a great piece from

Tom Haberstroh

Tom Haberstroh, from watching the game in question it doesn’t seem like Beasley is trying for fewer rebounds and in fact he had six rebounds in the game, meaning the under lost.