The Major League Baseball players union have filed separate lawsuits in New York and Pennsylvania that claim sports betting sites have been wrongfully using their name and likeness. The betting sites that have been sued include DraftKings, FanDuel, bet365, and Underdog.
In the filing, it states that sports betting sites have been using players on their platforms earlier this year, despite no license from the players. This includes images on various social media platforms, which is not done in other sports leagues such as the NFL. This also raises a larger question as to if the platform is implying that the MLBs athletes are endorsing sports betting.
The lawsuit comes three weeks after the National Football League Players Association (NFLPA) sued DraftKings for breach of contract. They claimed that DraftKings owed $65 million for a licensing agreement.
However, the MLB players union sees this differently. They do not understand why their images have to be used on sports betting platforms while players in other leagues such as the NFL and NBA do not have their likeness on the same platforms. This is supported by the fact that baseball is a game heavily based off of stats and not the popularity of players. As a result, using the faces of players to promote betting on various platforms is unnecessary for users to make a decision on what games they want to bet on.
Sports betting has been a huge revenue booster since the overturn of a virtual ban on betting outside of Nevada in 2018. This has helped keep sports fans interested in games that their favorite team or player may not be in as they create financial investments in sporting events. Over the past six years, several states have legalized different betting platforms with potential for that number to increase over the next year.
https://www.cardplayer.com/poker-news/29347-mlb-players-union-sues-sports-betting-operators
