Bryce Harper or not, Pennsylvania to keep ban on betting spring-training games

The ban on exhibition games does not change just because the Phillies signed baseball's most prized free agent. A trip to Jersey is still an option for area bettors, however.

Pennsylvania residents will have to wait until after spring training to bet on Phillies games. But there are a few prop bets on newest Phillie Bryce Harper (left), shown here celebrating during his time with Washington.Read more--- Michael Bryant / Staff Photographer

by Ed Barkowitz

Published Mar. 1, 2019, 12:49 p.m. ET

The addition of Bryce Harper changes things for the Phillies. It does not for the Pennsylvania Gaming Control Board.

The PGCB will continue to prohibit wagering on spring-training games, a ban that came at the request of Major League Baseball just before the start of play last week.

Harper hasn’t even laced up his cleats for the Phillies, so his spring debut is not happening today. The Phillies have 15 full-squad exhibition games in March. Odds are not offered for split-squad contests.

“Our thinking at this juncture followed the reasoning provided by MLB,” said Doug Harbach, communications director for PGCB, “so there is nothing else to add beyond” what has already been written.

This is baseball’s first spring training since the Supreme Court opened up legalized sports betting outside of Nevada in May. MLB has said it is concerned the growth of sports betting can make it easier for exhibition games to be manipulated.

The Associated Press reported that Bryan Seeley, deputy general counsel for MLB, wrote a request to states to prohibit wagers on exhibition games.

“Spring Training games provide greater opportunity for the misuse of inside information,” Seeley wrote. “The outcome of games sometimes depends heavily on non-public managerial decisions that are made in advance and are independent of Club or player performance, such as how many innings a pitcher will throw or in which inning Minor League players will replace Major League players.”

The sports-betting industry scoffed at this idea and said it has plenty of protections in place to detect foul play. Nevada, which flatly denied MLB’s request, has been booking spring-training games for years, though action is often very light.

“It’s grocery dollars on these games because it is very minimal,” Westgate Las Vegas oddsmaker Jay Kornegay told the Associated Press recently. “If there was any suspicious activity on these games, it would stick out like snow in Vegas.”

Residents on a certain side of the Keystone State should note that New Jersey also continues to take action.

While wagering on individual exhibition games is prohibited in Pennsylvania, playing baseball futures is not. As of Friday morning, Philadelphia casinos Parx and SugarHouse had the Phillies at 10-1 to win the World Series, 5-1 to win the National League pennant, and 7-4 to win the National League East.

The Harper impact

FanDuel Sportsbook, which operates in New Jersey and will open a retail spot at Valley Forge Casino in a matter of weeks, reports that 79.5 percent of the World Series bets it took overnight were on the Phillies. To win the NL pennant, the Phillies got 85.3 percent of the wagers, and to win the NL East, it was 87.5 percent.

The Phillies trail only the Yankees and Mets in money placed to win the World Series with FanDuel, which had the Yankees at 6-1, the Phillies at 12-1 and the Mets at 30-1 as of Friday morning.

FanDuel has a mobile app in the Garden State, and was offering an over/under on Harper’s home runs for the 2019 season at 32.5 and a prop bet on whether he’d homer in the March 28 opener (yes, +320) against the Braves.