REGULATION August 12, 2026

US Lawmakers Demand MLB Curb VIP Sportsbook Marketing After Harper Video Furor

Three members of Congress want MLB and its players' union to end VIP sportsbook promotions after a personalized Bryce Harper video reached a bettor with major losses.

Marie Toussaint Senior reporter covering gambling regulation, provincial policy and the business of iGaming in Canada. Articles are produced with AI assistance and edited by the ON360 newsroom. · 4 min read

AI-assisted

This article was produced with AI assistance and edited by the ON360 newsroom.

Three U.S. members of Congress have formally asked Major League Baseball and its players’ union to end policies that allow personalized sportsbook marketing tied to VIP betting programs, following backlash over a promotional video featuring star player Bryce Harper.

Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) and Reps. Paul Tonko and Valerie Foushee, both New York Democrats, sent a letter dated Aug. 10 to MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred and MLB Players Association interim executive director Bruce Meyer, according to Gambling Insider. The letter calls for an “immediate end” to policies the lawmakers say enabled a personalized clip of Harper to be used in a VIP promotion.

The video at the centre of the controversy

The dispute stems from a 2024 video, which resurfaced in media reports last month, in which Harper thanked a FanDuel VIP customer for his support. That customer, identified in the lawmakers’ letter as Terry Thompson, had reportedly lost more than $1.5 million on the platform.

Harper has said he was unaware that a FanDuel VIP host would use the personalized recording for promotional purposes and that he did not consent to its commercial use, according to Gambling Insider’s reporting.

Lawmakers press for policy answers by Aug. 24

The letter poses five questions to MLB and the players’ union, including whether current rules adequately prevent players from being drawn into “predatory” VIP marketing, whether the league and union will provide players with education on gambling-related risks, and whether they will bar players from personalized promotions tied to VIP or tier programs. MLB and the MLBPA have been given until Aug. 24 to respond.

“We write to demand an end to the MLB and MLBPA policies that enabled this type of predatory promotion,” the lawmakers wrote, according to the letter cited by Gambling Insider.

Under existing MLB rules, players may sign endorsement deals with sportsbooks as long as they do not encourage wagering on baseball itself. The lawmakers argue that carve-out still permits personalized player content to circulate within VIP marketing aimed at high-spending, potentially vulnerable customers — what they describe as a “systemic failure rooted in the deep enmeshment between leagues, teams, and sportsbooks.”

The intervention lands as MLB and the MLBPA negotiate a new collective bargaining agreement. The union has signalled it wants players to have greater latitude to strike deals with gambling companies — a direction the three lawmakers are explicitly trying to block.

Part of a broader federal push on sports betting

The MLB letter follows a similar move in May, when Blumenthal, Tonko and Foushee joined two other Democratic lawmakers in writing to a dozen CEOs of sportsbooks and prediction-market platforms — including FanDuel, DraftKings, BetMGM, Caesars, bet365, Kalshi and Polymarket — over what they called “predatory advertising” aimed at young adults, per Gambling Insider.

Blumenthal has separately co-sponsored the Prediction Markets Security and Integrity Act, which would give U.S. states authority to regulate prediction markets, including limits on advertising, bonuses and VIP programs, and has pressed Polymarket’s chief executive over trading-integrity controls.

Why it matters north of the border

FanDuel and other operators named in the U.S. controversy also hold licences in Ontario’s regulated online gambling market, where the AGCO and iGaming Ontario impose their own standards on advertising and player-protection tools. Ontario’s rules already restrict marketing that targets self-excluded or vulnerable players and require regulated operators to offer deposit limits, time-outs and self-exclusion options.

The Harper case, while a U.S. matter, is likely to fuel ongoing debate in Canada about how far VIP loyalty programs and celebrity-endorsed content should go before crossing into predatory territory — an issue regulators here continue to monitor as the legal sports-betting market matures.