ESPN to conflict their interest?

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Kevin M.

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Aug 27, 2021, 5:23:30 PM8/27/21
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They are apparently talking about a multi-billion dollar partnership with DraftKings, et al. I guess it would permanently eliminate the notion that ESPN is a sports journalism network if they merge with online gambling. 

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Kevin M. (RPCV)

PGage

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Aug 27, 2021, 5:54:41 PM8/27/21
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That ship sailed a long, long time ago…

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David Bruggeman

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Aug 28, 2021, 12:33:18 PM8/28/21
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The mothership has broadcast a gambling show (the Wager) for a while, and betting lines and odds have been part of the crawl as well.

David

Tom Wolper

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Aug 28, 2021, 4:31:52 PM8/28/21
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On Fri, Aug 27, 2021 at 5:54 PM PGage <pga...@gmail.com> wrote:
That ship sailed a long, long time ago…

I read this and got confused. Do you mean ESPN's journalistic cred is compromised? Or that taking gambling money affects them. For the gambling money, once it was made legal it was clear that everybody was going to do partnerships. One thing that surprised me was watching CBS Sports HQ on Pluto a couple of months ago and seeing a show advising about how to bet on the Olympics. But here we are. In their announcement of new amenities in Heinz Field, the Steelers said there will be a new betting shop run by their gambling partner so fans can place bets during games.

There are parts of sports journalism, like injury reports, that have a lot more value to gamblers than to casual fans. That has always been there and will continue to be.

PGage

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Aug 28, 2021, 5:33:25 PM8/28/21
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Let’s not kid ourselves (or let the NFL and their TV partners kid us) gambling, legal and illegal, has always been a huge part of the engine driving big time sports TV ratings, and that goes about 10X more for the NFL. 

What has waxed and waned is the extent to which they are explicit about this. When I was a kid the pregame shows always had experts making picks against the spread, and during lopsided games the announcers would comment specifically that even though a FG would not impact the outcome, it could change the direction of millions of dollars in bet outcomes. Then they stopped being explicit, but still gave winks and nods in the gambling direction.

The rise of fantasy football was touted by some as a way for the NFL to break its dependence on gambling while still driving interest in out of town and blowout games; whether they were ever serious about doing that, all it ever really did was give them cover to provide injury, weather and other information that gamblers wanted, pretending it was just for fantasy players. In the last few years all pretense is gone, with Raiders in Vegas and commercials fir gambling sites during games.

One argument for making it explicit is that the NFL and TV partners have a huge interest in keeping things honest, and more sunlight helps them do this. But there have been scandals in the last, and there is way too much money on the table to entertain even a glimmer of a hope that there will not be scandals in the future.

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Kevin M.

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Aug 28, 2021, 6:58:22 PM8/28/21
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I don’t pretend to be a sports fan (aside from Le Tour de France, the rest holds no interest to me), but I am a fan of what used to be known as journalism. If a sports book is aligned with sports journalists, to the point where the outcome of an event can lead to increased or lost revenue for both, there is tremendous financial incentive for stories to surface favoring one result, smearing individual players, accusations of misconduct. 

Let’s say an ESPN segment producer sees a quarterback of a given football team is accused of something on Twitter. On the even of a playoff game, ESPN then covers the story, and people start calling for suspensions after more allegations of impropriety surface. As a result, the quarterback is removed, and his team favored to win now loses, which results in more money for the sports book, which in turn means more money for ESPN. The story might be legitimate, but the financial reward taints everyone involved. 

Now if the argument is that sports reporters aren’t really journalists, then by all means, let the conflicts of interest fly. Or if the contention is that ESPN itself isn’t a news gathering organization at its core, again, have at it. But if a journalist is financially invested in the outcome of something they are covering, it is a serious conflict of interest. 

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Kevin M. (RPCV)

PGage

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Aug 28, 2021, 7:02:12 PM8/28/21
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I don’t think anyone is disagreeing with you Kevin, just that this conflict has been present for a long time.

Kevin M.

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Aug 28, 2021, 7:12:01 PM8/28/21
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On Sat, Aug 28, 2021 at 4:02 PM PGage <pga...@gmail.com> wrote:
I don’t think anyone is disagreeing with you Kevin, just that this conflict has been present for a long time.

You could be correct… but online gambling has always struck me as inherently susceptible to corruption (more so than a Vegas sports book)… this potential merger/partnership rubs me the most wrongest way. There’s no way it doesn’t end in a predictable scandal 

 
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Kevin M. (RPCV)

JW

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Aug 29, 2021, 7:45:27 AM8/29/21
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> but online gambling has always struck me as
> inherently susceptible to corruption (more so than a Vegas sports book)

Vegas sports books were never the problem. They were a small legal island in an ocean of illegal betting. There were occasional prosecutions of people involved with fixing games (Henry Hill of Goodfellas infamy was once involved), but the mob's dislike of being ripped off was the major deterrent. Whatever else you think of legalized gambling, the ability for people in the industry to report strange goings-on to law enforcement is a plus.

ESPN's conflicts of interest were manifest well before gambling was involved. As a rightsholder for most major sports, they have a vested interest in those events being as attractive as possible. That said, the people on the news side of ESPN claim loudly that they're independent, and that there's separation between church and state.

Mark Jeffries

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Aug 29, 2021, 9:16:30 AM8/29/21
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I've noticed for years that the edition of "SportsCenter" that ran before "NFL Countdown" on Sunday mornings existed mainly to run the point spreads they couldn't run on "Countdown," since the NFL banned that information from the pre-game shows of the networks that carried their games but they couldn't ban it from "SportsCenter," it being a news program.

Mark Jeffries
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PGage

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Sep 8, 2021, 8:49:14 AM9/8/21
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As noted, its not just ESPN…

“Last week, the league announced agreements with FOX Bet, BetMGM, PointsBet, and WynnBET to join Caesar’s Entertainment, DraftKings and FanDuel as approved sports book operators for the 2021 season. Just about the only unapproved sports book left is the one Uncle Junior ran out of the back of his candy store in 1962.


The new agreement means more choices for wagerers and even more visible gambling advertisements and pregame programming for everyone else. TV analysts may not openly comment on the point spread just yet, but that is likely to happen sometime before Al Michaels retires.”

 

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/08/sports/nfl-rule-changes.html?referringSource=articleShare


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