 It’s been one of those days where we all look at how overlooked a story is: in this case, it’s poor Kobe Bryant, whose 81-point gem Sunday night has been followed by a long chorus of sportswriters complaining about how overlooked it was. But let’s overlook that for just a moment; we’ve got bigger and more substantial hypocrisies at play today, and they revolve around one of sports media’s former powerhouses, The Sporting News.
Yesterday, TSN, one of the old guard of sports magazines (and, pleasantly, one that has avoided being bought out by one of the larger media corporations fifty times its size), settled a $7.2 million lawsuit with the Federal Government over TSN’s accepting of advertising revenue from illegal gambling sites. The deal will force TSN to pay $4.2 million in fines and implement a $3 million public service campaign warning about the dangers of illegal gambling.
Now, as Deadspin pointed out, there’s good news here. The last years have not been good for TSN, and the very fact that they have $7.2 million is, in its own way, refreshing.
But there’s also a huge amount of hypocrisy. Let’s not pretend for a moment that The Sporting News is the only instance of sports media to do official business with the sports gambling crowd; though the news about the lawsuit did not cite specific gambling houses by name, it’s hard to believe that the TSN publishers were the only ones taken in.
But moreover, let’s not lose sight of the bigger picture. Every major sports media outlet in this country exists in a tight symbiotic relationship (if explicitly unacknowledged, even from within) with the institutions of sports gambling. Let’s just look at ESPN as an example (it’s what we do):
- For years, Monday’s SportsCenter came with a dose of Nick Bakay – you know, the degenerate gambler who was just “livin’ the dream.” Well, Nick’s over on the NFL Network now, talking fantasy football, but it wasn’t that long ago that Nick would recap every NFL weekend by summarizing how much he had won and lost based on picks – using the spread – made on Friday or Saturday’s episode. Was it funny, and meant to be a bit sarcastic? Presumably. But did Nick’s segments also promote and link together ESPN with the sports book industry? Absolutely.
- Bill Simmons. The man/legend/potential-figment-of-my-imagination routinely does NFL previews and recaps with respect to the Vegas odds. He’s one of the most widely read sports columnists in America, and – much like Bakay – ESPN hides behind the idea that his writing is not “news” journalism but some odd little featurette. Which should in no way indemnify Bristol against accountability for the fact that their highest-profile writer routinely makes himself into a poster child for sports gambling, and promotes an idea of sports fandom caught up in the life of the gambler.
- And it’s no coincidence that the NFL Network has put Bakay on the fantasy football circuit. While it’s true that millions of fans cleanly enjoy fantasy sports teams without taking out any additional mortgages or selling officemates into slavery to pay off gambling losses, the tools of the fantasy athlete and those of the sports gambler are fairly similar. It’s no coincidence that ESPN’s mainstream content is available free, but that the hardcore statistical analysis and in-depth game previews are available by subscription only. Just because we ignore how those tools are often used does not make those uses go away.
- Which is all not to mention sports talk radio. As our own Daniel Crandall has pointed out, local ESPN radio affiliates are notorious for getting into bed with those sports gambling consultants who will give you a guaranteed pick at the other end of a 1-900 number. Again: those kind of services may get off on a technicality – no, they’re not actually sports bookies, so it’s unlikely ESPN or any of its radio affiliates would be subject to federal prosecution here. But that doesn’t make the hypocrisy of the industry evaporate.
Those of you familiar with this column know better than to think that I am on some moral outrage here. I’m not a gambling man, mostly because I’m no good at it, and would rather exchange my money for goods and services. But I’m certainly not on an anti-gambling crusade.
The problem here is that The Sporting News is getting slammed for doing business with the sports gambling industry when much of the thrust of sports media, especially stat- and analysis-heavy online sports media, has been to put in-depth analytical tools in the hands of sports gamblers. ESPN, CNN/SI, FoxSports: all of these companies have made substantial profits thanks to the gracious losses and unfortunate addictions of sports gamblers across the country.
We should not for a moment assume that The Sporting News is any sort of exception, except that they are now the ones taking the blame.
Today We Are Obsessed With ...
Well, it’s Kobe.
It might be football if the Colts, Patriots, Redskins, Giants, or Bears were still around.
It might be football if either of Sunday’s games had carried any amount of drama or tension.
It might be college hoops if the Duke/Georgetown game had taken place on Sunday instead of Saturday, but sports media moves primarily in cubicles and rush hour talk radio. Sundays are for football.
So we’ve got Kobe, a story that has moved from “Why isn’t anyone talking about this? (hours 0-12) to “How will this affect his image now?” (hours 12-24) to “Can he break 100?,” the topic of the morning, and the sort of sports hypothetical that emerges in vacuums created by media-unfriendly Super Bowl matchups and slow Monday nights.
And if you’re very quiet, you can hear SI and ESPN editors offering quiet prayers that Matt Hasselbeck or Jerome Bettis will say something – anything – outright outrageous. Because that would be a story. |
Daily Digest 
