We’ve known for a while that it’s not a question of if there will be an uptick in sports-related betting scandals, but how soon and how many?
The last few months gave us three extremely notable and concerning ones to choose from.
The first involved Ippei Mizuhara, the former interpreter for MLB superstar Shohei Ohtani, who is alleged to have gambled away millions of dollars and stolen money from Ohtani in an attempt to cover his debts.
The second involved Jontay Porter, who was banned for life by the NBA after it was revealed he had bet on NBA games, including ones that he was playing in.
The third involved former Jacksonville Jaguars employee Amit Patel, who allegedly stole over $22 million from the franchise to fuel his gambling addiction.
Specifically, the Mizuhara and Porter cases are wildly different in specifics. One involves the biggest name in the sport and the other involves a guy 99.99% of America had never heard of before (a best-case scenario for the NBA). One involves someone in the orbit of an athlete and the other directly involves the athlete. One involves the league attempting to separate itself and its superstar from the details and the other involves the league stamping its authority on the outcome and hanging a “Mission Accomplished” banner.
All three stories did have one thing in common, however. Everyone involved in the story wanted to sell the idea that this was a scandal created by one individual, a bad actor, and we shouldn’t read much more into it.
And it feels like the sports media world was more than happy to run with that.
ESPN’s general laser focus on Ippei Mizuhara as a rogue individual feels like a pretty safe template for future coverage of the epically egregious point-and-stat shaving scandals that are coming to college and professional sports within the next… year or two at the latest.
— Daniel Fienberg (@thefienprint.bsky.social) Apr 12, 2024 at 4:08 PM
Gambling now *is* the economic lifeblood of sports and much of mainstream sports media. Every scandal ripping out into the open risks mutually assured destruction. https://t.co/gwJAA11rYy
— Dave Zirin (@EdgeofSports) March 25, 2024
You don’t need to be much of an expert to understand why. All you need to do is be a sports fan in 2024.
Turn on ESPN or FS1 and you’ll be greeted by betting odds and endless commercials for gambling apps. Listen to your favorite podcast, which is sponsored by gambling companies, broadcast by them, or about gambling themselves. Check out the latest scoop from the sport’s top insider, who either works for a gambling company, invests in one, or has done reporting that made you question if it was influenced in some way.
Check your team’s social media account and get fed gambling prompts. Visit your favorite sports website and wade through betting offers to get the information you want. Sit down to enjoy the game and get ready to be awash in ads for sports gambling apps and services while the announcer offers you gambling advice. Open the league app to check scores and be prompted to drop a few bucks on what might happen next.
No wonder so many athletes say they’re already being harassed by gamblers with alarming regularity.
We are all complicit in allowing the suffocating presence of gambling to overtake the American sports experience, especially those of us in the media. Collectively, we see the problem, but individually, we don’t do much about it. And for many, it’s not hard to wonder if the line between journalistic integrity and loyalty to your gambling benefactors is getting hazy, or for some, has already disappeared.
Dr. Brian Moritz, an associate professor at St. Bonaventure University, has been beating this drum for a while now. He’s already pointed out that a major sports betting journalism scandal is inevitable. And now, in the wake of the coverage surrounding the aforementioned sports gambling scandals, he wonders if the way they’ve been covered is creating a template the sports media world can use to keep the blame on individuals rather than the system they are now a part of.
“Think about how these stories have been covered so far,” wrote Mortiz in his Sports Media Guy newsletter. “It’s a rogue actor, a bad person, an individual doing something wrong. It was Ohtani’s translator stealing money, and whether or not Ohtani was a dupe or not. It was Porter being galactically dumb.
“All of these stories are focused on the individual actors. But when you have a number of individual actors doing similar things, you’ve got a systematic issue. Yes, people are responsible for their actions, but they are responsible for their actions within the system they live and work in. Media coverage that focuses on the former without interrogating the latter is flawed, or at least a missed opportunity.”
The reality is that there will be some in sports media who suss this out and do good work around the sports gambling epidemic. Sadly, even their coverage will be caked in irony (and surrounded by sports betting ads).
sometimes I think about how in like two years there’s gonna be a ton of award-winning journalism about all the lives that have been ravaged by sports gambling and all the companies that knew and kept going and nothing will change because we’ve stopped trying to make things better in this country
— Julia Carrie Wong (@joolia.bsky.social) Apr 11, 2024 at 1:37 PM
