There are now multiple betting scandals rocking the sports world, with Toronto Raptors forward Jontay Porter joining Shohei Ohtani and Ippei Mizuhara in the headlines. While sports news is littered with Ohtani takes, New York sports radio host Gregg Giannotti believes ESPN is purposefully ignoring the more substantive Porter report because of the worldwide leader’s conflicts of interest.
Giannotti levied the accusations on Boomer & Gio on WFAN and CBS Sports Network on Tuesday.
“This is to me as big of a gambling scandal as we have seen,” Giannotti said of fishiness around underbets on Porter’s stats this season, which the NBA is reportedly investigating. “ESPN has two tremendously large partnerships right now, and we know how image-conscious they are about things. One, is their partnership with the NBA. Two, after Barstool Sportsbook collapsed and that whole thing happened, guess where Penn Gaming went? To ESPN. It’s now ESPN Bet.”
Giannotti argued ESPN intentionally buried the story on its homepage and its signature news show to deflect attention from the seriousness of the situation.
“If they were really doing their jobs there and weren’t concerned about what was the thing that made ESPN look the best as opposed to what made ESPN look the worst or their company, putting them first, they would’ve ran with this story,” Giannotti continued. “But the fact that they’re huge partners with the NBA and they just got in bed with gambling with ESPN Bet, they put that story later into the SportsCenter.”
WFAN's Gregg Giannotti accuses ESPN of downplaying the Jontay Porter prop bet gambling scandal because of its partnerships with the NBA and Penn Gaming pic.twitter.com/ToQXLE9zzD
— Awful Announcing (@awfulannouncing) March 26, 2024
After co-host Boomer Esiason pointed out ESPN also is partners with MLB, Giannotti pointed out it was not as big. Giannotti added that both the Ohtani and Porter scandals are bigger news than the NCAA women’s tournament, which it could be argued is getting more attention from the worldwide leader because ESPN has its broadcast rights.
“You can’t tell me that UConn women’s college basketball is a bigger story … than an NBA player fixing prop bets,” Giannotti said. “You can’t tell me that … in no world is that a bigger story.”
Giannotti may be onto something, but ESPN prioritizing news around sports it is invested in is not new. He will probably have to find some better evidence that ESPN is hiding this story than the order of headlines or what is first up on SportsCenter, considering ESPN senior NBA insider Adrian Wojnarowski broke the Porter story online and got a statement from the NBA first.
[Boomer & Gio on CBS Sports Network]
