Sports betting reporter Danny Funt: ‘Beyond conspicuous’ that Bill Simmons avoids covering gambling scandals

While sports leagues face questions over integrity resulting from their embrace of sports betting operators, top media voices are also heavily intertwined with these companies. One such host is Bill Simmons, whose deal with FanDuel amounts to the sportsbook “buying his silence,” according to sports betting reporter Danny Funt.

Funt, who reported on FanDuel’s close partnership with Simmons’ company, The Ringer, in his recent book Everybody Loses, argued in a recent podcast appearance that Simmons is unique from other high-profile hosts who push gambling to their audiences because, unlike Barstool’s Dave Portnoy or ESPN’s Pat McAfee, he claims to be a “defiant truth-teller” whose commentary is more high-brow. In reality, Funt argued, Simmons often spends even less airtime covering sports betting scandals than his counterparts.

“A big part of the Bill Simmons myth-making has been, he is this defiant truth-teller who calls it like he sees it. He’s not afraid to call out Roger Goodell, he’s not afraid to call out his bosses at ESPN, he will give you the unvarnished truth,” Funt said on The r/BillSimmons Podcast.

“And in light of that, I just felt it was worth laying it all out there that the way he talks about gambling … where he is the exact opposite of a truth-teller. It’s beyond conspicuous that he has next to nothing to say about one indictment after another, when a player is indicted for fixing games… he has nothing to say about athletes coming out and saying, ‘I’m dealing with a gambling addiction that’s ruined my life.'”

In recent months, multiple athletes have faced allegations of betting on themselves or their teams, including the NBA’s Jontay Porter and Terry Rozier as well as Texas Tech quarterback Brendan Sorsby. Beneath that, Funt noted, many players and coaches also face harassment and death threats that are constantly in the news.

But Funt and many of Simmons’ listeners have observed a noticeable absence of commentary on these stories on his show. The result, Funt said, is tantamount to “selling out,” and has the knock-on effect of communicating to the wider sports audience that the stories are not worthy of coverage, when in reality Simmons may be avoiding them because FanDuel would prefer he didn’t.

Added Funt:

“I just think it’s embarrassing and totally at odds with how he presents himself, and does real harm, both the way that he’s encouraging people to play sucker bets, but also as an important voice who apparently is, like, one of Barack Obama’s favorite (podcasters) and someone who a lot of people respect, [and] is selling out on this issue to a profound extent.”

While Funt, in his book and in the podcast appearance, acknowledged some minimal coverage of the Porter and Rozier scandals from Simmons, he argued that FanDuel is “buying the silence” of Simmons, just as competitors like DraftKings are with Simmons’ colleagues in sports media.

“In the hundreds of hours of content Bill’s put out since he signed his deal with FanDuel, I struggle to think of, like, a single sentence that he’s said that would have upset the C-suite at FanDuel,” he said.

The perfunctory commentary on sports betting controversies out of Simmons’ podcast, Funt said, are largely “industry talking points” that are “beneath” Simmons, such as the idea that sports leagues partnering with operators makes it easier to catch bad actors. Funt argued that sportsbooks actually have a “very difficult time” catching outlier bets on high-profile games and big stars, though they have been able to make examples out of Porter, Rozier, and others.

Funt went so far as to call Simmons’ arguments “simple-minded.”

While part of what drove Simmons’ rise in the industry was an embrace of gambling at a time when others would not touch it, and Simmons remains one of the top sports gambling promoters in media, many go further than him. Entire companies have been hatched off gambling advice and content, and the growth of both Barstool and McAfee can be largely attributed to the windfalls they received from gambling operators.

Funt’s primary critique of Simmons appears to be that he withholds judgment toward gambling scandals, which is fair. However, these stories have seemingly not yet crossed a line into true match-fixing or fraud. It could be that Simmons honestly trusts leagues and sportsbooks to keep the games clean, which may seem naive but is not the same as being bought and paid for by FanDuel.