The awkward position that sports media finds itself in amid the NBA gambling scandal was put on full display Thursday when a famed basketball podcaster bemoaned how prop bets were an “absolute menace” – right after urging his listeners to sign up for a sports betting app so they could “customize player props.”
Zach Lowe, a veteran sportswriter who now hosts a twice-weekly podcast for The Ringer, opened up Thursday’s episode with an ad read from the show’s sponsor – gambling website FanDuel.
“Welcome to the Zach Lowe Show, presented by FanDuel,” Lowe exclaimed. “This NBA season, put the power of the sportsbook in your hands with FanDuel’s ‘Your Way.’ ‘Your Way’ lets you create bets that you can’t find anywhere else. You can set your own lines and customize player props, and you’ll get new odds instantly!”
Finishing up the top-of-the-broadcast commercial, Lowe urged his listeners to “download the FanDuel app” to place bets, adding that residents from a certain number of US states were ineligible.
Following the nod to his program’s sponsor, Lowe then turned to sports journalist David Purdum – who writes about gaming and sports betting for ESPN – to discuss the stunning arrests of Miami Heat star Terry Rozier and Portland Trail Blazers coach Chauncey Billups in the FBI’s multi-year Mafia-linked gambling probe. In all, 34 people were indicted and arrested by the feds.
According to the federal indictments, Billups – a basketball Hall of Famer and five-time NBA All-Star – served as a so-called “face card” in underground mob-run poker games to help lure in wealthy participants. The “fish” that Billups attracted had no chance of winning, as the games used rigged poker chip trays, card-shuffling machines and even special contact lenses that could read playing cards.
Rozier, meanwhile, has been accused of participating in a game-fixing plot that involved placing prop bets on his playing time and availability. In one instance, according to investigators, Rozier shared inside information that he would take himself out of a game after only nine minutes, prompting his co-conspirators to place bets on the under and win $200,000.
Meanwhile, just a minute after telling his audience to sign up for FanDuel’s prop-betting features, Lowe lamented that player props were wrecking pro basketball.
“We have two separate indictments today. I’ve read them both. No. 1 charges a whole bunch of people – including Terry Rozier – on sort of an inside betting scheme tied to prop bets in the NBA,” Lowe said to Purdum. “You and I talked about prop bets a year or so ago, about Jontay Porter, how these prop bets are an absolute menace.”
Porter was banned by the NBA last year for “disclosing confidential information to sports bettors, limiting his own participation in one or more games for betting purposes, and betting on NBA games.” He would later be indicted on federal charges in the betting scandal and eventually plead guilty to conspiracy to commit wire fraud. He is scheduled to be sentenced in December.
With FanDuel graphics prominently displayed throughout his show’s broadcast alongside his sponsor ad reads, Lowe acknowledged his role in promoting the sports betting industry, which has become omnipresent in sports leagues and media organizations since it was largely legalized across the country.
“Everyone is in bed with the sports betting companies … We’re all complicit,” he noted during Thursday’s broadcast.
Meanwhile, as The Washington Post’s Ben Strauss observed, “nowhere is this tightrope walk more obvious than on ESPN.”
Shortly after the news broke about the indictments on Thursday morning, ESPN host Mike Greenberg appeared stunned and told the sports network’s viewers they would be inundated with coverage of the scandal throughout the day.
“Sports gambling... was something leagues stayed far away from,” Greenberg declared. “It was something networks like ESPN would stay far away from. Those days are obviously long behind us.”While he delivered this message, a ticker at the bottom of the screen advertised a promotion for ESPN Bet, the network’s own sportsbook – letting viewers know they could earn $100 in additional wagers if they bet just $10.
The network removed the on-screen promo by the time Greenberg finished his thought. However, screenshots of the graphic went viral on social media. According to the Washington Post, the ESPN Bet promo disappearing during Greenberg’s comments was because “the show’s producers were trying to be cautious around the discussion of a sensitive topic.”
Making the situation even more awkward, as Awful Announcing pointed out, is Greenberg’s own close ties to the network’s sports betting apparatus.
“ESPN pays Penn Entertainment $1.5 billion over 10 years under the ESPN Bet licensing agreement, which launched in November 2023,” the site explained. “Greenberg is one of the network’s primary faces for the sportsbook, appearing in multiple ESPN Bet commercials and having odds boosts named after him.”
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