Sports betting is about to become a disaster. But who will tell us?
The media has a gambling problem, too.
This sounds like a problem for Major League Baseball’s biggest star:
The Los Angeles Dodgers interpreter for Shohei Ohtani was fired Wednesday afternoon after questions surrounding at least $4.5 million in wire transfers sent from Ohtani's bank account to a bookmaking operation set off a series of events.
Ippei Mizuhara, the longtime friend and interpreter for Ohtani, incurred the gambling debts to a Southern California bookmaking operation that is under federal investigation, multiple sources told ESPN. How he came to lose his job started with reporters asking questions about the wire transfers.
During the Tuesday interview arranged by Ohtani's spokesman, Mizuhara, 39, told ESPN that he asked Ohtani, 29, last year to pay off his gambling debt, which multiple sources said had ballooned to at least $4.5 million. Mizuhara said that he previously had placed bets via DraftKings and assumed bets placed through Bowyer were legal.
And this sounds like a problem for the NBA:
Cleveland Cavaliers coach J.B. Bickerstaff revealed he received threats from gamblers last season and reported it to the NBA.
While being asked Wednesday night about sports gambling following comments made by Pacers All-Star Tyrese Haliburton, who said he sometimes feels like a "prop," Bickerstaff said gamblers contacted him.
"They got my telephone number and were sending me crazy messages about where I live and my kids and all that stuff," Bickerstaff said before the Cavs host.
All of that comes on the heels of a problem for … college baseball:
Neff was texting with Alabama baseball coach Brad Bohannon via the encrypted messaging app Signal while at the betting window, attempting to place the wager, the sources say. His texting was indiscreet, to the point that the book’s video surveillance cameras were able to zoom in on the details of Neff and Bohannon’s text exchange, making Bohannon’s name visible later in screenshots.
If you pay any attention at all to major sports in the United States, you’ve no doubt noticed the explosion of legal sports betting and its influence on how games are presented. Games are peppered with ads for gambling sites like FanDuel, and game commentators work it into the coverage. If you’re not a gambler — I’m not — all the betting content feels like so much pollution that’s drowning out the game itself.
There are reasons to worry about where all this leads for the people placing the bets:
But there are reasons to worry about the way all this betting affects not just coverage of the games, but the games themselves. We’ve already seen a number of suspensions of players for gambling violations by leagues that are tied deeply to gambling operations. Add in the stories above, and it’s clear that even if actual games haven’t been affected by players, coaches or referees trying to steer a gambling outcome, there’s a growing perception that it could be happening.
At the worst, it destroys the integrity of the sports involved. At best, it gives everything the sheen of professional wrestling — a performance of competition, not the competition itself.
But if this is all becoming a disaster, I wonder who will tell us.
ESPN? It has its own betting site. Sports Illustrated? It’s got lots of problems that have nothing to do with gambling, but it also has a betting vertical.
The Athletic, owned by the stolid New York Times, even has its own issues: One of its most high-profile reporters also works for the FanDuel gambling site. (In the interest of full disclosure: At least one paper where I write has its own betting vertical as well.)
The sports media are solidly in bed with the same organizations that benefit from all of this gambling. To be fair: The three stories above came from ESPN and SI. I’m sure they’ll continue to cover individual incidents — it would be too conspicuous if they didn’t. But will they be willing to step back and take a big picture look at what sports gambling is doing to America’s games and America’s gamblers?
I’m skeptical.
What I’m reading
Since the lockdown year, I’ve tried tackling at least one big classic novel a year. I did “Moby Dick” that year and mostly loved it. (The human interaction was great. The detailed descriptions of whale physiology were tedious.) I did “Anna Karenina” after that, and truly loved it. (It’s a Russian soap opera.) Now? I’m doing Middlemarch Madness. And it’s great. What I’m finding — once again — is that big novels that sound like homework are often classics because they’re so darn readable. George Eliot is no exception.
I think about the legends who were hounded from baseball - the 1919 ChiSox - because of betting. A century later, it’s totally normalized.
Maybe it’s time to revisit their exile as a result?
A couple of months ago, while listening to another FanDuel ad on my favorite podcast, I realized that gambling is going to eat the NBA and NFL. Apparently MLB and NCAA are on the menu too. I didn’t realize how much sports journalism was also tied to the gaming industry. With gambling front and center, who’s going to teach the next generation to “root, root, root for the home team?” Even without a major gambling scandal, I foresee a collapse in the fan base as the emphasis on gambling becomes a turn-off for non-gambling fans.