"When federal prosecutors charged Terry Rozier and Chauncey Billups this week, cable news and sports networks delivered their lines with appropriate solemnity. Gambling scandals, they intoned, strike at the very integrity of the game. Then they broke for commercial brought to you by FanDuel, DraftKings, and, because irony is dead, ESPN Bet. No one at the anchor desk mentioned the contradiction. No one could afford to."
"Here's what's actually happening, and it's a story you won't see reported on those same broadcasts: America is living through the fastest normalization of addiction infrastructure in commercial history, and the institutions that should be covering it have been bought into silence. This isn't just a basketball story. It's a media story about money, moral blindness, and what happens when the people paid to tell the truth start taking a cut of the lie."
"Since the Supreme Court struck down the federal ban on sports betting in 2018, the floodgates have opened. According to the American Gaming Association, Americans legally wagered $147.9 billion on sports in 2024 a staggering 23% increase from the previous year and more than double what was bet just three years earlier. That flood of money fuels a marketing blitz unlike anything in modern media."
Gambling advertising now saturates sports media, turning broadcasts into platforms for sportsbooks and embedding wagering prompts into live games. Legal sports betting grew dramatically after the 2018 Supreme Court decision, reaching $147.9 billion in 2024 and fueling massive ad spending that exceeded $434 million during televised sports. The influx of sportsbook money creates conflicts of interest for networks that rely on gambling revenue while reporting on betting scandals. Younger viewers face constant algorithmic recruitment for wagering. The normalization of gambling infrastructure promotes addiction, shifts cultural norms around sports consumption, and compromises the independence of journalism covering the industry.
Read at www.mediaite.com
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