Less than two weeks have passed, but it feels like an eternity ago. On July 23rd, Darren Rovell reported that oddsmakers from the Westgate SuperBook, a shop that has a reputation for being very sharp, were told information “about Aaron Rodgers possibly retiring by an informant who has been right about other news before.”
Obviously, Rodgers’ retirement did not ultimately come to fruition, but the episode underscored an idea that has been percolating in sports media circles for some time: it’s a matter of when and not if a gambling operator poaches a bona fide league insider to be an in-house talent.
We’ve covered before how the combination of social media and the gold rush of the gambling apps has given high level talents unprecedented leverage and earning power. After Penn National bought Barstool, the floodgates opened for everyone else to develop their own content shops, either by licensing or outright hiring media personalities. Probably the most notable partnership came when Dan Le Batard and John Skipper’s Meadowlark Media inked a $50 million licensing deal with DraftKings for their radio, podcast, and OTT shows.
Ultimately, sportsbooks and the sports media have become increasingly indistinguishable. Hardly an hour goes by where you don’t see a buzzy press release about a new network deal or talent hire.
It hasn’t happened yet but there are obvious synergies with a high-level sports media insider — think: Woj, Schefter, Rapoport, Shams, Passan, Rosenthal, etc. — joining one of these sportsbooks.
There are a couple of obvious functions for this. First, the insiders have enormous engagement on their social channels, which would be weaponized in the arms race to drive customer sign-ups.
Then, there’s also the administrative value of their insights.
While some books took the Packers’ odds down altogether on the Rovell news, others saw this news about SuperBook and/or had their own sources who believed Rodgers’ retirement from football to be imminent and priced Green Bay futures at steep discounts. The Packers were priced around 12-1 to win the Super Bowl prior to Adam Schefter’s draft day report that he was unhappy in Green Bay, and traded anywhere between about 14-1 and 20-1 in the months that followed. On the weekend after the retirement report, odds reached as high as 35-1 at DraftKings. They’ve since come back down, full circle, to 12-1.
There are a few reasons an insider hasn’t been hired at a book yet when it seems so obvious. The reputable books, which are the ones you’ve heard of, are scratching and clawing to get licenses in every state where gambling is legal, as soon as possible. The last thing they want is the appearance that they are benefitting from insider trading against an unwitting public. Nonetheless, there is a difference between using insiders to guide game line and future pricing versus leveraging their knowledge to limit liability by pulling down lines if big news could be about to break. The latter would seem to be a tightrope that could be navigated under the right structures.
Another reason why we haven’t seen a league insider jump to a gambling company yet is that, frankly, there aren’t that many of them. You can count the number of elite difference makers across all the major sports with your fingers and the next tier with your toes. That being said, this scarcity is precisely what will give these select talents considerable leverage come contract time.
These insiders already have a lot of intangible value to their employers — being the first to a Grade A bombshell scoop is a sign that you are connected with people who matter. ESPN, for example, relishes the ability to credit their in-house reporting on their bottom line ticker, on TV chyrons, and in push notifications. Combine that with the hours they fill — I dare you to watch ESPN for an hour or two and not see Woj, Schefter, or Passan. The gambling apps as bidders for these select few talents, and their counterparts at other outlets, will only push their market value even higher.
Ryan Glasspiegel is a contributor for BSM. He has previously worked for Outkick, The Big Lead, and Sports Illustrated. In addition to covering the sports media business, Ryan creates promotional products for brands and companies including t-shirts, hats, hoodies, and various types of swag. For business inquiries email him at Glasspiegel.Ryan@gmail.com or find him on Twitter @sportsrapport.
