Potential betting scandals have taken over the headlines for both Major League Baseball and the NBA. However, Gregg Giannotti of WFAN notes ESPN has seemingly given much less attention to the NBA story and he believes this is due to their strong partnership.
After confirming with producer Eddie Scozzare that he had noticed this as well, Giannotti said, “This is why I bring this up…This, to me, is as big of a gambling scandal as we have seen. This is a pro player who was fixing props, this is huge. This is bigger or could be bigger than Ohtani if we find out Ohtani was not involved, and he really was a victim of theft. That’s how big this is. You’re talking about fixing games.
“ESPN has two tremendously large partnerships right now, and we know how image conscious they are now about things. One, is the partnership with the NBA. Two, after Barstool Sportsbook collapsed and that whole thing happened, guess where Penn Gaming went? To ESPN. It’s Now ESPN Bet. There’s a lot of their programming that is centered around gambling.
“If they were really doing their jobs there and weren’t concerned about what was the thing that made ESPN look the best as opposed to what made ESPN look the worst or their company, putting them first, they would’ve ran with this story. But the fact that they’re huge partners with the NBA and they just got in bed with gambling with ESPN Bet, they put that story later into the SportsCenter.”
It is rather interesting to note that a quick look at the ‘Top Headlines’ section of ESPN.com has no mention of the story and the NBA section has it as the third headline, under such major news as who has made the United States 3×3 national team for the Paris Olympics.
‘Gio’ and partner Boomer Esiason went back and forth on the matter as Boomer believes ESPN has had the story posted in prominent places. Giannotti believes there is way more to this. “There is no doubt that editorial decisions are made based on how they come across, that’s just a fact, to me, with ESPN,” he said. “It’s been like that forever; they don’t want to deal with this stuff. They do deals with these commissioners all the time. Do you think they want to be slapping ‘this guy is fixing games’ on the front page of their website with a picture? No, they’re not going to do that.”
Referencing ESPN and ESPN.com highlighting Women’s NCAA Tournament games more than the Jontay Porter story, Giannotti said, “You can’t tell me that UConn women’s college basketball is a bigger story…than an NBA player fixing prop bets. You can’t tell me that…in no world is that a bigger story.”
