Once upon a time, sports leagues and most sports networks were wary of getting too cozy with the gambling aspect of sports.

It was a complicated relationship. We’ve always known that gambling has been a significant reason behind the popularity of sports, but aside from the occasional mentioning of gambling odds (or a wink-wink acknowledgement of the point spread late in games), networks kept gambling at an arm’s length. At the same time, the dirty little secret was sports leagues and networks knew a chunk of their popularity was because people had money on games.

In recent years, sports leagues and networks gave in and started to embrace gambling, particularly with the exploding popularity of daily fantasy and gambling sites such as FanDuel and DraftKings. Soon enough, entire shows dedicated to gambling and fantasy popped up all over sports networks, including ESPN.

Now ESPN is jumping in with both feet. On Tuesday, the network made a major announcement. ESPN is entering a $2 billion deal with casino owner Penn Entertainment to launch ESPN Bet, a branded sportsbook. ESPN Bet — which includes the mobile app, website, and mobile website — will go into effect this fall in the 16 legalized betting states where Penn Entertainment is licensed.

Jimmy Pitaro, Chairman of ESPN, said in a statement, “Our primary focus is always to serve sports fans and we know they want both betting content and the ability to place bets with less friction from within our products. The strategy here is simple: to give fans what they’ve been requesting and expecting from ESPN. Penn Entertainment is the perfect partner to build an unmatched user experience for sports betting with ESPN Bet.”

So there you go — Pitaro acknowledging that fans want content and the ability to place bets on the games they watch.

Of course, there are concerns when a sports network becomes heavily involved in gambling. One is maintaining journalistic integrity when covering gambling. Another is being ethical and responsible in dealing with those in the audience who might have gambling problems.

ESPN addressed those concerns in a statement, writing, “In concert with PENN Entertainment’s comprehensive responsible gaming programming, ESPN will use its platforms to educate sports fans on responsible gaming, including but not limited to:

• Continuing ESPN’s high standard of journalistic integrity when covering the sports betting space.
• Developing an ESPN committee of responsible gaming, representative of a diverse cross-section of the business, to regularly review compliance, programming, and policies.
• Implementing responsible marketing policies and guidelines to safeguard fans.
• Working with industry experts on best practices and continual review of responsible gaming programming.”

Meanwhile, this comes at an interesting time as Disney, which owns ESPN, figures out what it wants to do with the sports network. Disney could ultimately sell ESPN, although the greater possibility is that Disney keeps ESPN as a cable product and/or makes the network a direct-to-consumer streaming service.

Some of the details of this deal include: “PENN has agreed to make $1.5 billion in cash payments to ESPN paid over the initial 10-year term and grant ESPN approximately $500 million of warrants to purchase approximately 31.8 million PENN common shares that will vest ratably over 10 years, in exchange for media, marketing services, brand and other rights provided by ESPN.”

Wait, there’s more …

So there’s more to this ESPN-Penn story. As a part of the deal, Penn is selling Barstool Sports back to its founder Dave Portnoy. Penn paid $551 million to buy Barstool in 2020. Axios’ Tim Baysinger, Kerry Flyn and Sara Fischer reported, “Portnoy doesn’t appear to be paying upfront cash for his company, which is known for its popular podcasts, but did agree to certain noncompete agreements and to provide Penn with 50% of gross proceeds in the event of a future sale or monetization event.”

In a video statement on X, Portnoy said that for the first time in a decade, he owns 100% of Barstool Sports.

The Penn-Barstool deal seemed a good match at the time, but it just didn’t work out. Portnoy said, “We underestimated just how tough it is for myself and Barstool to operate in a regulated world. .. Every time we did something, it was one step forward, two steps back. We got denied licenses because of me. You name it. So the regulated industry (is) probably not the best place for Barstool Sports and the type of content we make.”

He also said, “I am never going to sell Barstool Sports. Ever. I’ll hold it ’til I die.”

This works out well for Portnoy, who now is free to go back and essentially say and do whatever he wants on his no-holds-barred podcasts without, pretty much, having to answer to anyone.

BuzzFeed pins hopes on AI as it suffers $27.8 million loss

For this item, I turn it over to my Poynter colleague Angela Fu.

BuzzFeed posted a $27.8 million loss in its second quarter, down 18% year-over-year, the company announced Tuesday evening.

The digital media company, which calls itself “home to the best of the Internet,” saw its total revenue decline 27% year-over-year to $77.9 million. Advertising revenue dropped 33%, and the amount of time audiences spent engaging with the company’s content decreased 9%. BuzzFeed expects similar revenue declines in its third quarter.

In an earnings call, founder and CEO Jonah Peretti acknowledged that “marketplace shifts” have caused the company to lose traffic referrals from social media platforms. To address this, BuzzFeed is trying to increase direct traffic by investing heavily in artificial intelligence and growing its creator programs. Peretti said the company is also prioritizing “destination news content” to increase its HuffPost front page audience.

“Though it will take time for these initiatives to translate into scaled monetization, we are making good progress in executing against our transformation plans,” he said.

In the second quarter, BuzzFeed doubled its output of AI-assisted content from the previous quarter and plans to grow that content at a similar rate in the third quarter, Peretti said. He spotlighted a number of new AI content formats, including personalized quizzes, chatbots, multiplayer games and AI-generated image posts. Such content has led to a threefold increase in views and time spent at BuzzFeed quarter-over-quarter, and the company’s other brands — including Complex and Tasty — are also using AI to grow their audiences.

“With these new generative AI technologies, it’s clear there’s going to be a lot of impact on digital publishing and content,” Peretti said. “Building towards that future and aligning our business with that positive trend is something that we’re very focused on.”

BuzzFeed has had a rough year. It ended its first quarter with a $36 million loss and underwent a restructuring in April that led to 180 layoffs — including the shuttering of its Pulitzer Prize-winning news division. Its stock closed at $0.59 a share Tuesday, marking a 65% drop over the past six months. Nasdaq has warned the company that it could be delisted if it does not improve its stock performance by Nov. 27.

Report of the Times

(AP Photo/Mark Lennihan, File)

The New York Times had their quarterly earnings report on Tuesday. My colleague Angela Fu wrote about it for Poynter.

The Times grew its digital subscriber base by 180,000 and reported a profit of $46.6 million in its second quarter. Fu wrote, “Total revenue for the quarter was $590.9 million, up 6.3% year over year. Much of the increase in revenue was due to higher digital subscriptions and money made through product reviews site Wirecutter, which had its best non-holiday quarter ever.”

Meanwhile, The Athletic — the sports site purchased by the Times in January of 2022 for $550 million — continues to operate at a loss. It reported a loss of $7.8 million during the second quarter. That’s at least an improvement over the $12.1 million loss in the second quarter of last year.

Times CEO Meredith Kopit Levien said The Athletic has more than doubled its advertising revenue year over year and is helping to drive new advertisers across the Times brand.

The Times announced last month that it was dismantling its sports department and would have The Athletic provide its sports coverage. The Times union is fighting that plan.

Journalists at CalMatters unionize

And here’s another item from Angela Fu.

More than 90% of editorial, product and development staff at CalMatters announced Tuesday that they are unionizing with the Pacific Media Workers Guild.

CalMatters, a nonprofit digital outlet covering California, started publishing in July 2015. The union is seeking voluntary recognition from management, and if successful, their bargaining unit will have roughly 40 people.

CEO Neil Chase acknowledged the request in a message to staff Tuesday morning: “We’re doing the prudent responsible thing, meeting with our attorneys today to ensure that we do this the right way, but we’ll have a more thoughtful response soon and look forward to the next steps.”

Journalists across the industry have been organizing in droves over the past few years. Though many of them have done so to survive budget cuts and hardships brought about by the pandemic, a growing number come from newsrooms that are flourishing. Last week, nonprofit investigative outlet ProPublica voluntarily recognized its staff’s union, and the week prior, journalists at Deep South Today, a nonprofit that seeks to build a network of newsrooms in the South, announced that their union had also been voluntarily recognized.

“While many news outlets are shrinking, CalMatters is growing in both size and reporting ambition,” investigative reporter Lauren Hepler said in a press release. “As CalMatters grows, I hope that talented staff members across our newsroom will have a say in where we’re going and how we get there.”

If CalMatters does not voluntarily recognize the union, the journalists will have to petition the National Labor Relations Board for an election to determine whether they can unionize.

More fallout over baseball suspension

I wrote in Tuesday’s newsletter how Baltimore Orioles play-by-play announcer Kevin Brown was suspended for, apparently, pointing out that the Orioles hadn’t had much recent success playing on the road against the Tampa Bay Rays until this season. What he said was hardly critical, and yet unless there’s something that we don’t know, that was enough for Orioles’ management to have him temporarily suspended. The Baltimore Banner’s Andy Kostka reported Brown will return to the air on Friday.

As the story picked up steam Tuesday, baseball announcers across Major League Baseball blasted the Orioles during their broadcasts.

New York Mets play-by-play announcer Gary Cohen said, “If you don’t want Kevin Brown, there are 29 other teams who do. It’s a horrendous decision by the Orioles. I don’t know what they were thinking. But they’ve gotten exactly the reaction that they deserve. And it’s just a shame because the Orioles are playing so well and now they’ve diverted attention from that. And now they have made themselves a laughing stock.”

New York Yankees play-by-play announcer Michael Kay, on his radio show in New York, said if what has been reported is true, the Orioles “should be ashamed of themselves.” Kay noted how not only did Brown say what he said, but the same information also appeared on a graphic during the Orioles broadcast. Kay said if Orioles chair John Angelos didn’t like the Brown comments then he is “unreasonable and thin-skinned.” Kay went on to call the suspension “unconscionable.”

Kay added, “This makes the Orioles look so small and insignificant and minor league.

Boston Red Sox announcer Dave O’Brien called all of it a “fiasco.”

The story gained so much traction that it actually made CNN on Tuesday morning. CNN anchor John Berman said on air that maybe the network should bring on CNN medical correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta to discuss a condition called “chronic thin-skinnedness.”

Bad call

Fox Sports 1 and radio host Colin Cowherd is one of the better sports broadcasters in the business, but he and his show had a cringeworthy mistake on Tuesday. Cowherd had a list of 20 NFL quarterbacks who are not getting to a Super Bowl and, Cowherd said, “certainly not winning it.”

Among the names that Cowherd said (and a name that appeared on a graphic on the screen) was Dwayne Haskins.

Haskins died in April of 2022 when he was hit by a dump truck while trying to cross an interstate in Florida on foot. A toxicology report later revealed he had a blood alcohol level of .24, and tested positive for ketamine and norketamine. He was only 24. Earlier this year, Haskins’ family filed a lawsuit against several people and companies, alleging Haskins was drugged as a part of a “blackmail and robbery conspiracy.”

Back to Cowherd. Mistakes get made when you’re giving out hot takes three hours a day, but this is bad. Not a fireable offense, but it’s apology-worthy. I’ll keep you posted if one is announced on today’s show.

Cowherd’s name is on the show and it was his list, according to the graphic. But there’s blame to go around. Someone typed Haskins name for the graphic and certainly someone on the production crew should’ve caught that before it embarrassingly went out of the air.

Media tidbits

• Even more ESPN news. After the recent layoffs claimed two of three co-hosts of its morning radio show, which was simulcast on TV, ESPN now has a new radio team. The New York Post’s Ryan Glasspiegel and Andrew Marchand report the new show will be co-hosted by Michelle Smallmon, SiriusXM’s Evan Cohen and former NFL player Chris Canty. They will replace the morning team of Keyshawn Johnson, Max Kellerman and Jay Williams. Johnson and Kellerman were part of the recent layoffs, while Williams’ contract is up soon and it isn’t known if he will remain at the network. The new radio show is expected to start by the beginning of the NFL season next month.
• In a piece for ProPublica and The Atlantic, Alec MacGillis with “How Social Media Apps Could Be Fueling Homicides Among Young Americans.”
• Republican presidential candidate and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis will be interviewed on Fox News’ “America’s Newsroom” this morning at 9 a.m. DeSantis, who had a major shakeup to his campaign staff and strategy this week, will be interviewed by Dana Perino and Bill Hemmer.
• Axios’ political reporter Alexi McCammond announced on X that she has moved on to write politics for The Washington Post Opinions section. In 2021, McCammond was hired to be the editor in chief at Teen Vogue, but resigned before she started after staff there complained about racist and homophobic tweets McCammond had posted a decade earlier when she was a teenager. McCammond, a prominent political reporter who also was a contributor at MSNBC, returned to Axios at the time, and now joins the Post.
• I’m a huge fan of the TV show “Law & Order.” So I love this piece from NPR’s TV critic Eric Deggans: “Dun dun — done! Why watching ‘Law & Order’ clips on YouTube is oddly satisfying.”
• In The Atlantic, Steven Waldman with “The Local-News Crisis Is Weirdly Easy to Solve.”
• A couple of items from Axios’ Sara Fischer. First, it’s “OpenAI funds new journalism ethics initiative.”
• Then, Fischer reports that “Puck, the buzzy media startup that covers the intersection of Hollywood, Silicon Valley, Wall Street and Washington, has raised over $10 million in a Series B growth round, Puck co-founder and editor-in-chief Jon Kelly told Axios.”
• X CEO Linda Yaccarino will be a guest on CNBC’s “Squawk on the Street” on Thursday at 10:15 Eastern.

Hot type

Vice’s Anna Merlan with “Trafficking Survivors and Advocates Are Being Harassed by ‘Sound of Freedom’ Fans.”

From last week, but worth your time: The Ringer’s Lex Pryor with “America’s Bee Problem Is an Us Problem.”

More resources for journalists

• Poynter will honor Anderson Cooper at the Bowtie Ball in Tampa, Florida, on Nov. 18. Learn how to get first dibs on tickets during a donor pre-sale event Sept. 5-10.
• Executive Leadership Summit (Oct. 2023) (Seminar) — Apply by Aug. 14.
• Poynter Leadership Academy for Women in Media (Mar., May & Sept. 2024) — Apply by Sept. 8, 2023.
• Power of Diverse Voices: Writing Workshop for Journalists of Color (Nov. 15-18) (Seminar) — Apply by Sept. 15.

Have feedback or a tip? Email Poynter senior media writer Tom Jones at tjones@poynter.org.
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