When gambling meets sports journalism

A look at the nightmare scenarios that come when reporters work for sports books

Early last year, I had a story published in Global Sport Matters that looked at sports journalism in a world where sports gambling was legal and easily accessible. 

One of the issues that came from my reporting was the potential for insider reporters to be hired by a sports book, and what would happen if their reporting moved betting lines. 

That exact scenario played out during last week’s NBA draft, when Shams Charina, a reporter for The Athletic who has a partnership with FanDuel, sent a tweet that dramatically changed the betting odds that Scoot Henderson would be drafted No. 2, instead of Brandon Miller (who was drafted second). Jared Diamond at the Wall Street Journal had the best story about this. 

Let's steer away from the specifics of this specific story. For one, Adrian Wojnarowski, one of Shams' main competitors, is a longtime friend and mentor. I don't think that colors my thinking and analysis of this issue. But here's the thing: It's about how you perceive that relationship will affect my thinking and analysis that matters. 

Second, for my perspective here, the larger issues that are arising now that gambling and sports and sports media and sports journalism are all intertwined.

My reporting for Global Sports Matters yielded two potential nightmare scenarios. The first would be the sports journalism version of insider trading, where a reporter places a bet based on information they learn before reporting that information publicly. 

My editors and I thought this would be the primary ethical issue, but the editors and writers I talked to all said this didn’t seem like a real-world concern.

At the national level, the currency of the realm for reporters remains informational scoops, and the nature of digital news means those scoops last minutes at most. Which means that reporters simply don’t have the time to place a bet before reporting, because by the time they do, the information will be public from another source. 

And while this could be a concern with games at, say, lower level college basketball, the fact is the state of the industry means that if there are still news outlets covering these teams, they’re not doing so on a day-to-day, minute-to-minute basis. There probably aren’t reporters covering Binghamton University men’s basketball practice anymore. 

The second potential nightmare scenario is the one that played out last week at the draft. It’s when a journalist is working for a casino, a sports book, or a daily fantasy site. That changes the relationship between sports reporters and their audience. 

My friend and frequent co-author Michael Mirer put it like this:  

"There's a big difference between tweeting 'Player X is inactive today' and 'Player X is inactive today; here's a link to a gambling site where you can act on that information."

Bryan Curtis of The Ringer summed up the situation like this: 

(If) one of these casinos or gambling operations hired a reporter, a big insider who breaks this kind of information, then there would be kind of a fascinating question of are you just using that guy as a rainmaker to bring people to your app or your site, or is that guy's information actually helping you set lines? "To me, that's the more direct (question) rather than a sponsorship. Because then the person is taking a check directly from the company. So 'who are they serving?' is the question there. "Are they serving readers, fans, or are they serving the company?

This is one of those areas where the established codes of ethics that govern journalism are trying to catch up with the times. There’s no industry[wide prohibition against journalists betting on the sports and teams they cover. The Society of Professional Journalists’ Code of Ethics urges reporters to “avoid conflicts of interest, real or perceived,” but that language is vague and open-ended.

The Associated Press Sports Editors’ ethical guidelines has nothing about gambling — which is odd, considering the close relationship that gambling and sports and sports media. There is an entire paragraph about the sharing of notes and quotes, but not a word about betting using information a reporter received while doing their job.

The moral is, when reporters have a financial stake in betting markets, bad can things happen.