Drew Magary: ESPN wants you to think sports gambling is easy – SFGATE

Hello there, fellow gamblers. Tis I, Drew Magary, aka Drew The Knife, aka Drewy Bones, aka The San Jose Shark, and Im here to let you in on an easy way to win BIG MONEY. Im talking potential millions here. Real smackers. Normally, this would be an exclusive offer Id make only to members of Premium Drew and to callers at 1-900-DRW-WINS. But today, and today only, Im gonna share my hottest tips with the general sporting public: information that Vegas DOESNT WANT YOU TO KNOW. So open up your wallets and hold onto your nutsacks, boys, because heres your ticket to The Land Of The Sharps.

Sportsbooks have been adjusting Baltimore's odds furiously the Orioles are down to 250-1 to win the World Series and 15-1 to make the playoffs at Caesars Sportsbook and still find themselves facing seven-figure liabilities.

Thats David Purdum, who writes for the Chalk gambling vertical over at ESPN.com. Purdum has become a regular practitioner of a genre of sportswriting that Ill summarily paraphrase as OH MY GOD CASINOS ARE SO SCARED RIGHT NOW! Purdum has deployed this formula many times before. He used it when writing about bettors seizing on prop bet unders before Draymond Green planned a brief, ceremonial start for the Warriors back in January. He did it in November when Caesars lost a whole million dollars (oh no whatever will they do) when a random bettor cashed in a futures bet on Shohei Ohtani winning the 2021 AL MVP award. He did it this past spring when St. Peters run to Elite Eight cost BetMGM money that they surely couldnt afford to lose. And he did it again this spring when poor Caesars Mister Biden, bail this casino out! botched their pre-series line favoring the Brooklyn Nets in a series that they would go on to lose in a sweep. Did Purdum use the phrase free money in that last one? You know he did:

It's often a clich in the betting community, but for roughly two hours Tuesday, from 9:45 p.m. ET until around midnight, there was indeed free money to be had.

Purdum is taking up the mantle of former ESPN business reporter and brand worshipper Darren Rovell, who cut out the middleman entirely in 2018 and left the network for a gambling concern. Rovell was no stranger to this Bookies really took a bath this time! form of take, where any anomaly in the pregame line or the postgame result triggers a house loss that looks onerous when isolated but is ultimately a rounding error for businesses that routinely make hundreds of million dollars annually. BetMGM made $850 million in revenue last year. The market cap for Caesars Entertainment currently stands at $9 billion. These are not companies in dire straits. Quite the contrary.

In fact, ever since the Supreme Court legalized sports betting in 2018, Americans have legally wagered more than $87 billion, according to the Washington Post. That number figures to increase exponentially as more dominoes fall and more states legalize online sports betting apps to streamline the gambling addiction process. Perhaps youve seen an ad or two for such apps, maybe even featuring the comedic stylings of J.B. Smoove.

As these services proliferate, they have become comfortably intertwined both with the major sports leagues and, more importantly, with the media companies that hold the broadcast rights to those leagues. According to the Financial Times, ESPN parent company Disney holds a stake in DraftKings and ESPN has an exclusivity arrangement with the clearly struggling Caesars for pregame odds. (Disclosure: Hearst, parent company of this website, also owns 20% of ESPN.) Disney CEO Bob Chapek himself told Disney investors that sports betting was vital to the future of ESPNs success within the company.

Im sure that declaration has nothing to do with ESPN.coms Chalk vertical, nor with why that vertical continually publishes articles by Purdum that so blatantly attempt to make the playing field between bettor and book appear more level than it actually is.

For sportsbooks, it would've been the most expensive tie in NFL betting history. Bookmakers acknowledged that they were on the hook for millions if the Chargers and Raiders had ended in a tie. The books endured an overtime sweat for the ages but escaped mostly unscathed.

Phew! Thank god for that! Even when the books dont take a loss, one that they could easily absorb, Purdum appears all too willing to mine content from them NEARLY taking a loss. Even Danny Ainge wasnt able to extract this much copy from things almost happening but not. Not only are these stories based on false premises (do you really see Caesars going out of business this year because the fking Orioles are barely above .500?), they serve as blatant PR to attract gambling addicts whose habits ESPN is willfully enabling for its own profit. Appealing to that subgroup is the real free money, for both ESPN and the gambling companies. Its an easy way for them to lure in consistent viewers, given that gambling addicts arent the type to rest their eyeballs, and given that almost no one who quits gambling does so for very long.

I asked Purdum over email whether he thought his articles willfully obfuscated the chances of an everyday gambler literally beating the odds. Here was his response, in full:

I would be surprised if anyone read a story about a sportsbook suffering a rare loss and came away believing that sports betting is easy. In my opinion, it is common knowledge that sportsbooks almost always come out ahead and beating the books is an up-hill battle with the odds stacked against you. My goal is to write on interesting topics in the sports betting space, including the unique and clever ways bettors occasionally get the best of the books. Sportsbooks win again doesnt seem very newsworthy, except for high-profile events like the Super Bowl and NCAA tournament. Stories on books losing typically do generate more interest, because it is a rare occurrence. For balance, though, I write a weekly recap of the betting action during football season and report whether books win or lose. Id estimate the books come out ahead on 80% of NFL Sundays, for example. In addition, I regularly post the monthly sports betting revenue numbers from individual states, showing how much the books win.

As Purdum noted, these are stories that attract readers. None of this st is new. I grew up with odds posted in the back of USA Today, and with the late Hank Goldberg making his NFL picks every Sunday morning on SportsCenter, and I spent my early adulthood voraciously reading Bill Simmons columns where he would openly mock Vegas for publishing lines he deemed to be easy pickings. Thus, I have long been accustomed to various hustlers and professional bros selling me the idea that a canny sports fan can beat the system. Im not inclined to believe this fairy tale because A) I am not in dire financial straits, and B) Im not a sucker. Ive seen Phil Mickelsons gambling losses. I know the lay of the land. But plenty of young sports fans are desperate enough, and stupid enough, to buy into the fable that they can become the next Haralabob if they exploit vulnerabilities in a system that has long proven to have next to none.

And now that sports betting is legal, leagues and networks (not just ESPN!) are freer than ever to feed into this myth, because it means more money wagered and more loyal eyeballs on the games. So they keep letting Purdum churn out this dreck to prop up what has proven to be an easy illusion to maintain. In fact, nearly a year ago, Purdums Chalk colleague Doug Kezirian, the host of a daily gambling show on ESPN2, did away with subtlety and stated the con outright:

After further review, the house does not always win. Since the beginning of time, we have been led to believe that gambling is a fool's errand and sportsbooks will inevitably wind up with your money. However, that is overstated. A successful football season with modest expectations is attainable with a firm grasp of one's approach and discipline to abide by several guidelines.

If this copy doesnt offend you as a member of society, and you may have bigger fish to fry with society at the moment, it should at least offend you as a consumer. If the Chalk represents ESPNs next big evolution in online content, thats somehow a step DOWN from the recently departed Matthew Berrys This fantasy player is like a crazy chick I once dated! articles that were routinely the most popular articles on ESPN.com. I should not find myself pining for Matthew Berry, or for the relative safe haven of lousy Bud Light ads, or for the days when ESPNs premier gambling content featured Chris Berman wearing a turban. I deserve better than this. You do, too. But thanks to Purdum and his ilk, Im not gonna bet on us ever getting it.

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Drew Magary: ESPN wants you to think sports gambling is easy - SFGATE