A remarkable thing happened in sports journalism in October.
The day after the most recent sports gambling scandal broke — this one involving NBA head coach Chauncey Billups and player Terry Rozier — some of the coverage’s most pointed critiques focused on sports gambling as an institution.
The New York Times, The Washington Post, ESPN, and The Athletic (which is owned by the Times) all had columns from long-time, respected voices in sports journalism that critiqued the way that sports leagues had sold out to gambling in a way that made scandals like this feel inevitable. “All the major sports leagues eagerly hopped on that bus, cashing in one day and then cursing the evils of illegal betting the next,” Ian O’Connor wrote in The Athletic.
It was a welcome first step. And 2026 will see more such steps. I think this is the year we start to see some real journalistic pushback to the behemoth that legal and accessible gambling has become.
I know what you’re thinking. The answer to most questions is “money,” and there’s far too much money in this particular banana stand. And you’re probably right. But to say nothing will ever change because of money is to resign oneself to nothing ever changing. So let’s take an optimistic view of the coming year.
The truth is, the combination of the ubiquity of gambling ads, a growing recognition of the societal dangers of legal and accessible gambling, and the number of scandals involving coaches and athletes — ESPN tracks 29 such stories in the past three years alone — have led to a vibe shift around sports gambling since the Supreme Court allowed states to make it legal in 2018.
Sports journalist Michael Weinreb wrote that we could have had a world where sports gambling was legalized but also regulated with necessary guardrails. Instead, everyone involved saw the dollar signs involved and went full steam ahead, especially teams and leagues.
This includes sports media. ESPN, The Athletic, Gannett, CBS, NBC, and Fox all have multiyear partnerships with sports books like DraftKings, FanDuel, and BetMGM. And while these media organizations have firewalls established between their journalism and the gambling partnerships — this is especially strong at ESPN, I’ve been told — the perception of being a sports journalism outlet reporting on gambling scandals while simultaneously promoting gambling through partnerships is hard to overcome. And of course, when it comes to journalism ethics, perception is reality.
2026 will be the year that starts to change.
A small step happened in November, when ESPN Bet ended after just two years. ESPN ended its partnership with Penn Gaming, which had operated its sports book under the name of the Worldwide Leader in Sports. Yes, on the same day, ESPN announced a new partnership, with DraftKings. But getting the name ESPN Bet off our screens is a good first step.
Sports journalists being critical of leagues and teams for being in gambling partnerships is another step in the right direction. So is covering the threats that athletes (especially college athletes) receive from gamblers. Being willing to call out your own news organization — or at least acknowledge the potential inherent conflict in reporting on a scandal while your employer partners with them — would be another one, albeit a tricky needle to thread.
What I think and hope we’ll see in sports journalism is coverage of gambling that is less episodic, less scandal-driven, less focused on the who-what-why of each individual case. What I think and hope we’ll see is more systematic coverage that critically examines legal and accessible gambling’s current place in the sports world.
It’s easy to shrug this off as wishful thinking — to lean on the old Toy Department cliché about sports journalism or just assume there’s too much money involved. But as the scandals become bigger and more common, the issue becomes too big to ignore.
We’ve taken the first steps. They were remarkable to see. This will be the year we take more.
Brian Moritz is an associate professor at St. Bonaventure and the author of Sports Media Guy.