A decorated ESPN producer describes what it was like working for a network that had fully embraced the sports gambling industry — despite a glaring ethical dilemma:
I had pitched numerous stories that would take a harder look at some of the gambling companies and addiction, and none of those stories were greenlit. They ended up doing a show on it around that time, but it became very neutered. Some of the people involved intended to make it much more hard-hitting and hold the gambling companies accountable. Let’s just say the final product didn’t end up doing that.”
During her two decades at ESPN, Nicole Noren won Emmy, Murrow, and Peabody awards for her work on “Outside the Lines,” an investigative sports series. Noren resigned in 2023, after the network launched its own branded sports gambling app, ESPN Bet. For someone who had grown up with family members “destroyed” by gambling addiction, and having lost a brother who died alone and homeless on a Las Vegas sidewalk, Noren believed that she would have “blood on her hands” if she kept working there, so she quit.