- 6 months ago
Category
🥇
SportsTranscript
00:00But the big story yesterday is if you have the NFL Red Zone, you're going to need to watch it in a brand new location.
00:07That and a whole lot more.
00:08Very intriguing purchase yesterday as ESPN announces they are acquiring the NFL Network and other NFL League properties in the media, including the rights to the Red Zone.
00:20And in exchange, the NFL gets a 10% equity stake in ESPN.
00:24My gosh, what a big merger.
00:26They'll also acquire the NFL's fantasy product and merge it into the existing program, making ESPN's fantasy football, as they say, the official game of the National Football League.
00:35So get ready.
00:37And the direct-to-consumer access is also going over to ESPN coming up in a week or two.
00:42So naturally, the NFL and ESPN merging.
00:45Also interesting what it means for media and how things are broken and where they're actually coming through.
00:50To me, that's maybe the more interesting thing, how they cover it from a media point of view.
00:54Well, there's no doubt that we know from the point of view of the Los Angeles Rams, not having Matthew Stafford at the beginning of the season would be concerning.
01:02It seems like there's a possibility of that happening.
01:04The latest from NFL Network, that Stafford is dealing with an aggravated disc in his back and has received an epidural to help him deal with it.
01:12He's not going to play, obviously, in the preseason.
01:15They're optimistic that he will play in week one.
01:17This is not the first time that this has happened with Matthew Stafford.
01:20So stay tuned on this one as it pertains to the Rams.
01:24Another state has applied for a license in sports betting in Missouri.
01:27They go live on December 1, 2025.
01:31Fanatics Sportsbook becomes the fifth sports betting operator to submit an application to Missouri.
01:36And starting in December, they'll go live.
01:39And in September, they're going to make sure that they have all the applications completed.
01:43So naturally, there'll be more than five going live in December.
01:46But Fanatics is the latest to jump on board.
01:48Meanwhile, the Los Angeles Dodgers in baseball last night saw Max Muncy and Teoscar Hernandez each hit home runs.
01:55And they saw a power surge as well.
01:56They scored 12 runs last night over the St. Louis Cardinals final 12-6.
02:01Max Muncy, obviously, now back in the lineup for the L.A. Dodgers after missing a chunk of the season with an injury.
02:07He says he's getting closer to 100%.
02:09Yeah, it was good.
02:11You know, still not moving as good as I'd like on the defensive side.
02:15But, you know, it's just going to come.
02:18Getting first or third, that was big for me.
02:19And, you know, more importantly, it was getting the slide in.
02:22You know, I think that was actually my first slide since I got hurt.
02:24So it's good to know that, you know, nothing's going to break when you slide.
02:30Is it encouraging at least to know that the swing is still in a good place, just especially considering how well you were swinging it when you got hurt?
02:37Yeah, I mean, I was getting to the pitches at the top of the zone.
02:40And, you know, you guys have heard me say before that as long as I'm doing that, I feel like my swing is in a really good spot.
02:45So, you know, just the pitches I was able to hit tonight, I felt really good about it.
02:50What was the tweak you mentioned making during the rehab assignment after those first couple games?
02:56You know, it was just something that we had seen with the data showing that my hands were a little too far over the plate.
03:01They weren't returning back to the slot they needed to.
03:03And so on the off day I had down there, I was just putting in a lot of work to try to, you know, get those hands back to the inside and immediately felt much better after that.
03:14Also out in the National League West, Luis Arise had a go-ahead single five-run 11th inning.
03:20Padres end up beating the Diamondbacks by a final of 10-5.
03:23Reds took on the Cubs yesterday.
03:25Zach Littell and Spencer Steer helped the Reds beat the Cubs by a final of 5-1.
03:31Here is manager of the Reds, Terry Francona, after watching his new starter pick up a win.
03:37What did you think of Littell?
03:38That's pretty good.
03:39I mean, you know, first two guys get on, you got some really dangerous guys coming up, gets out of that.
03:46And then, I mean, it was, you know, both the pitchers, kind of fastball split.
03:51Yeah.
03:52And, man, I mean, just, you know, he doesn't, I think he walked two, which is probably more than he usually does.
03:58But he got us deep into the game, put up zeros, you know, he gave up the one solo.
04:03God, that was really exciting to watch.
04:05You look at his last week, he gets uprooted.
04:08He said, go back to Tampa.
04:09He said, fly to Cincinnati.
04:11He said, go to the Speedway Classic.
04:12That was a bit of a nightmare.
04:13Coming here, packed house, division game.
04:17I mean, that's pretty impressive.
04:18You know, I had heard that he's kind of a pro's pro.
04:20In fact, somebody compared him to Nick Martinez, which in my book, pretty high praise.
04:26Yeah, he was supposed to actually go home from, to get his stuff, take his wife home.
04:32That got nixed.
04:33So, yeah, his week has probably been a whirlwind.
04:36Somebody get a light there so we can see him a little better.
04:39Terry, come on.
04:40Stephen Kwan helps the Guardians get another win, 3-2, over the New York Mets.
04:44It's really been a combination of things for the Mets.
04:46Their pitching has been okay, but really the offense has been a struggle.
04:50Here's Carlos Mendoza on that.
04:52Carlos, you had the last 14 batters retired.
04:55What did you see from the offense tonight?
04:57Yeah, it seems like after we didn't capitalize on that second inning,
05:02when Lindor had the bases loaded, hits a bullet up the middle, 1-0-5, I think,
05:06and then they're making a play.
05:08After that, I think just other than Soto walk, we didn't create anything.
05:12You know, I don't think we hit many balls hard.
05:16Lindor, you know, he hit a few of them.
05:18We just didn't put anything together, you know.
05:22Yeah, I mean, they got us today.
05:24And, you know, we got to turn the page, obviously, because, you know,
05:29I was that good today.
05:31I know we've asked you about this at times throughout the year,
05:34but how perplexing is it to see the way that you guys have struggled consistently
05:39against lefties this season?
05:41Yeah, I mean, we got really good hitters.
05:44When you look at Lindor's numbers last year against lefties, Pete, Vientos,
05:49and then you see a night like tonight where Lindor hits, I don't know,
05:52maybe four balls, three balls, 1-10, 1-0-5.
05:56Vientos had some really good at-bats.
05:58Eventually, he's going to turn, you know.
06:00But as a whole, we're having a hard time putting a rally together
06:05and being consistent against lefties.
06:06So, again, we continue to believe on those guys.
06:10They're really good hitters.
06:11And whether it's lefties, righties, right now, they got our numbers.
06:14But, you know, I'm anticipating this to turn here quickly.
06:19Also, one note from the National League.
06:21The Phillies announced Zach Wheeler will be pushed back to Sunday
06:24from the start on Friday with shoulder stiffness.
06:27They said he's okay, but we'll have to certainly keep an eye out on that.
06:30All right, no keeping an eye on the New York Yankees these days.
06:33You need, like, two eyes or five eyes or ten eyes.
06:36But you need to close them all because they just keep losing.
06:38They lost five straight games now yesterday.
06:41Again, Devin Williams blows it.
06:43My goodness, what is going on there in New York?
06:46He allows two runs in the eighth, but the Yankees don't score.
06:49Good news is Aaron Judge is back.
06:51The bad news is that Devin Williams is having a hard time getting one out.
06:54It seems pretty despondent on losing again.
06:57I mean, I don't really know what to say at this point, you know.
07:01You just continue to work and keep trying to execute and, you know, help the team anywhere I can.
07:07Aaron Boone calls on you there in that eighth inning, understanding the Garcia ball was pretty hard hit.
07:12But off the bat, did you expect that was going to be caught there?
07:14I mean, it's hard to expect him to catch that ball, but, you know, he got a glove on it.
07:21So he came close, but you can't expect that to be caught.
07:24Next two batters, you walked.
07:26What do you think caused you to kind of lose the strike zone there in those moments?
07:29Yeah.
07:30You know, I was trying to stay with my heater to jock.
07:33I wasn't really mad about that one, you know, set up the double play.
07:35But what really hurt me was the walk to Lankford.
07:39You look at that at bat to last, I believe, 10 pitches.
07:43Just how much of a grind did that feel like?
07:45And, you know, Aaron Boone did kind of express his confidence.
07:48He had two guys warming and trying to let you get out of that inning.
07:52Yeah, he did a great job.
07:54You know, battled me.
07:55He was falling off everything.
07:58You know, he won today.
08:01You know, I'll try and get him the next time.
08:03NFL announces yesterday, Jordan Addison, wide receiver of the Vikings,
08:08suspended for the first three games of the NFL season.
08:11Also, Keenan Allen signs a one-year deal with the Chargers.
08:14Get ready for a Shadur Sanders debut.
08:16People start Friday night.
08:18Quarterback to the ground.
08:19Welcome back to Newswire.
08:20We've got Sam McQuillan in from Legal Sports Report.
08:22We're going to get into the very latest as ESPN makes a monumental purchase yesterday,
08:27getting involved in a partnership with the NFL Network.
08:30What could it mean potentially for the future of ESPN bet?
08:32We'll dive into that and a whole lot more as Sam joins us here on the show.
08:36All right, Sam, let's get started here.
08:37We have approximately three weeks since it appears that Major League Baseball is going
08:41to give us some more clarity on the sports betting allegations or at least investigations
08:46into two of their players.
08:48But the state of Ohio doesn't appear to be wanting to wait anytime soon.
08:52They want immediately no more sports prop betting.
08:56And, you know, they make a good point.
08:58I think the American Gaming Association makes a good point.
09:01If we stop this, we can't monitor it.
09:03What do you think ends up happening in the future with prop bets?
09:05Oh, man, that's such a tough question to ask because the governor here is the one saying
09:13that he wants to ban all prop bets.
09:16And the commission that works for him, the Ohio Casino Control Commission, they're part
09:20of the executive branch.
09:21So usually they take their direction from the governor.
09:24Now, the governor is not allowed to really change the law.
09:26You'd have to go into the actual law and maybe add some language.
09:29But the Ohio Casino Control Commission can prohibit certain things.
09:34They certainly did it last year when they prohibited college player props, which we've
09:39seen a number of states do, kind of reacting to not only a bunch of the scandals we've seen
09:43out there, but a bunch of the harassment that's been going on online as well.
09:46But this would really be a very big step.
09:49We have never had a state just go up and ban all player props on any sports.
09:53And the governor, in writing his letter asking the commission to do it, specifically mentioned
09:58those two investigations you mentioned, Craig, the Emanuel Class A investigation, as well
10:02as Luis Ortiz, two pitchers on the Cleveland Guardians who have been put on nondisciplinary
10:08paid leave until the end of the month.
10:10Maybe we'll know more once that's over.
10:12But, you know, the reports have come out that their lockers have been cleared and they're
10:16likely not going to be on the team for much longer.
10:18In those situations, what they're investigating are micro bets that were placed on these pitchers
10:24to start the inning.
10:25There was a lot of money placed on these pitchers to throw, you know, a ball or a wild pitch.
10:32And some of the tracking that we have, thanks to legal sports betting, showed that, you know,
10:37in one case, it was like the craziest arm angle one of the pitchers had thrown on one
10:42of those pitches all year.
10:43So because we have sports betting legalized, you have these firms that monitor these kind of
10:48things and are able to flag when, you know, there's a lot of money coming in or when this
10:51pitcher is kind of, it looks like maybe he's throwing the game or not doing something correctly.
10:55And we certainly have that with all other sports as well, not just baseball.
11:00So it's a little worrisome if you do just say you can't bet on player props at all at legal
11:05sports books.
11:05The only place you'd be able to do it is on an offshore sports book, which we know they
11:10very much, they're accessible.
11:11They're out there.
11:12There's a lot of websites.
11:13It's very easy to get to these books.
11:14So you kind of worry if it gets done to Ohio with maybe another state kind of look at
11:19this for kind of political messaging and kind of a reaction to these investigations as opposed
11:24to, you know, maybe some good policy or good sense that would be put in here.
11:28But this would be a huge blow for sports books.
11:30So I imagine that there'll be a lot of the industry fight against this prop bets make up
11:34about or player prop bets specifically make up about 50% of handle across the country.
11:39Certainly they're popular as legs and parlays.
11:42It's a lot more fun to, you know, bet the narrative on over-unders of players than it
11:46is to just, you know, select less, you know, interesting things going on in a game.
11:50So I don't think this gets done, but if he really wanted to get it done, he certainly
11:55has the power.
11:56Yeah, definitely.
11:57So, you know, I also would say, you know, my opinion only is the governor of Ohio, I thought
12:04Sam should have first attacked micro betting before moving to prop betting.
12:09Because to me, that's really something more controllable where I thought the issue lied.
12:14Maybe he didn't get good advice here or didn't really understand the difference.
12:18You know, for me, professional sports bettors, look, you can say they shouldn't be betting
12:23on, you know, the props and they shouldn't be betting on micro betting, but it is a lot
12:27easier to manipulate micro betting than it is to prop bets.
12:30That's my opinion only on that.
12:32Okay, now let's get to online casinos, another sort of shutdown here.
12:38It looks like the U.S. is just kind of cracking down here, making sure that the illegal ones
12:42are booted.
12:45Yeah, it's not just online casinos.
12:47It's those offshore sports books we just talked about, right?
12:50Those, all those websites that are very accessible and oftentimes cited by legitimate news sources.
12:55They'll put out odds on crazy things to happen and they'll get picked up and the bovadas of
13:01the world, the bet U.S. is all these sites are very much out there.
13:05And it's been on the states for the most part to crack down.
13:09You know, once the argument for legalizing sports betting is it's going to get rid of
13:12the offshore market.
13:13But we've seen actually the only the offshore market has really gotten a lot bigger as,
13:17you know, sports betting has become legalized.
13:19It's become more accessible.
13:20And so far, the Department of Justice, the federal government hasn't really done anything
13:25against these offshore sports books.
13:27So this week, 50 state attorney generals came together, all authored a letter calling on
13:33the Department of Justice to really take action and pursue criminal and civil penalties and
13:38prosecute to the full extent of the law.
13:41These offshore sports books, which oftentimes are websites that are based in, you know, Costa
13:45Rica, other countries offshore.
13:47They don't provide tax revenue to the states.
13:49They certainly don't play by the same rules.
13:51So if prop bets are banned in Ohio, they definitely would not be banned on one of these
13:55websites you could still access in Ohio.
13:58And the American gaming industry estimated that over 400 billion dollars is illegally
14:03wagered online on these sports books, on these online casinos as well.
14:07That's about five billion dollars of tax revenue that states don't get.
14:11So we're seeing really the first coordinated effort.
14:13You know, sports betting is very much adjudicated and regulated on the state level, but they
14:17need the federal power to prosecute and go after all these.
14:21We've seen a bunch of, you know, attorney generals send cease and desist letters.
14:24Those have worked in some cases, but really they want the DOJ to turn their attention here.
14:29And that includes, you know, seizing assets and the domains of these websites so people
14:33can't access them.
14:34And then also work with the financial institutions that sort of finance these places to block their
14:40access to capital as well.
14:41So notably, there is a couple of states that didn't sign on the letter, which I'm not quite
14:45sure why.
14:46It was Kentucky, Montana and Texas, as well as Wisconsin.
14:49You know, Kentucky is the only one of those states that has sports betting.
14:52Maybe the other states don't care as much.
14:54And the letter was also authored by Connecticut, Massachusetts, Nebraska and Utah.
15:00They really took the charge on this.
15:01So we'll see if the federal government cares at all.
15:05But it's definitely pretty big news that all these attorney generals got together because
15:09that's pretty hard to do.
15:10Yeah, agreed.
15:11All right.
15:11Let's cap off here.
15:12Big news in the National Football League and ESPN yesterday as the NFL and, you know,
15:18certainly ESPN have decided basically to package all of the NFL Network's material over to
15:24ESPN.
15:25And look, at this point, I think the commodity here is the Red Zone channel.
15:30Honestly, Sam, I think it's probably the most popular channel around, maybe even in the
15:35world during the National Football League season.
15:37And, of course, equity is involved as well.
15:40Not a lot of talk about sports betting.
15:42But I got to tell you, Sam, if you don't think that that's not important to ESPN bet,
15:47getting the Red Zone, oh, you haven't seen anything yet.
15:49We're going to see that plastered all over the place.
15:52Yeah, last year was really their first season where they tried to ramp up things before the
15:59season.
15:59They launched in New York, ESPN bet, of course.
16:02And now, you know, tied right around the day that we get the news that ESPN was going
16:06to be purchasing NFL Network's assets, which, like you mentioned, Red Zone is probably the
16:10crown jewel there.
16:11ESPN bet announced some new features.
16:13They're going to have what's called a fan center hub, which they're saying merges betting media
16:18and fantasy like never before.
16:20So that middle part, media, you have to wonder what NFL content, how is that going to be a
16:25part of it?
16:26Really important here is that this is going to be the first time that if you're an ESPN
16:30bet user and you also play ESPN fantasy football, you're in a league, you're going to have bets
16:36that are served to you, custom parlays that pop up on your page that are tied to the players
16:40on your own team that you draft.
16:42So this goes back to when the deal was originally agreed upon between Penn Entertainment and
16:48ESPN.
16:49Back in August 2023, they said, you know, we're going to have all these integrations and use
16:53ESPN's assets.
16:54It's taken a long time to get there.
16:56This is kind of the first big milestone, I would really say, in that jump.
17:00Of course, it takes people, you know, linking and integrating their accounts.
17:04So you have to wonder how frictionless this is all going to move.
17:07But it's certainly taken some time.
17:08And football season is really going to be make or break for ESPN debt.
17:12They have this opt out clause next year, where if they don't hit their market share goals,
17:16ESPN can just walk away.
17:18And that's something that Penn has talked about as well in terms of saving money.
17:21You know, when they've only had 3% market share, they've really been aiming for, you
17:24know, 10 to 15.
17:25So it should be a make or break football season for both ESPN and Penn.
17:29Good stuff, Sam.
17:30As always, thanks for coming on.
17:31We'll read more at legalsportsreport.com.
17:33Thanks for coming on.
17:35Thanks a lot, Craig.
Comments