ESPN IS SELLING OUT, WITH ONLY LIVE EVENTS AND CROCK LEFT TO OFFER

The sports network continues to buy into gambling interests, even as Fox Sports drops its relationship, which means Jimmy Pitaro’s operation has given in to the NFL, the NBA and the SEC

     The future of sports is not in baseball honesty, if only because people don’t watch on TV unless you’re 60. True, Kevin Brown shouldn’t have been suspended by the Baltimore Orioles. True, at least half the other ballclubs would hire him as an analyst if he didn’t return Friday. He’ll be fine because some want to know the obvious, such as why they once went 0-15-1 inside The Trop, yikes.

     The problem, as you know, is gambling.

     Universal, inclusive, change-the-game gambling.

     It’s what will continue to turn sports into something radically grotesque than the obvious win-vs-loss outcome, something as fun as losing on a two-point loss when you’re team has won by three. Once again, after several years of dawdling back through the woods, ESPN has chosen to renegotiate a new gambling contract. Fox Sports has said no to FanDuel — which is owned by Ireland-based global-betting group Flutter Entertainment PLC — and finished the Fox Bet that won’t require Terry Bradshaw and David Ortiz to hold bags. But ESPN?

     Jimmy Pitaro is becoming the first chairman to keep alive the betting window. This means 43 bricks-and-mortar properties in 16 states, including one where I’ve spent considerable time — not gambling as much as watching hardly anyone bet three miles south of my mother’s home near Pittsburgh. ESPN will continue to add to this murky fray, all of which should make us sing the final song to sports in America. Last week, it was Oregon and Washington entering the Big (Whatever) gloom. Now, it’s gambling sustained on ESPN.

     What’s next, allowing players to gamble and tell us how they’re wagering? At this point, what is next? Anything that leads to more dark, depressing thoughts? In agreeing with Penn Entertainment, which will pay Disney Company almost $2 billion in cash and general warrants on Penn stock, ESPN will rebrand the casino operator’s sports-betting app as ESPN Bet.

     It means everything. ESPN is finished with real journalism, which has been obvious for years and will continue with more layoffs. This will keep overloading a cable-and-streaming product with gambling information, which has been known for years. As long as more people watch ESPN than other sports-related network, Pitaro will keep popping game lines for the next … 10 years or more. It means the Supreme Court ruling of 2018 — May 14 of that year — will continue into a sixth season for as long as the rest of us carry on, or until the Supreme Court sees a good reason to maintain sports through the problemized gambling and continued end of society as we’ve known it. Pitaro and his boss, the troubled Bob Iger, see no way around the problem than to dab into it.

     “Our primary focus is always to serve sports fans and we know they want both betting content and the ability to place bets with less friction from within our products,” Pitaro said. “The strategy here is simple: to give fans what they’ve been requesting and expecting from ESPN. Penn Entertainment is the perfect partner to build an unmatched user experience for sports betting with ESPN Bet.”

     This means Pitaro won’t care about Pat McAfee’s f-bomb comportment during his shows — from noon to 3 p.m., starting in September on TV — and have more interest in his same-game parlays on ESPN Bet. The morning radio show will have two people you probably don’t know, Michelle Smallmon and Evan Cohen, with one you might, former NFL player Chris Canty. Cohen is a longtime pinpoint of Good Karma Brands, which now becomes the leader of the operation, meaning it’s no longer ESPN audio. The new employee is Dan Katz, who used to rip on me constantly before the previous ESPN president, John Skipper, tried to hire him for one day. No longer part of it is Dave Portnoy, who received a $551 million deal to stay away.

     “We underestimated just how tough it is for myself and Barstool to operate in a regulatory world where gambling regulators, the New York Times, Business Insider hit pieces f–king with the stock price. Every time we did something it was one step forward two steps back,” said Portnoy, who added he’ll hold onto it until he “dies.”

     Maybe that was his mistake. “I have an honest question. How f–king dumb are all my idiot employees? I’ve literally owned Barstool again for less than 24 hours, they know I’m in town and literally none of them have showed up at the office today before 10 a.m.,” Portnoy wrote. “None of them thought to show up maybe early on day 1 of the new regime. I mean seriously how f—king dumb are these people? No wonder Penn gave it back to me for pennies on the dollar. I got the dumbest group of morons who ever lived. These motherf—kers don’t show up, I’m only in the office for a f—king week!”

     Chances are, they’ll be gone. For now, Pitaro takes over what once was The Worldwide Leader In Sports. Last year, he told The Athletic, which looks to take over its own gambling platform (what, you thought The New York Times would be different?): “The question for us is, what’s next here? Is there a next frontier? Here’s what I will tell you: We think that this is a growth opportunity for us. We think we can potentially be doing more. I have talked a little bit about this, not a ton, but what I’ll tell you is we have done the research and it wasn’t too long ago where folks were really concerned about what us being more aggressive in this space would mean for our brands.

     “On the ESPN brand, it’s not just OK, it’s important. It’s something we need to be doing. It’s something that our fans are expecting from us. So it’s not a ‘nice to have,’ it’s pretty much at this point a must-have. That means we need to be serving the sports fan with what they’re expecting and taking the friction out of the process. In terms of what that means for us and what’s the next step, I can’t tell you. … I will tell you that we have opportunities to partner with different folks and be a bit more aggressive in the space. We have to get this right.”

     As they begin, it’s already dead wrong, a further departure from its glorious past. The Orioles will bring back Daniel Brown the day after tomorrow, and their fans will carry on into their first postseason in seven years. ESPN is down to 43 properties in 16 states, including the one I’ll be headed soon enough, where no one will be gambling on sports.

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     Jay Mariotti, called “without question the most impacting Chicago sportswriter of the past quarter-century,’’ writes general sports columns for Substack while appearing on some of the 1,678,498 podcasts and shows in production today. He is an accomplished columnist, TV panelist and talk/podcast host. Living in Los Angeles, he gravitated by osmosis to film projects.