IF BIG MEDIA HAD A CONSCIENCE, SPORTS WOULDN’T BE SO CORRUPT
Without NBCUniversal’s co-conspiring billions, the Olympic Games and horse racing might fade away and stop infecting the American landscape with scandals and tragedies
When horses die from drug injections, we crucify the trainers with the needles and condemn corrupt forces in the racing industry, as we should. When the Olympics fade to black in China, we denounce a communist government’s human rights abuses and the crooked machinations of the International Olympic Committee, as we should.
But think beyond the obvious. Who is enabling the bad guys?
On a day when Medina Spirit was stripped of his 2021 Kentucky Derby victory for failing a drug test, while the scandal-and-apathy-marred Beijing Games were recording the worst-ever ratings for an Olympiad, did it occur to anyone that both events are bankrolled by an American broadcasting behemoth? And if NBCUniversal and other conglomerates decided to halt dishonest partnerships in the future, we wouldn’t have to suffer the grisly trends and headlines — because the events might go away altogether?
The ills of sports generally track back to media C-suites. At some point, television executives also must be held accountable for fraud and irregularities within their showcase properties. Nothing is forcing NBC to pay $7.75 billion to the IOC for Olympics coverage through 2032, just as nothing forces the network to continue renewing its deals with Churchill Downs and other Triple Crown events at tens of millions annually. The big wigs ante up in fear that rival networks will swoop in and steal their “crown jewel spectacles.’’ Well, it’s time to consider an option unfamiliar to Big Media — a deep, collective moral cleanse — and refuse to fund the dirtballs until they scrub up.
For decades, since networks realized fortunes could be made from sports, the emphasis on perpetuating the grandeur of mega-events has outweighed any concern about wrongdoing within. Why do you think NBC, CBS, Fox, Disney and, now, a streamer such as Amazon ignored the NFL’s existential problems of the late 2010s — a concussion crisis, the Colin Kaepernick protest movement, off-field player conduct problems — and combined to invest $113 billion in the latest round of bidding? Answer: Pro football, by far, is the most popular form of entertainment and biggest generator of media revenues in this country. It’s easier to bite the ethical bullet when 112.3 million people watch a Super Bowl and conference playoff games routinely attract around 50 million.
But ratings arrows aren’t pointing up for the Olympics and the Triple Crown. They’ve been in a steady downturn for some time, alarming indicators that both business deals could be imploding. A good rule of thumb in life: Don’t stay under the bedsheets with a sleazy partner. After absorbing a Beijing disaster by every metric — financial, aesthetic, ethical, audience engagement — NBC must do serious soul-searching about still defining its brand with the five-ringed Olympics logo. At least a killjoy run of three successive Asia-hosted Games, with time-zone flips that spoiled the immediacy so critical in the cellphone age, ends in 2024 with the Paris Games. But in a world torn by geopolitical threats, the pandemic and who knows what else, is there any reason for Americans to bond over athletes who enter our brainstreams only once every four years? Even if Paris has a chance to be a novelty of sorts, how many will watch the 2026 Winter Games in Milan and Cortina? By 2028 in Los Angeles, it’s reasonable to wonder if the Olympics will have lost most of their relevance.
If NBC wants to run for the hills, the escape window is open. The network’s sports chairman, Pete Bevacqua, acknowledged that creative talks with the IOC — previously a non-starter in what has been a one-sided dictatorship — must happen soon. “I think we in many ways have to work internally with the IOC and (U.S. Olympic Committee) to rejuvenate the Games coming out of Tokyo and Beijing in preparation for Paris, Italy and L.A. That is going to be a strategic priority of ours,” Bevacqua said in a media conference call.
The Chinese government might be in the befouled rear-view mirror, but Russian czar Vladimir Putin has no interest in playing clean, as seen in the state-sponsored doping program that exploited and nearly destroyed 15-year-old figure skater Kamila Valieva. NBC covered the debacle, with vanilla host Mike Tirico taking an unexpected and necessary stand on the air: “The adults in the room left her alone. Portrayed by some this week as the villain, by others as the victim — she, in fact, is the victim of the villains.” But as he hammered the Russian system, it was impossible to separate NBC’s role as business partner of the IOC, which, by extension, is a business partner of Putin. Tirico returned to wishy-washy form, the antithesis of fearless predecessor Bob Costas, and obediently whiffed when NBC needed to address China’s humanity crimes. How does a credible network live with itself and continue to self-boast as a leading news source when it sells out to the IOC and Xi Jinping?
NBC should seek a divorce on grounds of incompatibility. The Olympics contract is up in 2032, and when another competitor slinks in to curry the IOC’s favor and win the Games, let its hands be dirty. Think of the goodwill to be gained by a network known for Matt Lauer, Brian Williams and news-side scandals.
As for Churchill Downs, NBC practically turned every race day into the Bob Baffert reality show. That can’t happen now that the celebrity trainer has been banned from the 148th renewal of “The Greatest Two Minutes in Sports’’ on May 7, having been accused of injecting Medina Spirit with a corticosteroid known as betamethasone. The man with the snow-white hair and tinted glasses says he’s innocent, but then, so did Richard Nixon, O.J. Simpson and Herodotus. How much more evidence is needed that Baffert is the most egregious abuser of animals in a disreputable industry that kills horses by the dozens, year after year? It was the fifth time in 13 months that a Baffert-tainted horse tested positive — with more than 30 during his career — and when Medina Spirit died of a heart attack on Dec. 6 at Santa Anita Park, the sport was left with its ugliest stain.
Why anyone with a conscience would watch the Derby, after such tragedy and misconduct, is beyond rational minds. Yet it wasn’t long ago when NBC executive Mark Lazarus lauded a new agreement with Churchill Downs, saying, “This decade-long deal is a testament to the strength of the relationship between Churchill Downs Inc. and NBC Sports, and underscores NBC’s commitment to the sport of horse racing.’’ The deal expires in 2025. How many horses will die between now and then?
It isn’t often when TV lords are blamed for the sins of the events they finance. That time has arrived. Just perform a simple equation: Without the broadcast fees, there’s less money to grab and, thus, less reason to be corrupt.
A nation’s anxious eyeballs are on NBC. Which is more important to the network: credibility or crooked cash? If you smell something burning, the peacock’s feathers are on fire.
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Jay Mariotti, called “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.