Lots of discussion on media coverage of BIG BETS this week. They’re click-bait-y. Novel. Maybe there’s some envy or schadenfreude at play. But that’s not the real issue. The problem is how operators control media coverage.
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I don’t find big bets nearly as problematic as, say, coverage of someone hitting a 12-leg parlay, but the reason we are inundated with this type of coverage is the same: the operators are deciding what is newsworthy and what isn’t.

The issue is pretty fundamental. Most sports betting media entities exist only because of operators. They are literally paid by operators. That’s how the affiliate model works. Would we be ok if a newspaper covering the Trump White House were funded by the administration?

We’d expect some bias, wouldn’t we? As a result, the sports betting media is mainly a marketing arm for operators right now. Journalists have relationships with operators, who feed them information they want published. Operators understand the accessibility bias & exploit it.

Back to that 12-leg parlay. Operators *love* the 12-leg parlay because their theoretical hold multiplies as the number of legs on the parlay increases. Do operators want to see parlay success stories covered? YES!