Video: Scott Van Pelt rips daily fantasy leagues with SportsCenter monologue
It’s a widespread, money-making disease that’s sweeping our nation.
Sports gambling has reached its fever pitch thanks to DraftKings and FanDuel, daily fantasy leagues with expansive profit margins that are putting millions of dollars into daily advertising this season.
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ESPN figurehead Scott Van Pelt, a highly respected media personality, stood on a 2.5-minute soapbox during his midnight show on Thursday, bashing a pair of the network’s lead advertisers for the fast-growing monopoly that is daily fantasy sports.
“There’s an old adage that suggests pigs get fed and hogs get slaughtered,” Van Pelt begins. “Right now, it feels like daily fantasy is the hog running at warp speed to the butcher. The sheer gluttony and volume of activity creates a climate where some kind of correction seems inevitable. I don’t mean with the leagues themselves necessarily, but everything associated with the concept.”
Earlier this week, ESPN nixed its in-game ‘cover alert’ graphics referencing when a favorite was closing in on a cover (based on Vegas odds). Ethical standards were breached, even for the Worldwide Leader.
Van Pelt later calls greed a “human accelerant” and congratulates the folks who created a way to monetize our obsession involving sports.
It doesn’t mean he agrees with it.
(h/t Awful Announcing)
