Weekly Roundup – January 23rd, 2024

"...The players’ unions expressed concerns about the “human consequences of allowing sports betting to become mainstream.” There were worries that athletes would be subjected to more criticism and threats if the games they were playing in suddenly carried enormous financial implications for the fans watching.
What they may not have anticipated was the potential for their own athletes to be wrapped up in the pitfalls of gambling themselves. That’s because prior to the widespread legalization of sports betting in most North American jurisdictions in 2018, gambling-related incidents involving athletes were a relic of the past.
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But in 2019, Arizona Cardinals cornerback Josh Shaw was suspended for gambling on an NFL game while on injured reserve. In 2022, Atlanta Falcons star receiver Calvin Ridley was suspended for an entire season for gambling on NFL games. Then in 2023, 11 different athletes — 10 NFLers and one NHL player — were punished by their respective leagues for gambling-related infractions."

"One of the greatest plays in sports isn’t taking place on any athletic field.
Walt Disney Co. and the National Football League are said to be in earnest talks, according to two people familiar with the matter, that could have the league take a stake in ESPN while putting its NFL Media unit, which the sports body has been trying to monetize in better fashion, under the media company’s control. Such a move would further align Disney with the NFL, making it difficult for the company to lose valuable sports rights to show top-rated football games, and could put such NFL assets as the NFL Network and RedZone under Disney’s aegis.
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Such a transaction is not guaranteed to reach fruition, and one of the people familiar with the talks suggested it would have to be approved by the NFL owners at a regularly scheduled meeting slated to take place in mid Spring.
But a consummated deal might have significant ramifications for an array of sports entities. It could add the stand-alone NFL outlet NFL Network to ESPN’s array of sports content and might send NFL RedZone, a so-called “whiparound” cable offering that shows clips from across NFL games on Sundays to a venue such as ESPN+, a move that might turbocharge the streaming hub and reduce ESPN’s reliance on other rights that have helped buoy the outlet, such as the UFC"

"Sports Illustrated announced major layoffs on Friday, according to the publication’s union, throwing the future of the legacy sports magazine into question.
The union said it was notified by the magazine’s publisher, the , that it intended to “lay off a significant number, possibly all” of Sports Illustrated’s unionized staffers because Arena had lost its license to publish the magazine."

"Untethered from partisan politics and uninterested in keeping up with political news, here is how some Americans view the current state of U.S. politics.
In a fractious political environment often dominated by the loudest voices on the left and right, some people are saying: Count us out.
Last year, we talked to a group of people who, while they may vote, are not strongly attached to either political party. They don’t closely follow news about politics or government, though some feel guilty when they don’t. By and large, they look at the nation’s politics as a topic better avoided than embraced.
They have a sense that politics is everywhere – and often in a bad way. They find themselves overwhelmed by how much information they confront in their day-to-day life.
Many – but not all – of these people vote. While they acknowledge they could be more engaged with following politics, many say they have no desire to, or say it’s important to avoid the topic to protect their mental health."

"Artificial intelligence can’t replace the majority of jobs right now in cost-effective ways, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology found in a study that sought to address fears about AI replacing humans in a swath of industries.
In one of the first in-depth probes of the viability of AI displacing labor, researchers modeled the cost attractiveness of automating various tasks in the US, concentrating on jobs where computer vision was employed — for instance, teachers and property appraisers. They found only 23% of workers, measured in terms of dollar wages, could be effectively supplanted. In other cases, because AI-assisted visual recognition is expensive to install and operate, humans did the job more economically."

"Pitchfork, the acerbic music site that defined album reviews in the early blogging era, is being hollowed out. Owner Condé Nast has decided to merge the music magazine with GQ, the men’s interest publication, according to a staff memo circulated by Max Tani of Semafor. Launched back when CDs were a thing, Pitchfork outlasted the age of music piracy and mp3s and through the rise of digital streaming. Its future as a brand post-merge is now uncertain.
Multiple employees were also laid off on Wednesday, including editor-in-chief Puja Patel. One laid off writer, Matthew Ismael Ruiz, estimated that “half the staff” was laid off.
“Today we are evolving our Pitchfork team structure by bringing the team into the GQ organization. This decision was made after a careful evaluation of Pitchfork’s performance and what we believe is the best path forward for the brand so that our coverage of music can continue to thrive within the company,” wrote Anna Wintour, Condé Nast’s chief content officer, in the staff memo."