As an NFL insider today, Ian Rapoport sits squarely at the center of delivering information about the biggest sport in the U.S. at a time when information is currency in the rapidly growing space of legal sports betting.
Rapoport, who works across digital and television for NFL Network, knows his audience is evolving. But Rapoport explained Thursday on the Front Office Sports Today podcast that he also believes this age of sports consumption is already setting into a new normal.
“It feels like it has steadied a little bit,” Rapoport explained. “For (NFL Network), and for other networks, it’s woven into some of our shows. Not in a crazy level, but enough to where if you are a gambler and you watch those shows, you will get an idea of where certain things stand from a gambling standpoint.”
Rapoport appears on NFL GameDay and other NFL Network broadcasts on a daily basis. The league has partnerships with DraftKings, FanDuel and Caesar’s.
As a media personality, Rapoport sees that the network needs to cater to fans who are tuning in to keep up as bettors. But he believes the presence of sports gambling content has settled into a fairly reasonable place where fans can easily ignore it if they want to.
“I don’t know what people thought it was going to be like, but really it’s just kind of like, it got quickly woven into the fabric of what we do and now it’s just, kind of, part of it,” Rapoport said. “I don’t get the sense that it’s gone crazy, I don’t get the sense regular people are just gambling like nuts, I think it’s just people who did fantasy kind of now do that as well, and it’s pretty recreational and it’s pretty stable and maybe increases interest in football. And I like football a lot, and I like when people watch it, and I like when people care about it. So I think it’s at a pretty good place right now.”
Rapoport also praised the league for coming down hard on players who are caught involved with gambling to show how seriously they take such rule-breaking.
While it may not come as a surprise that a star employee of NFL Media would praise the league for handling a difficult issue, Rapoport is being pretty reasonable.
Earlier this year, CBS analyst Tony Romo called the growth of sports gambling a “slippery slope” that could leave sports media having a tangible influence on fans’ lives that he was uncomfortable with, calling that dynamic “less pure” than a traditional NFL broadcast.
Time will tell whether the balance Rapoport sees will stick, or if betting takes over more and more of sports broadcasts and content.
About Brendon Kleen
Brendon is a Media Commentary staff writer at Awful Announcing. He has also covered basketball and sports business at Front Office Sports, SB Nation, Uproxx and more.