I've heard sharp sports bettors dream of gaining access to that very data, for golfers especially.

@drewmagary.bsky.social presses @pablo.show to give straight answers on questions I and probably a lot of people have been wondering about, namely, "How on earth does Pablo have time to dig up so much so consistently?" Great interview. www.sfgate.com/sports/artic...

I had to pick my jaw off the floor after reading this lede in @rachelmonroe.bsky.social on self-defense insurance. Like out of an Elmore Leonard novel. www.newyorker.com/news/letter-...

Right after Trump's '24 election, Adam Gopnik of the @newyorker.com offered a prediction that seemed improbable and oddly specific at the time: He said one of MAGA's first priorities would be to find a way to get Stephen Colbert and Jimmy Kimmel out of late night.

So much intrigue in this NCAA release on Fresno State and San Jose State men's basketball players gambling and colluding with bettors. One important point is that some games were manipulated to ensure certain bets *won*. Too often people assume fixing always = failing. www.ncaa.org/news/2025/9/...

Every time the car GPS says to do something in 350 feet, 500 feet, etc., I imagine a home run traveling that distance and it seems oddly short. Am I alone?

The thing I keep thinking about re: Jalen Carter spitting on Dak — nobody does that once. Like Jalen Carter probably didn't decide in his 3rd NFL season to debut spitting on another man. That's a move. Maybe he just never did it to a quarterback with a ref standing two feet away.

As Steve Coll recounts in his extraordinary “The Achilles Trap,” Saddam Hussein vented privately to GOP Senators visiting Baghdad about the US press for drawing the world’s attention to his gassing of tens of thousands of Iranians and Iraqi Kurds, which he’d denied. Their reply:

"Room" in NFL-media-speak, i.e. a team's "receiver room," "QB room," etc., is now so ridiculously overused. Gonna spread outside football before long. "Congratulations to our my daughter for choosing a strong addition for our in-law room."

From this trailer, looks like Nick Watt and and co. pull no punches in their new sports betting documentary. Was grateful to be interviewed for it. Airs at 10 pm ET Sunday on @cnn.com

From this trailer, looks like Nick Watt and and co. pull no punches in their new sports betting documentary. Was grateful to be interviewed for it. Airs at 10 pm ET Sunday on @cnn.com

Amid some wild developments with sports betting, my latest newsletter (👇🏼) covers —my @washingtonpost.com piece on the WNBA’s dicey embrace of gambling —@jonlerner.bsky.social’s beef with people begging for prop refunds after injuries —the truly bizarre rate of deaths at 1800s baseball games

I've been raising this issue for years now, too. WNBA gambling has been a thing for ages, but it's growing massively (in large part because the league wants it to). And the players still make, relatively, peanuts. It's an obvious target for corruption and potentially very damaging scandal. #WNBA

Gambling on the WNBA is way up, as are the unintended consequences. By @dannyfunt.bsky.social: www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2025/...

Read the full story by @dannyfunt.bsky.social ⤵️

Pushing fans to gamble is risky business for any league. But for the WNBA, all those potential dangers — abuse toward players, match fixing, a culture clash between fans and bettors, etc. — seem to be even higher stakes, experts told me for @washingtonpost.com

Sometimes newspaper editors are too strict with word counts. I came across this story in The New York Times from 1889. I would have appreciated at least a few more paragraphs, personally.

It's pub day for my buddy @joshuasharpe.bsky.social and his incredible book THE MAN NO ONE BELIEVED ... I did a Q&A with him about his reporting process, freeing innocent people from prison, and the magic of the pedal steel. tommytomlinson.substack.com/p/pub-day-jo...

Lovely story about a man's lifelong book consumption. Seems like a character beyond his avid reading. I liked "The only things he asked for in the last year of his life were a soap dish, a watch battery and MSNBC." (By then, his eyes weren't up for reading.) www.nytimes.com/2025/07/26/b...

A mind-boggling game I had never heard of. Really expands your appreciation for human perception www.theatlantic.com/magazine/arc...

Extraordinary. If a props ban rippled across states, could the sports betting industry survive?

I've seen smart people associated with book publishing assert that social media doesn't sell books, and that's not my experience. I can't quantify how many books a site like Bluesky has sold for me, but it has given me a community, which has then spread word of my books to those who wouldn't see it.

Legal sports betting in Massachusetts raised $90M in taxes in 2023, @umassamherst.bsky.social finds. But MA bettors lost $450M that year and few jobs have been created. When you factor in health costs, reduced discretionary spending, & the toll of more young people gambling ... Is it worth it?

Sally is my favorite sports columnist. Obviously I'm excited for what she does at The Atlantic, but what a loss for The Post ...

Even in a departure letter, Sally Jenkins gives some of the best and finest writing you’ll read today. Grateful to have had the chance to work with one of the all-time greats, a singular voice who lifted up Post Sports and made the whole place better.

Wait ... hold on ... A few days of social media sleuthing from @pablo.show and @tomhaberstroh.bsky.social turned up ANOTHER potentially manipulated Jontay Porter game that the FBI (and presumably the NBA) had failed to identify after months of investigating?! Some thoughts 🧵

Brian Pempus spent years writing for poker and sports betting affiliate sites, but seeing the damage that gambling can do ate at him. A few months ago, he launched @gamblingharm.org, an independent news site. He was kind enough to tell me why he'd had enough of the betting biz.

Today on All Of It: Larry Fink's photos in the Hudson Valley; @dannyfunt.bsky.social on sports-betting; @nytimes.com new podcast season; Things to do in Queens. Live at noon on 93.9 FM, AM820 or @wnyc.org

Look forward to discussing how gambling is changing sports with Allison Stewart on @allofitwnyc.bsky.social, live from 1:30-2 ET. You can listen here: www.wnyc.org/radio/

Lose bets, pay taxes? New bill has some gamblers apoplectic.

"Astounding" "Asinine" "One of the dumbest things I've ever seen" Gamblers are irate about a subtle change to the tax code that could put sharp sports bettors out of business and cause others to pay income taxes on losing bets. I explain what happened in @washingtonpost.com

lol

The hardest part of parenting a baby, bar none, is resisting the constant urge to pick my kid's nose.

"EVERYBODY LOSES: The Tumultuous Rise of American Sports Gambling" is available for preorder! What's at stake as billions of dollars are spent to turn a nation of sports fans into a nation of sports gamblers? My findings after 300+ interviews are alarming. www.simonandschuster.com/books/Everyb...

This is insane! I can relate, having asked ChatGPT about an athlete's gambling stance and being told he'd been "vocal" about a position--all entirely made up. Sally says ChatGPT should be recalled. I do wonder if using the public as lab rats for a wildly defective product is maybe not so cool ...

Repugnant, unsurprising frontofficesports.com/grand-slam-t...

Fantastic story by @tonymiltony.bsky.social on what led Jontay Porter to commit sports's cardinal sin. Enthralled by huge profits trading crypto and stocks, he, like so many people, was inclined to bet recklessly on sports. Of course, he also played in the NBA ... torontolife.com/deep-dives/f...

1% of sports gamblers make money, yet roughly two thirds of them say they come out ahead or at least break even. Baffling! It got me thinking about the perils of "optimism bias" and how sportsbooks reinforce, and sometimes exploit, customers' delusions. dannyfunt.substack.com/p/feeding-in...

"The Hall of Fame, one of the few anachronistic holdouts in the ongoing American war on basic decency, can become just another leveled dumping ground for louses."

Rob Manfred's office was created a century ago for the express purpose of ridding the sport of gambling. To what extent is this an attempt to remove thorny reminders that the league has done a 180 on betting?

Michigan sends cease-and-desist to BetUS, accusing the offshore sportsbook of taking bets without a license. What's crazy is how brazenly sites like BetUS continue to advertise to Americans. Here's an auto-generated ad just now on ESPN.com

Humpday motivation: You can throw a sure-fire interception to lose the Super Bowl, but instead have it result in an insanely lucky catch that allows your team to win and you to be remembered as the greatest QB in NFL history.

I really hope we get a Sam Anderson story out of this OKC run.

Maybe 1 in 100 sports bettors wins money long term. Yet among students who bet at American University, 66% claim to be profitable. Prior surveys yielded similar results. So, what's to blame for a majority of customers fundamentally misunderstanding their odds?

The new paperback edition of Dogland (out today!) by @tommytomlinson.bsky.social has an absolute 10/10 cover. The book is a terrific window into dog-show culture, but it's also a sensitive, and at times provocative, rumination on our relationship with pets. www.simonandschuster.com/books/Doglan...

Norm Clarke, the Vegas gossip columnist, has died at 82. Profiling him for @columjournreview.bsky.social, I found him devoted to ideals of journalism—surprising for a guy chasing scoops about Britney Spears & Michael Jackson, but maybe that's why he was so respected. www.cjr.org/the_profile/...

Such a delight getting to discuss with @jerusalem.bsky.social of @theatlantic.com whether legalizing sports betting is more than just "good on paper" -- which is basically the essence of my upcoming book. www.theatlantic.com/podcasts/arc...

🎧 Listen to the podcast! Sports management prof Ryan Rodenberg, journalist @dannyfunt.bsky.social & ESPN writer @davidpurdum.bsky.social on how gambling has impacted sports, the players, and the people who bet on them. link.chtbl.com/tTr1xLRp

What is TGL? Think indoor golf, in prime time, fronted by Tiger Woods and Rory McIlroy, and geared toward television audiences (via @dannyfunt.bsky.social):

"New" doesn't do TGL justice. The startup league, featuring 24 PGA stars, reinvented competitive golf for prime-time ESPN, using extraordinary tech to hold matches in an arena. For @washingtonpost.com, I took people's guesses on the big Q: Will anyone watch? www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2025/...