'I'm not going to have blood on my hands': ESPN producer quit due to company's gambling stance
Nicole Noren resigned from ESPN, citing gambling addiction's toll on her family and the network's embrace of sports betting.Summary
Nicole Noren, a longtime ESPN producer known for her work on "Outside The Lines," resigned in 2024 after 24 years. In her first public interview about the decision, published in the Columbia Journalism Review, Noren told Danny Funt that ESPN's 2023 licensing of its name to a gambling app to create ESPN Bet was her breaking point. She explained that her grandfather, father, and a brother were devastated by sports gambling addiction; her brother died at 36 on a Las Vegas sidewalk after years of homelessness. She recounted growing up in sportsbooks and at racetracks because of her father's gambling. Noren, now a freelance producer, aims to create a sports gambling content initiative with journalists and creators, but says ESPN and other sports media companies must self-reflect on whether they should overwhelm fans with betting content and ads. ESPN Bet folded in December 2025 after underperforming, but ESPN partnered with DraftKings a month earlier, and DraftKings ads now flood its programming.
(Source：Yardbarker)