Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
I wanted to talk about this very interesting development we've
talked about ESPN and the ESPN app and why that
has effectively removed my theory. We don't have confirmation, but
anybody with business acumen could probably figure it out. ESPN
is holding up YouTube TV and saying to the general public,
(00:21):
if you want to watch sports on ESPN, you are
going to have to go through our app, because YouTube
TV they're the bad guys. They don't want to give
us the money that we need to come to an agreement.
They intentionally did this in the middle of the football season.
This is the most watched time of the year for ESPN,
especially when we get closer to like the college football
playoff and all that stuff. All that stuff's happening. But
(00:44):
like I've outlined before, ESPN wants you to pay thirty
dollars a month for their plan, the unlimited plan, to
get all their networks and all that stuff. They also
have these Disney bundles and like Disney Plus, for instance,
is doubling in price for an annual agreement. Because I mean,
(01:07):
who's to say that's an entire library. When it first
came out, it was like seven bucks or whatever it was.
I was like, man, this is crazy to have all
this stuff for seven dollars. It used to cost you
at least twice that much to get a DVD of
one of these movies. Now I can just watch them
whenever I want. Now Again, it depends on how much
you're using this stuff to make it worth it. I
don't have Disney Plus. I have ESPN Select. It's a
(01:28):
smaller package. I have that for the NHL. It's twelve
dollars a month. College basketball is going to be on
there a lot too, and it has all the thirty
for thirty documentaries. If we wanted to watch those, that's
stuff that I would consume for twelve dollars a month.
That's fine by me. I like YouTube TV, I really do,
and I wish ESPN was on it. But they are
holding YouTube TV up because they want people to directly
(01:48):
go to them and get them subscribers. If that wasn't enough,
while embattled in that there are more dramatic happenings with ESPN.
Number two, have you heard of ESPN Bet? That is
ESPN Bet as in a sports book. ESPN a network
(02:11):
had been telling you since twenty twenty three when Pen
Entertainment formerly the owners of Barstool Sports dropped Barstool, they
essentially gave it back to Dave Portnoy, sold it back
to him for one dollar and reprivatize essentially that company,
and they bought in with ESPN to help build them
a sports book. It's a flop, it's a failure, and
(02:33):
it's also a conflict of interest. You have these people
you're supposed to be able to trust talk about things
including I don't know, say, the NBA gambling scandal from
a couple of weeks ago, and they're doing all that
while an ESPN Bet app ad is running underneath on
the bottom of the screen, incredibly tone deaf stuff. Well,
apparently ESPN is trying to get out of that agreement,
(02:56):
and the app i'm sure has failed. People are still
using Draft Kings and Fan Duel much more than they're
using ESPN Bet. And now it already appears that ESPN
has signed a deal with DraftKings for DraftKings to be
the official sports book of ESPN as ESPN Bet goes
away forever. I don't know what Penn Entertainment's going to do.
They've been hemorrhaging money, I'm sure on the whole thing.
(03:19):
So there's that, and then a third thing just popped up.
I don't know if you've seen this, but Steven A.
Smith may pop up on your Twitter account on a
sponsored ad for solitaire. If you remember, in the NBA
Finals last year, Steven A. Smith was doing the NBA
count down stuff. And he's got a lot of haters,
and rightly so. He has completely jumped the shark as
(03:42):
a legitimate analyst of anything. He never talks about exits
and os. He's always about drama. He's always about storylines.
He's always talking about Lebron James, the Los Angeles Lakers,
the Dallas Cowboys, the New York Knicks. He's only talking
about basketball in the NFL, and he's only talking about
the big brands. It's exhausting, and somehow he's being paid
millions of dollars a year to do that. He was
(04:02):
at the NBA Finals between the Pacers and the Thunder,
a couple of small market teams, and somebody caught him
on the set playing Solitaire while the game's going on.
And now, all of a sudden, while all this is
going on with his employer, he has signed an endorsement
deal with this very sketchy Solitaire game and app, and
(04:26):
apparently all of his ESPN colleagues, or at least a
number of them, are also in on it. I don't
know if it's a I don't know if it's a
fall off, but it certainly feels like with the NBA
now being on Peacock and NBC and Amazon Prime and
those the coverage teams for that make it feel like
legitimate sport. It makes it really fun and exciting, and
(04:48):
everybody's realizing, oh man, ESPN's actually easily the worst sports
station for all this stuff. It's quite interesting. Well, apparently
Stephen A. Smith it has gotten into cahoots with a
solitaire company or a gaming company. Papaya Gaming is the
name of the company, and they have an app called
(05:08):
Solitaire Cash. Apparently you can actually win real money. You
can put money in and play like Solitaire, like modified Solitaire,
for actual money on this app. And Steven A. Smith
is now promoting this because he went viral for not
paying attention to an NBA game and instead playing Solitaire
(05:32):
on his phone, and now he's promoting this Solitaire Cash game.
And you have people like Mina Chimes, Kendrick Perkins, Laura Rutledge,
Dan Orlovsky, some other people that are working at ESPN
all hashtag ad like you have to. You know, when
you put an ad on social media and you're basically
(05:52):
seeing all these people chill out for a company that
seems pretty sketchy. And I say pretty sketchy is they're
dealing with a lawsuit right now, a lawsuit that alleges
it's defrauded its customers by placing them in real money
games against bots instead of actual human players, which is
what they advertise. You play real players, you go head
(06:14):
to head, or you play in a whole group or
a whole unit of individuals, and then if you finish
at the top, you win the money or whatever. I
have no idea how this is legal. This would not
have been something you could have done, I don't think
realistically or legally in the United States until very recently.
But this is you know, we talk about this with
(06:35):
the live sportsbooks and all that stuff from around the
United States and the legislation. How much money it makes
money talks man. Apparently the h a gambling journalist named
Alex Weldon, has dug into this, and he says, quote,
having initially denied the factual basis of the claim. Papaia
no longer disputes that at one time it pitted human
(06:56):
players against computer controlled adversaries. Some were used to fill
tournaments that had insufficient human players, but others were deployed
to guarantee a specific outcome win or loss for a
particular player. End quote. Could you imagine and I know
everybody says that the house always wins at a casino, but
you sat down at a roulette table and they just
could press a button like and know exactly what number
(07:22):
it would hit based on how you're playing. It's that's
not a game of skill. But they're saying this is
a game of skill, and what they're doing is essentially
deploying bots to defeat you and taking your money. They're
being suit. This is a lawsuit, it's ongoing. And here
we have multiple ESPN personalities going completely out of their
(07:46):
way to tell you to go play solitaire cash. It
feels scummy, it feels gross. The fall off of ESPN
is real on their coverage, but now you're seeing all
these people completely sell out and have absolutely no shame,
and you're seeing that in the comments. By the way,
if you go and see these If you click on
these individual posts that these people have and hashtag ad
(08:11):
getting in practice to play against steven A, you know,
be sure to get in if you want to beat steven.
I don't know how much money you'd have to be
making to willingly do this, but I feel like considering
the circumstances, considering the fact that the only reason this
is an endorsement Stephen A. Smith got is because he
wasn't paying attention to the NBA Finals which he was at,
(08:31):
and working the fact that ESPN is embroiled in this hole.
Should they or shouldn't they have their own gambling app
while they're talking about sports from an allegedly journalistic angle,
while they also have the media rights, the exclusive media
rights for something like the sec A Collegiate Football Conference.
The morals have tanked. And this is while Disney, their
(08:54):
parent company, is also embroiled in this battle over whether
or not they're gonna be on YouTube TV and whether
or not they can coerce sports fans to put thirty
dollars a month into the ESPN app directly so they
can watch all these football games. I don't even know
what to say about it. I cannot believe we are here.
(09:17):
These are the dark times, these are the dark days.
We need a hero to rise up. We need a
sports platform to rise up and be legitimate, to be healthy,
to be something we can trust. And yes, it is
fun to watch the NBA on NBC and on Amazon Prime,
and it is fun to watch like the Big Neon
Kickoff and see games on other networks and things like that.
(09:41):
But a twenty four to seven modern sports channel that
gives us analysis on the actual games. You just get
these journalists, these talking heads on Fox like Chris or
Nick Wright and Chris Brussard and Call and Coward. And
(10:01):
then you look at the ESPNS with the stephen A.
Smiths leading the way. These are not people who have
played the game. These are people who are just like me,
talking for a living. We don't get sports in a
fair and understated way anymore. I don't get it
I wanted to talk about this very interesting development we've
talked about ESPN and the ESPN app and why that
has effectively removed my theory. We don't have confirmation, but
anybody with business acumen could probably figure it out. ESPN
is holding up YouTube TV and saying to the general public,
(00:21):
if you want to watch sports on ESPN, you are
going to have to go through our app, because YouTube
TV they're the bad guys. They don't want to give
us the money that we need to come to an agreement.
They intentionally did this in the middle of the football season.
This is the most watched time of the year for ESPN,
especially when we get closer to like the college football
playoff and all that stuff. All that stuff's happening. But
(00:44):
like I've outlined before, ESPN wants you to pay thirty
dollars a month for their plan, the unlimited plan, to
get all their networks and all that stuff. They also
have these Disney bundles and like Disney Plus, for instance,
is doubling in price for an annual agreement. Because I mean,
(01:07):
who's to say that's an entire library. When it first
came out, it was like seven bucks or whatever it was.
I was like, man, this is crazy to have all
this stuff for seven dollars. It used to cost you
at least twice that much to get a DVD of
one of these movies. Now I can just watch them
whenever I want. Now Again, it depends on how much
you're using this stuff to make it worth it. I
don't have Disney Plus. I have ESPN Select. It's a
(01:28):
smaller package. I have that for the NHL. It's twelve
dollars a month. College basketball is going to be on
there a lot too, and it has all the thirty
for thirty documentaries. If we wanted to watch those, that's
stuff that I would consume for twelve dollars a month.
That's fine by me. I like YouTube TV, I really do,
and I wish ESPN was on it. But they are
holding YouTube TV up because they want people to directly
(01:48):
go to them and get them subscribers. If that wasn't enough,
while embattled in that there are more dramatic happenings with ESPN.
Number two, have you heard of ESPN Bet? That is
ESPN Bet as in a sports book. ESPN a network
(02:11):
had been telling you since twenty twenty three when Pen
Entertainment formerly the owners of Barstool Sports dropped Barstool, they
essentially gave it back to Dave Portnoy, sold it back
to him for one dollar and reprivatize essentially that company,
and they bought in with ESPN to help build them
a sports book. It's a flop, it's a failure, and
(02:33):
it's also a conflict of interest. You have these people
you're supposed to be able to trust talk about things
including I don't know, say, the NBA gambling scandal from
a couple of weeks ago, and they're doing all that
while an ESPN Bet app ad is running underneath on
the bottom of the screen, incredibly tone deaf stuff. Well,
apparently ESPN is trying to get out of that agreement,
(02:56):
and the app i'm sure has failed. People are still
using Draft Kings and Fan Duel much more than they're
using ESPN Bet. And now it already appears that ESPN
has signed a deal with DraftKings for DraftKings to be
the official sports book of ESPN as ESPN Bet goes
away forever. I don't know what Penn Entertainment's going to do.
They've been hemorrhaging money, I'm sure on the whole thing.
(03:19):
So there's that, and then a third thing just popped up.
I don't know if you've seen this, but Steven A.
Smith may pop up on your Twitter account on a
sponsored ad for solitaire. If you remember, in the NBA
Finals last year, Steven A. Smith was doing the NBA
count down stuff. And he's got a lot of haters,
and rightly so. He has completely jumped the shark as
(03:42):
a legitimate analyst of anything. He never talks about exits
and os. He's always about drama. He's always about storylines.
He's always talking about Lebron James, the Los Angeles Lakers,
the Dallas Cowboys, the New York Knicks. He's only talking
about basketball in the NFL, and he's only talking about
the big brands. It's exhausting, and somehow he's being paid
millions of dollars a year to do that. He was
(04:02):
at the NBA Finals between the Pacers and the Thunder,
a couple of small market teams, and somebody caught him
on the set playing Solitaire while the game's going on.
And now, all of a sudden, while all this is
going on with his employer, he has signed an endorsement
deal with this very sketchy Solitaire game and app, and
(04:26):
apparently all of his ESPN colleagues, or at least a
number of them, are also in on it. I don't
know if it's a I don't know if it's a
fall off, but it certainly feels like with the NBA
now being on Peacock and NBC and Amazon Prime and
those the coverage teams for that make it feel like
legitimate sport. It makes it really fun and exciting, and
(04:48):
everybody's realizing, oh man, ESPN's actually easily the worst sports
station for all this stuff. It's quite interesting. Well, apparently
Stephen A. Smith it has gotten into cahoots with a
solitaire company or a gaming company. Papaya Gaming is the
name of the company, and they have an app called
(05:08):
Solitaire Cash. Apparently you can actually win real money. You
can put money in and play like Solitaire, like modified Solitaire,
for actual money on this app. And Steven A. Smith
is now promoting this because he went viral for not
paying attention to an NBA game and instead playing Solitaire
(05:32):
on his phone, and now he's promoting this Solitaire Cash game.
And you have people like Mina Chimes, Kendrick Perkins, Laura Rutledge,
Dan Orlovsky, some other people that are working at ESPN
all hashtag ad like you have to. You know, when
you put an ad on social media and you're basically
(05:52):
seeing all these people chill out for a company that
seems pretty sketchy. And I say pretty sketchy is they're
dealing with a lawsuit right now, a lawsuit that alleges
it's defrauded its customers by placing them in real money
games against bots instead of actual human players, which is
what they advertise. You play real players, you go head
(06:14):
to head, or you play in a whole group or
a whole unit of individuals, and then if you finish
at the top, you win the money or whatever. I
have no idea how this is legal. This would not
have been something you could have done, I don't think
realistically or legally in the United States until very recently.
But this is you know, we talk about this with
(06:35):
the live sportsbooks and all that stuff from around the
United States and the legislation. How much money it makes
money talks man. Apparently the h a gambling journalist named
Alex Weldon, has dug into this, and he says, quote,
having initially denied the factual basis of the claim. Papaia
no longer disputes that at one time it pitted human
(06:56):
players against computer controlled adversaries. Some were used to fill
tournaments that had insufficient human players, but others were deployed
to guarantee a specific outcome win or loss for a
particular player. End quote. Could you imagine and I know
everybody says that the house always wins at a casino, but
you sat down at a roulette table and they just
could press a button like and know exactly what number
(07:22):
it would hit based on how you're playing. It's that's
not a game of skill. But they're saying this is
a game of skill, and what they're doing is essentially
deploying bots to defeat you and taking your money. They're
being suit. This is a lawsuit, it's ongoing. And here
we have multiple ESPN personalities going completely out of their
(07:46):
way to tell you to go play solitaire cash. It
feels scummy, it feels gross. The fall off of ESPN
is real on their coverage, but now you're seeing all
these people completely sell out and have absolutely no shame,
and you're seeing that in the comments. By the way,
if you go and see these If you click on
these individual posts that these people have and hashtag ad
(08:11):
getting in practice to play against steven A, you know,
be sure to get in if you want to beat steven.
I don't know how much money you'd have to be
making to willingly do this, but I feel like considering
the circumstances, considering the fact that the only reason this
is an endorsement Stephen A. Smith got is because he
wasn't paying attention to the NBA Finals which he was at,
(08:31):
and working the fact that ESPN is embroiled in this hole.
Should they or shouldn't they have their own gambling app
while they're talking about sports from an allegedly journalistic angle,
while they also have the media rights, the exclusive media
rights for something like the sec A Collegiate Football Conference.
The morals have tanked. And this is while Disney, their
(08:54):
parent company, is also embroiled in this battle over whether
or not they're gonna be on YouTube TV and whether
or not they can coerce sports fans to put thirty
dollars a month into the ESPN app directly so they
can watch all these football games. I don't even know
what to say about it. I cannot believe we are here.
(09:17):
These are the dark times, these are the dark days.
We need a hero to rise up. We need a
sports platform to rise up and be legitimate, to be healthy,
to be something we can trust. And yes, it is
fun to watch the NBA on NBC and on Amazon Prime,
and it is fun to watch like the Big Neon
Kickoff and see games on other networks and things like that.
(09:41):
But a twenty four to seven modern sports channel that
gives us analysis on the actual games. You just get
these journalists, these talking heads on Fox like Chris or
Nick Wright and Chris Brussard and Call and Coward. And
(10:01):
then you look at the ESPNS with the stephen A.
Smiths leading the way. These are not people who have
played the game. These are people who are just like me,
talking for a living. We don't get sports in a
fair and understated way anymore. I don't get it
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