Nicole Noren, an award-winning, longtime ESPN producer who handled lucrative projects, said she left the network out of conscience when it partnered with a sports gambling app.
Noren explained her decision to leave the network in a lengthy interview with Columbia Journalism Review, saying it shocked her, especially after Disney CEO Bob Iger told investors the company would stay clear of the gambling business.
“I don’t see the Walt Disney Company, certainly in the near term, getting involved in the business of gambling, in effect, by facilitating gambling in any way,” Iger said.
The sports network first licensed the ESPN name to a gambling app in 2023 with ESPN Bet, which failed in the marketplace before the company partnered with the highly profitable DraftKings.
“These days, DraftKings ads blanket ESPN coverage, and this past March the companies enabled customers to link their ESPN and DraftKings accounts,” noted CJR. “It’s a partnership, a press release explained, ‘that goes beyond a traditional marketing arrangement, redefining how fans engage with sports.’”
Noren said ESPN Bet was her breaking point and that she headed for the exit door as soon as it was announced. She had worked at ESPN for 24 years.
“I’m not going to work for a gambling company and have blood on my hands,” she said.
Noren’s decision, in part, stemmed from her family’s history with gambling addiction.
“Addiction dictated every part of our life,” she said. “It’s very, very personal to me.”
She began noticing signs that ESPN would be partnering with gambling apps when none of the news stories she pitched about gambling companies and addiction were greenlit by leadership.
“For so many years, there was a really strict line in the sand when it came to sports betting. Then the tide slowly began turning internally,” she said. “It was very troubling for me to see the normalization of betting and ESPN’s complete acceptance of that, and finally, they just decided to go all in. It worried me. I knew what gambling addiction could do to families.”
“My grandfather, my father, and one of my brothers were pretty much destroyed by sports gambling addiction,” she continued. “I grew up in Ventura, California, and multiple times, we suddenly had to move because of extreme financial ups and downs. I mean, I grew up in a sportsbook. We didn’t go to museums and typical places kids go to. We were dragged to Las Vegas in the eighties and hanging out in the Hilton and Caesars sportsbooks, when kids weren’t supposed to be around there. I remember going to the horse track, going to the dog track.”
Noren’s own brother died homeless on a sidewalk in Las Vegas 13 years ago at the age of 36. When she shared her story and her concerns with ESPN leadership, she said that they showed a “seeming disregard for the dangers and not thinking about the ramifications of ESPN normalizing gambling for an audience that looks to ESPN as sort of their sports guide.”
Earlier this month, Fortune reported that in 2025, Americans spent more on sports gambling than on movies, music, and museums combined, with a whopping collective wager of $166 billion.