The Athletic Hockey Show - Why was Jeff Marek pulled off Sportsnet?

Episode Date: August 1, 2024

Mark Lazerus, Katie Strang and Dan Robson discuss NHL commentator Jeff Marek's departure from Rogers Sportsnet after the 2024 NHL Draft in Las Vegas, the NHL and the broadcast rights holder prioritizing their relationship with the gambling industry over one of the game’s best ambassadors and why this story is different than what happens when information is leaked to hockey insiders, and insiders from other sports.Host: Mark LazerusWith: Katie Strang and Dan RobsonExecutive Producer: Chris FlanneryProducer: Jeff Domet Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This is the Athletic Hockey Show. Hello and welcome to a special Thursday edition of the Athletic Hockey Show. I'm Mark Lazarus. Happy to be joined today by Katie Strang and Dan Robson of the Athletic. Katie, Dan, how you doing? Very good. Thanks for having us. So you guys have the big story of the day here on Jeff Marrick's departure from Sportsnet, which has been kind of the talk of the hockey world here this last week.

Take us through the process. When did you find out about it? How early did you start working on this? I mean, we started working on it, I would say, in the like last week or two, Dan, correct me if I'm wrong. I mean, we had heard some sort of generalized grumbling or, you know, things circulating. They're, you know, like there often are in the very insular parochial hockey circles. You know, I think rumors, you know, cycle through and persist pretty virulently. And so, you know, we had heard a variety of things. And but really, I think started to poke around and report on them with more tenacity, I guess I would say, once it was reported that he was not returning to Sportsnet, that his departure was decided. So the story basically comes down to he was, Jeff Merrick was getting the picks at the draft ahead of time because that's what TV rights holders get,

so they can prepare their kairons and their graphics packages and things like that. And he was sharing them with a friend essentially who was that way able to, you know, have a have a tweet ready to go. Is that basically what it comes down to? Yeah, it is. You know, the friend was both a scout and, you know, I think has media or media adjacent presence in previous drafts. He had correctly picked some of the selections in advance. So had, you know, I think highlighted that fact to his followers. He runs a scouting service, you know, does prospect rankings, is very entrenched in the prospect world. And a period to have been getting that information from Jeff. At least that's what the league believes in suspected in advance. And that's obviously what prompted scrutiny from both. the league and ultimately gaming regulators.

One of the things that stood out to me immediately is the NHL, when they heard about this, instead of going to Sportsnet, they went straight to the Nevada gaming control board. And now obviously gambling is becoming more and more entrenched in pro sports and in hockey specifically. Is that surprising to you that they went straight to the gaming board instead of trying to handle this internally? I'm happy to take this one. then I'm going to stop talking because I feel like Dan, I'm going to let Dan chime in. But, you know, I think I want to be careful about sort of being too specific about the sequencing of events because I think there were a lot of factors converging at one time. I talked to a couple different people who work for integrity and compliance firms, similar to the type of firms that professional sports leagues contract to be able to, you know, monitor social media activity, any sort of anomalous.

betting activity patterns, et cetera. I think it's very likely that is, you know, in an event such as that, in a place such as that, you would have people from the league, this, you know, whatever external monitoring firm they contract with, and likely the gaming regulator is already paying attention to that. So, you know, it's not, I guess, I don't think it's super black. and white about, you know, the chain of command and the sequencing, but that at some point, the NHL became aware of activity that they deemed concerning and, you know, felt it was incumbent upon them to alert gaming regulators because of either the potential for betting implications

or perhaps even just the optics of, you know, any sort of betting implications. Well, Dan, Dan, how does the gambling part of this work? Like, can you, like, I'm not a gambler. Can you bet on draft picks like 10 seconds before they're about to be drafted? I mean, the window we're talking about is so tight here. Yeah, well, it's interesting. The Nevada Gaming Board has information about that in terms of when bets are allowed to be placed in Nevada regarding the NHL draft is laid out. There's public documents about that.

And for the first round, any bets had to be laid 24 hours before the actual draft, which is a factor that I think needs to be considerable looking at this story. Obviously, there's lots of betting in real time, and I guess that's the part where there's a lot of question these days about what happens in terms of the cozy relationship between information and being able to then wager on that information. But in this particular case, within Nevada, that was a regulation that was well established. It's absolutely wild to me that you can gamble on things like this when so many people know, like, you know, the Chicago Blackhawks knew they were taking Arden Leveshanov like a month in advance. Why couldn't so much?

low-level employee in the Blackhawks, go put $10,000 if the Blackhawks are going to draft Arden Levschenoff. Well, actually, that, I mean, that is something that they're super sensitive to, which is why a lot of these, you know, external monitoring and compliance firms, they have sophisticated software that has, like, a very fulsome and robust list of team personnel that are prohibited from betting. So there are, you know, guard rails. I think as it relates to the betting, I mean, obviously we saw in the Shane Pinto case where there, I believe that was a case of proxy betting.

Like there are, you know, prohibited lists and like, you know, some sort of, you know, parameters. But it is, you know, it does, I think you're getting at one of the fundamental issues of this is like, you know, when you get into bed with the. the gaming industry and the betting and gambling industry, there's a lot of really murky territory. For the few people out there who don't know who Jeff Merrick is. I mean, he is one of the games great ambassadors. Everybody loves Jeff Merrick inside and outside of the media industry. He's hosted a radio show, daily radio show forever on Sportsnet. His podcast, 32 thoughts with Elliot Freeman, I believe is the most listened to.

Maybe up there was spit and chicklets, one and two in terms of hockey podcasts out there. this is a very, very big name, especially in Canada, but most American hockey fans know who Jeff Merrick is. Sorry, yeah, I think that's the thing about Jeff that, you know, is one of the main reasons why this is such a big story is because he was such a well-regarded and beloved and respected broadcaster. Yeah, and here you have the NHL and a rights holder essentially prioritizing their relationship with the gambling industry over one of their great ambassadors. Is this just a sign of the time to just how ingrained betting culture is now in the sport? That this is, you know, you don't want to call, you know, it's like the 1950s in Vegas all over again. You don't want to go up against the gambling industry because bad things are going to happen to you. I mean, it's a complicated, I guess, factor there because, you know, we don't know the internal pressures at play and when it came to the outcome of what's happened with Jeff.

But, I mean, I think it's interesting with Jeff and his show. So he's well known, and we spoke to people that could speak to this directly, that himself, and within his own show, was quite adverse to discussing gambling and to promote gambling on his own show. It's one of those complicated things where, you know, right now, I mean, if you're in Canada, anyone that's watching Sportsnet will see gambling lines on broadcast regularly and frequently. It's quite one of those things that is now become sort of ubiquitous with sports media, as gambling became legal in Canada,

sports gambling came legal in Canada in August of 2021. And so it's everywhere right now. And that fine line about sort of, you know, what's at stake here in this balance and how do we, you know, how do we navigate these waters? It's one of the great questions within sports media and the industry at large.

So why isn't this an issue in other sports? I mean, Adrian Wojnarowski for ESPN tips every NBA draft pick has been doing it for years. A lot of people do that. You see it. NFL, Frank Sarah Valley at the Daily Faceoff, he had the entire Seattle Crack and Expansion Draft list hours before, you know, this big production that the NHL had. What makes this different? Okay, I think we need to like draw one distinction and it will matter to some people and it will

not matter to others, right? It's, there's some nuance here. I can't speak with a ton of confidence to the woge situation because I don't remember who had that broadcast. But with Frank Sarajevalli's situation that you brought up, you know, Frank was not working to my memory for a rightsholder at that time. He, he, you know, had started his own website in Enterprise. So I think the issue for like the league and Sportsnet is that Jeff came by way of that information by virtue of the fact that Sportsnet is a. rights holder, right? So to to disseminate that information on his part would be to be like, you know, I don't know what their contracts state, but potentially like, you know, leaking sensitive proprietary info or what have you or something like that. You know, my,

I don't know the vagaries of how Frank got that. information, Frank did not work for a rights holder. So you're right that draft tipping is not uncommon. Draft leakage, draft tipping, not uncommon. But it's generally like one step removed, right? Those people that are tipping picks are generally doing it because they're getting that info from someone else, but they do not write. In other words, it's okay to get this information through reporting, it's not okay to be handed to it by the NHL with special circumstances like as a broadcaster. Yes, I think that's the distinction. Now, I think there are some people that would point out that that's silly given, you know, sort of how the sausage is made, you know, with other like

reporting elements that happen in the NHL. But I mean, distilled down and, you know, in the most sort of like reductive distillation of that. Yes, I think that's the fundamental difference. Dan, Go ahead. Well, and I think one distinction here, too, is the issue of being the source versus the newsbreaker, right? I mean, in this case, in the case of Sarajevoi and other insiders, they're getting information that's being leaked to them and they're presenting the information. Presumably, if the people leaking that information were caught, they also could face ramifications. In this case, Jeff Merrick is the, is allegedly to be the source of the information that was given. And in this case, also given directly from the NHL specifically.

And so there is like sort of a line there in terms of like it's obviously it's common practice for this information to get out. But, you know, we like as we mentioned sort of it's like how the sausage is made sort of like if we're too clear about it and it was too direct and you're the person that's caught giving it. That's a little bit different than the person who's actually presenting it. And I do think I do think good political reference. I do think that it's fair for people to kind of question, you know, like, how sort of absurd this could seem to some, you know, that, especially for us as journalists, you know, we rely on people leaking us sensitive information all the time, right? Like that's to some degree of like the lifeblood of our reporting. So, you know, I recognize that that distinction to some is going to be a bit laughable given that like, you know, a media company generally relies on people, you know, spurning those

rules to help out journalists. And so anyone sort of pointing out like the, you know, inherent hypocrisy, like I don't blame them. There's probably an argument to be made on the other side that, you know, a big behemoth corporation probably looks at, you know, insider information or corporate proprietary info differently. And certainly we think that's, you know, one of the factors here in what led to his departure. It's funny. I'm almost embarrassed to admit. I never thought about the fact that the TV the TV stations get the picks ahead of time so they can prepare their packages. Might that change in the wake of this?

Is this something like where they're going to have to just, those poor producers are going to have to do this on the fly from now on? I don't think so because, I mean, it's such common practice. And it is kind of like, it's the sort of the magic of TV that you don't really realize. Like how do they do this?

And of course, there's, you know, there's a behind the scenes production at play. I mean, this is also perhaps why this was taken so seriously because this, this trust is essential to the show. And, you know, it's, it makes it very difficult to do a broadcast if you don't have this information, uh, somewhat ahead of time so that you're in the

truck and you can actually prepare for this. So, um, I, I don't think it's going to change it all because it would, it'll end up being a very difficult, uh, live broadcast without this privilege. I also do think that in recent years, I'm not positive about it this year, but I think in previous years, I do believe teams also got some level of advance notice about who was going to be the next pick before it was publicly announced. And I think that's just sort of like, you know, keep the process moving expeditiously and being able to plan and rearrange your draft board and such. My understanding is that in previous years, that was certainly the case. And so if you were inclined to, you know, leak the first round draft board, you could. We're talking about how the sausages made.

This is the stuff that fascinates me is I found that when reporting media stories, it's really hard to get, ironically, it's really hard to get reporters to talk for stories that you're working on, right? And Jeff Merrick being, he's friends with everybody. I was in touch with Jeff over the past week, just kind of like saying, hey, hope everything's okay. I didn't push them on what happened. I'm sure like 150 other reporters did that too.

Does that make it more of a challenge to report a story like this when I've just found that reporters tend to climb up really quickly when something like this is happening. I mean, I think as reporters, you know, Katie, I look at this as our job to look at a story and try and uncover the truth as best we can. I think there's, you know, the reality that we're kind of looking inward somewhat at our own industry in this case is a factor within that. But, you know, we approach it the same way we approach a story about a team, about anything else within And that's sort of in the purview of what we report on. So it's difficult, but all stories, I think, that when you're trying to get people to talk about something that people don't really want to talk about are difficult to uncover.

And it's always a challenge to report. I mean, I'm sure you guys have crossed past with Jeff at some point or another. It's always difficult to kind of walk that fine line, right? Yeah, I think that's, you know, one of the benefits of like doing collaborative reporting is I think it's easier to, when you're have another person that you can bounce something off of and Dan and I have, you know, worked together a lot in stories and I feel super grateful for that is that you can like sort of bounce things off of each other, check each other, and reorient to yourself in terms of like the why of, you know, the reporting of the story and like your your commitment being to the truth

and to the facts. And that, you know, you can put sort of personal feelings aside in a pro, you know, approach it with humanity and empathy, but also, you know, sort of dispassionately. The two of you as investigative reporters, obviously, you're touching on a lot of sensitive issues and big topics out there. How much have you found gambling is infiltrating kind of every aspect of this? Like how much, like between Shane Pinto and this, I remember when we were doing our player poll, every time I would ask a player, do you understand the gambling rules? I'd get a different answer. Like, it's just, we're kind of still in the nascency of this gambling era. How much is, it is really kind of permeating all this aspects of your report.

Well, I mean, I just think in general that this is a conversation that we're having across sport right now. And I think to the point you just made, it's, I don't think a lot of people fully understand that. I mean, gambling is more accessible now than it's ever been. You can just look at your phone and start, you know, gambling whatever you want. And we've seen it. Obviously, the NBA is cracked down.

You mentioned the NHL. It's an issue that is, it's a grave concern for leagues because obviously they have, there's a lot of stake with relationships with gambling companies. and then also just in terms of the integrity of the sport. And so it's, and then within media, there's also things that we need to be thinking about as well. So it's something that I think, you know, I think of it, the real danger here is sort of the,

the unintentional sort of side of things, or the ignorant sort of ignorance of it. They're not really realizing what the boundaries are. And, you know, I think there's sort of a gray area between like gaming versus, you know, just having fun versus sort of gambling. And obviously there's some real conflicts there. So it's definitely a story that's, not going to be going away anytime soon.

This doesn't feel like a thing that's going to kind of haunt Merrick going forward, right? I mean, this is, I don't think anyone, this isn't like a stain on his reputation. He's going to, he's going to be hosting in a prominent position sometime soon, I would imagine, right? I mean, I can't, I can't speak to that directly, but I can say, you know, I spoke on the record to some of his former bosses. I mean, Scott Moore, who was the president of sports, they've hired him twice, who was quite confident in saying that he thinks, you know, Jeff, wherever he goes next will be, you know, well regarded and well respected.

And so in terms of people I've spoken to on and off the record, the sense is that no, this isn't going to be the end of the line for Jeff Merrick. I think it's safe to say that that's the opinion. Katie and Dan, I want to thank you for your time. Thank you for the story. It answered a lot of questions that I think literally the entire hockey world wanted answered. If you haven't ready yet, go on Theathletic.com and give it a look. Dan, I hope you guys get some kind of a summer coming forward.

It's August. You're supposed to escape the cottages. That's what I've always been told, at least. We'll do our best. Thanks, Mark. So Jeff Merrick lost his job because he was informing a friend who was about to be picked just so that guy could get a little bit ahead of time on a social media post. This is the gambling world we live in.

I know I'm not a big gambling guy. I'm tired of seeing it on TV constantly. Every single commercial is about gambling. Every single TV broadcast of sports is about gambling. I think we just have to accept this is the way of the world here. I don't think it's going to change. There's too much money involved. We're seeing every arena.

They're putting sports books in. It's just getting more and more prevalent. And I guess this is just the world we live in now. And I guess all radio hosts are going to have to worry about that from now on. Before we go, I wanted to say a quick word about the athletic hockey show, Stalwart and Master of the Segway, Ian Mendez, who's leaving us to become the vice president of comms for the Ottawa Senators, which is very cool.

Besides being an absolutely dogged reporter with unimpeachable integrity, he's also simply one of the nicest guys in the business, just the best teammate you could possibly ask for. And for what he did to raise the profile and the bar for this show, and personally for what he did for me and bringing me along as a new guy with, frankly, very little radio experience, which you might be able to tell. We all just want to say thanks and good luck, and we'll miss you, Ian. The Olympics are rolling along and the Athletic Podcast Network has you covered.

The Athletic Women's Basketball Show, NBA show, and full-time with Meg Linahan are bringing you reports from France after all the big team USA basketball games and soccer matches. Plus, check out Summer of Champions on the No Dunks Feed every night when the action in Paris wraps up. Check it all out wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks for listening to The Athletic Hockey Show. The Prospect Series with Max, Corey, Scott, and Chris is the next Athletic Hockey Show Monday on the Athletic Podcast Network. Haley Salvian and Sean Gentilly discussed that the NHL's mushy middle teams did enough this offseason to graduate to the top 16 on Tuesday's The Athletic Hockey Show. I'm