This is another story in our continued coverage of the upcoming Olympics. You can read the introduction to this series here; the first part of the preview is here, and the second part is here. The first “What to Watch” is here. The first part of the preview and the intro are provided without charge; the rest of the pieces were behind the Wide Left paywall, with proceeds going to Minnesota Direct Relief. This one is also provided free of charge. Nevertheless, consider subscribing to support Minnesota Direct Relief and Wide Left.

After 16 days of fierce competition, the 2026 Winter Olympics have come to an end. Team Rainbow earned at least 10 total medals, good for a tie for 13th place with South Korea and surpassing the likes of Great Britain, Australia, and Finland, among other countries.

Team Rainbow’s athletes wrapped up their activities with a couple of additional medals in the waning days of the games. Sandra Naeslund admirably defended her 2022 ski cross championship with a bronze this year, coming up just short against German victor Daniela Maier.

Bruce Mouat concluded his marathon Olympic run, having competed in almost every single day of the Games’ action, with a silver medal in Men’s Curling. His 7th end toss against Switzerland to earn a spot in the championship match is what will stick with me the most; I linked it last week, but I will share the post again because god damn, was it cool.

Gus Kenworthy pulled off a great attempt in the Men’s Freeski Halfpipe finals, earning sixth place and potentially concluding his multi-national, two-decade Olympic career with a sterling performance. Brittany Bowe just missed the podium in the Women’s 1500m, ending her final Olympic Games with her third fourth-place finish in a race. Bowe has had an incredible career, and ended this Olympic Games as an engaged woman, so she has nothing to be upset about. Nikola Zdrahalova finished 14th for Czechia.

Overall, Team Rainbow accrued one additional medal compared to their 2022 performance, a good showing given the size of their contingent. South Korea, for instance, had 71 total athletes on their squad; Team Rainbow only had 49. I’m hopeful that in the 2028 Summer Olympics, Team Rainbow will see even more potential victory opportunities. I also cannot wait to follow this cohort of winter athletes beyond the games as well.

I hope that reading this little series was fun for you and gave you a different vantage point through which to watch the Winter Olympics. I’m so happy that Arif gave me the opportunity and we worked together to raise money for Minnesota Direct Relief. I can’t wait to continue building on this going forward and potentially add a similar feature to Los Angeles 2028. For now, though, I’ll be keeping an eye on Paralympic athletes as they contend starting March 3, and if any of them are on Team Rainbow, I’ll be sure to shout them out on my Bluesky.

Until next time — keep that Olympic spirit going and always root for Team Rainbow!

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This is another story in our continued coverage of the upcoming Olympics. You can read the introduction to this series here; the first part of the preview is here, and the second part is here. The first “What to Watch” is here. The first part of the preview and the intro are provided without charge, but the rest of the pieces, including this one, will be behind the Wide Left paywall, with proceeds going to Minnesota Direct Relief.

As this iteration of the Winter Olympics winds down, the past few updates have been a bit quiet on the medal front for Team Rainbow. However, Thursday provided a deluge of positive results, boosting the current medal count to 8 (table below) while also guaranteeing that an additional gold or silver will be earned. This means that, at worst, Team Rainbow will equal its medal count from the 2022 Beijing Games.

Week in Review

Women’s hockey is the headliner, as it has been for so much of the games. After host nation Italy bowed out in the quarterfinals, Team Rainbow was guaranteed a sweep given its representation on all four finalists. However, the way Team USA won gold proved to be icing on the cake for both our squad and the champions’ captain, Hilary Knight.

Knight came into the Olympics two goals and five points away from becoming the most decorated athlete in American Olympic history. While she got off to a strong start in the preliminary games, tying her contemporaries in both categories, she had a multiple-game pointless streak going into the quarterfinals and semifinals. Prior to her final matchup against arch-nemesis Canada, she would need something miraculous to break those records.

And then, something magical happened. She got engaged to speed skater Brittany Bowe.

Bowe and Knight had their first date in Beijing four years ago, and this moment in Milan served as a culmination of their careers and maturation as athletes and people. I also like to think it gave Knight the spark of magic she needed in the third period of her gold medal match against Canada. She posted up in front of the net, Leila Edwards shot from the point, and she tipped the puck in to set records — and, of course, extend the game for the Americans.

Megan Keller iced the game with a gnarly backhand shortly after, earning Knight, Alex Carpenter, and Cayla Barnes gold medals. Barnes also notched a clutch goal in the semis, and Carpenter was solid the entirety of the games. The Canadian silver medalists had at least 7 confirmed athletes on Team Rainbow, and Laura Zimmerman was the Swiss representative who earned a bronze medal.

Along with this group, Bruce Mouat had the largest breakthrough of the week, earning a guaranteed gold or silver medal at Men’s Curling with an incredible shot to ice the game against Switzerland.

Mouat was undefeated in the Mixed Doubles round and came up just short — he will not be denied in this competition. We should know whether he earned gold or silver later today.

I also have so much love and appreciation for Amber Glenn, who bounced back from an emotionally draining short program to orchestrate a stunning free skate, which bumped her from 13th place to 5th overall.

Glenn was also an incredible cheerleader for teammate Alysa Liu, who won gold and embraced her as the results sunk in.

At eight medals, with one more guaranteed, the only potential additions all may be decided by the time this post is live. At press time, I do not know the results of the February 20 activities, since this is pre-written and I am currently on a plane; any activities will be reported in the final edition of this blog on 2/24! But if Gus Kenworthy, Nick Novak, Sandra Naeslund, or any of the bevy of speedskaters medaled, I’ll be sure to note it in the final wrap-up.

For now, I’m going to think about the magic of Knight’s goal and Glenn’s skate, and smile.

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This is another story in our continued coverage of the upcoming Olympics. You can read the introduction to this series here; the first part of the preview is here, and the second part is here. The first “What to Watch” is here. The first part of the preview and the intro are provided without charge, but the rest of the pieces, including this one, will be behind the Wide Left paywall, with proceeds going to Minnesota Direct Relief.

What You Missed

Team Rainbow has contended admirably in multiple competitions, although medals have been few and far between. Lara Wolf landed an incredible 93.25 in Women’s Free Skiing Big Air, the best scoring jump in the contest, only to finish just off the podium in 5th place. In the same competition, Mathilde Gremaud was favored but had to pull out due to an injury sustained in training.

Kim Meylemans made up ground after initial stumbles in Women’s Skeleton, finishing in 6th place; her girlfriend Nicole Silveira came in 11th. Kévin Aymoz shone in his short program at Men’s Singles figure skating, culminating in 11th place after his Free Skate. Bruce Mouat is 4-3 in the Men’s Curling Round Robin, tied in third with a good chance to make the medal round.

Hockey-wise, Canadian Marie-Philip Poulin became the world’s all-time women’s Olympics goal-scoring leader after notching a snipe during Canada’s semifinal win against Switzerland. She has fought through injury to lead the red and white to the gold medal game against their continental rivals. American Hilary Knight is tied at the top for most points AND most goals for an American woman at the Olympics. The two North American titans will square off in the gold medal match, while Switzerland and Sweden will contend for bronze. For Team Rainbow’s purposes, this guarantees a medal sweep in the sport, which should boost the overall count by the next update.

The big news of this past week, however, was Ilia Malinin’s surprising eighth place in Men’s Singles figure skating. In a competition where multiple potential medalists fell, Malinin ended his routine with tears in his eyes after stumbling to the ice twice. It was tough to watch.

Sometimes, I feel like we all get caught up in the medal count, myself included. It’s fun to see who comes in first, second, and third. The moment with Malinin, though, caused me to take a bit of a step back in terms of how I was consuming the Olympics. It made me better appreciate those athletes who were coming in 5th, 10th, 50th place. Every single person who is competing in Milan deserves our time, attention, and fandom.

Namely, it made me think about Martina Sablikova. Sablikova is an absolute warrior. She still holds the World Record in the Women’s 3000m, already has three gold medals, and is an international-caliber cyclist as well. When she took to the ice in the Women’s 5000m, it was clear something was not right from the start of the race. She ended up in 11th place out of 12 skaters, over 20 seconds behind Italian champion Francesca Lollobrigida.

And yet, in that moment, I was ecstatic for her just being there.

This Olympic Games, I’ve enjoyed watching not only our Team Rainbow athletes but also the unexpected stories that have unfolded. I’ve loudly cheered on the skeleton racer from Puerto Rico who may have finished in second-to-last place, but managed to have her best career run in the process.

I’ve been inspired by halfpipe snowboarders going for broke, falling on their faces, and hugging their friends afterwards with a smile. I’ve loved the musicality and self-expression exhibited by ice dancers and figure skaters, whether they had the highest amount of quad axels or triple loops. Yes, even the competitor who dressed up as a minion made me smile.

I’m promising from here on out to celebrate all athletes more, regardless of what place they finish. Getting here is enough. It is an achievement in itself, and the members of Team Rainbow tell us that queer people can aspire to the highest heights in sports, despite preconceived notions and stereotypes.

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This is another story in our continued coverage of the upcoming Olympics. You can read the introduction to this series here; the first part of the preview is here, and the second part is here. The first “What to Watch” is here. The first part of the preview and the intro are provided without charge, but the rest of the pieces, including this one, will be behind the Wide Left paywall, with proceeds going to Minnesota Direct Relief.

Team Rainbow had a decent week, with a couple of new pickups of the bronze variety.

Results This Week

At the top, let’s discuss Ice Dancing. Canadians Paul Poirier and Piper Gilles did an incredible job, especially in their Free Program, earning the bronze medal. Watch the dance if you have not, it’s worth it. They skated with passion and joy, and ended with tears in their eyes. It was the culmination of lengthy careers for them both, and vindication after years of hard work that they could stand atop the medal podium. We can always support a man who loves hot girl walks and his Monty Python-loving partner.

I now must revisit the elephant in the room I had noted when initially discussing the co-gold medalist for this discipline, Guillaume Cizeron.

This is what I wrote three weeks ago when discussing his eligibility for being on this team.

There’s an elephant in the room to address here. Guillaume Cizeron won gold in ice dancing in 2022, but he’s in a war of words with his ex-partner, Gabriella Papadakis, who has accused him of being “controlling, demanding, and critical.”

Cizeron is slated to skate with his new partner, Laurence Fournier Beaudry, in Milan. It will be interesting to see how the conversation surrounding Cizeron impacts his performance. If more serious allegations come to light, his inclusion on this team will be reviewed.

Since that piece came out, more reporting has come to light. I specifically recommend reading this piece by Diana Moskovitz at Defector, who reported on both Papadakis’ memoir and a rape case involving Fournier Beaudry’s ex-partner and current boyfriend, Nikolaj Sorenson. It should be noted that Sorenson was suspended for 6 years after the initial investigation before successfully appeaing by a technicality impertinent to the initial charge. Fournier Beaudry has defended Sorenson throughout the process. In interviews, Cizeron has attempted to shift focus away from discussion surrounding his partner’s ex.

This exercise is mainly meant to be fun, and having a competitor who appears complicit in criminality and rape apologia on our team casts an ickiness over this whole exercise. So, I will not be adding his gold medal toward the Team Rainbow medal count.

One additional medal is a late entrant to our team, Tineke den Delk from Belgium’s short track speedskating Mixed Relay. After the Americans washed out in the semis, the Belgians eked out a surprise bronze. Congratulations to Tineke, who brings Team Rainbow to five total medals (12th place) and 11 “medal points” (11th place) in the international count, staving off the ungilded Canadians, South Korea, and China.

Hockey-wise, Team Rainbow athletes are still representing well on likely medal contenders. American Alex Carpenter is tied for second in goals, and Hilary Knight’s assist to Caroline Harvey against Canada tied her with Jenny Potter for most career Olympics points. Canada, Finland, and Czechia fill the other top four slots. Canada’s captain, Marie Philip-Poulin, is hurt and missed their blowout loss to Team USA, but will hopefully return later in the tournament. One statistical quirk: members of Team Rainbow (Carpenter, Lina Ljungblom, Brianne Jenner, Philip-Poulin) make up four of the top five women in terms of winning faceoffs.

In speed skating, Brittany Bowe, Conor McDermott-Mostowy and Martina Sablikova competed hard in various races. While none of them medaled, all of them should be proud of their performances and will have additional medal opportunities later in the Olympics.

Breezy Johnson won her downhill segment in Women’s Combined, but teammate Mikaela Shiffrin stumbled in slalom, dashing her repeat medal dreams. She also did not finish in Super G, but got surprised by her boyfriend at the bottom of the hill, who proposed to her. We love Breezy and congratulate her on her engagement!

Finally, in figure skating, Kevin Aymoz may have something to say when it comes to the bronze medal in Men’s Singles. He came in seventh in short program skating to Lady Gaga, and his free skate is highly rated. Here’s hoping this wannabe Pokémon trainer can make his way to Victory Road in Milan.

Medal Count

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This is another story in our continued coverage of the upcoming Olympics. You can read the introduction to this series here; the first part of the preview is here, and the second part is here. The first “What to Watch” is here. The first part of the preview and the intro are provided without charge, but the rest of the pieces, including this one, will be behind the Wide Left paywall, with proceeds going to Minnesota Direct Relief.

One note from Ethan prior to getting into what has happened to date: given that these previews are pre-written, there are occasionally changes that happen after press time that I’m not able to tweak. A great example of this is not knowing who on Team USA would skate in the Women’s Team Program (Glenn vs. Liu), or France not making the medal round in that same event. I’ll try to be more explicit about noting these hypotheticals going forward, and I'll post a daily updated schedule on my Bluesky account if you want slightly more timely information.

Medal Updates

Team Rainbow is off to a fantastic start with TWO gold medals, both of which were earned by American athletes! It began with Breezy Johnson barnstorming in Women’s Downhill, earning victory with a time of 1:36:10. While the event was marred by Lindsay Vonn’s injury, Johnson’s triumph over the Tofane slope was a bit of a reclamation project of her own.

That very hill had caused Johnson to hurt her knee prior to the 2022 Olympic Games, sweetening this revenge story just a bit more. Unfortunately, fate had one more break in store for Johnson - her gold medal, literally, shattered into three pieces. Hopefully, someone fixes it up before she leaves Milan. Johnson’s work is not complete, as she will be competing for Team USA in the Team Downhill starting Tuesday.

The second gold medal was earned in figure skating by Amber Glenn, who endeared herself to the nerdy masses as a Magic: The Gathering superfan prior to earning third place in the Women’s Free Skate during the Figure Skating Team Event.

While Glenn did not execute her skate perfectly, she overcame mental hurdles and helped the Americans secure just enough for a gold medal. Glenn is also a top contender in the Women’s Single Skating competition, and I am hopeful she will bounce back and earn us one more medal.

Additional notables include Bruce Mouat, who will vie for bronze in Mixed Curling Doubles, ice dancing French favorite Guillaume Cizeron, and Hilary Knight, who has tied the American goal-scoring record in Women’s Hockey. Knight and Alex Carpenter have two goals apiece in the competition thus far, keying the USA’s attack.

Anna Kjellbin has the highest +/- of any woman (+6), while Emerance Maschmeyer has been critical in net for Canada. Illness in Milan has impacted some scheduled games, but as the round robin wraps up, it will be interesting to see which teams can face the added pressure of impending sudden-death competition.

One disappointment came in the form of Brittany Bowe being edged out of the medals in the Women’s 1000m speed skating. She held second place until Jutta Leerdam and Miho Takagi blitzed through the final heat, storming their way onto the podium. Czechia’s Nikola Zdrahalova finished in 10th place.

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The live video h…

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This is another story in our continued coverage of the upcoming Olympics. You can read the introduction to this series here; the first part of the preview is here, and the second part is here. The first part of the preview and the intro are provided without charge, but the rest of the pieces, including this one, will be behind the Wide Left paywall, with proceeds going to Minnesota Direct Relief.

As a note, some of these events have already transpired—that’s not Ethan’s fault, it is mine. We’ll be working to make sure these come out in a more timely manner

The Opening Ceremonies are finally upon us, and the 25th Winter Olympics are set to begin this weekend! On a twice-weekly basis, we’ll be recapping the weekend’s action while also telling you what to watch in order to keep up to date on the latest with our Team Rainbow cohort. As always, check out my Bluesky account if you want to talk about the Olympics more informally.

If you want to watch any Olympic action, I will try to note which channel each event will be on when I can, but you cannot go wrong with the NBCUniversal family of networks and Peacock. Now is the time to get a Peacock free trial if you’ve been reticent in the past. Gold Zone (the Olympics’ version of Red Zone) is a game-changer, and you can cancel after the games are over.

Additionally, throughout the Olympics, I will be keeping my own updated medal count and list of Team Rainbow athletes, which you can find here. My medal count will be updated daily, generally during the morning Pacific Standard Time. Feel free to take a look at this list to refresh yourself on Team Rainbow’s athletes and see how it’s performing against its peers. My hope for every Olympics is that Team Rainbow can out-medal any counterparts that have objectively anti-LGBT public policy; we’ll see if 2026 adds to this tradition.

I’d also like to thank Sports Illustrated writer and NFL editor Mitch Goldich for including me in his Olympics Starter Pack! I recommend following it to engage with other Olympics reporters and content creators who will be analyzing the games.

February 6

3:55 AM EST/12:55 AM PST - Paul Poirier CAN, Lewis Gibson GBR - Ice Dancing Short Program Team Event

4:05 AM EST/1:05 AM PST and 8:35 AM EST/5:35 AM PST - Bruce Mouat GBR - Mixed Doubles Curling vs. Sweden and South Korea

5:35 AM EST/2:35 AM PST - Fillipo Ambrosini ITA, Filip Taschler CZE - Pairs Short Program Team Event

6:10 AM EST/3:10 AM PST - France vs. Japan - Women’s Hockey Pool Play

8:40 AM EST/5:40 AM PST - Czechia vs. Switzerland - Women’s Hockey Pool Play

2:00 PM EST/11:00 AM PST - Opening Ceremony

Prior to the Opening Ceremony, there will be some preliminary figure skating for the Team Event, wherein multiple Team Rainbow competitors will take part. Amber Glenn has the best chance to medal here. I’ve also added Filip Taschler, a pairs skater for Czechia, to Team Rainbow’s roster. Hockey matches will also serve as an amuse-bouche prior to the main event that will officially start the Olympics.

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This is another story in our continued coverage of the upcoming Olympics. You can read the introduction to this series here and the first part of the preview here. The first part of the preview and the intro are provided without charge, but the rest of the pieces, including this one, will be behind the Wide Left paywall, with proceeds going to Minnesota Direct Relief.

In this two-part series, we’ll take a look at Team Rainbow contenders across the breadth of different Olympic events. Today, we will conclude with skiing, snowboarding, and speedskating.

Some of the most accomplished members of Team Rainbow are potential medal contenders in these more individualistic pursuits. There is nothing quite like rooting for an athlete who nails massive air in the halfpipe, wins a sprint in skicross, or zooms across the ice in speed skating, edging out their competitors. This cohort of athletes has some individual medal favorites we can cheer on enthusiastically.

Ski Cross

Ski cross, for those unaware, is a head-to-head sprint with 3 or 4 athletes on the course at once. It leads to huge air, tight races, and exciting finishes. Thankfully for us, Team Rainbow’s own Sandra Näslund is the best women’s ski cross athlete in the world.

Näslund has been a force ever since her first World Championship win in 2017, earning three other World Championship golds since then. In her debut Olympics in Beijing, the Swede took gold, winning all of her heats with aplomb. Näslund has worked her way back from injury over the past year and is ready to defend her title from the likes of Swiss nemesis Fanny Smith.

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This is another story in our continued coverage of the upcoming Olympics. You can read the introduction to this series here. This part of the preview and the intro are provided without charge, but the rest of the pieces will be behind the Wide Left paywall, with proceeds going to Minnesota Direct Relief.

In this two-part series, we’ll take a look at Team Rainbow contenders across the breadth of different Olympic events. We’ll start with skating and sledding sports.

Hockey

Hockey is the hottest sport in the world, thanks to a little Canadian television show that has taken the small screen by storm, is hockey. While Shane and Ilya will not be suiting up for their respective countries in real life, there is one interpersonal conflict that will add some panache and flair on and off the ice.

Anna Kjelbin is a defender on Team Sweden, and Ronja Savolainen plays the same position for Team Finland. Both are stellar backstops for their PWHL (Pro Women’s Hockey League) teams and carry similar statuses for their home countries. They are an engaged couple that will play major roles on two medal contenders, their paths potentially crossing later in the Olympics. For now, they will toil in separate groups, but should they compete, it will be an incredible match to watch.

Team Canada also has a married couple. Thankfully, they will only compete in practice rather than in live action. Captain Marie-Philipe Poulin and teammate Laura Stacey have been married since 2024, and they lead the gold medal favorites.

Poulin is the best goalscorer in women’s hockey, having led the PWHL in 2025 and is tied for third thus far in 2026. Stacey is no slouch when it comes to veteran experience and leadership; she’s the president of the PWHL’s Players Association. Emerance Maschemeyer, Brianne Jenner, Micah Zandee-Hart, and Erin Ambrose also represent Team Rainbow, and all will be key if Team Canada is to defend its gold medal.

For those who wish to support their American rivals, there are multiple queer representatives donning the stars and stripes as well. Hilary Knight is captaining once again, while Cayla Barnes and Alex Carpenter aim to play big roles as well.

Knight, at 36, is five points (or two goals and six assists) away from being the highest scorer in Team USA history, cementing her status as the GOAT American women’s hockey player of all time. This is undoubtedly her last chance at glory, but she led the PWHL in goals in 2025, so perhaps the spark still ebbs. Carpenter and Barnes are each making their third Olympic appearances, seeking to earn gold over the Canadians and other rivals.

Twenty-two of Team Rainbow’s athletes are taking part in the women’s hockey competition across eight of the 10 competing countries. The two teams with the highest concentration of queer athletes are the aforementioned Canada and Finland. Along with Savolainen, Finland has superstar forward Michelle Karvinen, Sanni Ahola, Anni Keisala, Ida Kuoppala, and Viivi Vainikka set to suit up for Suomi. Czechia has two athletes in 2025 PWHL number one draft pick Kristýna Kaltounková and Aneta Lédlová. France, similarly, will roll out a dynamic duo of Chloé Aurard-Bushee and Lore Baudrit. Nina Jobst-Smith and Laura Zimmerman round out the competitors for Germany and Switzerland, respectively.

There is a good chance that Team Rainbow sweeps the medals in women’s hockey, as they did in 2022 (Canada, USA, Finland). That would be crucial for Team Rainbow to keep pace with their medal count from the previous Olympic Games.

Figure Skating

While Team Rainbow has traditionally dominated hockey, there is a growth opportunity for it in figure skating. Kévin Aymoz will compete in the men’s competition, Amber Glenn in the women’s, and Filippo Ambrosini in pairs.

Glenn, specifically, is poised to break out after serving as an Olympic alternate in 2022. She has won three consecutive national titles, including setting a short program record this year in her Olympic qualifying attempt. Glenn has been fairly open about the arduous mental strain she is under as a professional athlete, and she is the oldest American women’s singles skater to qualify for Team USA since 1928, which seems ridiculous, given that she is 26 years old.

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However, she is hitting her stride and will compete with multiple top-tier Japanese skaters and American queer ally Alysa Liu for gold. Glenn hopes her short program, set to Madonna’s “Like a Prayer,” will leave a strong impact on the judges. Winning a single figure skating medal would be an improvement over 2022, and Glenn looks to have the best shot.

Aymoz, at 28, may be nearing the end of his figure skating career, but he always puts on a show with his performances. One of his routines this year is to yet another Lady Gaga song, “Judas,” although it remains to be seen if this is the routine he will skate to in Milan.

Aymoz finished a disappointing 10th in Beijing, but he is coming off a strong 2025 season, including his seventh French national title. He probably will not medal, but he will bring the entertainment no matter what. Ambrosini will compete with partner Rebecca Ghilardi in pairs — they aim to improve on their 14th-place finish from 2022.

Ice Dancing

There’s an elephant in the room to address here. Guillaume Cizeron won gold in ice dancing in 2022, but he’s in a war of words with his ex-partner, Gabriella Papadakis, who has accused him of being “controlling, demanding and critical.”

Cizeron is slated to skate with his new partner, Laurence Fournier Beaudry, in Milan. It will be interesting to see how the conversation surrounding Cizeron impacts his performance. If more serious allegations come to light, his inclusion on this team will be reviewed.

Along with Cizeron, Paul Poirier and Lewis Gibson will dance for Canada and Great Britain, respectively. Neither man medaled in 2022, but Poirier has an outside shot of competing for bronze in both Men’s and Mixed Ice Dancing events.

He and his partner, Piper Gilles, have a choreographed routine to RuPaul’s Supermodel (You Better Work) that will assuredly turn heads. Gibson has multiple Spice Girls songs prepared for his Mixed short program. It will be interesting to see what these athletes pull off during this event.

Skeleton

We have another Heated Rivalry to report, and it’s in the intense world of women’s skeleton. Brazilian Nicole Silviera and Belgian Kim Meylemans are in a relationship and are serving as ambassadors of Milan’s Pride House this year.

Meylemans is a medal candidate; she ranked first in the World Cup ranking for 2025-2026. Silveira sits respectably in ninth and perhaps can sneak onto the podium. A Meylemans medal here would serve as a pickup for Team Rainbow, which did not earn any in this discipline in 2022.

Curling

The queer king of curling is Briton Bruce Mouat, who will serve as the team’s skipper in Men’s and Mixed Curling competitions. Mouat earned a silver medal in 2022 and will aim to work for gold in 2026. Time will tell if he can lead his British (and rainbow) comrades to victory.

Biathlon

And then there’s Biathlon. My personal favorite Winter Olympic sport: a perfect blend of cross-country skiing and marksmanship. I highly recommend watching if you happen to catch it live.

Canada provided an out Olympian in 2022 (Megan Bakes), and a different contender will don the maple leaf red in Milan. Shilo Rousseau has a career best finish of 21st place and will most likely race in relays and serve as an alternate in competition.

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The Olympics are special to me. One of my first memories was Kerri Strug’s vault in 1996, sticking her landing despite a sprained ankle. I remember screaming in my basement, watching Jason Lezak chase down Alain Bernard in the 4x100 medley relay. I cried when Nathan Chen broke through in 2022 and won figure skating gold. I even got the opportunity to attend the 2024 Paris Olympics in person. The Olympics inspire me to work harder, push myself to my limits, and have informed my professional and personal goals throughout my career and life.

It’s hard to talk about the Olympics right now without recognizing the role they play in deflecting and redirecting the very real violence being imposed by my home country’s government on its own citizenry. There are meaningful discussions to be had about boycotting the 2028 Olympics, especially given Los Angeles’ status as host city. For 2026, however, I’m happy to posit another option for those who still have an interest in the Olympics but would rather not root just for the red, white, and blue.

Let’s cheer for rainbows instead.

One reason the Olympics stand out to me as unique in the world of sports is because of the wide breadth of LGBTQ+ athletes who star for their countries. There are zero out athletes in any of the four main men’s sports; at least 196 confirmed LGBTQ+ athletes competed in the 2024 Summer Olympics.

Even in times where such overt nationalism can feel odd, this has served as a way for me to identify competitors I can relate to and cheer them on. Prior to the 2021 Tokyo Games, I had an idea: why not keep track of them all and see how many medals they can attain? What if queer athletes at the Olympics formed their own country?

I give you: Team Rainbow - which I’m proud to present exclusively on Wide Left for the Milan-Cortina 2026 Winter Olympic Games!

Team Rainbow: An Introduction and Statistics

I have been tracking Team Rainbow for the past three Olympic games, and in each one, LGBTQ+ athletes have crushed the medal count, earning as many golds, silvers, and bronzes as most of the mainstay countries — even though definitively it seems that Team Rainbow is a summery country rather than a winterish one.

Before diving more in-depth, there are three main nuances that I use when tracking these athletes and medal counts:

• Only openly out athletes are counted within the medal count — I do not use this exercise to speculate on the sexuality of any athletes - only verifiable members of the community are included.

• The list is evolving — I try to verify every athlete on it using news sources and their personal social media pages to ensure I’m not missing anyone. If I miss one, or one comes out during the games (which has happened before!), they can be added later, and that is totally fine.

• For team sports, teams with even a single LGBTQ+ member count as medals for the whole group — This also means that for a sport like hockey, Team Rainbow can technically sweep the medals, earning a gold, silver, AND bronze in the same sport.

Beijing 2022 — The Starting Point

In 2022, Team Rainbow earned 9 medals at the Winter Olympics, which would have put it at 14th internationally, tied with South Korea.

Additionally, 14 of the 35 confirmed athletes won medals thanks to a sweep in Women’s Hockey. Canada led the way with 7 athletes on their gold medal squad, while Team USA and Finland also had representation in silver and bronze efforts.

The additional medalists earned their titles through alpine skiing, curling, and long-track speed skating. Swede Sandra Näslund won gold in women’s ski cross, while Dutch speed skater Ireen Wust and American Brittany Bowe earned gold and bronze in their Women’s 1000m and Team Pursuit races. Finally, Brit Bruce Mouat is THE top male curler in the entire United Kingdom, and his patient captaincy piloted the Britons to a silver medal in the Men’s competition.

Wüst, a five-time gold medalist, is now retired, but these other athletes are coming back and ready to defend or exceed their previous performances. Plus, more queer athletes are on the horizon, ready to prove themselves and showcase their skills, allowing us all to appreciate them and embrace how great they are as role models.

What’s Next

Over the coming days, we will introduce you to a number of LGBTQ+ athletes most likely to earn medals in Milan-Cortina and let you know when you can watch them compete. Peacock changed the game with their coverage of Paris 2024 via Gold Zone and coverage of every single event, and they’re bringing it back in February. There is a great mix of returning competitors and new talent, many of whom will see their stars rise over the course of those fated two weeks in February.

I’ll be providing twice-weekly updates of how Team Rainbow is performing throughout the games, noting major medal opportunities and where viewers can watch them. Additionally, I’ll be cheering and liveposting every event from my Bluesky account — feel free to join in and follow along.

Finally, any compensation for these pieces will be donated directly to Minnesota Direct Relief, supporting the Minneapolis community as they are brutalized by ICE. We had originally planned to donate any proceeds to The Trevor Project, a charity close to my heart that supports queer children, but given current events and Wide Left’s proximity to Minneapolis, this felt like an obvious pivot.

It goes without saying that I personally stand with the community as they are attacked by their own government, and Minneapolis-St. Paul is one of my favorite metro areas in the world. I visited this summer (when this idea was conceived), and I intend to return soon.

I’m incredibly grateful to Arif for the opportunity and for uplifting this incredible cause, while also providing broader visibility to queer excellence in athletics and, hopefully, giving viewers an alternative way to follow the Winter Olympics.

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It has been two weeks since I’ve written an article for Wide Left. Some of that is because of the holidays, but a lot of it is because the purview of Wide Left’s coverage range is broad and events have piled up over the past few weeks.

I had planned to write about the illegal strike on Venezuela, a war-not-war, earlier this week. I had to drop that to pick up a piece Wide Left will be publishing about our All-Pro teams and postseason awards. As I began writing that piece, I saw the news that ICE agents killed a woman in the Powderhorn neighborhood, a walk not too far from my current home and just blocks away from where I nearly purchased a house six years ago.

Her name is Renee Nicole Good. Within minutes of the report that ICE officer Jonathan Ross murdered Good, the Department of Homeland Security released statements arguing, absurdly, that Ross’ decision to shoot was motivated by a legitimate fear for his life and that Good attempted to run him over in an act of “domestic terrorism.” They chose to defend his actions before they could conduct any reasonable investigation.

The initial statements made by Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem are so far off from reality that they demonstrate the knee-jerk willingness to lie to defend their fascistic actions more than truly investigate an incident of brutality from law enforcement.

It was an act of domestic terrorism. What happened was, our ICE officers were out in enforcement action, they got stuck in the snow because of the adverse weather that is in Minneapolis, they were attempting to push out their vehicle, and a woman attacked them and those surrounding them and attempted to run them over and ram them with her vehicle. An officer of ours acted quickly, and defensively shot to protect himself and the people around him, and my understanding is that she was hit and is deceased.

Dozens of videos of the incident exist on social media and multiple video forensics teams, including those at the New York Times, Washington Post and Bellingcat, have demonstrated the absurdity of those claims. Ross, violating DHS policy by approaching the vehicle from the front and obstructing it, easily sidestepped a vehicle turning away from him and shot Good in the face multiple times.

The Department of Justice’s Use of Force policies have gone somewhat viral in response to the Good’s murder, but it should be noted that ICE officers fall under the purview of the Department of Homeland Security, whose use of force policies are slightly different.

Nevertheless, the text of the DHS guidance policies and the jurisprudence surrounding deadly force would suggest that the decision to shoot clearly violated policy, particularly because shooting is not considered justified if one can “[move] out of the path of the vehicle.”

This is, of course, only relevant in a world where law could be objective and we had a reasonable belief that it would be enforced.

Witnesses described contradictory orders given to Good and also described ICE officers as obstructing the arrival of medical aid.

Later that day, a close friend of mine had plans to attend an ICE observer training. Another close friend of mine attended one on Monday. Since writing my post on attending No Kings the day a shooter killed state representative Melissa Hortman, along with her husband, while critically injuring state senator John Hoffman, his wife and his daughter, I have attended a few anti-ICE protests and at least one anti-ICE action besides.

Between text messages telling me to be safe and other text messages asking me to attend another action, it feels like I’ve never left 2020 behind.

In a sense, all of my political histories — not just 2020 — have clashed together in the past week.

Shadows of Fallujah

In March of 2003, the United States proceeded with “Operation Iraqi Freedom,” ostensibly meant to inhibit then-President Saddam Hussein from deploying weapons of mass destruction.

For a 15-year-old Arif, it was a turning point, politically. It was the first time I had ever felt hopeless — months of protest, impassioned argument, and ardent belief had produced nothing.

It is difficult to overstate how inevitable it felt; the immaterial lack of consequence for a pathetic showing by Colin Powell to make the United States’ case for invasion in front of the United Nations, the continued public case-making for an invasion in the media by pundits and administration officials and the clear bad-faith connections that politicians — mostly Republicans but a good number of Democrats — would imply between the terrorist attacks on September 11 and Hussein.

To a teenager, the concept of clichéd imagery had not yet taken root, so it was impossible not to envision the oncoming war like a roiling black stormcloud, visible on the horizon and impossible to stop or run away from.

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SumerBrain, an AI product, has been taking the sports data community by storm. Its launch was met with some amount of fanfare, including dozens of positive quote tweets of the launch video and several glowing podcasts.

If it can deliver what it promises, it indeed would be a revolution in public-facing football analytics. And, in theory, it’s something I’ve been asking for.

After I wrote my piece on “artificial intelligence” in sportswriting, I had been asked if there were examples I could think of where AI would be useful for a sportswriter.

For some who had asked this question, they were determining if I had a blanket bias against this generation of “AI” tools or if I was thinking through my objections with more nuance. Others were genuinely curious about what the pros and cons may be and thought I focused too much on the negatives. More asked because they simply loved the thought exercise.

Whatever the reason, the answer I typically gave was that a beat writer on gameday could be composing a story where a locally-hosted, lightweight AI tool could monitor what was being written and provide suggestions for data to look up, new angles to consider or even provide grammatical or spelling feedback — much like Grammarly, a tool that launched before the existence of LLMs but now has incorporated them into its framework.

It could then link to a connected database to perform those statistical lookups and give the writer the ability to click through and see the result, and then incorporate that into the story if they chose to.

This leverages the strengths of LLMs while keeping the writer in control of their content and avoiding many of the problems associated with the creep of these AI tools being used to replace writers.

It seems as if the bot released by SumerSports, SumerBrain, does something very similar to that, allowing writers to look up statistics within SumerSports’ database to return results contextual to the story they’re writing.

For those unfamiliar, SumerSports is a football consulting and analytics firm that primarily contracts with teams to provide data-oriented solutions to questions like “how much should we value this position,” and “what are optimal roster construction strategies,” alongside more specific questions for those teams.

They also provide teams with proprietary data and an interface to use that data, much like Pro Football Focus does with their Ultimate product. Recently, they’ve branched out into consumer-facing work and now have a multimedia content operation as well as a navigable, limited database and draft guide.

SumerSports is staffed with highly qualified and intelligent people passionate about football. Shawn Syed’s weekly film breakdowns are outstanding and thoughtful content that teaches viewers about the game, while Sam Bruchhaus and Lindsay Rhodes’ podcast skillfully introduces listeners to applicable and relevant sports analytics concepts.

The company launched SumerBrain with the stated goal of equalizing access to advanced football statistics. Matt Stopsky, who works both as a producer for SumerSports and as a senior public relations officer, told Wide Left this directly, saying, “This is so we can democratize football data. So, you don’t have to be [someone] who gets access to all this crazy data for an arm and a leg in price if you want to know how often your team is running Cover-1. You don’t have to spend $100,000 to find that out.”

Within moments of the announcement of SumerBrain, paired with a video from Syed, my inbox filled with groupchats and DMs from other sportswriters excited to use the tool. “Yo! This is sick,” “Arif, have you seen this? It looks so cool,” “I’m using it right now [to write a story],” and “This is how AI is meant to be used.”

The NFL is considering deploying something similar for sidelines, and Wide Left has been able to confirm that multiple NFL teams are building LLM tools to query their own internal databases. Josh Kendall at the Athletic wrote a story about how this might be implemented.

As for SumerBrain, Stopsky outlined some broad use cases but wanted to remain open-minded about how the product could be utilized. Personally, he used it to improve his high school coaching and produce on-the-fly research for podcast production. “There’s how I’m using it and then I see how Lindsay [Rhodes] uses it, to how people online use it ... it’s just not even in ways I would have thought.”

“When you get a new technology, the first thing you think about is how you’re going to use it for your problems,” he said. “So, when I first got that, I was thinking, well, I’m a producer. And now I’m seeing how writers are using it, how hosts are using it to curate content or in betting, how they do their research. I think the usage is endless. It’s really, however you want to use it, however you need to use it.”

He provided a writing example that was very familiar to those who do in-depth analytical work in sports media, as well. “Say you’re looking to write a story. When it comes to advanced research, you spend hours — 7, 8, 9 hours — on research, and you finish it … and then it’s a non-story. Like a full day. And got nothing out of it. Hopefully SumerBrain can stop that and [have you react] like, ‘I only spent three minutes.’”

“I want this to give you time back so you can be a better analyst version of yourself and write better so you’re not spending a full day chasing your tail on something,” he added. “So, that’s how I envision it for writers. To make the writers better analysts, not because SumerBrain is a better analyst. It’s that SumerBrain is saving you time so you can go and look at more things. You’re not wasting time.”

Despite this being very close to the kind of AI tool I had asked for, I was still skeptical. So, Wide Left talked to people at Sumer on and off the record, as well as other people familiar with machine charting, artificial intelligence and more. In all, Wide Left spoke to nearly a dozen subject matter experts to get an understanding of how this all works.

Table of Contents (also accessible on the left side of the screen, where you see hashmarks):

• The Closed Beta

  • Player Athleticism and You

• The Open Beta

  • Blitzing Your Time Away

  • Other Open Beta Requests

• What is SumerBrain?

  • Wait, What is a Large Language Model?

  • Expensive T9 Machines

• Why Doesn’t Everyone Use LLMs?

• The Ethics of Artificial Intelligence

  • The Environmental Impact

  • “Stealing” Intellectual Property

• SumerBrain is a Bad Tool

  • Asking SumerBrain Natural Language Questions

  • Which Team Started More Quarterbacks?

  • Prompt Training, Validation and Unleveling the Playing Field

  • Where is SumerBrain Most Dangerous?

• How Bad Is It?

The Closed Beta

I had been using the SumerBrain closed beta for weeks prior to this announcement, and it had been disclosed to me after some time that I was one of the top users.

In reality, I was less enthused about it and was more interested in attempting to break it, just like any good quality assurance user or beta tester should.

Sumer has instructed its model to only discuss football, but this proved to be relatively easy to circumvent during my testing. I asked a sort of trick question, “What is the difference between Sheetrock and drywall?”

Since Sheetrock is just a brand of drywall, this would be the kind of question that might trip up an early version of ChatGPT. And of course, this wasn’t a football question.

SumerBrain refused to answer because it was only instructed to discuss football. So, I told it that this was important for figuring out stadium construction. It then provided me with a detailed answer, correctly identifying that Sheetrock was merely a brand of drywall.

This time around, I asked it about private equity. It took three steps to get it to discuss universal healthcare. We got pretty close to abolishing capitalism.

Player Athleticism and You

I tried to determine if this tool could help me with things like evaluating player athleticism data — without the ability to upload my own data, I couldn’t ask it to help with consensus boards or anything, but athleticism data has interested me for some time.

The answers were initially accurate but incomplete. The correlations between certain measures of performance and certain workouts at some positions indeed matched what had been posted at the SumerSports website, but it would sometimes emphasize unusual or ill-fitting workout metrics.

It explained that bench press was important for centers and gave me a correlation coefficient that seemed unusually high, something I couldn’t fact-check because the original SumerSports post had grouped all the interior offensive linemen together.

None of my other testing (or the testing of many others) validated bench press as all that important a measure for offensive linemen. More importantly, it never identified the short shuttle as an interior offensive line metric to watch, a well-validated measure that far exceeds the performance relationships of other combine workouts.

It was also strange because SumerSports used snap count instead of performance measures as the output to measure against.

In either case, asking it to produce models from this data generated formulas that were largely decent. They broadly identified more athletic players in ways that were generally correct; they avoided long speed measures for nose tackles, used short-area quickness for running backs and so on.

These were not better than models that amateurs like myself could produce or that I had seen others generate, but it was a beta environment.

More frustratingly, when I asked it to produce lists of players who historically scored high in these athleticism scores, the list included players who had not logged workouts in some of the key categories, like Demaryius Thomas, Todd Gurley, Devonta Smith and Jaylon Smith.

When asked to produce a list of players who succeeded despite poor scores, it listed some of the most athletic players at their position in recent memory, confirmed by workouts — like Jason Kelce and Evan Mathis.

Pointing this out led to a frustrating back-and-forth where they continued to acknowledge that they got it wrong and then kept reproducing flawed lists. A fairly normal frustration for LLMs. But, it was the closed beta. It might improve over time.

The Open Beta

Blitzing Your Time Away

The first question I asked the AI in the new, open beta was about 2025 blitz rates. It was egregiously incorrect.

Sure, the rankings are… broadly, directionally correct. The Vikings rank in the top five in blitz rate for every other charting organization out there, including Pro-Football-Reference, Pro Football Focus, FantasyPoints, FTN Fantasy and Next Gen Stats.

But to test the reliability of the rankings, I ran some comparisons. One can compare the rankings of each organization to the average of all the other organizations for each team. In that exercise, SumerBrain deviates more than any other analytics outfit.

That doesn’t dispositively mean anything; one of these databases must necessarily deviate more than the rest do. It is notable, however, that it’s not just a high average deviance. They also had the highest number of teams ranked five or more spots away from the average of the other organizations.

However, a more obvious issue that many may have noticed is that the rates themselves are impossible. An 88.4 percent blitz rate is ludicrous. The top blitz rate from other organizations ranged from 37.1 percent to 50.9 percent. This is a fairly broad spread, but that 13-point difference still falls well short of the change suggested by the 88.4 percent mark above.

The median blitz rate ranges from 23.0 percent to 30.0 percent by the other companies. Here, the median blitz rate is 41.9 percent, which would be the top blitz rate for some of the charters.

On a different day, with no new games played, I asked SumerBrain once more for 2025 blitz rates, choosing to word it identically to see if we would get different results.

We did get different results, and this later attempt seemed more accurate, at least the first time. But we encountered new problems. Not only did it break the table it produced twice, for no reason, the second ask that wanted the same data produced yet another set of datapoints.

This means we are left with three unique datasets.

This is a problem inherent to using LLMs — these models are meant to understand the implicit assumptions of a question, encouraging natural dialogue between the user and the console. The way they achieve this ends up being both a strength and a weakness.

Udit Ranasaria, the director of Deep Learning research at Sumer Sports, discussed this problem with Wide Left. “I think anybody that works with stats in football [knows that] there are many ways to interpret a question, and there’s many things often implicit in a user question that they’re expecting the model to know automatically,” he said.

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As an example, he added, “If I ask you how is Daniel Jones doing? You don’t want the response that says he had a really bad 2022 season with the Giants. That’s not what you meant to ask. And so those are the types of errors that I think we’ve spent a lot of time [on]. We tested a lot internally, and we triage the types of errors and the types of misinterpretations that are happening.”

In deploying a tool meant to capture sentiment not explicitly stated, one can get closer to answering the question the user is really asking. However, one might also land on a different implied interpretation than the user intended — and it’s challenging to control for it.

The frustrations exhibited by the blitz questions provide a perfect example of this problem. In the first table, produced on October 7, the percentage is calculated from “pass plays,” which exclude sacks and scrambles. The second table, produced two days later, is taking the percentage out of “total dropbacks,” which would be a more appropriate denominator.

After all, we’re trying to find out how often defenses send extra pass rushers after the quarterback when they drop back to pass. If a defense succeeds on a blitz and sacks the quarterback, that would not be counted as “pass plays” by SumerBrain, which only looked at plays where a passing attempt occurred.

“The pass versus dropback thing… that’s at the crux of why this is hard, because during our internal testing, we had different expectations,” Ranasaria told Wide Left. “Somebody who wants to do this for a quarterback and team analysis, like you did, wants dropbacks. Other people who come from a fantasy angle, or wanted to match the NFL box scores on nfl.com, they wanted it to really strictly be passing attempts.”

“I’m a big EPA per dropback person,” he added. “And every time it gives me EPA per pass, I’m a little annoyed. That’s why I always ask for dropbacks now, and this is exactly what I mean about understanding sentiments and making sure we are able to capture what the user was most likely intending to ask for, even though, technically, by the definition, there could be multiple reasonable interpretations.”

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It just so happened that my query encountered one of the two biggest challenges in how the model interprets user sentiment. Later on, we’ll see a query that hit the other.

I wanted to double-check SumerBrain’s blitz data against what their database actually charted, and Wide Left was able to acquire a partial list of actual blitz rates from their database. Looking at that list and discussing it further with others, it’s clear that Sumer is confident about its internal charting and what it identifies as a blitz. The issue is not with the data that undergirds the service — but rather how the data is retrieved by the large language model.

At the moment, the problem is clear. SumerBrain cannot be consistent in how it produces rates, cannot be consistent in what it defines as a blitz when producing it for users (Did the Vikings blitz 82 times or 122 times?), and the formatting breaks for no apparent reason.

Again, this was the very first question I asked in the Open Beta.

Other Open Beta Requests

I asked it about four other questions I knew the answers to in order to follow up on this. It was correct about my next query, to the extent of my ability to fact-check it, which was about the on/off impact on EPA per play Harrison Smith had for the Vikings defense.

These numbers are close to, or exactly the same as, the numbers provided by Next Gen Stats via TruMedia.

I asked next about third-down to-go distances. It perfectly produced the average third-down distance to go for 22 teams and was off by small amounts (0.04 yards or fewer) for an additional four. I do not know why it was nearly a tenth of a yard off for some others, but it appears that it repeated some table data for other teams when they were close in ranking. The largest difference was for the Carolina Panthers, who SumerBrain put at 6.57 average yards to go when, in reality, the Panthers averaged 6.44 yards to go.

It may be the case that one source is counting plays that never occurred because of penalty while the other doesn’t.

Some other writers who I have discussed SumerBrain with have produced other errors.

Another writer asked about Jack Jones’ ability in coverage, and it returned… tackle statistics. A very 1990s approach to judging cornerbacks, one that is not particularly effective at evaluating defensive players in general, particularly those whose value primarily stems from coverage.

Wide Left reproduced this error and then followed up, asking SumerBrain why it used those statistics. It told me, “While our data doesn’t show complete coverage metrics like completion percentage allowed or yards per target, his 3 interceptions in 2024 indicate he had success making plays on the ball.”

This was strange because one of the earlier requests I had made was to determine how often the tackler on a completed passing play was the primary defender in coverage. It gave me an answer, broken down by season!

How could it know one but not the other? So, I opened up a new chat project and asked about coverage yards allowed per snap.

Very confusing. And frustrating!

This was not the only example of when SumerBrain provided data, it later argued it did not have access to. Another writer asked about the Chargers’ ability to run through the A Gap, a notable area of weakness.

There were other requests, with many more egregious problems, but before getting into that, what is SumerBrain, and why do LLMs keep producing different answers to the same question?

What is SumerBrain?

At launch, SumerSports identified SumerBrain as two separate pieces of software. The user-facing interface is a large language model. The original version of their explainer (since updated) also identified SumerBrain as the name they’ve given their tracking software, which is essentially a large language model that does not use language.

After discussing this confusion, SumerSports told Wide Left that they would be producing a new name for their tracking model to avoid this problem.

Visual tracking data — a technology that has existed long before LLMs — identifies players and the ball from broadcast and All-22 footage, relating them in space on a representational football field to produce a series of tagged X,Y coordinates with telemetry data (speed, direction, orientation, etc.).

They cross-reference this data with official NFL feeds, including down-and-distance, time remaining on the clock, and other relevant information.

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As had been rumored in January, the NFL sold elements of NFL Media to ESPN, offloading the NFL Network, NFL Fantasy and distribution rights for RedZone to the self-appointed Worldwide Leader in Sports.

ESPN is a juggernaut of sports journalism and entertainment and famously pioneered sports-forward programming, introducing a 24-hour sports network to the airwaves to audiences in the 1980s before revving up in the 1990s and becoming the behemoth it is today.

This announcement has been paired with other updates to ESPN's plans for distributing content to consumers, including the launch of a direct-to-consumer app that ESPN will control. This app will provide users with access to all ESPN programs and networks for a monthly subscription fee.

The NFL will still operate and produce RedZone for NFL games, but ESPN’s acquisition of distribution rights for the product also means the branding license, allowing them to launch similar products in other sports or niches, like college football and basketball.

The winnowing away of independent sports journalism started decades ago, but this could be the death knell of independence in the practice, as the largest outlet for sports journalism gives up the last vestiges of independence it has by providing ownership equity in exchange for a more lucrative product.

Yes, ESPN is Sports Journalism

The response to this observation on social media, of course, was to argue that ESPN had long abandoned its journalism. Calling it a journalism “outlet” was doing us all a disservice because it had been a bastion of bloviating entertainment products, and not a place where Serious Journalists worked. It is an understandable sentiment, but flat wrong.

ESPN has been behind some of the most explosive stories in the sports world for some time and was one of the driving forces behind the massive shakeup at the NFLPA, which saw the resignations of its executive director and chief of strategy.

Though Pablo Torre (a former ESPN employee) broke the case wide open with his initial reporting on the collusion case, Don Van Natta and Kalyn Kahler’s reporting was arguably more impactful in how the NFLPA responded, and had broken other significant reports that led to the resignations:

• The direct reporting that the NFLPA and NFL agreed to keep the collusion ruling a secret

• Former executive director Lloyd Howell’s conflict of interest as a board member of the Carlyle Group

• Howell’s sexual discrimination lawsuit at Booz Allen Hamilton

• Howell’s attempt to charge the NFLPA for two separate visits to strip clubs

Though they weren’t the first to report on issues stemming from the NFLPA’s mismanagement, they provided crucial reporting. The same is true of the Larry Nassar case with Michigan State, regarding the sexual abuse of gymnasts in USA Gymnastics. They provided important, critical reporting unique to their platform, even if they didn’t break the initial story.

Though there is significant room for criticism — worth covering in more detail in a bit — for how they handled some of the concussion reporting surrounding the NFL, they nevertheless laid down significant groundwork criticizing the league for their decision to cover up the potential relationship between concussions sustained in NFL games and Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy.

Outside the Lines reported on the NFL’s attempt to influence the medical investigation into Junior Seau’s suicide, the deployment of a team doctor as the chair of its Mild Traumatic Brain Injury Committee, the daily lives of former players suffering from symptoms of CTE — including those suffering from suicidal ideation — and their public lobbying to downplay CTE and concussion risks.

ESPN’s reporting on the NFL’s lax attitude towards concussions sustained in games or practices led directly to the uniformization of the concussion protocol and is a big reason that there is a broader cultural reaction to seeing concussion symptoms play out in games as well as a serious attitude by the league to treat them with care.

On top of that, their reporting on the relationship the NFL has to painkillers was groundbreaking.

They were involved in much of the original reporting surrounding Brittney Griner’s detention in Russia, the post-World Cup environment for migrant workers in Qatar, Alex Rodriguez’s role in the Biogenesis scandal, former Suns owner Robert Sarver’s history of racism and misogyny, former Mets general manager Jared Porter unsolicited explicit texts to a female reporter, the theft by a Patriots fan of Giants Super Bowl rings, the problematic makeup of MLB front offices and more.

In the NFL world, they broke the story of Caleb Williams attempting to engineer a trade out of Chicago before the draft, and the dissolution of the Patriots dynasty

Even when it’s not “breaking news,” ESPN’s reporting has given us unique insight into the sport, whether that’s an inside look into a failing front office, their breakdown on how the Ray Rice scandal played out behind the scenes, an outstanding feature on rising women’s college basketball star Azzi Fudd, the most comprehensive look behind the scenes of Caitlin Clark’s time at Iowa, Antonio Brown’s brief ownership of an Arena League team or how the Vikings handled J.J. McCarthy’s “lost year.”

ESPN has consistently provided insightful, outstanding reporting that has enriched our understanding of the sport, humanized the athletes, and helped people understand the business and decision-making at a political, financial, social or competitive level of our favorite leagues, players and teams.

It is easy to look at the giant contracts ESPN has handed out to Stephen A. Smith and Pat McAfee and conclude they are no longer in the business of journalism, preferring instead to highlight the shouting matches and escapades of entertaining, sports-adjacent personalities.

That’s particularly the case when ESPN lays off 500 people within a five-year span while also handing millions of dollars to McAfee.

It is harder to realize that our (often unconscious) understanding of the sport is produced in large part through reporting, whether that’s everyday beat work, feature-length breakdowns or investigative deep dives.

We know what a backup quarterback is and generally understand that their job is more than simply being ready to come into a game when the starter goes down. But we might not understand that the reason we know comes from decades of reporting on this niche subject, something ESPN has contributed significantly to.

Teams do not go out of their way to educate fans on any elements outside of surface-level looks at their stars. Reporters do. These journalists work at Sports Illustrated, the Defector, the Athletic, the Ringer or, often, at ESPN.

So, while ESPN’s most prominent figures might be loud demagogues or access-merchant breaking news mavens like Adam Schefter (who, while not challenging any power structures, is reporting), many of the things we value about sports journalism have been delivered by and embodied through ESPN.

None of this is to say that the derision cast towards ESPN about their journalistic integrity hasn’t been earned. Frustration with ESPN has existed for about as long as the network has been a nationally recognized brand.

ESPN Has Hardly Been Independent

Even before the Disney buyout, ESPN had never been a bastion of independent ownership free from corporate influence. Their seed capital came from Getty Oil, and they had, just five years into their existence, sold themselves to ABC.

In that same year, ABC sold 20 percent of its ownership to RJR Nabisco — yes, that Nabisco — which wanted to use its access to a national sports media audience to begin a sports marketing division, in addition to its extant work in food and tobacco.

A few years later, Nabisco sold its interest to Hearst Communications, meaning that ESPN was once again wholly owned by media entities with deep experience in journalism. But it was never an independent franchise after those first five years on air.

ABC’s sale to Disney in 1996 meant that the mouse now owned 80 percent of the world's most significant sports media property. But there’s a difference between a media entity captured by the corporate world at large and a media property beholden to the subject it covers.

ESPN Bows to Pressure

The independence of ESPN has long been in question. Most notably, ESPN cancelled a show called Playmakers in 2004 under pressure from the NFL. Playmakers was a dramatic series that followed a fictional professional football team called the Cougars and touched on topics unflattering to the NFL — PED usage, narcotics, sex, violence and so on.

Mark Shapiro, the then executive vice president of ESPN, remarked at the time, ‘‘It's our opinion that we're not in the business of antagonizing our partner.” Shapiro added that the league never threatened ESPN or put its broadcast rights at risk, but the message was clear.

It wasn’t just that the NFL could have implied that they would impact ESPN’s bottom line — one of the NFL’s major sponsors, Gatorade, pulled its advertising from ESPN. Then-commissioner Paul Tagliabue said to James Andrew Miller and Tom Shales for the oral history of the network, Those Guys Have All The Fun, ESPN’s relationship with the NFL essentially created obligations for the network to portray the league in a positive light.

I called [Disney CEO Michael Eisner] and told him I thought the programming was a terrible disservice to athletes and to society. He said, “Well, you know, I understand what you’re saying, but there’ve been things that are not exactly positive published about, or presented on television about NFL players before, such as Pete Gent’s book North Dallas Forty.”

I said, “North Dallas Forty, are you kidding me? It’s got nothing to do with this issue. The author of North Dallas Forty did not have a contractual relationship with the NFL. He was an independent author, a former player, who was not under an obligation to present NFL football, NFL players, NFL teams in a way that makes it a valuable, credible, respected product.

Steve Bornstein, the former CEO of ESPN, was also interviewed for the piece. By the time Playmakers was greenlit and started production, Bornstein had already taken a role with the NFL Network as its CEO. “[Playmakers] was terrific, but I don’t believe it was the right direction for ESPN, and I would not have green-lighted it because of the relationship with the NFL, our most important customer,” Bornstein said.

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“My wife loved Playmakers; the only time she’s ever watched ESPN in her life was when Playmakers was on,” he added. “And my argument is, I really don’t need my wife to watch ESPN. She’s welcome to, but I want her to like what we put on there, not what she’s looking for.”

Bornstein’s attitude — specifically that the NFL was ESPN’s most important customer — is alarming for someone who had been in charge of the company for six years.

Perhaps most alarmingly is the fact that Shapiro was a strong advocate of Playmakers and played a significant role in the decision for ESPN to explore fictional dramatizations of sports. He reviewed scripts and was enthusiastic about their potential success.

His turnaround on the show is telling, especially after they posted viewership numbers that confirmed it was their most-well-watched show at the time outside of primetime football broadcasting on Saturdays and Sundays.

ESPN’s decision to shutter Playmakers marked a turning point in the perception of ESPN as an independent outlet, even though this wasn’t journalism — it was entertainment.

Nevertheless, the kind of spine it takes for a journalistic outlet to stand up to a powerful entity is essentially the same kind of spine it takes for a dramatic fictional program to withstand the forces trying to shut it down.

As the executive producer of the series, John Eisendrath told the New York Times:

‘‘The N.F.L. is entitled to its opinion,” Eisendrath said, ‘‘but I think they're wrong, and I think they're bullies. They're a monopoly. I think it fell to ESPN to have the strength to stand up to the N.F.L.'s opinion. It's offensive to me that they would bully ESPN that way, so I'm most offended by the N.F.L.'s attitude, which is blatantly hypocritical considering some of the things that go on in the league, which far exceed anything I wrote about.”

He said that for a while, he thought ESPN would fend off the N.F.L.

“In the beginning, I thought, 'O.K., the league's upset, but ESPN will weather the storm.’” Eventually, he concluded, “There was no way they wouldn't try to get rid of it.”

Those Guys also demonstrated that ESPN would compromise when it came to the NBA in an effort to preserve their ability to broadcast those games. “Bottom line is that Stern usually got his way,” Shapiro said in Those Guys. “He'd scream and scream and we'd cave.” The most notable of those compromises might have been their decision to rescind a contract with former NBA coach, NBA critic and commentator Stan Van Gundy.

Van Gundy claims, and many have good reason to believe him, that ESPN did so at the behest of the NBA due to his frequent criticism of the league. ESPN claims that they could not come to an agreement about Van Gundy’s potential role with the network, which Van Gundy firmly denies — they agreed on a role, he says, and ESPN later pulled it all back.

“What I find fascinating ... you have to give David Stern and the NBA a lot of credit ... ESPN pays the league, and then the league tells them what to do,” he said on The Dan LeBatard Show. “It's more ESPN's problem. You gotta have no balls whatsoever to pay someone hundreds of millions of dollars and let them run your business.”

Playmakers and the Van Gundy hiring-then-non-hiring are alarming moments in the ESPN saga, but there are others. ESPN’s decision to work with PBS Frontline on a deep story investigating how the NFL handled the concussion crisis was lauded by observers and touted by ESPN itself.

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Two weeks ago, journalists Pablo Torre and Mike Florio obtained a copy of the confidential decision that arbitrator Christopher F. Droney handed down when resolving the NFLPA’s claim of NFL collusion.

They found, in their eyes, strong evidence that the NFL illegally colluded to keep guaranteed salaries for NFL players down. The arbitrator disagreed, finding evidence that the NFL attempted to collude but failed.

This is meteoric, and the fact that the decision wasn’t made public was something that Torre and Florio broke down on Torre’s podcast — an episode well worth listening to. The decision is worth discussing, as are the broader implications for our relationship with labor and politics in the United States.

But first, let’s talk in broad terms. What is collusion, and why does it matter?

Collusion, Trust and Labor Law

Labor politics in the United States are weak compared to so-called social democracies in Western Europe, where labor politics have become more foundational to corporate governance and labor law.

When labor politics were stronger in the United States, antitrust legislation sped through the process to become law, updated on occasion to prevent such law from limiting labor unions in the same way they were supposed to limit monopolies.

These laws, passed at the height of the robber baron era, were designed to limit the power of corporations that had taken over entire sectors like steel production (Carnegie Steel), rail (railroads operated by Cornelius Vanderbilt and Jay Gould), fossil fuels (Standard Oil) and more.

Those corporations had the unique ability to set prices without competition while reducing product quality. The promise from free market advocates is choice; choice that should force companies to lower prices while increasing quality. Monopolies erode that promise, raising prices and reducing quality.

These changes occur outside the scope of their impact on consumers; monopolies (single sellers) are also, generally, monopsonies (single buyers). Just like markets can be distorted when only one firm can provide a product to sell, markets can be distorted when only one buyer exists to purchase a product.

And monopsony power exists in the labor market for these mega-corporations. In addition to exercising their monopsony power to purchase the raw materials needed to produce their products (say, coke for steel or coal for rail engines), they are single buyers for labor in many of the communities they’ve set up shop in.

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That allowed them to drive down the price of labor, especially in a mid-19th-century environment with limited labor movement across cities and without an enforceable minimum wage.

Antitrust law exists so that we don’t have just one place to buy our food, just one place to buy our televisions and just one place to buy our cars. When we’re talking about “quality,” we don’t just mean food that tastes bad or cars that need more maintenance. We’re talking about rotten food in the supply chain, electronic appliances with poisonous materials and cars without safety standards.

Monopolies erode safety by cutting corners in their products, resulting in fuller cemeteries and emptier cities.

Unfortunately, for antitrust legislation to be effective, there needs to be enforcement. The poor enforcement of these laws, seemingly intentionally, is one reason why we’re seeing a growth in monopolies governing elements like internet access, internet search (and ads), credit ratings, rural grocery and even syringes.

Antitrust law governs not only monopolies but also oligopolies. Oligopolies form when a few firms, instead of just one, have dominant control over the market and act in concert to engage in functionally monopolistic behavior. There are several well-known international examples of oligopolies.

The most well-known is OPEC, or the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries. They cooperate to restrict the supply of oil or otherwise fix the price of fossil fuels, enriching their member states.

In the United States, if we had evidence that ExxonMobil, Chevron and Marathon were cooperating to raise the price of gasoline, that would violate antitrust law. Oligopolies carry much of the same risk that monopolies do, although there is a significant chance that members of an oligopoly will “cheat” on the agreement without some sort of mechanism to punish cheaters.

Oligopolies coordinating like this is called collusion.

The NFL’s Monopoly

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Authors Note: With the news that the United States participated in another round of strikes on Iran, I've decided to re-pin this piece, originally written in June.

On June 21, 2025, the United States announced that they had successfully struck three Iranian nuclear enrichment facilities – an announcement that came on the heels of two weeks of strikes on Iranian facilities from the Israeli Air Force.

This occurs globally against a background of domestic disruption – one that pierces the very notion of democratic order and carries the weight of historic change.

It is draining.

There is a particular fear standing on the precipice of history. Understanding that the distinctions between the adventurous reads through historic times and the experience of processing the real-time events that will end up in history books can be sobering.

It is fascinating, after the fact, to learn how people coped with eating during the Great Depression by making tomato and peanut butter soup. It is another thing to figure out what cost-efficient legumes you need to cook with in real time.

Political scientist Francis Fukuyama was lambasted for his 1992 book, “The End of History and The Last Man,” where he argued that the end of the Soviet Union marked the final ideological conflict that humans would see — liberal democracies had “won,” and market capitalism would become the dominant economic system.

Scrolling through news feeds, it seems laughable to think that one imagined we were at the end of history in the early 1990s.

At the moment, we face the hollow reality of international conflict – a war that could result in the deaths of hundreds of thousands, if not more – while the United States also finds itself with a domestic crisis.

So we see the all-too-familiar repetition of a recent turn of phrase.

Is there a relief from the unbearable weight of history?

Intervention in the Middle East

The volley of strikes between Iran and Israel escalated beyond what we’ve seen in the region before, brought about, allegedly, by Iran’s refusal to participate in an open and transparent evaluation of their supposedly civilian nuclear weapons program.

Israel, as many Western powers argue, is engaging in proactive defense – known as the Begin Doctrine. This means wiping out Iran’s military capabilities before it has the ability to strike Israel – a preemptive strike by another name.

Whether or not the international community has approved of Israel’s actions, they generally understand the reasoning to be legitimate. They do not conversely believe any Iranian strike on Israeli facilities can be legitimate, despite the fact that Israel is, by far, the most opaque and unchecked nuclear power in the world.

The fact that Israel has nuclear weapons and Iran does not seemingly has no bearing on which states are deemed more “dangerous.”

It is rarely discussed in the media whether or not it would be destabilizing for a country like Israel to have access to these weapons, but it is treated as an obvious fact that it would be bad for Iran to have them.

Israel is not a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and is not subject to inspection by the International Atomic Energy Agency. Nevertheless, IAEA inspections are a critical component to Iran’s ability to run its civilian nuclear program – an attempt to prevent their program from “dual-use” development, where enrichment of nuclear fissile material could be used in both civilian and military applications.

It is through these inspections and other more clandestine assets that the United States determined that Iran was not in the process of developing nuclear weapons, a determination reaffirmed several months ago. These are the collective assessments of the 18 different intelligence agencies that comprise the American intelligence community. This is consistent with an earlier intelligence report from the previous administration.

Israel’s nuclear capabilities on the other hand, are an obvious reality, even if they officially don’t exist. Experts estimate that they have 90 or so warheads and enough fissile material to produce hundreds more. This has been the understood reality since 1973.

None of this is to say that Iran hasn’t run afoul of the IAEA in the recent past. They’ve faced censure for apparently failing to disclose an enrichment facility when uranium was detected in an unusual part of the country.

They responded to that censure by announcing a third official facility, already built. Iran’s commitment to restrictions on their program is paper-thin, though this is in part a product of reciprocity – they aren’t stable in their commitments to a civilian program because the West has not been stable to them.

In 2003, Iran floated a “Grand Bargain” proposal that would, among other items, normalize relations between the United States and Iran and open up Iran to a deep inspection regime that ensured that their program retained purely civilian characteristics. In essence, the international community drops its sanctions and Iran drops its nuclear ambitions.

This was not popular with the Bush administration, but gained some traction with the Obama administration. Though they didn’t accept Iran’s proposal, the counter-negotiations led to the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, which offered sanctions relief in exchange for heavy restrictions on Iran’s nuclear program and transparency with all current and future uranium mining, enrichment and deployment sites.

While this was not popular with hardliners in Iran or in the United States, it did at least develop a regime that inhibited nuclear proliferation and gave Iran more control over its economic future. Underdiscussed in this conversation has been the fact that sanctions have crippled the Iranian economy, leading to skyrocketing inflation and unemployment.

In this sense, the West has been waging a war against Iran for decades, laying waste to its economy. Alleviating that suffering was a big component to getting Iran on board with limiting their development of weapons-grade fissile material.

When the Trump administration withdrew from the JCPOA, it eliminated any possibility for Iran or any other adversarial state to trust the United States in negotiations – understanding that all agreements could be reneged at any time and that they would persistently be at war with the West.

It is not shocking, from their perspective, to see that Iran has been “belligerent” in the eyes of its potential enemies – enemies that don’t just include the United States and Europe, but most of the Middle East, Israel and Saudi Arabia included.

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On May 1, 2025, YouTuber Brett Kollmann uploaded an hour-and-a-half video detailing “The Highest Impact Picks for All 32 Teams.” In the video, he highlights key players in every NFL team’s draft class using college tape to showcase those players' traits and how they fit into their new teams’ schemes.

The video features Kollmann’s slick editing and high production value, interspersing video effects and smart transitions with the college film, all overlaid with his analysis.

On the morning of May 5, YouTuber Brett Kollmann woke up to an email that would stop most creators in their tracks.

“Hi Brett Kollmann,

After reviewing your appeal, xosdigitalsports has confirmed that your video contains copyrighted material that hasn’t been approved for use in your video.

Video title: The Highest Impact Picks for All 32 Teams
Copyrighted content: UTSA 091424 Texas OFF vs TEX UTSA O.mp4
Claimed by: xosdigitalsports

xosdigitalsports wants to give you an opportunity to cancel your appeal within the next 7 days. Canceling your appeal will return your video to the state it was in before you began this dispute.

[VIEW OPTIONS]

If no action is taken, your video will be taken down from YouTube on May 12, 2025, and a copyright strike will be applied to your account. If you still believe you have the rights to use this material, you can file a counter-notification after that date."

For most YouTube creators, copyright strikes cannot be taken lightly. Receive three strikes in a 90-day period, and your account can be terminated. For many, losing an account means a loss of livelihood. But Kollmann reacted with anger, not fear. Unlike many YouTubers, he had the means and the wherewithal to stand up to a notorious bully in the world of football content.

He decided to fight back.

This fight is about much more than the fleeting lifecycle of one YouTube video. It’s about how an antiquated copyright system, unfit for the digital age, has enabled big corporations like Catapult to exploit small content creators.

Their practices allow them to quickly and cheaply rip revenue away from people who put in hundreds of thousands of hours of work into their content. They are why fans have been denied great works of football journalism, and why football analysis hasn’t made a bigger mark on YouTube.

So, let’s step back — what exactly is so dangerous about this very dry email?

Sports on YouTube Just Aren’t Like Sports Anywhere Else

Kollmann’s is one of the biggest football YouTube channels in the landscape with more than 400,000 subscribers. Channels like UrinatingTree and FivePointsVids are in the same ballpark. The biggest sports channels usually provide quick, consumable videos. House of Highlights has 17.2 million subscribers and the official NFL channel has 14.5 million subscribers.

But those well-watched channels are dinky compared to the behemoth that is traditional sports broadcasting. The 15 most-watched broadcasts of all time in the United States are the final episode of M*A*S*H, the moon landing, Richard Nixon’s resignation speech and 12 different Super Bowls.

Football broadcasts were 76 of the 100 most-watched broadcasts in 2024. The Olympics and other sports took four more spots and 16 spots were consumed by the election. In a non-Olympic and non-election year, 2023, 93 of the 100 most-watched broadcasts were football games.

Globally, the most-watched broadcasts of all time are various FIFA World Cup games, Olympic ceremonies and the funeral of Elizabeth II.

But sports don’t crack the top videos or channels on YouTube. The most popular sports YouTube channels are vlogs from sports personalities (Cristiano Ronaldo and Celine Dept) without much sports content, while official or licensed content dominate the rest of the rankings – channels like ESPN or the NBA are at the top of the heap.

And even when counting vlogs, it’s surprising to see the most-subscribed-to sports YouTube Channel, Ronaldo’s, rank 29th among all channels. Among independent YouTubers talking about the most popular sport in the world, CazéTV is the largest with 19.2 million subscribers. That ranks about 700th worldwide.

CazéTV's sizable following isn’t that much compared to independent variety content (MrBeast’s channel is number one with 400 million subscribers), kids channels (Cocomelon ranks third at 193 million) or video game channels (PewDiePie ranks tenth with 110 million).

Music channels and channels like 5-Minute Crafts dominate the charts, as do personalities like Mark Rober, or drama channels like Alan’s Universe. One way to compare these diverse categories to each other is to look at how YouTube analytics app VidIQ categorizes content on the platform. It lists 12 categories: Autos & Vehicles, Education, Entertainment, Food, Gaming, Lifestyle, Music, News & Politics, Pets & Animals, Technology, Travel and Sports.

When looking at the top-ten creators in each category, sports channels rank fifth in subscriber count, sixth in total view count and 10th in views per video.

While it’s impossible to say exactly why sports content underperforms on YouTube compared to other mediums, it might be because the range of sports content is narrow compared to other categories.

One could compare the sports content landscape on YouTube to other types of content that rightsholders and content creators fight over. Official music channels post singles for the artists they represent and occasionally will upload full albums. Official channels for the NBA and NFL don’t even post games, choosing instead to post highlight clips on occasion.

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Music reviewers often cannot play any of the actual music they review, but it’s much easier to engage with that content because it’s easy to access that music on the platform while watching someone review a song.

For football content creators who want to break down play design, highlight key moments, isolate impact players or discuss the evolution of the sport, there’s no method of depicting what they’re talking about without running afoul of a copyright system that stymies them at every turn.

In short: music listeners can actually listen to music on the platform, but sports fans can't watch sports.

Copyright and YouTube

American copyright law — I swear to God this is interesting — was not built for the digital age, with the velocity and scale of the internet in mind. Copyright law, in a manner similar to most areas of law, has been built around the notion that copyright holders could resolve their claims in court or through arbitration — processes that take time and money.

But while almost all areas of law have needed to “scale up” with the digital age, perhaps nothing has needed more tweaking for this landscape than copyright law. The expansion of digital content produced by individual creators — rather than publishers and broadcasters — has drastically changed the architecture of “intellectual property.”

There are, by several orders of magnitude, many more rightsholders and potential violations of those rights than there were 20 years ago. This isn’t really the same for land ownership law or contract law.

YouTube, in some senses, streamlines this process. Copyright holders can, through YouTube, have their claims resolved through the platform instead of through the courts. This practice gives YouTube legal protection from violations created through user-uploaded content, a concept known as Safe Harbor.

YouTube doesn’t have the option to ignore copyright concerns – that would run them afoul of several laws designed to hold platforms responsible for the content that users post – but it’s worth pointing out that they have sped up a process that was designed to take much longer.

Beyond arbitration, YouTube also offers rightsholders a means to detect infringement. From YouTube’s perspective, that makes sense; offering this service is one way to keep big copyright holders happy.

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Content ID, the name of that service, scans YouTube videos and audio against a database that is constantly being updated with the property of rightsholders. The scan is designed to overcome the tricks many YouTube uploaders use to get around detection software, like reversing the content, altering the size, changing colors, slowing down or speeding up content, and so on.

This service not only insulates YouTube from the likelihood of facing future lawsuits from those copyright holders, but it also increases the odds that YouTube is able to form lucrative relationships with them.

YouTube likely wouldn't have become one of the few broadcasters allowed to exclusively stream NFL games on their platform if they weren’t committed to making rights-holders of valuable content, like the NFL, happy.

The relationships maintained by Content ID are contributing factors to YouTube’s potential to outpace Disney when it comes to showing live sports on their YouTube TV platform.

Technically, copyright holders can resolve their claims outside of YouTube, but almost none of them do. It’s more convenient to handle the process in-platform rather than through the legal system. There are other reasons to use the internal system, too.

YouTube receives an overwhelming number of claims to process. After all, over 20 million videos are uploaded every single day – an expansion from four million daily videos just a few years ago, in part because of their short-form video platform meant to challenge TikTok and Instagram Reels.

Many of those videos violate copyright, and YouTube’s broad Content ID service notifies rightsholders of potential claims nearly instantly. There is no feasible way for YouTube itself to diligently resolve millions of claims on a daily basis, so instead it relies on an automated system that essentially handles the process with minimal human interference. That’s how emails like the one Kollmann received above are generated.

The mechanism flows from the faceless procedure of automation, but it impacts real human beings, many of whom are trying to genuinely navigate the byzantine world of fair use and copyright. But, unfortunately for them, they’re fighting an uphill battle against bad actors who know how to exploit a system rigged against creators.

The Impact on Content Creators

The claim against Kollmann arrived from XOS Digital, a division of Catapult Sports. Typically, Catapult wins these disputes because few independent creators are comfortable challenging their size and financial backing.

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One of the outstanding things about the Super Bowl is that even if the game is a boring blowout — which it was this year — it can provide us with a window into so many other elements surrounding the NFL landscape and culture at large.

It doesn’t take much understanding of the game, for example, to know that Kendrick Lamar’s halftime show performance was the final step in his evisceration of Drake. So, too, with the commercial landscape.

One doesn't have to be familiar with the fact that the Eagles turned up the pressure on Patrick Mahomes without blitzing him once in order to get that this year’s Super Bowl ad landscape gives us a preview of what’s coming next in capitalism.

This year’s Super Bowl ad spree features advertisements for all sorts of artificial intelligence products; some are from companies dedicated to providing generative AI as their primary product, like OpenAI, while others are focusing their ad space for their AI offering — Google is advertising Gemini, Microsoft is showcasing Copilot, GoDaddy and Salesforce are highlighting the AI tools within their platform and Meta is advertising its… sunglasses?

“Artificial Intelligence” is a broad term encompassing a wide range of technologies, but recently has come to mean the type of “creative” artificial intelligence produced from Large Language Models like ChatGPT. These models largely convert units of language — words or phrases — into tokens, all of which have particular values attached to them.

Using these combinations of tokens and their respective values, they can “generate” new, purportedly unique pieces of text so they can fit appropriate words into sensible orders that don’t appear elsewhere in literature or online.

It is perhaps overly simplistic to call these models more advanced versions of predictive text tools that cell phone users have had for decades, but it’s also not entirely inaccurate. That fact may make it suitable for some applications — LLMs seem to be pretty good at producing code snippets for programmers (though that is also sometimes suspect) — and poor at other tasks. Like, evidently, basic math.

Other “artificial intelligence” products exist outside of the realm of these LLMs — Amazon’s AWS solutions that highlight which players might be most likely to blitz or how difficult a catch was are built off of “discriminatory” AI that is bound not to creating new data but building off of already extant data.

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In a sense, LLMs “guess” what word might be next based off of a series of relatively imprecise token-matching functions while other machine learning models tell you the probability of a particular outcome based off of the history of variables for a similar event.

That might not seem like a big difference, but it is — the Amazon prediction machine may have miscalibrated the probabilities of a blitz on a particular play, but they won’t invent a new defensive technique. LLMs can often invent “facts” out of whole cloth, generating what are called hallucinations. It’s a big problem.

The new AI systems are “built to be persuasive, not truthful,” an internal Microsoft document said. “This means that outputs can look very realistic but include statements that aren’t true.”

None of this is to say that LLMs don’t have use cases. But rather that the use cases that have been advertised, suggested or even implied run far broader than what has been functionally possible. And that has led to some of their bloated valuations.

Much of this was covered in a previous piece, one about how sports media organizations will attempt to use LLMs to replace sportswriters and stuff sports media with “artificial intelligence.”

Perplexity, a company that advertised that it didn’t advertise during the Super Bowl, offers a similar product to ChatGPT. To test it, I asked it a question that a natural language database search should be able to unveil but was not easily accessible via a simple web search or typical lookup tools: “Which team has started the most quarterbacks in a single season?”

The answer it gave was incorrect. Neither the 2015 Cleveland Browns nor the 2020 Denver Broncos had achieved this ignoble accomplishment. Not only that, neither they nor any other team in NFL history has started six quarterbacks in a single season, as far as my research could tell.

Both of those teams started three quarterbacks in those seasons. Curiously, the Browns just last year tied the NFL record with five: Deshaun Watson, Joe Flacco, P.J. Walker, Dorian Thompson-Robinson and Jeff Driskel.

That record is shared with four 1987 strike-era teams (Chicago Bears, New England Patriots, Atlanta Falcons and Kansas City Chiefs), the 1984 Chicago Bears and the 1961 Buffalo Bills.

It’s a difficult question to look up; I didn’t expect Perplexity to have the answer to this fairly niche query. But, this demonstrates that there isn’t much benefit to using these LLMs as search engines, despite the fact that many people do. Nearly everything an LLM can do as a fact-checker a search engine could already do ten years ago.

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This year, New Orleans will host Super Bowl LIX and re-establish itself as one of the premier hosting destinations for the Super Bowl, part of the NFL’s somewhat regular rotation of key hosting cities aside from an occasional year given to cities that play ball and build their teams a new stadium.

Typically, sportswriters and fans love the New Orleans experience and this year seems no different. Those experiences have been catalogued in articles and in social snippets shared on Instagram or Twitter. It very much seems like the early returns on advertising New Orleans as a tourist destination are positive — a necessity after the traumatizing attack the city suffered on New Year’s Day.

But the Super Bowl isn’t a typical event. It’s expensive to host an event the size of the “big game”. Cities pour millions into various necessities, like temporary infrastructure for the event, redirecting traffic, paying overtime for police and civil service workers and setting up welcome decorations.

On top of that, cities have an incentive to make sure that the city looks “presentable” to visitors and the cameras that will be there. That means more investment in street cleaning, garbage collection and specific costs like cleaning up graffiti.

Given the NFL’s exorbitant list of demands for host cities, is it worth it for a city to host the Super Bowl?

The NFL Loves Its Studies

There are a lot of positive headlines about the economic impact of an event like the Super Bowl. But it is important to keep in mind that many of the encouraging studies about the impact that an NFL event can have on a city are commissioned by the NFL, which can and likely does influence the results. This can guide a researcher’s methods — like choosing more generous assumptions, isolating friendlier variables, using generous comparison sets and so on.

A number we see cited by the NFL and cities celebrating their ability to host the Super Bowl is $726 million, a reference to an estimate produced by Anthony Evans at the W.P. Carey School of Business at Arizona State for Super Bowl LVII — the prior Chiefs-Eagles Super Bowl.

The document that produced this figure was produced by Evans for the Arizona Super Bowl Host Committee and the Arizona Commerce Authority. Those two groups hired the Seidman Research Institute, the consulting arm of the business school at ASU. Notably, it is difficult, if not impossible, to find the paper Evans is citing; other research citing it refer to articles about it rather than the report itself. Instead, we learn about it via secondary reporting – it’s not even available on Evans’ biography page at Arizona State University under his listed, published research.

In Minneapolis, we were treated to an analysis produced by Rockport Analytics on behalf of the Minneapolis-St. Paul Host Committee, who paid for the report. Rockport concluded through a slideshow, but not a publicly accessible paper, that Super Bowl LII produced a net economic impact of $400 million for the Minneapolis-St. Paul area.

There is perhaps a reason that Rockport Analytics has been hired by multiple Super Bowl Host Committees as well as the Orange Bowl Committee. To their credit, they are somewhat detailed in their methodology, citing multiple data sources to estimate visitor spending including internal sources (their own surveys) as well as external sources.

Interestingly, many officials, like chairman of the Arizona Super Bowl Host Committee David Rousseau, cite an even larger number: $1.3 billion. That number comes from the Evans report mentioned above and was meant to signify gross output of economic activity and not contributions to gross domestic product – a number that Evans himself characterized as a poor one to use.

Evans argues that the gross economic output was used to evaluate the impact of local events in the past, the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis concluded that it was a poor estimate on the effect an event has on local income, substituting in a more precise measure like local GDP.

So, even for consultancy firms paid to provide evidence that the Super Bowl is worth hosting, there are limits to how much they’ll stake their academic reputation on that claim.

The arguments put forth by proponents of big event hosting are pretty obvious – the Super Bowl brings in visitors from all over the country who buy food, lodging and other local services, all of which are taxed by local governments. The anticipation of economic activity produces short-term employment and the capital provided to businesses

Does that hold up?

What Are the Costs of Hosting the Super Bowl?

In the NFL’s 2013 bid book (obtained by the Star Tribune), distributed to city Host Committees in preparation for their bids to host the Super Bowl, the phrase “no cost to the NFL” appears 192 times in the 154-page document (while the phrase “at no cost” without the words “to the NFL,” but still in reference to the NFL, appears an additional 17 times). Costs are “waived” at least seven times as well.

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Since the presidential election, a malaise has settled upon politically engaged leftists and liberals that is difficult to explain to unenthused observers, committed centrists and right-wing voters. Unlike 2016, there isn’t a sense of zombie-walking shock among the general public. Instead, it's been replaced by online discussions of processing and trauma and depression that haven't seemed to translate to the real world. 

According to my colleagues covering the NFL, there hasn't been much of a reaction among players to the results of the election. In 2016, the election deeply divided locker rooms as teammates grappled with the changing nature of their political space. The response in 2024 seems much more localized to the most passionate political actors. This is no longer epoch-changing. 

I want to explore some of that reaction and, of course, my reaction to the reaction.

If the first Donald Trump presidential election victory represents a shock to the system, the second represents the crumbling nature of failed institutions, a signal that we are at the end of a political and economic era.

Our new era is not necessarily one defined by Trump or his beliefs but heralded by them. While we will experience dramatic short- and medium-term changes to the levers of power and bureaucracies that govern our lives, the changes on a global ideological level could be even more far-reaching: the end of neoliberalism and the beginning of a new economic and political framework.

In this piece:

• Running to the Middle

• The Hidden Nature of Violence

• Donald Trump and Fascism

• The Democrats Are Bad at Politics

• What is Neoliberalism

• Neoliberalism and Fascism

• The End of Neoliberalism

Running to the Middle

The instinct for many is to reach for a middle ground when it comes to weighty proclamations; avoid extremes, understand that things are never as bad as they’re made out to be, believe in the power of people and community.

The tendency to minimize emerges from a fairly common cognitive trap of running to the middle. The “Golden Mean Fallacy” is a curse on politics because it is always intuitively appealing, but never grounded.

The idea that “the truth” is somewhere between “the extreme left” and “the extreme right” — terms that elide definition and change from moment to moment — is ahistorical. We have always had opposing viewpoints throughout history, and many times, one of those viewpoints is definitively correct. I am not particularly interested in evaluating the middle ground claims on slavery, women’s suffrage or Jim Crow.

History does not stop; there’s no compelling reason to think the middle must necessarily be true now when “the middle” has failed so often before.

It’s about where one draws the boundaries and, therefore, the middle. There are definitely cases where “the middle” is true, for certain values of “middle” — just as it is that there are many cases where an “extreme” is true when defining extremes in particular ways.

The Hidden Nature of Violence

In the past week, I have seen many people sounding alarms for forthcoming crises, often unnecessarily. I have had to reassure friends against their worst imaginations while giving credence to the systemic truths they speak to; there will not be roving lynch mobs on day one of a(nother) Trump presidency, but there are still people in everyone’s neighborhoods who hold unkind thoughts about marginalized people. That represents a distinct, recognizable and, perhaps, emboldened danger.

The danger is a matter of degree. While there have always been concerns about stochastic terrorism when it comes to carrying out the brutal dirty work of fascism, the more common methods of violence are mundane and well-hidden, often hijacking extant systems. From my piece on a more complete definition of violence:

This distinction between the violence of the everyday versus the violence committed by a known, specific actor has been called the difference between objective violence and subjective violence — that is, where one can identify a clear subject engaging in a specific violent act.

Typically, this distinction is reserved for describing objective violence — acts of structural violence committed by systems rather than people — the absconding of resources away from communities, ghettoizing minorities, underfunding their social safety nets and refusing to develop infrastructure to access food, water or medicine.

These deaths get absorbed into the background consciousness of the Western world at large.

I don’t expect this to be any different in a new regime, but the background violence this time will likely be committed with more bare intention rather than apathy. Instead of something as crass as direct extermination, this damage will be carried out by procedure and administration.

This could look like undercutting federal programs that protect minorities, like the potential elimination of the Department of Education, or underfunding direct support to access food, water, medicine or shelter. It means undermining access to reproductive health, which has knock-on effects on healthcare generally, with or without direct abortion care.

These changes are carried out through rulemaking and budgeting processes. They are felt in graveyards and cemeteries.

This isn’t idle speculation or mere alarmism; Trump has tried to kick millions off of federal food assistance. He wants to do it again. While millions lose access to food assistance, the price of food will likely go up — not down — as his immigration policy overwhelmingly impacts agriculture.

Donald Trump and Fascism

In this section:

• A short list of fascist tendencies

• Non-fascist dangers

Next section: The Democrats Are Bad at Politics

When confronted with the specter of fascism, we engage with the classical images that defined 1930s and 1940s Germany. But these images — concentration camps and death marches — are the product of years of successful implementation of a vicious ideology. The ideology itself takes root far earlier than those endpoints. 

That is to say, Adolf Hitler was already a fascist in 1919 when he attempted to overtake the German Workers’ Party, as much as he was a fascist in 1923 when he was arrested for his role in the Beer Hall Putsch. He was as much a fascist in 1925 when he published Mein Kampf as when he ran for president in 1932.

The argument against the fascist interpretation of Trump is that he has not led death squads or shipped people off into concentration camps. But Hitler didn’t do so in our popular conception of these camps until 1937 — the “early camps” were primarily for political prisoners and were far smaller than the network of extermination and labor camps that included Dachau, Auschwitz and Treblinka. The camp population did not reach beyond five figures until 1938, following Kristallnacht.

Point being: We can identify fascist tendencies in Trump’s politics even if we can't see the furthest possible end point of that ideology. And, to be clear, we did see camps. And we will again.

Refer a friend

Let’s List It Out

I am not sure how to demonstrate Trump's fascist tendencies to those who think journalism is captured by delusion, so I won’t spend the time. Instead, we can compose a list of alarming details from his stated goals and policy achievements that dovetail with many definitions of fascism:

• The first act for Trump in office was an attempt to ban Muslims from entering the country, with a half-hearted nod towards making it legal by isolating it to specific (Muslim-majority) countries. He wants to do it again, calling these countries “infested.”

• It seems like many forgot the actual insurrection attempt, one where people were prepared to kill Mike Pence.

• Trump’s insistence that immigrants have “bad genes” that allegedly make them more likely to commit crimes (they are not). This is not a one-off opinion; he has said immigrants are “poisoning the blood of our country,” a phrase that directly matches Hitler’s violent rhetoric.

• Demonizing countries with nonwhite majorities as dirty or diseased is typical of him.

• Trump’s admiration and desire to imitate authoritarians, including Kim Jong Un, Vladimir Putin, Viktor Orbán, Tayyip Erdoğan and, of course, Adolf Hitler. His comments praising Hitler have been corroborated. These are not isolated pieces of praise; these are consistent themes for him, and he specifically praises them for their most authoritarian tendencies.

• Characterizing his opponents as vermin, language that matches the words used by those committing genocide, from Rwanda to Armenia to Germany. He just keeps doing it.

• He also produces the same kind of language for nonwhite non-immigrants, like Native Americans.

• His consistent platforming of white supremacists — people who identify themselves as white nationalists, white supremacists, Nazis, or anything else along those same lines. It’s not just that he (often) retweets those white supremacists (or shares their content), it’s also that his campaign staff and administration officials also follow these obscure accounts. This might be why he initially refused to condemn former KKK Grand Wizard David Duke and the KKK itself when pressed on their support of his campaign.

• Hosting self-described Nazis at Mar-a-Lago — not just Kanye West, but Nazi influencer Nick Fuentes. Again, these are self-described labels, not wild accusations. Fuentes has explicitly called for the genocide of Jews. This is well understood in his sphere; Trump supporters invited Fuentes to the America First Political Action Conference alongside Marjorie Taylor Greene and Paul Gosar.

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• Trump also engages in antisemitic tropes, like accusing Jews of double loyalty (or rather, demanding it?). This used to be something the Anti-Defamation League cared about when they criticized him. So, too, with the Jewish Democratic Council of America.

• All of this, together, fits into his conception of what a “real” American is, allowing him to construct visions of who is allowed rights and safety and who is not.

• His first pardon as president was of former sheriff Joe Arpaio, who committed the worst case of racial profiling in US history, according to the Department of Justice. For that, he received praise from Trump. This man was running concentration camps. That’s not a characterization from “liberal media,” that’s the language he himself used to describe the camps.

• Trump regularly advocates for violence against his political opponents, both from state and non-state actors. That includes protestors, journalists and politicians aligned against him. There are lists of people he has threatened with this kind of violence. That includes threats of execution against former Wyoming representative Liz Cheney, former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley, President Joe Biden, Democrats in general, immigrants in general, journalists in general and more.

• Trump once again recently used “vermin” language for his political opponents, promising to “root out” those opposed to him. His “enemy within” rhetoric perfectly maps onto the fascist rhetoric used by Benito Mussolini and Hitler. That list of opponents includes journalists and “deep state” bureaucrats within the government.

• These sentiments are echoed by former Trump official now considered a likely candidate to head up federal law enforcement, Kash Patel — who wants to “eradicate” disloyal members of the FBI or CIA in government and extend that eradication to journalists.

• Trump is particularly fond of advocating for state violence, hoping to violate the First, Fourth, Fifth, Sixth and Eighth Amendments with regularity

The note about the immigration concentration camps in Arizona is important as that became a landmark feature of the administration. Worse, this is related to why leftists are sick of Democrats: The camps never went away.

Those listed elements above replicate the patterns of fascism. Scholars of fascism have agreed with this characterization, as do people who have worked with him. Some have made the important distinction that Trump allows fascists to carry him and design his policies rather than being personally fascist. That matters, but not for this piece.

Even If He’s Not Fascist, He is Dangerous

There are non-fascist (or at least not necessarily fascist) elements of his approach that also sound alarm bells.

Robert F. Kennedy’s purported role in the administration will be to manage the federal health response. That will include deregulation of “natural health” products like raw milk or the off-label, unproven usage for medicine like hydroxychloroquine. He has also come out against fluoride in drinking water, one of the greatest achievements in modern medicine.

As experts told the New York Times, Kennedy's threats to long-accepted public health practices are unprecedented:

“I think it’s fair to say we’re in uncharted territory,” said Michael T. Osterholm, who directs the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota and has advised presidents of both parties dating back to Ronald Reagan. “In my 50 years in the business, I never had to encounter, even in the first Trump administration, a callous disregard for science and facts.”

Recommendations like Kennedy’s have led to measles outbreaks, increases in tooth decay, deaths and hospitalization from the consumption of raw milk, delays, many times fatal, in seeking effective treatment because of the usage of alternative medicine, poisoning from the dangerously unregulated supplements market and more.

In addition, we’re facing the prospect of inflation accelerating under Trump’s proposed tariffs policy. The precise impact of these proposals is unclear given that we don’t know which companies will be granted waivers, or how tariffs will ripple throughout the supply chain; tariffs are difficult to model, though the error tends to underestimate their negative impact rather than overestimate, especially when retaliatory tariffs are taken into account.

That's just two of the issues this forthcoming administration presents. We could further include extensions of Trump's previous stint, like the elimination of science funding leading to a “lost generation of scientists” and a paucity of research in the coming years coming from STEM fields. The environmental regulation rollbacks created more damage in four years than we can reasonably recover over the course of decades. It takes more time, resources and willpower to undo damage than to cause it.

And we haven't yet touched on Trump's alarming comfort with sexual assault or instances of personal (as opposed to policy-level) racism that are also well worth considering. We have also seen multiple studies establish a shockingly granular correlation between his statements and spikes in hate crimes.

Evidence suggests that hate crimes increased substantially during Trump’s presidency. For example, anti-Semitic incidents in the USA increased 86% in the first quarter of 2017 (post-election) compared with the same time period in 2016 (pre-election)^vi. Similarly, there was a 91% increase in anti-Muslim hate crimes in the first half of 2017, compared with the same time period in 2016 (pre-election)^vii. These trends continued throughout Trump’s presidency, with annual hate crimes remaining around 20% higher during his administration^viii. Other research specifically tied these increases in hate crimes to Trump himself, finding that counties that hosted a Trump rally showed hate crime rates almost double those of similar counties with no rally [1]

…

even brief exposure to Trump’s prejudiced rhetoric (a single statement embedded among other political quotes) led participants — particularly those who personally supported Trump — to express greater prejudice towards a minoritized group [2]. Similarly, a second investigation found that exposure to Trump’s rhetoric had an emboldening effect for prejudiced individuals, leading them to express greater acceptance of others’ prejudiced behavior, as well as to personally be more willing to disparage a member of a minoritized group [3].

If this is all true, how the hell did the Democrats lose?

The Democrats Are Bad at Politics

In this section:

• The Democrats cannot message

• The Democrats’ crippling fear of labels

• Labels don’t matter, people do

Next section: What Is Neoliberalism

Examining why the Democrats lost and the Republicans won is difficult, in part because our data is messy and in part because we don’t have the tools to break it down. Exit polls are notoriously unreliable in the United States when it comes to predicting election results before polls close, and that casts doubt on their ability to accurately capture voter sentiment after the fact.

It would be nice to compare exit polls, but there aren’t many organizations conducting them. News organizations have largely used the exit polls conducted by Edison Research — if you’ve seen exit polls from NBC, ABC, CBS, CNN, etc., you should understand that they were all conducted by Edison and distributed by Reuters.

The next-best thing is the Associated Press’ “VoteCast,” which conducts surveys before and during the election of registered (not likely) voters, many of whom have already voted. There are a lot of critiques of their approach, but it is at least another datapoint.

Nevertheless, the demographic data these polls produce are not often useful and are deployed instead to blame specific demographics for Harris’ loss, as opposed to explaining what motivated their decisions to stay at home or vote for Trump.

Instead of wondering why the share of white women voting for Harris declined when compared to Trump, or the same for Black men, liberal observers have often admonished those voters. It is not, to many people, worth asking why these groups split the way they did. Paternalism seems more important than rectitude.

When constructing reasons that the Democrats lost, it has also become convenient to argue that the Democrats did not fit into one’s own ideology and project that upon the electorate.

As an example, New York House Democrat Tom Suozzi and Massachusetts House Democrat Seth Moulton attempted that tactic when they argued that Democrats lost because they didn’t do enough to bar trans women and girls from competing in women’s and girls’ sports, covered here by the conservative National Review.

There is no data to support the assertion that buying into trans panic would have helped the Democrats. Even as sparse as exit polling data is, it tells us that voters didn’t particularly care about that issue, citing “the state of democracy” as their top concern and the economy as their second concern.

In fact, neither major exit polling firm thought it worth their time to even ask voters about the culture war around trans people.

The last time the GOP ran on this issue, they catastrophically underperformed in special elections and the 2022 midterms. Andy Beshear was just re-elected in Kentucky as governor after strongly defending trans rights both publicly and with the power of his office. Polls of likely voters show that they don’t care about the issue, and often find Republican ads on the issue to be mean-spirited.

The instinct to argue that Democrats lost because they did not advocate a particular ideology applies to policy positions I agree with, too. Would that I could blame the Democrats’ loss on their depraved stance on the genocide in Gaza and inability to attract leftists. There is little to no chance that this alone swung the election away from Harris.

That’s not to say it didn’t have an impact.

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Anyone following the NFL over the past few years has found themselves inundated with ads for sportsbooks and fantasy football apps. The fantasy games that we’re being targeted with are nothing like the redraft season-long leagues we’ve become used to or even the more familiar daily fantasy games that flooded the airwaves several years ago.

Instead, we're assaulted with ads for "pick 'ems," where participants attempt to guess whether a player will hit "more than" or "less than" a particular statistical milestone (say, 62.5 rushing yards in a single game). These are legally distinct from gambling on "overs" or "unders" but, aside from a few technical details, are functionally identical.

For most of these companies, the lines — the milestones these guesses are built around — even move in the same way as the over/under props do in traditional sportsbooks.

The development and introduction of sports gambling into regular football consumption has fundamentally altered the landscape of the sport. And that’s a problem.

This is not written from a place of judgment against those who gamble, play pick ‘em pools or daily fantasy. I currently have fantasy accounts with six different apps and have enthusiastically entered (the same) thousands of dollars into those contests. When I briefly visited New York over the summer, I took a 12-minute detour to New Jersey, where I laid hundreds of dollars into season-long props on the NFL and CFB seasons.

In fact, it behooves me to keep this hype train going. In addition to these companies bankrolling my non-Substack ventures, I have made a profit from these games personally. On top of that, I can turn my participation into sponsorship deals.

I have been approached for that very reason. The array of sponsorship opportunities are dizzying. I can keep a permanent banner on this site, create specific sponsored posts, generate weekly lineups with invites for readers to compete or simply post about these sites on social media. Each tier of participation has a different payout.

Unfortunately, I have had to turn them down because, after a back-and-forth with their legal departments, pieces examining the fantasy and sports gambling space run too close to violating partner disparagement clauses. With that, I have turned down tens of thousands of dollars.

It is important to note that the gaming landscape is diverse in what it offers. Many companies offer both a sportsbook and fantasy options. Those fantasy options can vary widely in how the games are played and this gives some of them legality in some states but not others. What emerges is a patchwork of results where every state has a different set of products on offer, making it difficult to nail down what is fantasy and what is gambling.

My discussions with multiple companies offering to sponsor Wide Left has made it clear that these distinctions are important; indeed, they are critical to the survival of some of these companies. To understand this distinction, it’s important to dive a little bit into the history of regulated online gaming.

How Did Online Poker Turn Into AI-Powered Fantasy Football?

In 2003, an accountant named Chris Moneymaker – I promise that’s his actual name – splashed onto the poker scene after securing an entry into the World Series of Poker’s Main Event after winning an online poker tournament.

His win in the online tournament provided him with a bid in a satellite tournament hosted by PokerStars – one of the premier online poker sites – and the win there gave him his ticket into the Main Event, with an entry fee of $10,000.

Oral histories will attribute a good deal of poker’s rise in popularity to Moneymaker’s run. They’re probably correct. But in my recollection, Moneymaker wasn’t the sole cause of the popularity of poker.

It was the first year ESPN televised the tournament in earnest (instead of as a tape-delayed, documentary-style broadcast with no commentary) and it feels ridiculous to deny the impact that the Worldwide Leader would have on poker’s visibility, with or without a just-so underdog story. The innovation of the “hole cam,” the camera that allowed broadcasters and viewers to see what cards every player had, was crucial in capturing audience interest.

Of course, my recollection could be marred by replays on ESPN of the tournament and discussions that middle schoolers would hold in real-time for events that had already passed. The combination of all of the factors involved in poker, Moneymaker Effect or not, resulted in huge gains for poker.

In 2002, there were 632 entrants into the tournament’s Main Event. In 2003, the year that Moneymaker entered, there was a bump up to 839 entrants. But in 2004, the year after his highly public victory, there were 2,576 entrants. By 2006, there were 8,773 entrants.

That year would be the peak until 2023, during another revival of the poker scene. There’s a reason for that localized maximum peak in 2006 instead of 2007 or 2008.

Moneymaker’s success sparked interest in the online poker community – so much so that it was called the “Moneymaker Effect.” The former accountant, himself inspired by a different cultural poker phenomenon (the movie Rounders), was sponsored by the website that punched his ticket – PokerStars. They, along with Full Tilt Poker, Gutshot Poker, PartyPoker and many others, would explode with new membership.

Poker websites hadn’t been particularly mature through the early 2000s but had developed just in time to absorb the boom and enable sharp players to make significant money. That influx of players, isolated from the realities of playing in person, could focus on odds and performance tracking.

Quickly, tools like heads-up displays were developed that gave players access to the history of every decision made at a table by every participant, as well as running odds on the likelihood of winning a hand based on the state of the table.

Some players would play dozens of tables at once and would train themselves to ignore the graphics on the screen – instead focusing on the text overlays from third-party programs to quickly determine if they wanted in on a table’s action without having to pay attention to it. This way, they would fold the vast majority of their hands and opt into only the hands with good odds of success.

These tools weren’t magic, and the reason players had dozens of games up is that it required quite a number of hands, played again and again… and again and again… to start accruing a profit. Many online poker players turned it into a job, eking out a living by tracking the numbers on the screen for small but steady gains by playing the odds and pouncing on small edges hand by hand, table by table.

It was a short-lived boom. The online poker scene took an enormous hit in 2006 when Congress passed the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act of 2006, banning online gaming – poker, sports betting, online blackjack and more – in states where those games were banned locally. Prior to this, those in New York couldn’t walk into a casino to play poker but could sign up online to do so.

Crucially, the law carved out fantasy sports – “a game of skill.”

One impact of this legislation is the explosion of alternate sites hosted offshore with similar domains. For a brief time, websites like PokerStars would advertise their free, legal and non-gambling poker site, PokerStars.net, with the understanding that interested parties might end up at PokerStars.com instead.

Once there, users would have to find a way to fund their account – US banks were prohibited from working with these websites, as were US-based payment processors. Before cryptocurrency, this meant creative tools to move money offshore and then into those sites.

It didn’t stop people from gaming online but it inhibited it significantly. Nevertheless, poker limped along with these simple bait-and-switch advertising tactics – neither illegal or honestly unethical on the surface, but enabling behavior that violated various state laws against online gaming — often unbeknownst to the players themselves.

It all came to a head on April 15, 2011 – known in the poker world as “Black Friday.”

Full Tilt Poker, PokerStars and a number of other online gaming companies were indicted by the federal government for a host of crimes related to the UIGEA, including money laundering and bank fraud. This was no slap on the wrist either; the federal government shut down the websites in question, threatened a number of executives with jail time and extracted billions in fines.

This was such a significant move that it invited international protest, as Antigua and Barbuda, which hosted a number of online gaming platforms, extended a suit from 2003 about the United States’ shutdown of online gaming platforms to include new sites impacted by the poker shutdown.

Antigua and Barbuda won, for what it’s worth. Instead of engaging in authorized retaliatory action against the United States government, they sought a settlement payout worth millions of dollars. They still have not received it.

Regardless, this wiped out the online poker community. Those in the know could find ways to play; offshore sites would attempt to fill in the void — thus the rise of Bovada and Ignition — but there wasn’t a large pool of new players to take advantage of. Sharks without fish.

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So, what did all of these online poker mavens, conversant in modeling and statistics, turn to?

Sports.

Traditional sports betting was difficult for all of the reasons online poker was difficult. And, on top of that, casinos had the goods on most of the odds. It was difficult to find an edge.

But the loophole in the law that allowed fantasy sports gave those same players an out. This led to the development of “daily fantasy” from websites like DraftStreet, DraftDay, StarStreet, DraftKings and FanDuel. Daily Fantasy, or DFS, offered an accelerated version of traditional fantasy sports, a model where users would draft or bid for players on a team whose lineup would remain largely static throughout the season.

This novel way to play would give players a chance to furnish a completely new lineup every day, possibly mere moments before a new slate of games. Many of them used a salary cap method, with the host site assigning a dollar value to each player and a dollar limit to each roster.

There were two primary contest types – cash and GPP (guaranteed prize pool). Cash contests pay out (about) 50 percent of participants; the most common cash contest format pits just one player against another in a head-to-head. That player could be random or selected through the lobby system.

GPPs are tournaments that only reward a small portion of the participants – often ten percent or fewer. Dozens, hundreds or even thousands of players would pay an entry fee that gave only the top scorers substantial payouts. That’s where events like the “Millionaire Maker,” guaranteeing the top participant a million-dollar payout, come from.

While homebrewed model-making couldn’t compete with sportsbooks, it could compete with the vast majority of the participants entering GPPs after the explosion of daily fantasy. The sharks had found their fish.

This flight from online poker to daily fantasy isn’t some imagined narrative – the concept was developed by a former online poker player named Chris Fargis and the terminology used by these sites and those who make content about daily fantasy is steeped in poker language. The owners of these sites are often former (or current) poker players. As Jay Caspian Kang pointed out:

The D.F.S. industry is still inextricably tied up in those poker roots. Players talk about “tilting” because of “variance,” especially when a “fish” puts in a “donkey” lineup that ends up going crazy. (In regular American English, this translates roughly to “I am really mad because some idiot punched in some random lineup that ended up catching every conceivable break and beating me.”) And it’s not only the former poker players who talk like this — when I first spoke to Nigel Eccles, the C.E.O. and founder of FanDuel, he referred to the different denominations of D.F.S. games as “tables,” in the same way a pit boss at a casino might point you to the $10 blackjack or the $25 baccarat tables. Rotogrinders, by far the biggest site for D.F.S. discussion, commentary and content, was founded in part by Cal Spears, a former poker player from Tennessee who used to run an online forum for poker strategy called PocketFives. Jonathan Aguiar, DraftKings’ director of V.I.P. services, is also a former poker player known as FatalError. Fargis, too, now works at DraftKings.

These daily fantasy contests would come under heavy fire after a blitz of advertising from the emergent duopoly of DraftKings and FanDuel. Leagues and media would partner with either of the two sites – who had either bought out their competitors or were content to watch them die on the vine – providing daily fantasy content alongside their typical fantasy discussions.

Several states took a different view of fantasy sports than the federal government, arguing that these were, in effect, online gaming and not “games of skill.” The fact that the same players emerged at the top of the rankings time and again was unpersuasive. After all, that’s also true of poker. And that’s not legally a game of skill.

There are massive imbalances in daily fantasy. Several analyses had emerged during the daily fantasy boom that quantified this imbalance; the New York Attorney General found that nearly 90 percent of players had a negative return on investment. A McKinsey study found that 1.3 percent of players had earned 91 percent of the prize money.

Top players earned these massive prizes using both formats. GPP grabbed headlines, where high-volatility strategies that use multiple, correlated tactics are virtually the only way to win. Top players entered hundreds of entries with optimized lineups.

Most of the entries didn’t win any money, but that doesn’t matter – placing 100th and placing 1000th were the same. The key is that they placed in the top ten percent often enough to earn a profit, while retail players were entering in just two or three unoptimized lineups.

The same, however, occurred in cash games, where the top half take home the prize. In head-to-head contests against single players, sharks flooded the entry market so that participants without tools to enter multiple lineups would more often than not be paired against experienced players. In cash tournaments, where the top half won, career players maxed out entries.

On top of that, high-level players had access to tools that others did not. Injury news would result in thousands of automated lineups changing at a moment’s notice because of scripting software deployed by professionals. Typical players couldn’t respond to injury news this quickly.

Daily fantasy participants, in essence, were being sold a fair game while playing a rigged game. When entry limits and scripting controls were proposed, DFS platforms decided against the practice – even loosening their restrictions on certain types of scripting in order to appease their big players.

As Kang points out, poker has natural controls to prevent professionals from regularly gouging newcomers and preventing fresh blood from coming into the sport. Beginners play at small-stakes tables and play against the variety of players who happen to show up on that night of play – not a professional gambler playing seven of the eight hands.

With the ability in DFS to enter as many contests as possible, sharks could prey on low-stakes entries alongside their appearances in the million-dollar contests.

Oversaturation and, perhaps, this profound sense of unfairness may have killed the DFS craze. But not-gambling gambling on sports didn’t die with DFS. Instead, pick contests – where fans would pick “less than or more than” for certain statistics like rushing yards – took their place.

These are, these fantasy sites tell us, not prop bets. After all, at a sportsbook, you can place a prop bet on a single player’s statistics and ride that line. Here, you not only have to do so with multiple players, they have to be on different teams (or, in some cases, in different games).

And the payout doesn’t come from the company like it would a casino – instead it comes from other players entered into automatically generated tournaments. The fantasy house simply takes a portion of the winnings in that tournament, just like in DFS.

This is, of course, an accounting trick. Sportsbooks also use losing bettors’ money to pay out winning bets with a little off the top. But, as anyone who follows the NFL salary cap knows, accounting tricks matter.

One could parlay enter a full-send pick ‘em tournament, where every pick has to hit in order for the player to earn any payout, or they could take a reduced reward and enter a flex tournament, where they can miss one, two or even three legs and still find a modest payout.

Sportsbooks Followed Suit

Gambling has been embedded in the sports landscape, both in legal and illegal forms. The advent of the injury report, for example, was designed to limit insider advantage when it came to betting on games.

The initial history of gaming is marked more with scandal than anything else, with the infamous 1919 Black Sox defining the common understanding of that relationship. College and professional games, not well-monetized at the time and therefore subject to outside influence, were rife with illegal gambling interests influencing outcomes.

In 1931, Nevada legalized all gambling, establishing an initial jurisdiction for gaming as a state-level concern. Sports betting, still largely conducted in the black market, was only legal in casinos. However, increasing concerns about organized crime led to federal intervention – first a heavy 10 percent tax in 1951, and ten years later, a ban on the use of wire communications for interstate gambling.

Those combined to functionally kill legal sports betting until 1974, when the tax was reduced from ten percent to two percent, allowing casinos to reopen sports books. That tax was later reduced from two percent to 0.25 percent.

Because no other states explicitly allowed sports gambling, the 1992 Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act functionally made the practice illegal at a federal level outside of Nevada, with some carve-outs for horse racing, dog racing and, for some reason, jai alai.

New Jersey, who had an opportunity to legalize sports betting in their own state before the passage of PASPA but failed, sued the federal government over this law, arguing it violated the rights of federalism enshrined in the Tenth Amendment.

Winning that lawsuit in 2018, states were free to craft their own rules about gambling. They approached this in typical patchwork fashion, with some states legalizing some forms of gaming but not others, while some states developed their own definitions of gaming – whether fantasy sports were included, for example.

Gambling, Paperclips and “Artificial Intelligence”

Fantasy promotions run in a wider number of states than gambling promotions do. That legal distinction hasn’t prevented them from introducing users to anti-gambling tools – while there’s something vaguely commendable about this, it gives the game away: this is, psychologically speaking, gambling. In theory, the reason we have anti-gambling laws at all is because of that concern.

And fantasy companies are doing everything they can to put fuel on that fire.

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