From "Reveal": Bad Bunny, Billionaires and the Business of Sports

On the award-winning podcast by our friends at The Center for Investigative Journalism, Pablo sits down with host Al Letson to discuss what it’s like investigating the complicated world of sports — from financial scandals to transgender rights, to DEI and the Super Bowl halftime show and beyond. • Subscribe to "Reveal" https://pod.link/886009669 • Previously on PTFO (with The Center for Investigative Journalism): "All-American Grift — We investigated Trump's Favorite Sports Troll" https://pod.link/1685093486/episode/NjkxZTkxYjY1ZTU0YzY2NjBhNTIyMGU3 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy https://acast.com/privacy for more information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Pablo Torre?

  Okay, so what is this episode that has just popped into our feed? That is a good question, beloved member of our audience. This is an episode that I taped with a podcast called Reveal. And I want you to know about Reveal because Reveal is one of these institutions in the world of investigative journalism, one of these entities that I think people should consume even more than they do already. And I appeared on an episode of their weekly franchise called More to the Story where they had questions about how we do our jobs here, as well as, you know, what I thought about Bad Bunny and the Super Bowl and capitalism, and also the story we reported with Mother Jones and Madison Pauley about Riley Gaines, which you should also check out if you have not already. Anyway, this is me talking to Reveal. I hope you enjoy.

• 0:44Pablo Torre?

  The reason to have Bad Bunny at the Super Bowl is not anything, I think, resembling a cultural enlightened progressivism. It's merely you want an audience that can become customers. But because Bad Bunny speaks Spanish, this is now woke-ism. And I'm almost like, this is, it's capitalism.

• 1:07Speaker 01

  On this week's More to the Story, veteran sports journalist Pablo Torre. As the Super Bowl approaches, we talk about the NFL's recurring problems surrounding race and how a flood of money is transforming sports in America. Stay with us.

• 1:27Speaker 02

  I've got big news. I switched to Verizon and got the new iPhone 18 Pro. Shh. I can keep my old phone and I also get the latest iPhone every year. Shh, anything else? Verizon let me choose Apple Watch Series 12 or iPad on them.

• 1:40Speaker 03

  Everybody, listen up.

• 1:42Speaker 02

  Shh. Switch to Verizon and get the new iPhone 18 Pro now. No trade-in needed. And the latest iPhone every year with Simplicity Plan. Plus, choose Apple Watch Series 12 or iPad on us. Simplicity Plan with Simplicity Pro required. Plan and device payment purchase are separate agreements with separate terms. Service plan for watch or iPad required. Additional terms apply for all offers.

• 1:58Speaker 04

  Welcome to 215 Maple Drive. We just put this property on the market.

• 2:04Speaker 05

  Love the crown molding.

• 2:06Speaker 04

  Oh, wait until you see the walk-in closets and the bathroom tile.

• 2:09Speaker 05

  Does it have Verizon FiOS? You know, 100% fiber internet?

• 2:13Speaker 04

  No FiOS, but it looks like it's got cable. Let's check out the kitchen.

• 2:17Speaker 05

  No FiOS? Yeah, no, thank you.

• 2:20Speaker 04

  Don't you want to see the rest? Okay, bye-bye.

• 2:23Speaker 06

  Get Verizon FiOS because when you're moving, it's 100% or nothing.

• 2:29Pablo Torre?

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• 3:13Pablo Torre?

  from small businesses to larger organizations, and it's built for teams who want less manual busywork and more time with buyers. If your marketing and sales teams are trying to work from the same view of the customer, it's worth a look. Sign up for free at Apollo.io. That's Apollo.io.

• 3:41Speaker 01

  This is More to the Story. I'm Al Letson. Just a few decades ago, investigative sports journalism was thriving. There were high-profile TV shows, national magazines, and intrepid reporters around the country who went deep and connected the dots on some of the most important issues in sports. But today, many of those outlets are gone or shells of what they once were. And that's meant that sports in the US, one of the most dominant elements of American culture, has often been left without probing journalism that shines a light on athletes, owners, leagues, and the tens of billions of dollars they generate every year. One of the reporters who stepped into that void is Pablo Torre. Previously a writer at Sports Illustrated

• 4:26Speaker 01

  and an ESPN contributor, Pablo is now the host of the podcast Pablo Torre Finds Out. It's an investigative show that has broken big stories in sports that had gone unnoticed or underreported. And Pablo says understanding sports in America, especially today, is easy. You just gotta follow the money. Pablo, welcome to the show.

• 4:49Pablo Torre?

  Al, thanks for having me. A very kind introduction.

• 4:52Speaker 01

  I'm curious if you can just rewind the clock a little bit and tell me your superhero origin story. How did Pablo Torre get sucked into the world of sports?

• 5:03Pablo Torre?

  You're suggesting that my rippling athletic physique is not self-evidently my origin story, Al?

• 5:09Speaker 01

  You know, we're podcasts and they can't see you, so I just wanted you to kind of lay it out for people so that they understood.

• 5:16Pablo Torre?

  It's a 14-pack. That's what is obvious through my sweater. I grew up loving sports because I am the first person in my family to have been born in America. And so for me, I have an articulated idea of this. I wasn't a parent back then, but if you ask me the question in those terms, I answer in the sense of sports was my passport to knowing what this country is like and could still be like, which is to say, I got to talk to people who had nothing in common with me and sort of like microwave friendships and social intimacy. And I loved, you know, I grew up watching the 92 Dream Team and

• 6:00Pablo Torre?

  Michael Jordan. They were superheroes to me. And so in that way, I got to realizing, oh, wait a minute. Yeah, I love playing pickup basketball and stuff, but developing a sense of the lore of sports was this social connectivity that nothing else provided. And then when you combine that with a general desire to figure out, okay, how do I express myself? And that's going to be through writing. And how do I want to spend my time? It turns out, it involves like writing down statistics pathetically in a notebook for myself as if those numbers need to be preserved like talmutically by me for the benefit of posterity. It radicalized me into being someone who just loved sports a lot.

• 6:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, I remember when I was much younger. One of my first major jobs was I was salesman slash service provider for a knife sharpening business. Random as hell. But we used to sharpen carbide saw blades. And in northeast Florida, I would go out there, meet these guys, and they didn't really like me because I'm a young black kid from, you know, the big city, coming to their place. And I found that the only way that I could communicate with them was getting to know sports. And I wasn't really that into sports at that point in my life, like in my early twenties. But I began to like study sports.

• 7:29Speaker 01

  So when I go there, I could have something to talk about with them and ultimately like service their blades, sell them new blades and all of that stuff. And it worked. Like, I got really good at sports because I needed to make a paycheck. And I think what you just said, like, it triggered that memory to me is that the bridge to talking to somebody who was so different than I was was sports.

• 7:52Pablo Torre?

  Well, they're heirlooms. They're like family heirlooms. And so if you can speak that language and immediately skip several steps.

• 8:01Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 8:02Pablo Torre?

  And start complaining about the same things. You know, you can immediately just start like making fun of the kicker who missed that field goal or that quarterback who chokes. I mean, I find myself, you know, at wedding receptions in Fayetteville, Arkansas, or out west at Berkeley, talking to people, right? You're sort of like going through the matrix politically and sociologically through our country to the extreme ends. And for better and for worse, one of the things that remains even vaguely monocultural Is sports, is is football, especially lately?

• 8:42Pablo Torre?

  And so I just find that I'm doing the same things I did when I was a kid. Showing up, trying to figure out, can I really relate to or become friends with these kids who don't look like me at all? And I'm doing it still, except now I have, on account of again, the very self-evident musculature, I have the authority of someone who like comes from the world of sports, which is a real trip for me, man.

• 9:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, I I wish our viewers could see you because you're just, you're you're a strapping specimen.

• 9:13Pablo Torre?

  Flexing.

• 9:13Speaker 01

  I mean, I guess it's, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm gonna keep it nice because I just, I don't know what I'm gonna do. The interesting thing about sports is that like it definitely is a bridge to other people. But also, sports are inherently political. And it feels today where we are, it is it's even more political, or at least the magnifying glass is on it in a way that like, I mean, everything in in America now is is has been politicized. So it feels like there's a magnifying glass on it in a way that, you know, I'm sure before me, it was political as well. I mean, I've seen the pictures of, I think it was the 68 Olympics.

• 9:55Pablo Torre?

  Mexico City.

• 9:56Speaker 01

  Yeah, Mexico City.

• 9:57Pablo Torre?

  John Carlos, yeah.

• 9:58Speaker 01

  Right, exactly. So like, obviously, it was political then, but also like in this modern era, when I think about politics, it feels like Colin Kaepernick is like, definitely a a bookmark, a place where you can see like, the specific polarization of America around a sports issue.

• 10:19Pablo Torre?

  It's a reference point for so many people, which makes it politically useful. Right? So there's a reason why Donald Trump, for instance, despite, and this is my scouting report on him, dude doesn't really know sports, but he knows enough to hang. And so what does that mean? It means that he can show up at a place and do a little bit of small talk in a way that, by the way, J D Vance cannot. He's at a donut counter like, dude, that's when you talk about the Jets right now. That's when you talk about like the Alabama football team. Like, that's where you do that stuff, and he really can't do it. Donald Trump can get away with pretending like he is of sports because he can wear the costume well enough. And the reason I say and go to that point specifically is because sports are being

• 11:02Pablo Torre?

  used politically all of the time. And the fact, and I and I think about this. With the 68 Olympics, actually, the power of them is that people don't watch sports for politics, and therefore, when politics comes up organically or otherwise, they're forced to confront politics. And so, the sort of like reaction to Colin Kaepernick, to two Olympians from America, two black men raising their fists in the air for seven seconds, such that we're still talking about it decades and decades and decades later, it's specifically because they provoked an audience that wasn't asking to see this stuff, to have to think about it.

• 11:44Pablo Torre?

  And that's the power of sports being the big tent we're all climbing inside of for other reasons.

• 11:49Speaker 01

  Right.

• 11:50Pablo Torre?

  Is that the politics are gonna be there because the people there end up expressing themselves authentically, or simply because they can't take it anymore.

• 12:00Speaker 01

  Right.

• 12:01Pablo Torre?

  And that's an incredible platform that isn't granted to them, but sports allows them to have it, until, of course, you know, the president says, get these sons of bitches out of the stadium.

• 12:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Speaking of sports and politics, feels like it's a nice bridge to walk across to talk about your reporting on Riley Gaines. So Riley Gaines has become a force on the side of the right and when it comes to trans issues, but she didn't always start there, and your reporting along with Mother Jones, like, kind of revealed that. Can you talk a little bit about that?

• 12:36Pablo Torre?

  Yeah, so the reporting that we did with Madison Pablo, who's the excellent reporter of Mother Jones, it was a story not even about the issue, which is, should there be trans athletes included in women's sports, which is a topic I've exhaustively, or at the very least, I've done a lot of work to discuss on my show, Pablo Torre Finds Out. This one is about the cottage industry of why sports are politically useful, as you were just saying. So it turns out, and the elections we have experienced have proven this, that the trans female athlete is what's called an 80/20 issue for a lot of Republicans. They seem To win eighty percent of the time by fear mongering.

• 13:22Pablo Torre?

  And Riley Gaines, who very famously now tied for fifth place with Leah Thomas at an NCAA swimming championship and objected to the fact that she Riley Gaines got the smaller of the fifth and sixth place trophies because, you know, it was a tie. And so they didn't really know which one to give to which athlete. And so she got the smaller one and turned that into not just a grievance, but a career and a political platform such that she is in real intimate connection with not just the White House, but the superstructure of political organizations

• 14:04Pablo Torre?

  that crop up to turn her cause as this supposed victim into a way to truly victimize trans people in America. And what do I mean by that? You follow the rhetoric, Al, and the rhetoric starts, and this is what we reported in the episode. The rhetoric starts with her being even understanding of how Leah Thomas herself, the trans athlete, is merely existing in a structure that she Riley Gaines objects to, which is the NCAA and how they deal with trans athletes and their inclusion. But over time, as she is goaded in interviews, which we play on tape for the listener,

• 14:44Pablo Torre?

  you see that whether it's the Daily Wire or Clay Travis at Outkick or Fox News and Tucker Carlson and all of, again, the Mortal Kombat sort of ladder towards the heights of conservatism in the modern era. She's goaded in and incentivized to increase the temperature of the rhetoric such that Leah Thomas is allegedly an abuser. Leah Thomas is forcing the innocent girls in these locker rooms like Riley Gaines to basically view male genitalia as if they, the female athletes like Riley Gaines, are being sexually abused against their will. And the rhetoric, as insane as that sounds. It's all on tape.

• 15:28Pablo Torre?

  There are comparisons to Larry Nassar, who is the Michigan State doctor, who is responsible for the largest sexual abuse scandal in American sports history. Those are the equivalences that are being made online. And parallel to that, money is flowing in. Riley Gaines gets paid. And we go through the charity and the nonprofit in the 990s, those forums that sort of show how she's getting paid more and more every year to do the work of a political party that is using trans people as stepping stones to win elections. And it's horrific.

• 16:08Speaker 01

  Not long after your episode about Riley Gaines, she responded to you. She made a whole podcast that basically like tore into your reporting. You know, she pointed fingers at you. What's your response after listening to that? Or did you listen to it?

• 16:24Pablo Torre?

  I listened to a good amount of it. I won't say that I'm a subscriber to Riley Gaines's show. Although apparently she's very successful at media in general. What I would point out is that the story, the real teeth of the story, which I haven't mentioned yet, is that as Riley Gaines was talking about how sexual abuse was being visited upon these quote unquote biological females by trans athletes, there was in fact, an actual sexual abuse scandal happening on her own college swimming team at the University of Kentucky. And the person perpetrating that allegedly, was her head coach and quote unquote best friend Lars Jorgensen,

• 17:09Pablo Torre?

  whom she has said one tweet about in the entirety of her rise to power in American politics. And so I'm not saying that I have a guide or mandatory instruction manual for how you should deal with a story like that. If one of your closest friends, somebody you write about in your book, and you praise, have praised frequently, ends up being someone who is... That horrific, allegedly. But the story we reported was fundamentally told through the perspective of Riley Gaines' own teammates on her college swimming team, who fundamentally couldn't take her rhetoric

• 17:51Pablo Torre?

  anymore, given her silence about an actual story of sexual victimization that she didn't address.

• 17:59Speaker 01

  When we come back, Pablo examines how the rise of sports betting is threatening the integrity of sports itself.

• 18:06Pablo Torre?

  You can now bet on obscure athletes to underperform in any given game. And what that has done is created incentives for those obscure athletes to do the easiest thing, which is to not be good at sports.

• 18:22Speaker 01

  Before we continue our conversation with Pablo, I want to remind you that there is a really easy way that you can keep up with all the important work we're doing here at Reveal. You can sign up for our free newsletter. Just go to revealnews.org/newsletter to receive your weekly email, reminding you about all of our good reporting. We have to stay connected now more than ever. All right. Thank you, and we'll be back in a minute with more from Pablo Torre.

• 18:54Pablo Torre?

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• 19:27Speaker 02

  I've got big news. I switched to Verizon and got the new iPhone 18 Pro. Shh. I can keep my old phone and I also get the latest iPhone every year. Shh, anything else? Verizon let me choose Apple Watch Series 12 or iPad on them.

• 19:41Speaker 03

  Everybody, listen up.

• 19:42Speaker 02

  Shh. Switch to Verizon and get the new iPhone 18 Pro now. No trade in needed and the latest iPhone every year with Simplicity Plan. Plus, choose Apple Watch Series 12 or iPad on us. Simplicity Plan with Simplicity Pro required. Plan and device payment purchase are separate agreements with separate terms. Service plan for Watch or iPad required. Additional terms apply for all offers.

• 19:58Speaker 04

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• 20:20Speaker 01

  This is more to the story. I'm Al Letson and we're back with investigative sports journalist Pablo Torre.

• 20:27Speaker 01

  From my viewpoint, from 20,000 feet away, it seems to me that, at least at one time, that the NBA seemed to be way more progressive than the NFL.

• 20:43Speaker 01

  I'm specifically thinking about like during the time of Black Lives Matter. I think that the NBA reflects kind of like what's going on in the country more than the NFL does. During Black Lives Matter, NBA kind of like really embraced it. You don't see that stuff anymore because you really don't see Black Lives Matter anywhere anymore. But it seems like the NFL had a really hard time wrapping their heads around it and really pushing against it. Is that the way I'm looking at it? Does that feel accurate to you?

• 21:13Pablo Torre?

  That's how it felt. You know, there was a time like 10, 15 years ago, even preceding like the summer of 2020, when the NFL was seen because of concussions, because of its own slate of scandals, domestic violence and otherwise, the ways in which Roger Goodell, the commissioner, seemed like a top-down relative autocrat compared to Adam Silver, who was very, again... On a relative basis, pro labor, pro player empowerment. It seemed like the NBA and the NFL, the graphs were gonna switch over and the NBA would be the stock you'd wanna own. And what's happened since then, I think, is that the NBA has truly followed the money

• 21:55Pablo Torre?

  in a way that abdicated anything resembling like a relative progressive platform. And it's not to say that the NFL now is itself like leaning left. It's merely to say that I think both sports decided that there is so much money available to us that if we cater to the mainstream or our understanding of it and we don't alienate the people who don't want this stuff, these politics in our sports, we'll be better off for it. And so I think the mirror that you're seeing in terms of like, why isn't any, I mean, it's kind of stunning, honestly.

• 22:37Pablo Torre?

  So to go from the summer of 2020, in which like protest is the default assumption of what is an appropriate response to the administration of Donald Trump, now going, now going to general silence as the administration that we're watching in the news do things that are so even further beyond the pale. It's a reflection of, I think, capital winning. Of, by the way, labor realizing that if, unfortunately, if there's this much money available for them on the table, why are we gonna risk shaking the table?

• 23:20Speaker 01

  It's complete capitulation with the idea that if you don't make noise and you just go along to get along, A, you'll keep being able to get along, but B, you'll be rewarded by that financially.

• 23:34Pablo Torre?

  And look, in sports right now, I think there is this dynamic with politics where if you follow the money, you realize everyone's going to the same places. And so we're living in this time, you know, you referenced my, my career at ESPN. I got to see from the inside what the cable television economy, the media rights deals, billions upon billions of dollars, sort of gave rise to, which was the largesse of professional sports. And now, because that same economy has been disrupted by the internet, they're looking, sports broadly is looking to the same places that this administration is looking for money. They're looking to the Middle East, they're looking at crypto, they're looking at private equity, they're looking at Silicon Valley.

• 24:20Pablo Torre?

  And the through line through those entities that I just mentioned is not, wow, we really love free speech. Now, they will claim it.

• 24:30Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 24:30Pablo Torre?

  They will pretend we're the costume of we are free thinkers. But the proof is in how everyone is just chasing where capital is now available. And that's been an incredibly, I would say, jarring and sobering reminder of what happens when the goal is to preserve being, yeah, a, a cash machine for lots of very famous public people.

• 24:59Speaker 01

  There is a whole uproar over Bad Bunny being named the halftime performer at the Super Bowl. Why does the NFL seem to have these recurring problems surrounding race?

• 25:13Pablo Torre?

  So that story is very funny to me because I think the NFL's prime directive in this case.

• 25:19Speaker 01

  Was outreach, right?

• 25:20Pablo Torre?

  And it's money, right? So like outreach meaning more money.

• 25:24Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 25:24Pablo Torre?

  So, and I think it reflects your question earlier of like, who gets to be the outsider? Because Bad Bunny, for those not familiar, is like the biggest international recording artist on the planet. And so the reason to have Bad Bunny at the Super Bowl is not anything, I think, resembling a cultural enlightened progressivism or anything resembling that. It's merely you want an audience, you want to reach out to an audience that can become customers. But because Bad Bunny speaks Spanish.

• 25:57Pablo Torre?

  This is now woke-ism. And I'm almost like, this is, it's capitalism. That's what it is. And people are grafting culture war onto a financial story to me. And right now, it's very convenient to accuse, again, even the NFL of not sticking to sports because they got a Puerto Rican dude performing at the Super Bowl.

• 26:22Speaker 01

  Yeah. Question for you. I don't follow college sports much at all. But what I do know is that like, money has now come into the picture in a way that it had never been in the past. I mean, it feels like, you know, in the past, players were being exploited. And now players are actually getting paid. So, so I mean, I think that that fixed one part of it. Do you think that that money is ruining college sports?

• 26:52Pablo Torre?

  Yeah, it's a really good question. And there's no simple answer. To me, it's important to know that college football is in fact the second most popular sport in America.

• 27:00Speaker 01

  Mm hmm.

• 27:01Pablo Torre?

  It's that popular. And the reason it's popular is because, A, people love football. Period. People would watch a football sitting on a table. But the second thing about football in the college context is that in college football, there's this presumption that we're watching students. And the lie has always been that these are not employees simultaneously. And so you got to lead with the fact that college football is a multi-billion dollar industry that only recently started permitting payments to the labor that are responsible for the billions of dollars that all of these conferences and these executives and these coaches are making.

• 27:44Pablo Torre?

  And so first reaction is, I'm glad that money is finally entering college football, such that it could go to the labor. But at the same time, it's happening in such a half-measure, unregulated way, without contracts, still wearing the costume of these are marketing payments as opposed to employment deals, that it is welcoming a level of chaos and just disorder, which is threatening, I think, the long-term viability of a product because the institution of college football wants to remain. College, but it doesn't know how to reconcile that with paying athletes.

• 28:25Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So my father is from Pleasantville, New Jersey, which is right outside of Atlantic City. And when I was a young man, I would come down and visit and it was, you know, right around the time when Atlantic City went from like, at least from my point of view, went from like little small casinos into like Trump coming down there, making all these big casinos. And I watched how gambling affected a lot of people, both in my family and around my family. And so for me, gambling has always been something that I stay far away from. But I've noticed recently that whenever I am on TikTok, Instagram, or whatever,

• 29:10Speaker 01

  I am constantly seeing gambling ads for sports betting, which I never saw before. Cause it seems to me that it came out of the shadows. How did it come out of the shadows? And are we seeing that affecting the actual play of the sports?

• 29:26Pablo Torre?

  Yeah, I mean, there's so much here. This is the story of legalized gambling occurring on a state by state basis. So it's not federally legal, it's not for the entire country, but state by state, you've seen the opening of the market and the legal gambling, sports gambling operators have innovated something that the bookie around the corner didn't use to, or even Atlantic City sports books or Vegas sports books didn't use to, which is they now have, and I call it, you know, basically a Cheesecake Factory long menu of bets you can make on any given game. And they include micro bets, what are called prop bets, which is to say hyper-specific things

• 30:11Pablo Torre?

  that you can now bet on, basically financial instruments that are so obscure and complicated that.

• 30:19Pablo Torre?

  They have in totality created one of the largest revenue drivers for legal sports books because these are things that are deeply tempting and deeply addicting along the lines of people trying to play the lottery. Because if you hit one and then another and then you put them together in what are called parlays, like multi-step bets that have these multiplier effects, you have, yes, possible windfalls that are happening, I would say, at a time in which our literacy around probability is not better than it used to be. And so people have really fooled themselves into thinking that this is, and it's again

• 31:03Pablo Torre?

  a lot like stuff that's happening in the country, that this is their ticket to the economic windfall that our actual society is not otherwise apparently giving to them. This is the path to get rich quick. And what has it done to sports itself? It's absolutely mutated incentives. So briefly, like these prop bets are things that are so small but so universal that you can now bet on obscure athletes to underperform in any given game. And what that has done is created incentives for those obscure athletes to do the easiest

• 31:45Pablo Torre?

  thing, which is to not be good at sports.

• 31:49Speaker 01

  So I could do that.

• 31:51Pablo Torre?

  Even I, even I, the greatest athlete you've ever met.

• 31:55Speaker 01

  I know, I know. I was about to say, Pablo, come on.

• 31:58Pablo Torre?

  Even I could run an inside information betting scheme in which I underperform and let people who bet on my underperformance profit. And so the level of scandal that is now emerging from the shadows, and there have been FBI investigations that we've covered on our show, and lots of problems for the leagues in terms of like, okay, we're again drinking from that fountain of legalized gambling money while also watching our product. Have a giant conflict of interest that we don't know how to solve. Yeah, it's leading to a really dangerous direction, absent regulation. And that's not even getting to the medical concerns, which

• 32:43Pablo Torre?

  I think are worth considering, even as I am not someone who thinks it should be outlawed. But I am someone who thinks that we need to disclose as accurately and as transparently as we can. Like, what are the actual harms here as the experiment is being conducted on Americans as we speak?

• 33:01Speaker 01

  On a personal note, as somebody who is deep in this stuff and, you know, I mean, you kind of know where all the bodies are buried. How does that affect you as a fan of sports? Like, do you still tune in just as a fan or is it all work now?

• 33:17Pablo Torre?

  So personally, I tend to put on sports and almost like absorb it through osmosis as background noise a lot while I'm investigating someone in sports. So it's funny, like, I used to be engaged with games because I was just there to be present, watching the game. And now, because I think the lane I'm in is so large and otherwise unoccupied. There is an unlimited number of subjects that I'm curious about that require me to do research and to make calls and to think about the bigger stories that connect to larger issues. And so I don't watch sports in the same way.

• 34:02Pablo Torre?

  I will say that I love going to live events because there is nothing replacing that feeling to me of being present alongside, by the way, people who politically disagree with me, but were all there under a common cause to enjoy this experience. I think that is so rare on all of the levels that we've already referred to that I try to be off my phone, obviously, if I'm going to actually go to a sporting event and be there as a fan. But even there, I mean, my answer, now that I'm real, I'm on my own therapy couch now, Al. My own answer could not help but be sort of like sociologically bigger picture.

• 34:42Pablo Torre?

  And so I, my curse and I think the blessing of what I do now professionally is that I still get to love sports and I've never engaged with sports more. But it's just not in the way that I grew up. Learning to love sports as a kid, I'm like, I find myself thinking like, what does it mean to be a serious person? What does it mean to be an adult in the room who's like, is anyone else gonna point this shit out?

• 35:12Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 35:12Pablo Torre?

  And it turns out that like, the gift and the curse is that I think it's my job too at this point.

• 35:17Speaker 01

  Yeah. You're doing hard hitting investigative journalism. But some critics say that sometimes you're pushing stories too far, like you're inserting yourself as a character and sensationalizing the stories. How do you respond to that criticism?

• 35:31Pablo Torre?

  Yeah, I mean, I exist on the internet and I exist in a desert of sports journalism. And I grew up reading and then working at places like Sports Illustrated and ESPN the magazine. And I watched a program like Real Sports, the foremost investigative news magazine on television at HBO. And those places don't exist or are zombie versions of themselves now. Sports reporting, especially investigative sports reporting, under the previous way of doing it, couldn't support itself. And so the question I face every day is, how do I make the reporting I'm doing, some of which you've kindly referred to already in our conversation? How do I make sure that that doesn't get dismissed? How can I puncture an echo chamber?

• 36:15Pablo Torre?

  How can I make sure that the media person, me, the host of a show, also does the job that's required of us, which is also being a billboard for the work we do? And anybody who runs a Twitter account against their will knows this feeling. I think for me, what that has extended into logically is, yes, leaning into the idea that if I'm gonna investigate a story, it's also on me to be the defender of my reporting. And also at times, an adversarial character in trying to hold the subjects of my reporting to account. Because often, I'm not just talking about Riley Gaines, I'm talking about some of the richest people on earth

• 36:55Pablo Torre?

  who come to sports for all of the reasons we've said, including, by the way, to launder their own images and to hide things from a public in ways that I think are more flagrant and indefensible than they've ever been before, given the levels of inequality in our country. And so for me, if I can do that. It also means that I need to be the one like tooting my own horn. And it also means that I need to convince young people who are on the internet that the sports reporting I like to do isn't just vegetables. Right? Like I'm also melting some cheese on it for them.

• 37:29Speaker 01

  Right, right, right.

• 37:31Pablo Torre?

  Which means that I'm here to like laugh and make jokes and exist on the internet and yes, be a character. And that is not the way that this craft, this job was taught. But I think it's an evolution that's been an adaptation.

• 37:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think we need new definitions. I think that the world has changed. And the way that you and I do our jobs has to change in order to grab ears and to grab people's minds and hearts and all of that stuff. Like it can't be the same way it was done 20 years ago because the world is vastly different.

• 38:05Pablo Torre?

  Yeah, I mean, look, there's a world in which I would be a lot happier and a lot less stressed. And my family would be less worried about me psychologically and otherwise. If I was just able to put something out of the world, under a byline, and it would sort of make its way down the river of discourse. And I didn't have to be the guy flashing a neon sign on this weird like, again, I'm torturing various metaphors, on this weird like motorboat. I'm loudly revving up to make sure that you know I'm coming. You know, like, but that's what it's like to compete in a media ecosystem that's attention driven.

• 38:39Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. Pablo, before I let you go, are there any stories in sports that we should be keeping our eye on?

• 38:49Pablo Torre?

  Man, I've realized as I've tried to answer your questions that I think we need to see sports as the story of money. And so in my reporting on my show Pablo Torre Finds Out, I've been doing this investigation to the Los Angeles Clippers and Steve Ballmer, one of the 11 now richest people in the world, and the ways in which he's been circumventing the rules around fair play in his sport by hiding secret payments that we've reported in these alleged schemes that have been basically ways to break rules to spend money that allow him to get the thing that he can't just buy, which is a championship. So the story of money, what do I, what do I mean?

• 39:34Pablo Torre?

  I simply mean that the people who own sports have never been richer. And they're coming from Silicon Valley, especially lately. And what these people want is, again, if I may be simplistic for a second, is the ability to finally be the jock, the cool kid at school, the famous person sitting courtside who gets to be praised because they're owning the coolest thing and most exclusive club that they can join. But what they're realizing is that they can't just buy the championship, the trophy. In sports, unlike in business, you can even argue, there is something resembling a meritocracy

• 40:18Pablo Torre?

  that is enforced and cared about by fans, let alone the officials that are meant to tend the store of what it is to have integrity in professional sports. And so we're watching this conflict between lots and lots and lots of money and what they're using that money to do, which is get the stuff that they can't buy. And so how do they do it? They break more rules. So I just think we should follow the money.

• 40:49Speaker 01

  Pablo Torre, thank you so much for coming on.

• 40:51Pablo Torre?

  Al, thank you for not being intimidated by, of course, my physical presence.

• 40:55Speaker 01

  I was, I was intimidated the whole time. What are you talking about? That was investigative sports journalist and host of Pablo Torre Finds Out, Pablo Torre. You can subscribe to his show and listen to hundreds of Pablo's interviews, investigations, and intriguing sports stories on your favorite podcast app. You gotta do it, I'm telling you, the podcast is excellent. Plus, if you like this show, then be sure to check out our January 24th episode of Reveal. It's all about the debate over transgender athletes, which includes a story reported in partnership with Pablo Torre Finds Out. You can find it in the Reveal feed.

• 41:40Speaker 01

  Lastly, a reminder, we are listener supported. That means listeners like you. You can help us thrive by making a gift today. Just go to revealnews.org/gift. Again, that's revealnews.org/gift. And thank you. Today's show was produced by Josh Sandburn and Carmen Gourgalison. Brett Myers edited the show. Theme music and engineering help by Fernando "My Man Yo" Ruda and Jay Breezy, Mr. Jim Briggs. I'm Al Letson, and you know, let's do this again next week. This is More to the Story.

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