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Nicole Noren, a former ESPN producer of 24 years, explained that she knew she “was out” when the Worldwide Leader entered the gambling space in 2023.
During an interview with the Columbia Journalism Review, Noren spoke publicly for the first time about her family’s experience with compulsive gambling and her brother’s tragic death after they were exposed to it at a young age.
“My grandfather, my father, and one of my brothers were pretty much destroyed by sports gambling addiction,” Noren said. “I grew up in Ventura, California, and multiple times, we suddenly had to move because of extreme financial ups and downs. I mean, I grew up in a sportsbook.
“We didn’t go to museums and typical places kids go to. We were dragged to Las Vegas in the eighties and hanging out in the Hilton and Caesars sportsbooks, when kids weren’t supposed to be around there. I remember going to the horse track, going to the dog track.
“My brother died thirteen years ago on the sidewalk in downtown Las Vegas. It’s a stark reality, but it illustrates the tragic arc of being brought there as kids so our dad could gamble at sportsbooks, to then surviving on the streets there as a homeless person and dying at thirty-six.”
ESPN licensed its name to a gambling app in 2023, and launched ESPN Bet that November.
“I was out,” Noren, who left ESPN in 2024, said. “I’m not going to work for a gambling company and have blood on my hands.”
Noren added that “addiction dictated every part of our life.”
ESPN Bet was replaced by a partnership with DraftKings, the sports gambling giant, in November 2025.
Noren explained that she noticed the wall between business and editorial become “a little more penetrable” around 5-7 years ago — when stories that involved stakeholders became more difficult for her and her investigative team to pursue.
“What was telling to me was that I had pitched numerous stories that would take a harder look at some of the gambling companies and addiction, and none of those stories was greenlit,” she said. “They ended up doing a show on it around that time, but it became very neutered.
“Some of the people involved intended to make it much more hard-hitting and hold the gambling companies accountable. Let’s just say the final product didn’t end up doing that.”
Noren won Emmy, Murrow, and Peabody Awards, mostly for her work on “Outside the Lines,” the investigative newsmagazine, during her ESPN tenure.
Now she’s starting her own initiative around the very thing she said destroyed her family.
“I’ve been working with a few partners to start a sports betting and gambling addiction content initiative,” Noren said. “It’s a collaboration among journalists, content creators, and nonprofit health organizations to reach a young audience, rooted in public health, with the goal of spurring more national conversation and action to combat the growing crisis.”
Noren is also a documentary filmmaker.