Sports Betting Finally Goes Too Far; AI Splits The Digital News Market In Two

Recorded: Sept. 16, 2026, 2:40 p.m.

Original

image/svg+xml:

Topics
Latest
Marketers
Agencies
Publishers
Technology
Platforms
Identity
Measurement
Data Privacy
Artificial Intelligence
CTV
Commerce
AdExplainer
Exclusive Report
Daily News Roundup

Opinion
All Columns
Data-Driven Thinking
On TV & Video
The Sell Sider
Content Studio
Comic
Contributor Guidelines

About Us
Advertise
Newsletter
AdExchanger Advisory Board
About Us
Contact Us

Events
Programmatic I/O 2026
CTV World 2027
Top Women in Media & Ad Tech
Webinars
All Events
Network Events

Podcasts
AdExchanger Talks
The Big Story
Inside the Stack

Programmatic I/O

CTV World 2027

Become an AdHero

Topics
Latest
Marketers
Agencies
Publishers
Technology
Platforms
Identity
Measurement
Data Privacy
Artificial Intelligence
CTV
Commerce
AdExplainer
Exclusive Report
Daily News Roundup

Opinion
All Columns
Data-Driven Thinking
On TV & Video
The Sell Sider
Content Studio
Comic
Contributor Guidelines

Events & Awards
Programmatic I/O 2026
CTV World 2027
Top Women in Media & Ad Tech
Webinars
All Events
Network Events

Podcasts
AdExchanger Talks
The Big Story
Inside the Stack

Subscribe Free
Sign Up

About Us
Advertise
Newsletter
AdExchanger Advisory Board
About Us
Contact Us

CONNECT

Home Daily News Roundup Sports Betting Finally Goes Too Far; AI Splits The Digital News Market In Two

Daily News Roundup
Sports Betting Finally Goes Too Far; AI Splits The Digital News Market In Two By AdExchanger

Wednesday, September 16th, 2026 – 12:03 am
SHARE:

A Risky Bet
Irony is officially dead.
The five largest US professional sports leagues are asking the government to crack down on sports bettors who harass players, team personnel and their families, ESPN reports.
The NFL, NBA, MLB, NHL, MLS and the unions representing their players sent a letter to regulators in 35 states and Washington, DC, on Tuesday requesting that any individual who engages in such harassment receive a lifetime ban from legal sportsbooks.
Cue a torrent of “We’re all trying to find the guy who did this” memes shared by beleaguered sports fans, inundated in recent years with ads and sponsorships from sportsbooks, betting apps and prediction markets.
The floodgates were opened in 2018, when the Supreme Court overturned a federal ban on sports betting. Nearly every state has since legalized gambling on sports. As a result, sports sponsorships from gambling companies surged. By 2025, researchers found that viewers were exposed to gambling logos or gambling ads every 13 seconds during an average US sports broadcast.

Maybe that relentless exposure – and all the gambling ad money flowing through pro sports – has something to do with MLB pitcher Lance McCullers Jr. hiring 24-hour security last year after an irate gambler threatened his 5-year-old daughter following a bad start on the mound.
“We carry all of the burden, all of the risk and danger that comes with the association to gambling,” says NBA player and National Basketball Players Association President Fred VanVleet. “It was one of those things that was just kind of thrown upon us, and I think everybody’s trying to figure out how to adjust to it.”
Building For Bots – Or Not
Publishers are split on how to react to the existential threat of AI search.
Some are transforming themselves into AI-powered information and data resources, according to Martin Schori, a former AI lead at Swedish publisher Aftonbladet. These pubs are prioritizing licensing deals and content aggregation while building their own AI search tools, he tells The Rebooting.
But other pubs, Schori says, are promoting their human creators as influencers and hyping the audience trust and industry relationships they’ve built over decades.
Most news publishers, though, are falling somewhere in between these two approaches, Schori says – which, he adds, probably won’t serve them well in the long run.
The choice confronting news publishers, according to The Rebooting’s Brian Morrissey, is whether to “pursue a direct-to-consumer strategy or become an information supplier to AI interfaces.”
We can already see that tension in TIME’s effort to make its content AI readable and Axios’ sponsored content designed to influence AI responses.
Even invalid traffic detection services now say that some bot traffic should be considered valuable to advertisers – even though these same services historically demonetized publishers for having too much bot traffic.
So it looks like publishers have to decide: Are they going to create content for humans, for bots or both?
Rogue Agents
Setting aside the AI doom and hype cycle, one thing feels true about the state of AI technology for non-tech individuals: It’s getting a lot more annoying.
Over at 404 Media, Jason Koebler argues that agentic services are wreaking havoc on the inboxes of writers, including his own. “There are so many dumb people asking dumb AI agents to beg journalists for favorable coverage,” he writes.
(For the record, the AdExchanger team gets emails from self-identified AI agents, too, albeit not nearly as many. Mostly we hear from humans who are clearly prompting their messages.)
The AI bots – some unabashed, others undisclosed – also press for random linkbacks or client mentions in old news stories well past their prime. Ironically, that’s because AI search engines weigh those mentions heavily since the stories are original human productions.
Meanwhile, AI agents with account log-ins can end up deleting emails and company databases, greedily snapping up restaurant reservations, canceling flights and even giving up data or control over accounts to hackers.
Ostensibly, people using those agents want to accomplish said tasks. But right now, says Koebler, the infrastructure isn’t in place to do so safely and correctly – a small consolation for the humans they have not yet replaced.
But Wait! There’s More!
Marketers whose products have longer consideration cycles are using the AI-driven change in consumer search behavior to make the case for larger media budgets. [Digiday]
Good news and bad news for Cable TV: The industry might be hitting its floor. [Business Insider]
Companies that produce electronic shelf labels are trying to distance themselves from the specter of dynamic and personalized pricing. [Fortune]
The US Commerce Department has ordered Kalshi to stop tracking the price of AI compute. [Semafor]
Another day, another Sydney Sweeney ad controversy: Female sports stars are blasting the celebrity’s new hypersexualized ad for prediction market Novig as a setback for women in sports. [CNN]
Ratings for this season’s premiere of “60 Minutes” dropped 19% overall and 33% in the 25-to-54 demo compared to last year, which critics blame on changes made by new CBS News boss Bari Weiss. But at least one media pundit is blaming Nielsen’s recent change to its ratings methodology instead. [post]
You’re Hired!
Teads appoints Alex Underwood as managing director of North America and Alena Morris as SVP of client solutions and strategic product. [release]
Former Seedtag exec Mike Villalobos joins AI audio ad tech company Audion as CRO. [release]
Sneakers, shows and apparel retailer JD Sports names Mike Grimes as CMO. [Business of Fashion]
Thanks for reading AdExchanger’s Daily News Roundup. Want it by email? Sign up here.

Tagged in:

Aftonbladet

//
agentic AI

//
Axios

//
generative AI search

//
ivt

//
Martin Schori

//
MLB

//
MLS

//
nba

//
NFL

//
NHL

//
prediction markets

//
sports betting

//
time

Next In Daily News Roundup

Google’s New AI Licensing Model Is A Black Box; Streamlining The Lobbying Process

Related Stories

Daily News Roundup
Nextdoor’s Next Step; Sports Surge Drives Upfronts

Daily News Roundup
AI Creates More Ad Tech Frenemies; Is Social Video Eating CTV’s Lunch?

Daily News Roundup
A Spoonful Of Sugar; The New Bot Drawbridge

OPINION: Data-Driven Thinking
Advertising’s Next Audience Isn’t Human. So We Must Rethink The Value Of Non-Human Traffic

Must Read

CTV
Horizon Is Bringing Roku’s TV Data 'In House.' Here's What That Means for Advertisers

Horizon is bringing Roku’s streaming-TV data into its homegrown intelligence platform to help advertisers act on viewing signals while campaigns are still in flight.

Publishers
Chrome Has A New Way To Measure Ad Overload On The Web

Chrome is introducing new metrics that give advertisers and publishers a more data-driven picture of what users actually experience on ad-heavy sites.

Platforms
Why Wall Street Turned Against The Trade Desk

The Trade Desk is less than a third as valuable as it was a year ago. It retains about one-tenth of its high-water market cap from December 2024, when the company was worth almost $70 billion. Why did investors lose the faith?

Technology
Prebid’s New President Is Its Former Chairman, Garrett McGrath

McGrath left Prebid in June following five years as board chairman after stepping down as SVP of product management at Magnite. But now, overseeing Prebid will be his full-time job.

Programmatic
TV Manufacturer Telly Touts Programmatic Home Screen Ads

Telly, the startup that gives away free smart TVs in exchange for data and ad exposure, is making its home screen ads available for brands to buy programmatically – and pushing for industry standards to help attract more spend.

Marketers
AI Is Helping L’Oréal Brainstorm Unique Ways To Reach Male Audiences

L’Oréal adopted creative AI platform Springboards to generate creative ideas that led to a collaborative, ongoing ideation process.

Popular

Platforms

Why Wall Street Turned Against The Trade Desk

Data Privacy Roundup

The Startup That Got Ukraine’s Rival Telcos To Collaborate On Identity

Everyone Has An Opinion On The Best AEO Tactics. Do Any Of Them Really Work?

Programmatic

TV Manufacturer Telly Touts Programmatic Home Screen Ads

CTV

For CTV And Video, The Most Obvious Contextual Audiences Don’t Always Produce The Best Results

Join the AdExchanger Community
Join Now

Your trusted source for in-depth programmatic news, views, education and events.
AdExchanger is where marketers, agencies, publishers and tech companies go for the latest information on the trends that are transforming digital media and marketing, from data, privacy, identity and AI to commerce, CTV, measurement and mobile.

NEXT EVENT
Programmatic I/O New York
September 28-29, 2026Marriott Marquis, New York
Learn More

ABOUT ADEXCHANGER
About Us
Advertise
Contact Us
Events
Subscribe
RSS
Cookie Settings
Privacy & Terms
Accessibility
Diversity, Equity, Inclusion & Belonging

CONNECT

The digital media and technology landscape is being reshaped by several interconnected developments, including the fallout from sports betting, the emergence of artificial intelligence, and shifts in content distribution models. A significant event detailed is the reaction from the five largest US professional sports leagues—the NFL, NBA, MLB, NHL, and MLS, along with their player unions—which petitioned regulators in thirty-five states and Washington D.C. to enforce lifetime bans for any individual engaging in harassment against players, team personnel, or their families from legal sportsbooks. This action arose amid the massive surge in gambling advertising and sponsorships following the legalization of sports betting, which led to exposure of viewers to gambling content at very high frequencies during broadcasts.

Simultaneously, news publishers are grappling with the existential threat posed by AI search capabilities, leading to divergent strategies. Some publishers are pivoting toward becoming AI-powered information and data resources by focusing on licensing deals and content aggregation while developing their own AI search tools. Conversely, others are prioritizing the promotion of their human creators, emphasizing the trust and industry relationships established over decades. This tension reflects a broader dilemma for news organizations regarding whether to adopt a direct-to-consumer strategy or transition into a system that supplies information to artificial intelligence interfaces. This tension is evident in efforts like making content AI readable and designing sponsored content to influence AI responses.

The evolution of artificial intelligence also brings new operational challenges for content creation and data security. Agentic AI services are currently causing disruptions, as noted by Jason Koebler, who observes that these agents are utilized by some individuals to solicit favorable coverage from journalists or to aggressively seek out old mentions in news stories. Furthermore, risks related to data security are escalating, as AI agents with account log-ins have been observed deleting emails, acquiring reservations, and accessing company databases, highlighting an infrastructure deficit regarding the safe and correct operation of these systems.

Beyond these central themes, the broader commercial environment is also undergoing changes. Marketers are leveraging the shift in consumer search behavior driven by AI to justify larger media budgets. In the television sector, the industry may be approaching a floor, while companies producing electronic shelf labels are attempting to mitigate the effects of dynamic and personalized pricing. Regulatory efforts are also taking place, such as the US Commerce Department ordering Kalshi to cease tracking the price of AI compute. Miscellaneous industry news points include a controversy involving a female sports star and a prediction market advertisement, shifts in television ratings attributed to changes in methodology, and executive appointments within various media and technology companies.