Calif. filmmaker says she left ESPN in protest of gambling embrace

An award-winning California filmmaker says she left ESPN after more than 23 years in protest of the company’s embrace of sports gambling.

Nicole Noren is a producer and filmmaker based in Santa Barbara who was born and raised in nearby Ventura. According to her LinkedIn, Noren started working for ESPN in 2001, rising through the ranks to become a top producer and filmmaker for the sports titan’s documentary wing, particularly for the renowned show “Outside the Lines.”

But in an interview with the Columbia Journalism Review that was published on Wednesday, Noren revealed that she decided to leave the company when ESPN launched a gambling partnership for the first time in 2023, then known as ESPN Bet.

“I was out,” Noren told CJR. “I’m not going to work for a gambling company and have blood on my hands.”

In the interview, Noren revealed that three generations of men in her family – her grandfather, her father and one of her brothers – were afflicted with gambling addictions that greatly shaped her childhood. Among other things, she said her family had to suddenly move multiple times because of fluctuating financial situations tied to gambling.

“I grew up in a sportsbook. We didn’t go to museums and typical places kids go to,” Noren told CJR. “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.”

Noren received numerous awards for her work at ESPN, including the company’s first Murrow Award in the Investigative Reporting category for a report from South Africa on the 2010 FIFA World Cup’s effect on human trafficking in the country. She also was a part of the reporting team that won a Peabody Award in 2018 for an investigation into how Michigan State allowed trainer Larry Nassar to sexually abuse gymnasts over a span of decades.

That was ESPN at its best, Noren told CJR, with an investigative journalism arm that could cover extremely sensitive topics but also had the support to look into entities that the company had business interests with. (For example, ESPN was the television broadcaster of the 2010 FIFA World Cup.) But Noren said that started to change at the end of the 2010s and early 2020s.

“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,” Noren 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 also said when she raised her concerns internally, leaders at the company were “almost like putting their heads in the sand.” She left the company in 2024.

ESPN shut down ESPN Bet in late 2025 but simultaneously entered into a multiyear agreement with DraftKings to become the network’s official sportsbook and odds provider. While ESPN has continued to do some investigative journalism on the impact that gambling can have since, that hasn’t stopped the company’s partnerships and promotions of gambling – nor lessened Noren’s concerns.

“What troubles me most is the disconnect at the ESPN executive level between making money and caring about the human impact of constantly bombarding fans with betting odds and talk,” Noren said. “It’s become impossible to escape – during live games, studio shows, podcasts, etc. But just because there aren’t yet laws here banning some of this during live sports broadcasts – as there are in some other countries – doesn’t mean they should be doing it.

“I try to give them the benefit of the doubt and think, wow, maybe they don’t have any direct experience with gambling addiction. But at some point, where are the people in the room saying, ‘Just because we can do this, should we?’”

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This article originally published at Calif. filmmaker says she left ESPN in protest of gambling embrace.