Last month’s announcement that long-time sports broadcasting icon Brent Musburger would be leaving his home at ESPN was met with awe as fans around the world quickly paid tribute to the man who spent nearly 50 years as host and play-by-play commentator for the likes of the Super Bowl, College Football Championship, Final Four, Masters, Rose Bowl, Little League World Series, FIFA World Cup, Indianapolis 500, NBA Finals, MLB Playoffs, US Open tennis, Belmont Stakes and more. A day before calling his final event, Musburger again made waves with the announcement that he would be launching his own media network, called VSiN (Vegas Stats & Information Network), dedicated to sports gambling. The new role would see now see him broadcast live from a custom-built studio at the city’s South Point Hotel, Casino and Spa, joining boxing announcer Al Bernstein, with additional talent that would include oddsmakers from around Las Vegas. In addition, the network is also launching a national radio channel on SiriusXM, beginning Feb. 27 on Sirius channel 215/XM channel 204, with Musburger offering a taste of the content on Super Bowl Sunday.
Cynopsis Sports asked Musburger about his career move, building a brand and the growing acceptance of gambling by the leagues.
On leaving ESPN: I love the game and all the people I’ve met and have worked with but it was time to not be running for airplanes every weekend. But I love to watch sporting events my wife has put up with that for fifty-some years and its nice. But I think the fact that is a family business with my nephew and brother jumping in was the first attraction, because my family has always been very close. If I can help them out in some way, than that’s great. We have properties up in Montana where I grew up, but we were thinking of moving to Las Vegas anyway so when this opportunity presented itself, we saw the chance to finally make the move.
On launching VSiN: The younger generation, certainly not my generation, gets so much of their information digitally, that we saw an opportunity to stream a brand new website aimed directly at the sports gambling world. I became involved because I knew people in Las Vegas and I immediately jumped on some of my bookmaker friends who I knew where working at South Point. The idea was simply driven by the streaming world and along the way, SirusXM Radio jumped on board.
On the reaction: It’s interesting to me the amount of reaction I’ve gotten about this. It was so positive from people all around the country. I always knew there was a large body of bettors out there who were looking for information. I also was aware that there were a lot of 900 and 800 numbers from people trying to sell picks. I’m not the world’s greatest handicapper, but I always thought that maybe those picks weren’t any better than my picks. But I like information and to hear what other people think about games. So the feedback that I’ve gotten has been tremendous so I guess we struck at the right time for that and it will be up to all of us to move it forward.
On building a brand from scratch: You start from scratch with an idea. If you look around, the digital universe that we now operate in has changed the landscape of media completely. If this idea had been hatched 20 years ago, you would have had to go to a television network or a major company that was involved in broadcasting to see if they could find space for you. With the availability of streaming, you now have the tools, almost like a skyscraper that comes pre-built for you and you put the elevator in it. So you have all of these things that you never had in the old days. You can narrowcast, and while we will be primary talking to people who are interested in the numbers for gambling on a sporting event. The fringe audiences that will drift in are probably more curious about understanding what to do and how the money flows.
On bringing gambling in from underground: The attitudes toward gambling have changed dramatically. In the 70s, when we brought Jimmy the Greek into The NFL Today. He was already known as an oddsmaker and in the meetings with NFL Commissioner Pete Rozell, who was a friend I had known for a long time, Rozell asked us specifically to not say something like “The Chicago Bears are a three-point underdog to the Packers,” for example. We said that was fine, so we developed a checkboard and people who know gambling saw that the Greek had way more checks on the Green Bay side so the Packers would be on top of that spread. We went about our business, and in all the years I worked with the Greek, I don’t remember anyone on the NFL side coming up and complaining to me.
Deep down, if you and I were talking to Mr. Jones or Mr. Kraft, they would both openly say to us that gambling and point spreads are an accepted part of what’s going on with the NFL. I think the fact that some of these operators actually bought parts of the fantasy world a year ago shows that, because I laugh when somebody tries to tell me that fantasy football is different from taking the Atlanta Falcons and the points.
