A sports podcaster says he has discovered the apparent reason ESPN has ignored covering the extramarital affair between a top NFL coach and a reporter.
Tony Farmer is reporting that Patriots owner Robert Kraft and ESPN NFL insider Adam Schefter are business partners in a sports-betting company.
Farmer has been perplexed why ESPN, which otherwise scoops the Boston sports media on story after story, hasn’t touched writing about the affair between married Pats coach Mike Vrabel and the also-married Dianna Russini.
Russini was a top New York Times reporter covering the NFL until she resigned after the New York Post published pictures of her and Vrabel being intimate at an Arizona resort back in April.
“Farmer has offered a theory for why Schefter has kept his distance from the biggest media story of the offseason,” reports Pro Football & Sports Network.
“Schefter is business partners with Vrabel’s boss Robert Kraft,” Farmer wrote Saturday on X.
Schefter and Kraft are invested in Boom Entertainment, a gaming company that builds sports and casino gambling apps.
That investment, first reported by Bloomberg in 2021, raised immediate questions about whether Schefter could remain unbiased in his coverage of the Patriots, according to PFSN.
Bloomberg writer Timothy O’Brien five years ago reported that the business relationship between a team owner and an NFL insider covering that owner’s team warranted scrutiny, and ESPN declined to comment on whether the arrangement violated any internal conflicts-of-interest policy.
“Farmer argued that Kraft’s connection to both Schefter and Vrabel creates a clear incentive for silence as the Patriots owner would like less noise around the team, especially around the head coach, after a Super Bowl appearance last season,” PFSN says.
“If questions were being asked in 2021 about bias, how are they not being asked in the middle of a Pats scandal when Schefter is blatantly quiet?” Farmer asked Saturday.
Schefter, who has worked as an NFL insider for ESPN since 2009, is arguably the most established pro-football reporter on the scene today, according to Wiki.
