Advance Local Gambling Surge Puts Award-Winning Newsrooms in Ethics Spotlight

07 November 2026

Since 2022, Advance Local, publisher of The Oregonian, The Cleveland Plain Dealer, and The Star-Ledger, has published relentless waves of content promoting sports books, online casinos, and prediction markets. In 2022, promo codes for sportsbooks began appearing, but the deluge truly started in 2023. By 2024, online casinos joined the mix, and this year, prediction market promo codes for Kalshi and Polymarket have flooded the sites.

At the current pace, Advance has produced over 1,700 gambling-themed articles in 2026 so far - a wave of branded casino and prediction market promotions in what were once respected regional newsrooms. Today, gambling companies associate themselves with Advance Local as "media partners," producing hyper-targeted affiliate ads disguised as analysis and commentary.

In 2025 alone, Gannett's USA Today and local affiliates quietly embedded sports betting "Bet Now" links and provided betting data-driven insights, all without fully disclosing the financial relationships. Even as outlets partner with Kalshi and Polymarket, tightening regulations - and lawsuits - ensure these speculative markets face increasing scrutiny. This has driven a wave of uncertainty. Multiple lawsuits have been filed questioning the legality and proper regulatory oversight of Kalshi and Polymarket.

As gambling accelerates from topic to business partner, industry watchers worry that these arrangements could skew gambling coverage and erode hard-earned audience trust. Affiliates often use small print to disclose paid promotions, but this fails to offset the overwhelming presence of promos dominating pages across Advance Local's sites. Few local users clicking "best PGA betting sites of 2026" expect what amounts to advertising while the affiliate company books a profit.

This all emerged from 2023's gaming promotion expansion, when betting-journalism hybrid content surged. According to industry analysts, the number of sports journalists who saw gambling content becoming a major newsroom trend grew significantly from 2023 to 2025 as outlets pushed more betting-themed content, regardless of how it affected perceptions of objectivity.

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Yet the ethics concerns are only starting to reach mainstream awareness. Like affiliates' disclosures, there's fine print for journalism brands too. Regardless of how regulatory disputes resolve, Advance Local publications have positioned themselves as betting content hubs. Some investigative reporters have been moved from gambling coverage, while others have shifted focus to gambling-related reporting. Industry sources have influenced major publishers, and Amanda Litman, a Gannett senior editor, warned that this scenario could make "even well-intentioned news sites look questionable to users."

This echoes a pattern in 2025 when gambling/newsroom partnerships accelerated: publishers cautiously documenting early financial arrangements. Several Illinois news outlets covered the NBA gambling beat - with sports analyst Charles Barkley, while Gannett maintained its USA Today affiliation with Fanduel, an established betting company with NBA partnerships. Industry observers note how widespread the influence feels, saying outlets like Advance Local have "used gambling as a lens to cover other topics, attaching links to sports betting to stories about sports."

From here, Advance Local and its audiences face growing skepticism. While Advance Local says only that "new markets" are behind the surge, staff reportedly had incentives tied to traffic under their sports-reporting units. But disclosures in some cases minimized the paid nature of the content - and the potential impact on users.

The Oregonian, for instance, featured Fanduel and bet365's offers without clearly labeling them as promotions, contrary to standard practice for commission-based content. Some pieces buried disclosures at the bottom in footnotes. For now, the lines have blurred, and gambling content could grow further in Advance Local newsrooms. But as stories generate traffic, Gannett newsrooms may see short-term gains - but at potential long-term cost to credibility.