• Ad Age, Monday, January 23, 2006 11:45 AM

It was a bad bet. The Sporting News, which for three years--2000 to 2003--had accepted ads promoting illegal Web and phone-based gambling, lost a round with federal prosecutors, who hauled the weekly into court and last week announced that it had paid a whopping $4.2 million fine to the government. What's more, TSN had agreed to conduct a $3 million public-service campaign warning against illegal gambling services. In a statement, the Federal government said, "The Sporting News was aware that its conduct and the fees it accepted in exchange for its conduct were proceeds of illegal gambling." A statement by TSN stated only that the magazine had stopped accepting the ads when it was informed by the government that taking them constituted a crime in itself. The magazine's average paid circulation was more than 713,000 for the six months that ended mid-year 2005, according to the Audit Bureau of Circulations.

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