Joon Lee
@joon
Independent Sports Journalist • Formerly: ESPN, B/R, WaPo • Born in Seoul 🇰🇷 Bred in Boston • workwith@joon.me 📍New York City 📺
NEW VIDEO: A German tourist discovering Waffle House. A President personally calling FIFA to overturn a red card. Same six weeks, same tournament. The story of the World Cup is fans building the event of a lifetime, despite how much DC & FIFA tried to get in the way www.youtube.com/watch?v=s7my...
No matter how many times I mention that I do not work with sports gambling sponsors on my YouTube channel, I always hear from a prediction market at least once a month.
NEW VIDEO: I was prepared for Backyard Sports to become another nostalgia cash grab. So I flew to Pittsburgh to find out who bought it, why they brought it back and whether it’s actually possible to revive a childhood classic without ruining it. youtu.be/DTcxmaThMFs
NEW VIDEO: For 30 years, American soccer waited for a savior. Freddy Adu. Christian Pulisic. The next one. The USMNT finally got good the moment it stopped needing one. New video on how that happened — and why we spent two decades looking at the wrong thing. youtu.be/B1dViSxlzAU?...
NEW VIDEO: I went down a rabbit hole trying to answer one question: How did Chinese basketball brands go from being dismissed as knockoffs to signing Steph Curry? youtu.be/L37JdjeU39I?...
I made this video last year, but it feels even more relevant now. In 2018, Kylian Mbappé told me about his dream of playing for Real Madrid. Now he’s there. But somewhere between becoming the future of football and living the dream, the conversation around him changed youtu.be/SKxpArcyJMY?...
Members of the Knicks front office partially credit James Dolan "getting distracted" by the Sphere for the team's success in recent years, according to team sources Inside the transformation of the Knicks from dysfunctional to champions: youtu.be/wElpzYbWtgs
NEW VIDEO: The Knicks won a championship, but they also made New York feel like New York again. I talked to fans who almost gave up, dug into one of the most dysfunctional franchises in sports, and tried to understand why this team means so much to this city. youtu.be/wElpzYbWtgs
NEW VIDEO with @rogbennett.bsky.social: The World Cup is the biggest event in human history. It’s also a political weapon, a billion-dollar business and one of the most corrupt institutions in sports. So how did billions of people end up caring so deeply about it? www.youtube.com/watch?v=uB_8...
NEW VIDEO: For decades, America treated soccer like a joke. Then something changed. For Americans under 35, soccer is as popular as the NBA, and more popular than MLB. So how did a country that spent decades mocking soccer suddenly embrace it? youtu.be/uyY9J_KY-u8?...
Why did Taylor Swift become one of the biggest figures in sports? Why did fans start acting like detectives over Mike Vrabel & Dianna Russini? And why does sports suddenly feel more like Hollywood than Hollywood? Feat. @thewilderthings.bsky.social + @madelinehill.bsky.social youtu.be/og_v3EyxPe4
NEW VIDEO: Sports video games used to feel like the future. Every year they looked better. Felt bigger. More ambitious. Then somewhere along the way, they stopped trying to become better games. To find out why, I talked to @kofie.bsky.social youtu.be/G7gDTy9o7t0?...
NEW VIDEO: 15 years ago, a pitcher throwing 100 MPH felt almost superhuman. Now the best pitcher in baseball throws 100. The closer throws 100. The random reliever in a blowout throws 100. So how did baseball learn to manufacture velocity? www.youtube.com/watch?v=MxA7...
Youth sports is getting more expensive, more intense and less accessible. So what can a city actually do about it? I’ll be talking with Boston mayor Michelle Wu at the Aspen Institute’s Project Play Summit next Wednesday. Livestream registration: projectplay.org/summit/2026/...
NEW VIDEO: A decade ago, people were rioting for Jordans. Now the coolest shoes in the world look like something your dad wore to Costco. How did that happen? www.youtube.com/watch?v=bJwx...
Sportsbooks and prediction markets continue to reach out about sponsoring my YouTube channel and Substack. I don’t take gambling or prediction market sponsorships. The channel is already profitable without sports betting, and I plan to keep it that way.
NEW VIDEO: For a decade, people thought baseball was dying. And then … it wasn’t. How that happened, with @cespedesbbq.bsky.social, and how it's about more than just a few rule changes and Shohei Ohtani www.youtube.com/watch?v=5F6L...
NEW VIDEO: How did sports debate shows turn into the way we talk about everything? I went inside the rise of hot take culture, talked to the people who built it and traced how hot takes took over media. In collaboration with Vice Sports: youtu.be/ndGUBh3EjJw?...
Trust in sports leagues to protect competitive integrity is all over the place, according to a Sacred Heart poll. The NFL is both the most trusted and one of the least trusted leagues. The NBA is the least trusted league. What happens when gambling becomes central to sports.
List of athletes invested in Kalshi, per Front Office Sports. This many active athletes — including a union president — investing in a sportsbook is a massive conflict of interest. frontofficesports.com/kalshi-athle...
NEW VIDEO: “Sports are rigged” used to sound crazy. Now it’s just … normal discourse. What changed? youtu.be/kzREwFhpCHU
NEW VIDEO: Every sports fan has heard it. "Sources say..." But what does that actually mean? I talked to Jeff Passan -- one of the most trusted insiders in sports -- to break down how reporting really works -- and why it can be so confusing. www.youtube.com/watch?v=a_EX...
Gambling companies are tweeting lies as if it's legitimate news because it brings more attention to them. Facts matter. Slippery slope when gambling companies that leagues and media outlets are partnered with are lying to fans. It undermines all of sports.
NEW VIDEO: The rise of private equity, gambling, ticket prices and sports team valuations is no coincidence. It's leagues realizing sports has a ceiling in the US, and they need to everything possible to make the leagues go global: www.youtube.com/watch?v=l8aL...
Prediction Markets claim you’re betting against other users, but you’re really betting against Wall Street investors Prediction markets are sports gambling with a better PR strategy
NEW VIDEO: What started in sports is spreading everywhere. Over the past year, I've been reporting on how gambling became embedded in sports -- and how it's changing the way we experience the world far beyond the games themselves. www.youtube.com/watch?v=oBBn...
Surreal hearing the GOAT Bob Costas say this about my independent sports journalism on YouTube. He's a huge inspiration for what we're building.
NEW VIDEO: Sports logos used to be chaotic, colorful and weird. They used to look like this 🦖 Now they look like this ⭕️ That didn't happen by accident, and I tried to figure out why: youtu.be/pOj5gTodXeU
NEW VIDEO: Why are sports owners suddenly so comfortable losing? Some blame tanking, some blame analytics. But an answer increasingly is private equity. www.youtube.com/watch?v=taaj...
