When VSiN CEO Brian Musburger was looking for someone to host the gambling network’s flagship program, My Guys in the Desert, he knew what kind of person he wanted.
The new host not only had to have an encyclopedic knowledge of sports, but also be well-versed in the intricacies of gambling. The position required satisfying VSiN’s hardcore wagering demographic while engaging casual listeners unfamiliar with gambling terms such as hedging, moneylines or reverse-line movement.
Musburger needed the equivalent of a Swiss army knife. Someone like his uncle, the legendary broadcaster Brent Musburger who previously hosted the program.
Musburger chose Stormy Buonantony, who had been filling in at VSiN while working as a rink-side reporter for the Las Vegas Golden Knights. Buonantony was named host of My Guys in the Desert in September 2021.
Stormy covering CFB for ESPN
“She knows her stuff and is it just an incredibly talented broadcaster,” Musburger says. “I think that the kind of content that Stormy creates works across every platform, and her personality allows her to be an outstanding television host or radio host. Platform agnostic is the buzzword people like to use when somebody has that kind of charisma and intelligence.”
For Buonantony, the VSiN job was something she’d been preparing for her entire life, having grown up in a Las Vegas household that embraced sports betting. Even though she had never hosted a show before, Buonantony embraces the idea of “driving the bus.”
“Hosting is something I’ve always wanted to do and always had an interest in,” Buonantony says. “This is such a great opportunity to develop that skill set, and in such a unique way.”
Buonantony is one of the first women to be featured in the sports betting space, joining Barstool Sports’ Kelly Stewart, who also briefly worked for ESPN before being fired for past tweets on Twitter; and Erin Dolan, an ESPN sports betting analyst who joined the network in December 2021.
“You can count the dominant women in the space on one or two hands,” Buonantony says,” but even that is exponential growth from 10 years ago. It’s growing; it’s changing… We know that female athlete sports fans are out there.”
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Buonantony won her first bet when she was nine years old.
Her father, former minor league pitcher Rich Buonantony, would sometimes come home from work early in the morning and take his daughter to a bowling alley.
“We had a bet that if I beat him in bowling, he’d pay me $100,” she says, noting the day that she rolled a 150 to best her dad was one of the happiest days of her life.
Buonantony also rolled a 200 game when she was nine and a 300 game at 13. Growing up in an athletic family — in addition to her father being a minor league pitcher, Buonantony’s mom, Cheri Shipp, was a competitive gymnast — encouraged Stormy and an older brother to try “a little bit of everything,” she says.
Buonantony admits she wasn’t the most talented athlete on any field or court but always had a passion for competition.
“I think it’s a combination of trying to outthink an opponent and also a competitive drive,” she says. “I’ve always had that. I might not be as big as you or as strong as you, but I try really hard, and that’s carried over into my career.”
After graduating from high school, Buonantony earned a degree in print journalism from San Diego State while also taking classes at Palomar College in San Marcos, California, where she earned a degree in broadcast journalism. One of her first jobs was as a digital reporter for the Mountain West Conference, writing and producing video content. She also has worked in various roles for the NFL’s Carolina Panthers and the NHL’s Las Vegas Golden Knights and covered college football for ESPN.
As a sideline reporter, Buonantony has an uncanny ability to find nuggets of information that elude most reporters whether it’s informing Kentucky basketball coach John Calipari of a player’s stat line or noting that former Las Vegas Golden Knights winger Ryan Reaves had been working on his hands in the pre-season the moment before he made a no-look pass that resulted in a goal.
ESPN broadcaster Dave Flemming worked with Buonantony during the 2021 college football season. Noting it was her first full year working the sidelines for ESPN, Flemming found Buonantony’s intelligence and ability to adapt during games remarkable.
“She’s extremely fun to be around in that she doesn’t have a big ego,” Flemming says. “She doesn’t make it about herself. She’s got a great attitude every game and she can find what’s fun and interesting about any game that we do. In our business, a lot of times, people will say that a game stinks. That’s not Stormy. She’ll work to find what’s interesting and exciting about any event we do.”
Flemming is not quite ready to anoint Buonantony as the best sideline reporter he’s worked with, having been on assignments with ESPN’s Holly Rowe and Laura Rutledge.
But he does say that he’s never worked with anyone better at breaking down the post-halftime interviews with coaches coming out of locker rooms.
“It’s so hard,” Flemming says. “You go up to a coach at the start of the second half and ask what they talked about in the locker room, and the coach rattles off four things: ‘we gotta do this, we gotta do that.'”
“It’s hard to regurgitate that on live television and not get lost in the weeds of all the different stuff that was just told to you two minutes ago. But she just rattles right through it and can very articulately break down everything the coach was talking about. “
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As Musburger searched for a My Guys in the Desert host, Buonantony’s name came up. When someone told him that Buonantony’s father and uncle were regular hockey bettors, Musburger started paying closer attention to her work with the Las Vegas Golden Knights.
It didn’t take long for Musburger to recognize that Buonantony was a cut above most sports journalists.
“I started looking at that at what she was doing with (the Golden Knights) in a different way,” Musburger says. “She’s an exceptional talent and then works so hard at being prepared. There’s also this natural quality that really makes her unique.”
Musburger had no doubt that Buonantony had the skill set to succeed, but hosting a sports betting show is like juggling flaming clubs on a high wire. From injury lists to weather conditions to analytical data, the disparate elements are incredibly hard to balance.
Buonantony admits that she wasn’t even supposed to talk about sports betting at most of her prior positions. But because she grew up in a household where gambling on sports was considered acceptable, her learning curve wasn’t as steep.
“I think I have a different perspective on (sports betting) because I’ve been around it forever,” Buonantony says. “I’ve enjoyed it. It’s been a new challenge, and I think I’m learning and growing every day.”
“Stormy isn’t somebody that we threw into the position trying to coach her up,” Musburger says. “She had the knowledge, and she had the broadcasting chops. She’s a unicorn. It’s not something that’s faked. There are so many people that are new to the sports betting media world, and sometimes it’s so transparently fake. That’s not what you have with Stormy. She’s 100 percent real.”
