This card isn't bad if you start thinking about how you can manipulate the runner instead of what it gives you.

If you put this out, the runner is probably going to run it three turns from now (or sooner). Put it behind a protected/trapped remote and take advantage of that! Reveal a new, expensive threat and make them pick between the two!

Make sure you can follow up on the threat, though. Nothing is worse than having 8 credits with nothing to spend them on. Also, if you're already rich, the runner isn't going to care.

Granted, if you're NBN and want to force a run, just use Daily Business Show. And if you're Weyland, you can use, I dunno, Capital Investors or something nastier? And Jinteki has Sundew...and HB has Adonis Campaign...

Okay. Yeah. This card isn't great. Many better things will force a run. But not many put the runner on a clock that builds over time; all of the examples I mentioned stay at the same threat level or decrease in threat with time.

In the current Rumor Mill meta, Ibrahim Salem is hilarious as the one unique asset that has an additional rez cost. Rez him without forefitting an agenda, then score a Breaking News or start up a new current. Hope they can trash him or play a new current!

Destroy their economy, destroy their ability to get into the server, then start scoring out!

Have you considered comboing with Blacklist? Use those, Wraparound, and Jackson Howard to hit the alliance requirement and suddenly Ibrahim can start showing up in all sorts of wacky corporations.

EDIT: For a short while, the Rumor Mill play was ruled incorrect. Now it's back to correct again. Thanks, Damon!

You can install this on runner card Off-Campus Apartment. So cool!

That aside, Corporate Troubleshooter isn't too useful since D4v1d is a thing. Sure is great when you can invalidate one-time strength boosts with one-time icebreaking!

Sports Hopper has two uses:

1. engines
2. engines

The effect is iffy. If you need at least 1 to kick-start Underworld Contact or Cloud Icebreakers, you're much better off with the permanent Dyson Mem Chip (!), the cheaper Forger (tag avoidance!), or the stronger Rabbit Hole (+3!). I guess it might be okay with Inside Man, but I haven't seen a hardware-heavy deck before. ...I'll get back to you on that.

Anyway, the ability is where it's at. Put these in a Hayley or Geist with Tech Trader support, and suddenly this card is pretty good. Instead of a slightly weaker Plascrete Carapace with serious dead draw issues, it now moonlights as a zero- Diesel for Hayley and nearly a free Quality Time for Geist!

It's no Sure Gamble, but Sports Hopper has a great support role in decks built around -effects.

As of now, this isn't very useful. I experimented with it in a couple of tournaments, and really...everything this card can do, other cards do so much better.

Infiltration and Satellite Uplink let you avoid Install-Advance-Advance'd or Mushin'd traps.

Parasite and the cutlery Events (Forked, Spooned, Knifed) let you trash troublesome ice with advancement counters on them. Can't use Trick of Light if the ice doesn't exist!

If you can't steal an agenda right now (like NAPD Contract or something advanced after Utopia Fragment was scored), Imp lets you trash it. To make matters worse, upcoming card Film Critic will let you basically steal it for free. Plus, playing a Sure Gamble would give you the money to steal it anyway.

I had one case where this was useful during my last tournament; I used Crescentus to derez a Wormhole during an Exploratory Romp run and then removed the counters from Wormhole.

But how often can we live the dream?