Latest / The Chuck ToddCast / Interview Only w/ Danny Funt - Addicted, Unregulated, and Everywhere: The Sports Betting Explosion

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Interview Only w/ Danny Funt - Addicted, Unregulated, and Everywhere: The Sports Betting Explosion · The Chuck ToddCast

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Speaker 1: joining me now. Is the author of a new book.
1:53
Speaker 1: It's called Everybody Loses. It's by Danny Funt, and it's
2:00
Speaker 1: a book about gambling and sort of this new era,
2:04
Speaker 1: right this is not even ten years old, this sort
2:06
Speaker 1: of not quite national legalization of sports gambling now. The
2:11
Speaker 1: book itself is not necessarily an anti gambling screed, and
2:15
Speaker 1: it's not a nostalgia soak defense of some pure past,
2:20
Speaker 1: but it is an investigation into a policy decision that
2:23
Speaker 1: has had massive unintended consequences, this rapid legalization and commercialization
2:29
Speaker 1: of sports betting. And you could say the core argument
2:34
Speaker 1: of the book is this America didn't just legalize sports betting,
2:37
Speaker 1: It industrialized it, financialized it, and embedded it into the
2:41
Speaker 1: media ecosystem with almost no guardrails. The result has been
2:46
Speaker 1: the following. It's an industry where states chase tax revenue,
2:50
Speaker 1: leagues chase engagement, media companies chase ad dollars, sports books
2:56
Speaker 1: chase recreational losers, and consumers are to lose slowly, constantly,
3:02
Speaker 1: and invisibly, hence the title Everybody loses well. The author
3:07
Speaker 1: joins me, Now, Danny, welcome to the podcast.
3:10
Speaker 2: Thanks for having me.
3:12
Speaker 1: So let's establish a few things here. You do it
3:14
Speaker 1: yourself in the book. You're a sports fan, you gamble.
3:17
Speaker 1: I'm everybody that listens to my podcast knows I'm a
3:20
Speaker 1: sports fan. I gamble, I do picks for Tony Kornheiser.
3:24
Speaker 1: I've always dabbled in mostly football, in sports gambling, and
3:32
Speaker 1: yet there is it all feels like it's been too much,
3:38
Speaker 1: too fast, and all of a sudden, now we're adding
3:42
Speaker 1: everything else to this prediction. Markets and politics and culture,
3:47
Speaker 1: and there seems to be very little interest in public
3:51
Speaker 1: policy makers of figuring out, huh should we have erected
3:55
Speaker 1: some guardrails? So tell me your motivation for doing this book.
4:01
Speaker 3: You know, I've been covering it for several years, mainly
4:04
Speaker 3: for the Washington Post, and I felt like I was
4:06
Speaker 3: scratching the surface. I felt like two big things were
4:10
Speaker 3: not answered to my satisfaction. One was why did the
4:13
Speaker 3: leagues and so many politicians have this profound change of heart?
4:16
Speaker 1: Right?
4:17
Speaker 3: They gave certain surface level explanations. I didn't find that
4:20
Speaker 3: totally satisfying. I felt like there had to be more
4:23
Speaker 3: to the story that hadn't been.
4:25
Speaker 1: Put it pit in this the harshest penalties before the
4:29
Speaker 1: era of steroids, that professional leagues ever leveled was over gambling.
4:35
Speaker 1: Whether it's shoeless Joe Jackson in baseball, Paul Horning in football,
4:42
Speaker 1: rumors of Mickey Mantle back in the day, Pete Rose,
4:48
Speaker 1: the Michael Jordan rumors that always circulated, it has always
4:52
Speaker 1: been this. The leagues were aggressively anti gambling, to the
4:58
Speaker 1: point where that works would get notes from leagues if
5:03
Speaker 1: they mentioned the points spread too much during some things
5:06
Speaker 1: which created the al Michaels speak right where he always
5:10
Speaker 1: you know, was al Michaels used to do it before
5:12
Speaker 1: anybody else do it. Now it sounds silly when he
5:14
Speaker 1: does it. Some people may care about this last stile.
5:17
Speaker 1: Oh shut up, we're all everybody knows it that. Anyway,
5:19
Speaker 1: I just wanted to remind people that there was a
5:21
Speaker 1: time the leagues and this is important because this is
5:25
Speaker 1: what I think, really, I think exposes this vulnerability. Is
5:31
Speaker 1: the is the whiplash the leagues have created on this.
5:34
Speaker 1: But anyway, continue, absolutely, It's not distant history.
5:37
Speaker 3: You know, not only has players or coaches betting been
5:40
Speaker 3: the cardinal sin in sports, but even beyond that, just
5:43
Speaker 3: the influence that gambling, if it were expanded outside Nevada
5:46
Speaker 3: would have, was referred to as an evil like barely
5:50
Speaker 3: a decade ago by commissioners of sports. I remember the
5:53
Speaker 3: commissioner of Major League Baseball at the hearings in nineteen
5:56
Speaker 3: ninety two when Congress was considering this federal ban on
5:59
Speaker 3: book making, was asked if the leagues would ever do
6:02
Speaker 3: business with gambling operators, and he said that would make
6:05
Speaker 3: a mockery of my office. And now, Vincent, yes, indeed, yeah,
6:10
Speaker 3: He's spoke with me shortly before his passing that you know, so,
6:15
Speaker 3: what did it cease being an evil? Did you learn better?
6:18
Speaker 3: Did the calculus change? I didn't feel like they had
6:21
Speaker 3: been forthcoming about that, and I wanted to understand their thinking.
6:25
Speaker 3: The other thing that motivated the book was these companies
6:28
Speaker 3: are now the sports books themselves are now household names, obviously,
6:31
Speaker 3: but they don't give a lot of interviews. They're very
6:34
Speaker 3: secretive in all sorts of ways, and I really wanted
6:38
Speaker 3: to spend the time to cultivate sources within those companies
6:41
Speaker 3: to understand how they think about customers and how they
6:44
Speaker 3: think about their business and if they have any misgivings
6:47
Speaker 3: about how things are going. And that I felt was
6:50
Speaker 3: something I was very glad to succeed with. Was talking
6:53
Speaker 3: to dozens and dozens of people who work in the business.
6:57
Speaker 1: So it is you know you the Supreme Court finding
7:03
Speaker 1: this has been something that the states of Delaware and
7:05
Speaker 1: New Jersey were always the most aggressive on this. They
7:08
Speaker 1: had filed suit forever they wanted sports books, and the
7:12
Speaker 1: Nevada exception was always very hard to rationalize and in fairness,
7:19
Speaker 1: from a pure legal argument, I always thought New Jersey
7:22
Speaker 1: and Delaware had very strong cases because the Nevada exception
7:25
Speaker 1: was very hard to explain.
7:29
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm definitely not like a Tenth Amendment scholar and
7:31
Speaker 3: could I don't know if there are comparable states that
7:34
Speaker 3: are exempted from federal law.
7:37
Speaker 2: I do think it was.
7:37
Speaker 3: Noteworthy that when the Supreme Court ruled in twenty eighteen
7:41
Speaker 3: in favor of New Jersey that they said it wasn't
7:45
Speaker 3: that Congress lacks the authority to regulate book making. And
7:48
Speaker 3: I don't even think they specifically said this exempting aspect
7:51
Speaker 3: of that law was invalid. It was just PASPO was structured.
7:56
Speaker 3: The ninety two law was structured in a very odd
7:59
Speaker 3: way where they said the states that have ban book
8:01
Speaker 3: making can't rethink that they can't. You know that those
8:05
Speaker 3: those laws are locked in place as of ninety two.
8:09
Speaker 3: But they opened the door for Congress to immediately pass
8:11
Speaker 3: a bill that would correct the constitutional errors of that law.
8:15
Speaker 3: And as so often happens, there wasn't the political will
8:18
Speaker 3: to do that in states seize that opening, right.
8:21
Speaker 1: This gets that you know, I'm not going to go
8:23
Speaker 1: off in this tangent with you, but I when everybody
8:26
Speaker 1: expresses frustration with you know, why does this happen? This happened,
8:29
Speaker 1: this happened. It always comes back to Congress. You know,
8:32
Speaker 1: why are the courts so politicized? Because Congress won't do
8:35
Speaker 1: its job and people feel like the only place they
8:38
Speaker 1: can get relief is the courts, and so the courts
8:40
Speaker 1: have been forced into becoming legislators. And in this case,
8:43
Speaker 1: they essentially wrote legislation that allowed for the structure of
8:48
Speaker 1: legalization of sports gambling in all fifty states.
8:52
Speaker 3: Yeah, and I would suspect that had that decision come
8:54
Speaker 3: down in nineteen ninety three, Congress would have immediately passed
8:58
Speaker 3: an updated law. But you know, the leagues were the
9:02
Speaker 3: ones that lobbied Congress to put the ban in place
9:04
Speaker 3: in the first place.
9:05
Speaker 2: And although they were.
9:07
Speaker 3: They were the plaintiffs, I guess in the Murphy and
9:11
Speaker 3: CAA case, the twenty eighteen case that the Supreme Court
9:14
Speaker 3: ruled on, there was not nearly the same motive to
9:18
Speaker 3: correct the court's decision and lobby Congress. In fact, the
9:22
Speaker 3: leagues were so aggressive in lobbying states to legalize book
9:26
Speaker 3: making as quickly as possible.
9:30
Speaker 1: You know, my friend Tony Corneizer has a saying they
9:32
Speaker 1: answer all your questions is money. And I can't help
9:38
Speaker 1: but wonder if the simple motivation of the leagues here
9:42
Speaker 1: is if we want our media rights to continue to
9:46
Speaker 1: exponentially grow, if it's so therefore growing the perceived value
9:50
Speaker 1: of these franchises, we have to continue to find new
9:54
Speaker 1: money into this space. And and it turned out right
9:59
Speaker 1: there was sort of an exhaustion of only so many
10:02
Speaker 1: car commercials you could sell, only so many other industries
10:08
Speaker 1: wanted to advertise, and here was this. You know, they
10:12
Speaker 1: knew this was happening anyway, and they just there was
10:16
Speaker 1: just too much money to be gobbled up into. I mean,
10:20
Speaker 1: it feels like this is the only motivation that basically
10:23
Speaker 1: you may have morals and ethics, but clearly there's a
10:26
Speaker 1: price tag on.
10:26
Speaker 3: Them, no doubt. And obviously the leagues didn't suddenly get
10:30
Speaker 3: profit motivated in twenty eighteen. So I think what you
10:32
Speaker 3: said is exactly right. Media rights was what swung them.
10:36
Speaker 3: I really wanted to understand the convictions of the commissioners
10:40
Speaker 3: who had been saying things like this is an evil
10:42
Speaker 3: to think was that just dramatic language because they had
10:45
Speaker 3: other things motivating them. I do think David Stern, the
10:50
Speaker 3: former NBA commissioner really did detest gambling. I think Fae
10:54
Speaker 3: Vincent also had sincere misgivings about what it would do
10:59
Speaker 3: to sports. But what I learned was as the leagues
11:02
Speaker 3: were in federal court fighting New Jersey on this, they
11:06
Speaker 3: were meetings secretively with representatives of the gambling industry. I
11:10
Speaker 3: say secretively, so much so that the NFL and Disney,
11:13
Speaker 3: because they also met with broadcasting partners, insisted that the
11:16
Speaker 3: meetings take place at Park Avenue cafes, not at their
11:20
Speaker 3: league offices because they just didn't want to welcome gambling
11:23
Speaker 3: reps through their doors. But in those meetings, the main
11:28
Speaker 3: point of conversation was your TV audience is aging. People
11:32
Speaker 3: are cutting the court on cable subscriptions. What can you
11:36
Speaker 3: do to ensure that people are hooked on sports even
11:39
Speaker 3: more than they had ever been? And they commissioned more
11:43
Speaker 3: than a million dollars of studies from Nielsen that found
11:47
Speaker 3: gamblers watch more than twice as many games as traditional fans.
11:51
Speaker 3: They're also watching blowouts because they want to see if
11:53
Speaker 3: a bet wins or loses, even if the game has
11:55
Speaker 3: been decided and normal people have changed the channel. And
12:00
Speaker 3: they also studied the direct and indirect revenue projections for
12:04
Speaker 3: the league. So if you added the sponsorships that the
12:07
Speaker 3: leagues would get from advertising, but more importantly, the indirect
12:11
Speaker 3: revenue from having such a hyper engaged audience of gamblers.
12:16
Speaker 3: The NFL, for example, was shown findings that they would
12:20
Speaker 3: make more than two billion dollars every year if gambling
12:24
Speaker 3: were legalized across the country, and because TV rights are
12:28
Speaker 3: their biggest money maker, that was just too good to
12:30
Speaker 3: pass up.
12:33
Speaker 1: I guess what was done with this? You know, I
12:35
Speaker 1: was trying to There's been a parallel track of developments
12:40
Speaker 1: over the last thirty years in our public policy, and
12:44
Speaker 1: that is we are running out of ways to tax people,
12:47
Speaker 1: right as you've had a you know, the the basically,
12:53
Speaker 1: it is just very hard to raise just ordinary taxes, right,
12:57
Speaker 1: whether you want to raise a property tax and income tax,
13:00
Speaker 1: the political it is very hard. And so what have
13:04
Speaker 1: lawmakers figured out? Vice taxes? Right? It started with the
13:09
Speaker 1: cigarettes and liquor, right, and you'd have these normal and
13:13
Speaker 1: you know, you'd throw in some tourism and they you know,
13:16
Speaker 1: all of these entities, and then marijuana, right, and then
13:22
Speaker 1: sports gambling and all this stuff. But I want to
13:25
Speaker 1: single out marijuana here for a minute, because I might
13:29
Speaker 1: argue that marijuana, the rollout of marijuana legalization and the
13:32
Speaker 1: rollout of sports gambling, right, Essentially, what we did is
13:38
Speaker 1: we didn't legalize every drug. We legalized one drug, a
13:44
Speaker 1: specific drug. With sports gambling, we went from nothing to everything.
13:50
Speaker 1: There was no piece meal. If anything, all we've peacemealed
13:55
Speaker 1: is state by state. But the minute you get in there,
13:59
Speaker 1: we immediately went and from this to betting on every
14:01
Speaker 1: pitch in baseball or you know, creating all these you know,
14:06
Speaker 1: extra derivative bets all over the place, adding every sport
14:11
Speaker 1: across the planet right in high it when you compare
14:17
Speaker 1: to marijuana, it's it's it like we're looking responsible when
14:20
Speaker 1: it comes to marijuana, well, looking completely irresponsible on sports
14:25
Speaker 1: dam and.
14:25
Speaker 3: Not just that chuck, but it's like it's as if
14:27
Speaker 3: you legalize a drug that's the legal industries is ten
14:31
Speaker 3: times more potent than what you were getting on the street,
14:33
Speaker 3: because there are ways of betting legally that are so
14:37
Speaker 3: so much vaster, it's so much easier. You can bet
14:41
Speaker 3: on so many more things than you ever could have
14:43
Speaker 3: through a street booky or even in Las Vegas.
14:45
Speaker 1: There are most street bookies did only a couple of sports,
14:48
Speaker 1: and they were like, right, and you're not going to
14:50
Speaker 1: probably get player props.
14:52
Speaker 3: Yeah, that same game. Parlays are essentially an invention of
14:56
Speaker 3: online bookmakers. These micro bets where you're betting on a
15:00
Speaker 3: play by play or possession by possession basis. That's entirely new,
15:05
Speaker 3: something you could only do if you're betting instantaneously from
15:08
Speaker 3: your phone. So yeah, I'm right there with you. It's
15:11
Speaker 3: like you might have thought there'd be baby steps or
15:14
Speaker 3: such tight guardrails at first, and then you'd ease things up.
15:19
Speaker 3: It was basically, you know, off to the races immediately.
15:23
Speaker 1: And this is where you know where you know, I
15:27
Speaker 1: go back to If you're really frustrated by this, you
15:29
Speaker 1: have one entity to blame, Congress. They had no interest
15:32
Speaker 1: and you know in some ways, Look, there was a
15:33
Speaker 1: story earlier this week. We're taping on February third, Tuesday. Second,
15:38
Speaker 1: you know, right before the Super Bowl. This is going
15:40
Speaker 1: to air before the Super Bowl. But I wanted a
15:42
Speaker 1: timestamp it because I believe yesterday there was a story
15:45
Speaker 1: on Monday of how Draftking and Fan Duel are suddenly
15:50
Speaker 1: throwing a bunch of money into federal political coffers because
15:54
Speaker 1: they're basically trying to prevent federal intervention in this at
15:59
Speaker 1: what they've pulled off, which is state by state, would
16:02
Speaker 1: you do this? When you can get to pick off
16:05
Speaker 1: regulation state by state, you really get to manipulate the process.
16:10
Speaker 1: Like I was reading, apparently West Virginia allows all sorts
16:13
Speaker 1: of experimentation on their mobile gambling, so that governor gets
16:17
Speaker 1: more money from those two entities than other governors, and
16:21
Speaker 1: they want to keep that sort of ability to use
16:24
Speaker 1: West Virginia as a peatrie dish to decide, hey, does
16:27
Speaker 1: this work well? This new way of offering a bet work,
16:30
Speaker 1: et cetera. It does seem as if that Congress is
16:36
Speaker 1: in an uninterest or inability to get involved at the
16:40
Speaker 1: beginning has made it probably impossible to now erect guardrails
16:45
Speaker 1: after the.
16:46
Speaker 3: Fact, no doubt, after the Supreme Court decision, there was
16:50
Speaker 3: a bill proposed by Chuck Schumer and a retiring Utah
16:53
Speaker 3: senator who I'm blanking on, and it was sort of
16:56
Speaker 3: like just a symbolic, you know, let's plan a flag
16:59
Speaker 3: of oh, we try to do something that got nowhere
17:02
Speaker 3: since then. Richard Blumenthal, the Democrat from Connecticut and Paul Tonko,
17:08
Speaker 3: a Congressman from New York, also a Democrat, have proposed
17:12
Speaker 3: a very aggressive set of reforms called the Safe Bet
17:15
Speaker 3: Act that obviously the industry detests, but even much much
17:20
Speaker 3: more modest proposals are resisted so aggressively by the industry
17:26
Speaker 3: and industry friendly members of Congress. Like there's always been
17:30
Speaker 3: a federal excise tax on betting. So for every one
17:34
Speaker 3: hundred dollars bet Congress or the federal government takes twenty
17:38
Speaker 3: five cents, which adds up to a lot, you know,
17:40
Speaker 3: if you're betting one hundred and fifty billion dollars a year.
17:43
Speaker 3: A few years ago a few members Tonco and Andrea Salinas,
17:48
Speaker 3: a Democrat from Oregon, proposed diverting. I think half of
17:52
Speaker 3: the money that raised toward research, treatment, and prevention for
17:56
Speaker 3: gambling problems. But research is so conspicuous neglected. You know,
18:02
Speaker 3: we don't really have a firm grasp of just how
18:04
Speaker 3: many people are betting, let alone how many people have problems.
18:08
Speaker 3: And you'd think using an excise tax to study the
18:13
Speaker 3: breath of the of the sin that you're taxing would
18:16
Speaker 3: be common sense. It was resistance, you know, the fight
18:22
Speaker 3: against that was so aggressive, so severe, and I mean
18:27
Speaker 3: that just goes to show how correctional.
18:29
Speaker 1: Yeah, like, how did they make their case to not
18:32
Speaker 1: do this, to not divert this money to studying this? Right,
18:35
Speaker 1: It's it's almost as rabbit as the gun manufacturers petrified
18:40
Speaker 1: of the CDC studying gunshot wounds as an epidemic issue.
18:46
Speaker 2: Right.
18:46
Speaker 3: The only thing I heard from people like Congresswoman Dina
18:49
Speaker 3: Titus of Nevada, who's, you know, a very industry friendly member.
18:53
Speaker 1: She's a yeah, say no more right, Nevada. Okay, I mean,
19:00
Speaker 1: like accept the premise that's your industry, right.
19:03
Speaker 3: All I remember her saying was this is already covered
19:06
Speaker 3: by states, that it would be redundant for Congress to
19:09
Speaker 3: fund it, which is just not true. State funding is
19:13
Speaker 3: so pitiful by the bare minimum that people advocate for
19:17
Speaker 3: on treatment, and you'd think, you know, a lot of
19:19
Speaker 3: gamblers who need help, need some safety net to get
19:22
Speaker 3: that because they're out of money. And also, yeah, or
19:27
Speaker 3: just understanding how much gambling is going on, states are
19:31
Speaker 3: not remotely funding that adequately.
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20:58
Speaker 1: When it comes to these sort of bet creations, right
21:04
Speaker 1: and I think that this is you know, I guess
21:07
Speaker 1: I look at it was the original sin allowing mobile gambling,
21:11
Speaker 1: because how did we go from allowing states to allow
21:15
Speaker 1: to be able to do sports books to mobile gambling? Like?
21:20
Speaker 1: Why was that not a larger debate or conversation. It
21:25
Speaker 1: just sort of this happened. And then this just these
21:30
Speaker 1: wonderful apps. And I say it, they're very good. They're
21:33
Speaker 1: really you know, there's some of they're very user friendly.
21:37
Speaker 1: I mean, they're as good as any apps you're going
21:39
Speaker 1: to use. In fact, they're too good. At some point,
21:45
Speaker 1: How did that? Why was that immediately legal too?
21:50
Speaker 3: It's so much more profitable For one, I did think
21:52
Speaker 3: it was a funny footnote on this story that New Jersey,
21:56
Speaker 3: you know, when they were petitioning the Supreme Court, they said,
21:59
Speaker 3: this is strictly for land based casinos and race tracks,
22:03
Speaker 3: and then as soon as the decision came down, they
22:04
Speaker 3: updated the law to legalize online betting across the states.
22:08
Speaker 2: So it just makes so much more money.
22:11
Speaker 3: It's so much easier, obviously, and the fact that lawmakers
22:14
Speaker 3: didn't put two and two together seems bizarre, and yet
22:19
Speaker 3: some of them have copped to that. The person who
22:21
Speaker 3: stands out in my mind as Charlie Baker, one of
22:23
Speaker 3: his last axis governor of Massachusetts, was legalizing book making.
22:27
Speaker 3: Months later he became president of the NCAA, and he said,
22:31
Speaker 3: as soon as he started talking to students and college
22:33
Speaker 3: athletes and realizing how out of control online betting was,
22:38
Speaker 3: it dawned on him that if you have to go
22:40
Speaker 3: to Las Vegas or track down a bookie or use
22:42
Speaker 3: some sketchy offshore website, people are not going to be betting
22:46
Speaker 3: at the rates they are now, and the problems would
22:48
Speaker 3: be a lot more contained. There are some states that
22:52
Speaker 3: restrict it to in person, including sometimes in person only
22:56
Speaker 3: on tribal land, just to simulate tribal economies, but ninety
23:00
Speaker 3: percent of this business is now online.
23:02
Speaker 1: So yeah, no, I mean, I look at my own habit, okay,
23:06
Speaker 1: I enjoy it. I now I've got my own ethics, right.
23:11
Speaker 1: I won't bet on any individual props or any individual
23:15
Speaker 1: games of sport, meaning tennis or any player where you're
23:19
Speaker 1: relying on a single individual. You know, I think tennis
23:22
Speaker 1: is you know, that's just more corruptible. And I just
23:27
Speaker 1: don't think it's a I think airs. I look at
23:29
Speaker 1: it as hey, I think I think there's hidden odds
23:32
Speaker 1: against me on this. I just don't think it's as
23:35
Speaker 1: safe as a bet is vote betting on a team sport.
23:38
Speaker 1: And so I have my own lines in the sand.
23:41
Speaker 1: But I think about my own habit. If I had
23:44
Speaker 1: to go down the street to a storefront to place
23:48
Speaker 1: my bets rather than just doing it on my couch,
23:53
Speaker 1: i'd probably bet. I'd probably cut back on my gambling
23:57
Speaker 1: by eighty percent. And they know that, right, And yet
24:03
Speaker 1: it's likely the social It is probably the societal change
24:08
Speaker 1: we should be making.
24:10
Speaker 3: Yeah, And you know, those sorts of friction points do
24:12
Speaker 3: make a difference. One thing that's debated now is to
24:16
Speaker 3: bet online, you have to enable geolocations. They can pinpoint
24:20
Speaker 3: very precisely exactly where you are. You could they geofence
24:24
Speaker 3: like federal buildings, so you can't bet in Washington.
24:27
Speaker 1: If you're fascinating in DC, where where you because I've
24:32
Speaker 1: done this, you know where where it allows it. And
24:36
Speaker 1: then you're like, why am I not allowed here? I'm
24:38
Speaker 1: like in the middle of the district. But if you're
24:40
Speaker 1: really close to a federal building, right, or if you're
24:43
Speaker 1: too close to Capitol Hill, there's an extra geofence.
24:48
Speaker 2: Right.
24:49
Speaker 3: So there's some talk now of well, we could geofense
24:52
Speaker 3: college campuses, or even more modestly, geofense freshman dorms or classrooms.
24:58
Speaker 3: And people say, well, people, well, across the street or
25:01
Speaker 3: you know whatever. It's like, sure, but it would it
25:03
Speaker 3: would be a deterrent or just on principle it might
25:06
Speaker 3: make sense.
25:08
Speaker 2: Things like that.
25:08
Speaker 3: Friction points are such a buzzword because the industry has
25:13
Speaker 3: been very effective at making it as frictionless as possible.
25:16
Speaker 3: That especially seems like the apt way of describing this
25:19
Speaker 3: micro betting where you're you know, betting play by play,
25:24
Speaker 3: and I you know, a psychologist of the University of
25:27
Speaker 3: New Mexico who study this said, just like, we don't
25:30
Speaker 3: sell you know, two hundred proof ethanol to get you
25:33
Speaker 3: drunk faster, Like maybe you would want to put some
25:37
Speaker 3: friction points in place so that people pump the brakes
25:40
Speaker 3: a little bit or are given the chance to take
25:43
Speaker 3: a breath and say, am you know, am I am
25:45
Speaker 3: I getting out of control here?
25:48
Speaker 1: So who is doing research? What were you able to
25:52
Speaker 1: uncover and how what is it being research that should.
25:56
Speaker 3: Be I've seen some compelling studies over the past couple
26:00
Speaker 3: of years that are able to isolate states that have
26:03
Speaker 3: legalized sports betting and those that haven't and see what
26:06
Speaker 3: the consequences are. And there is a demonstrable impact where
26:10
Speaker 3: it's legal. Bankruptcies are going up, credit scores are going down,
26:15
Speaker 3: personal savings are going down. There was even a study
26:18
Speaker 3: I wish I could remember the university to credit. But
26:21
Speaker 3: incidents of domestic violence when the home football team loses
26:26
Speaker 3: are higher in states with legal sports betting than those
26:29
Speaker 3: that aren't. And by the way, like rage induced by
26:33
Speaker 3: gambling and the violence that that can motivate is so
26:36
Speaker 3: scary and goes well beyond domestic violence.
26:38
Speaker 1: Well, this is becoming a thing with right. The NCAA
26:41
Speaker 1: even did public service announcement to television adds saying, hey,
26:46
Speaker 1: you know, leave the players, you know, leave the players alone.
26:50
Speaker 3: It's a disaster waiting to happen. I get into that
26:53
Speaker 3: in my book, and there are people I spoke one person,
26:56
Speaker 3: the chief security former chief security officer of the NFL,
27:00
Speaker 3: said it's only a matter of time, as he put it,
27:02
Speaker 3: before someone tries to kill an athlete because they cost
27:04
Speaker 3: them a bed. I think that would make some lawmakers
27:07
Speaker 3: take action.
27:08
Speaker 1: Danny, I can tell you this. Look, I'm a huge
27:11
Speaker 1: University of Miami fan. Arguably the only reason Miami lost
27:16
Speaker 1: was due to a block punt, and on that play
27:19
Speaker 1: there was a missed block. Okay, guy just seemed a
27:22
Speaker 1: whiff mm hmkay. The most bet on prop, one of
27:27
Speaker 1: the more bet on props was a block punt that
27:30
Speaker 1: it was going to happen, And so immediately social media
27:34
Speaker 1: goes into this conspiratorial mindset. You know, I feel terrible
27:37
Speaker 1: for this kid. Look, everybody has brain fart. It happens.
27:41
Speaker 1: But now, because of all this gambling in there, I
27:46
Speaker 1: understand why many will jump to that conclusion, right, because
27:52
Speaker 1: has this happened. Yes, We've just had baseball players get
27:57
Speaker 1: indicted for this, Basketball players get in guided for this.
28:01
Speaker 1: So it's not as if it's a crazy thing to assume.
28:06
Speaker 1: But wow, does that you know, look at what that
28:11
Speaker 1: guy's social media feed, what happened to it? And it's
28:15
Speaker 1: this is this is an uncomfortable development because it is
28:21
Speaker 1: inevitably going to lead to where somebody loses their loses
28:25
Speaker 1: their marbles over.
28:27
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, I mean there've already been people arrested for
28:30
Speaker 3: threatening to kill people in the most gruesome ways. So yeah,
28:34
Speaker 3: sadly that doesn't seem alarmist. The cynicism also that you
28:38
Speaker 3: were describing, This kind of conspiratorial thinking is so mainstream now.
28:43
Speaker 3: Sometimes just as a game, I'll search the words rigged
28:46
Speaker 3: on X when I'm watching. It's this one post after another,
28:50
Speaker 3: this is rigged. Here's proof it's rigged.
28:52
Speaker 2: You know.
28:52
Speaker 1: Sure the script. They're following a script, right, the old script.
28:56
Speaker 1: I see them, my son. It's so prevalent in the
28:59
Speaker 1: conversation that my son will say, well, that's against the script,
29:02
Speaker 1: and I'm just like, you know, it's just like he's like,
29:05
Speaker 1: the language is so coded now that everybody speaks it
29:08
Speaker 1: this way now.
29:09
Speaker 3: Right, And this is why this is such a bigger
29:12
Speaker 3: problem than just how it affects gamblers, because so many
29:15
Speaker 3: fans in general are adopting that kind of cynicism. After
29:19
Speaker 3: a couple of players on the Cleveland Guardians were arrested
29:22
Speaker 3: last year for fixing specific pitches that they intentionally threw
29:27
Speaker 3: his balls allegedly and were able to bet tens of
29:31
Speaker 3: thousands of dollars on that.
29:32
Speaker 1: Which, by the way, I've thought about this incident a lot. Right,
29:35
Speaker 1: you're am Manuel Classe. This is the guy that's been
29:38
Speaker 1: alleged to uses. You make a ton of money. You
29:42
Speaker 1: may have a lot of buddies, friends, family relatives, maybe
29:46
Speaker 1: have had their hand out. You can't help them all out,
29:50
Speaker 1: But you rationalize doing this because you're like, look, i'll
29:53
Speaker 1: get the guy out. I'll throw him a pitch. I'll
29:57
Speaker 1: go ahead and give him this. I get to help
29:59
Speaker 1: out my b buddies or help out my friend. It's
30:02
Speaker 1: no sweat off. You know, it doesn't cost me a thing. Yeah,
30:06
Speaker 1: it cost me a pitch, but I'll find my way
30:08
Speaker 1: out of it, right, you know. And in his own head,
30:10
Speaker 1: he's like, I'm not you know, I'm not throwing the game, right,
30:14
Speaker 1: I'm I've got I've got this under control. And I
30:17
Speaker 1: say this because I'm not trying to rationally justify what
30:21
Speaker 1: a manual Classe is accused of I'm not doing that
30:24
Speaker 1: at all. But this is how good people end up
30:28
Speaker 1: doing bad things with good intentions.
30:32
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, I mean, I think the argument that today's
30:34
Speaker 3: athletes are uncorruptible is so ridiculous, and there's so many
30:38
Speaker 3: reasons why.
30:39
Speaker 1: No, they're comfortable in the way I just described. And yeah,
30:41
Speaker 1: and they're not, in their mind not being corrupt. They're
30:45
Speaker 1: just throwing a bone to a buddy so that they
30:47
Speaker 1: don't have to write a check themselves.
30:49
Speaker 3: It's even important to remember that fixing doesn't necessarily mean failing, right, Like,
30:54
Speaker 3: you could say you could bet on will the next
30:56
Speaker 3: pitch be off speed? So you could just say, hey,
30:58
Speaker 3: I'm going to throw a breaking to lead off this batter.
31:02
Speaker 3: Bet on that you're not doing. You know, you're not
31:04
Speaker 3: trying to lose. You're just giving them an inside edge.
31:08
Speaker 3: You could bet on who will the first player be
31:10
Speaker 3: to catch a pass in the Super Bowl. So if
31:13
Speaker 3: the quarterback said I'm gonna throw it to my tight end,
31:16
Speaker 3: you know, that's fixing, but it's not. It's not intentionally losing.
31:21
Speaker 3: So that temptation is just so much more. You know,
31:25
Speaker 3: you could easily imagine someone going down that hole.
31:30
Speaker 1: Well, is there any good guys in the sports industry
31:32
Speaker 1: on this.
31:36
Speaker 2: Good guys is a tough way of putting it.
31:38
Speaker 3: I would say there are definitely people who are alarmed
31:40
Speaker 3: of what's happening and speaking up about it. Tony Clark,
31:44
Speaker 3: the former baseball player is now head of the players Union,
31:47
Speaker 3: spoke to me saying the players Association was not consulted
31:51
Speaker 3: as legalization took off. He's worried about all the threats
31:55
Speaker 3: that players are facing, the temptation for them to gamble.
31:58
Speaker 3: Thinks something must be done. You've seen athletes recently. Tyrese
32:03
Speaker 3: Haliburton in the NBA said, you know, I feel like
32:06
Speaker 3: a prop out there. I don't like what's happening. Michael
32:10
Speaker 3: Porter Junior, whose brother Johntay was banned for life for
32:14
Speaker 3: including with gamblers to fix his prop bets, gave a
32:19
Speaker 3: very candid interview this past offseason, saying things are out
32:22
Speaker 3: of control and just the mess that this has made.
32:26
Speaker 3: I can't believe the league embraced this. You're hearing more
32:30
Speaker 3: of that and yet a lot of I get the
32:32
Speaker 3: sense that a lot of people in sports are walking
32:34
Speaker 3: on eggshells when they talk about gambling. Maybe their friends
32:38
Speaker 3: are doing ads maybe they might want to work in
32:41
Speaker 3: media and realize they're.
32:43
Speaker 1: Too much money involved.
32:44
Speaker 2: Look, yeah, I mean that simple.
32:46
Speaker 1: You know, thirty years ago. You know, look, I'll give
32:49
Speaker 1: you a I think this is a apples to pairs comparison. Okay,
32:55
Speaker 1: not quite apples and oranges. And that is the decision
32:59
Speaker 1: by Congress to legalize advertising of prescription drugs. And then
33:05
Speaker 1: how all of a sudden this became a crutch for
33:09
Speaker 1: the news industry in particular, and it was sort of
33:13
Speaker 1: this lifeline, right, and that's and then so what happens
33:16
Speaker 1: is they get so addicted to that that, you know,
33:20
Speaker 1: even as you have entities that are concerned that, hey,
33:24
Speaker 1: these pharmaceutical companies by advertising, you know, it's misleading people
33:28
Speaker 1: about certain drugs and this and that, and the news
33:34
Speaker 1: organizations were less credible because they so desperately needed to
33:38
Speaker 1: add dollars from those prescription drugs. Right, Look, me, just
33:42
Speaker 1: doing this segment may put sponsorships. You know, I am
33:45
Speaker 1: not you know I say this. I use a few
33:48
Speaker 1: of these apps. But you know, the the sudden necessity
33:55
Speaker 1: the sports information world has, right, they so dominant, particularly
34:00
Speaker 1: podcasting and all this other stuff. You know, if you
34:05
Speaker 1: took it away. Suddenly you'd have people say, hey, that's
34:08
Speaker 1: going to be my livelihood. There's no advertising, this is
34:11
Speaker 1: going to leave this huge hole in vacuum. And it's
34:15
Speaker 1: just like, yeah, I mean, it's like it's like getting yourself.
34:19
Speaker 1: It's like going to the mob for security. Be careful
34:22
Speaker 1: who you get into bed with. You suddenly can't get
34:24
Speaker 1: out of your deal.
34:25
Speaker 2: Right.
34:25
Speaker 3: I'm concerned about being complicit in promoting gambling through those
34:29
Speaker 3: ad deals. I'm maybe even more concerned about how it
34:32
Speaker 3: might cause journalists to think twice about covering something that
34:35
Speaker 3: would embarrass the sports boxer and the leagues for doing
34:38
Speaker 3: business with them. And you know, sometimes I can feel
34:42
Speaker 3: like a sort of a J school debate, like to add.
34:44
Speaker 1: I won't even debate. Look, I'll tell you Look, this
34:47
Speaker 1: happened to me with the NFL. I was doing a
34:50
Speaker 1: story during the Super Bowl I Meet the Press, featuring
34:53
Speaker 1: a player who was soon in the league over the
34:55
Speaker 1: concussion issue. This is CTE. This goes back about to anyone,
34:59
Speaker 1: And I was going to do the episode of Meet
35:02
Speaker 1: the Press on the field of the Super Bowl was
35:04
Speaker 1: an NBC year, and the NFL informed NBC Sports that
35:08
Speaker 1: you know, no and so I was basically told, we're
35:12
Speaker 1: not going to tell you what to cover, but if
35:14
Speaker 1: you want to do if you want to broadcast from here,
35:17
Speaker 1: you can't cover that story. I chose to do the story,
35:20
Speaker 1: So I stayed back in DC, you know, sweat off
35:22
Speaker 1: my back was like, was there a small personal discipline
35:25
Speaker 1: how I missed out on going to a Super Bowl?
35:28
Speaker 1: But that's how the league's strong arm, right, And so
35:32
Speaker 1: they did. They were doing that on concussions. Imagine what
35:34
Speaker 1: they're going to do on anybody of their media partners
35:38
Speaker 1: that questions their relationships with these sports books.
35:41
Speaker 2: No question.
35:42
Speaker 3: Someone at ESPN said the rule, like the unspoken rule
35:47
Speaker 3: in the newsroom for so long, was you can sort
35:51
Speaker 3: of reference gambling, but don't do anything that'll f up
35:53
Speaker 3: our deals with the leagues, which meant, don't push gambling
35:56
Speaker 3: too much because the.
35:57
Speaker 1: Leg didn't like now it's going to be.
35:59
Speaker 3: Now the other right, don't say anything bad about gambling.
36:02
Speaker 3: Is that'll f up our deals with the leagues. Another
36:05
Speaker 3: former ESPN reporter said, it's as if sports media is
36:08
Speaker 3: being bribed by all this ad advertising that they're not
36:12
Speaker 3: covering things they might they're biting their tongues pulling punches,
36:16
Speaker 3: you know, choose your metaphor. I think that's very real.
36:19
Speaker 3: That's not just a hypothetical danger here.
36:22
Speaker 1: So let's talk about the sadly, the societal triggers that
36:26
Speaker 1: might sober up policy makers and sober up the leagues.
36:31
Speaker 1: It sounds like number one is a player gets attacked
36:35
Speaker 1: by an angry gambler is probably the is probably one
36:42
Speaker 1: of those triggers. Yep.
36:44
Speaker 3: I think there's three. They're all pretty disturbing to think about.
36:47
Speaker 3: One is that. The other is a rash of suicides
36:50
Speaker 3: among gambling addicts, which has happened in Europe and been
36:53
Speaker 3: a big motivator for reregulating that industry, saying, the industry
36:58
Speaker 3: can't self police, this is out of control. We must
37:01
Speaker 3: tighten the card rails. And the third would be a
37:04
Speaker 3: major match fixing scandal. You know, even beyond what we've
37:07
Speaker 3: seen now where people say this is destroying sports, we
37:11
Speaker 3: were not going to allow that, even if it's making
37:13
Speaker 3: peop all.
37:13
Speaker 1: The money fixing, all the fixes that have been exposed
37:16
Speaker 1: of are always sort of lesser, you know. It's frankly,
37:21
Speaker 1: where there's less money at stake, right, or less fewer
37:25
Speaker 1: gamblers in that take the recent indictment, it was almost
37:29
Speaker 1: all involving games, not in the Power For or five
37:33
Speaker 1: conferences in basketball.
37:35
Speaker 3: Yeah, it was humiliating to me as a Georgetown grad
37:38
Speaker 3: because there was one fix where de Paul allegedly intentionally
37:43
Speaker 3: lost the first half. So the indictments in Georgetown was
37:46
Speaker 3: up double digits and then the fix was over and
37:48
Speaker 3: DePaul came back and won. So stuff like that things, Well,
37:52
Speaker 3: that's the.
37:53
Speaker 1: Story of Georgetown basketball. As my friend Chris Eliza will
37:55
Speaker 1: tell you, Yeah, no doubt.
37:57
Speaker 3: But yeah, if it were something on the scale of
38:00
Speaker 3: a Pete Rose or you know, even it's strange. The
38:03
Speaker 3: biggest sc gambling scandal of this century was Tim Donaghe
38:07
Speaker 3: the NBA ref who was convicted of, you know, betting
38:11
Speaker 3: on more than one hundred games he officiated. It seems
38:14
Speaker 3: quite clear he was blowing the whistle to look out
38:16
Speaker 3: for those bets, and people made hundreds of millions of
38:19
Speaker 3: dollars supposedly off of colluding with him. You'd think the
38:24
Speaker 3: NBA would never touch gambling after that. But if something
38:27
Speaker 3: like that were to happen now, I think people would
38:30
Speaker 3: say this is a direct result of what's happened.
38:36
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40:20
Speaker 1: it something here with officiating, and so then it becomes
40:24
Speaker 1: the question is are we going to start regulating sports
40:27
Speaker 1: simply to make sure the gambling is honest? Right? Because
40:32
Speaker 1: I've thought about this issue of referees in this respect,
40:36
Speaker 1: I'm very friendly with some college basketball coaches, and I
40:39
Speaker 1: was really curious because I've been very you know, there
40:45
Speaker 1: are no correct me if I'm wrong, but you care.
40:48
Speaker 1: There are no full time college basketball officials. Nobody whose
40:51
Speaker 1: full time job is this. They all have another job.
40:55
Speaker 1: These are these are side hustles. Some of them are
40:59
Speaker 1: hoping they can. May you get the call to the NBA,
41:01
Speaker 1: or get the call to the NFL, or get the
41:03
Speaker 1: call of Major League Baseball. But in that, particularly in
41:06
Speaker 1: these college ranks, right, and that in many cases, this
41:09
Speaker 1: is a second job. If you're a MAC referee, right
41:19
Speaker 1: at this point, maybe you're not, you know, you're trying
41:22
Speaker 1: to get to the SEC, or you're trying to get
41:24
Speaker 1: to the Big ten, or you know, and at some
41:26
Speaker 1: point you know, maybe you know you're It just feels
41:32
Speaker 1: like the corruptibility of underpaid refs in lesser known conferences
41:41
Speaker 1: that are equally available to gamble on by the same
41:45
Speaker 1: people are a huge vulnerability. And yet so there's a
41:50
Speaker 1: part of me that says, hey, we should worry about
41:52
Speaker 1: professionalizing the referee ranks. And then I look at it
41:54
Speaker 1: the other way. It's like, wait a minute, are we
41:56
Speaker 1: going to try to sort of police the sport just
41:59
Speaker 1: to make sure the gambling is on the up and up.
42:03
Speaker 3: I do think that's a reason why there's such a
42:06
Speaker 3: push to automate so much of officiating, you know, automatic
42:10
Speaker 3: ball and stripe calling, using technology to spot the football
42:14
Speaker 3: in a football game, all sorts of stuff like that. Yeah,
42:16
Speaker 3: the technology is very appealing in its own right, but
42:19
Speaker 3: a big argument for it is it removes the corruptibility
42:23
Speaker 3: risk of officials, I think.
42:26
Speaker 1: Which is sort of strange, and it like that we're
42:28
Speaker 1: so worried about the corruptibility, we don't want to actually
42:32
Speaker 1: limit the potential for corruption. Instead, let's eliminate some jobs.
42:40
Speaker 3: Yeah, and you know, there's a lot of evidence of
42:42
Speaker 3: officials being corrupted quickly. One that I thought was very
42:45
Speaker 3: funny is there's this issue in tennis of what's called
42:48
Speaker 3: court siding, where gamblers who are at the matches are
42:51
Speaker 3: betting before the sportsbook heres that a point went a
42:55
Speaker 3: certain way and sometimes oversees. The umpire in a tennis
43:00
Speaker 3: match would input who won a given point, and they
43:04
Speaker 3: were paid off by these court siding gamblers to just
43:07
Speaker 3: be a little slow in tapping the tablet computer and
43:11
Speaker 3: saying this point went this way that way, and if
43:14
Speaker 3: you can get that twenty or thirty second edge, you
43:17
Speaker 3: know where you're like a step ahead of the sports books.
43:20
Speaker 3: You can make a lot of money. It's as subtle
43:21
Speaker 3: as that.
43:22
Speaker 2: Sometimes.
43:23
Speaker 1: So you, like I said, you confess that you are
43:29
Speaker 1: a modest gambler, you enjoy sports. After you did this
43:33
Speaker 1: whole book, how do you watch sports now?
43:39
Speaker 3: Yeah, I've honestly, you know, I bet a little bit.
43:42
Speaker 3: I was in New York when they legalized, and who
43:44
Speaker 3: could resist, you know, pocketing thousands of bucks just to
43:47
Speaker 3: sign up for a half dozen sports books. So I
43:49
Speaker 3: was doing a bit of betting. Then I lived in
43:51
Speaker 3: Colorado when my wife was in grad school and I
43:53
Speaker 3: was alone a lot, So definitely betting a little bit
43:56
Speaker 3: back then. Over the past year, I got to say
43:59
Speaker 3: I haven't been betting nearly as much, sometimes not at all,
44:02
Speaker 3: because part of it is just hearing from professional gamblers
44:06
Speaker 3: and book makers how difficult it is to win. You
44:09
Speaker 3: know that one percent of people are making money, that
44:12
Speaker 3: if you do make money, they'll cut down how much
44:14
Speaker 3: you're gonna wager very aggressively.
44:15
Speaker 1: This is a problem, Like, you know, this is a
44:18
Speaker 1: problem I've run into. I'm I guess I'm a I
44:21
Speaker 1: didn't think I was that good, But the minute you're
44:25
Speaker 1: on a run, you suddenly they like limit and you're
44:28
Speaker 1: just like, well, wait a minute, how is that? How
44:32
Speaker 1: is that legal?
44:34
Speaker 2: Yeah? Oh, people say it shouldn't be, but I don't care.
44:38
Speaker 1: Yeah, I don't know, I don't understand. You know, it
44:43
Speaker 1: should the same, It should be the same amount. If
44:47
Speaker 1: I win too much or lose too much should be
44:50
Speaker 1: the same metric. But that's not the metric they use
44:53
Speaker 1: to determine, right, Yeah.
44:54
Speaker 3: I mean, and when you lose, when you're losing, the
44:56
Speaker 3: sky's the limit. Like there's someone who's lost one hundred
44:59
Speaker 3: million dollars betting on sports online, and.
45:01
Speaker 1: You have a bunch of free bets. Hey, look you've
45:03
Speaker 1: got free bets. You got five free you bet. Yeah.
45:05
Speaker 3: So between that and also just hearing such upsetting stories,
45:10
Speaker 3: honestly of the industry taking advantage of people and praying
45:14
Speaker 3: on people, that turned me off to where I felt
45:17
Speaker 3: a little hooky about patronizing that business at least for now.
45:20
Speaker 1: What have you learned about who controls Fandel and who
45:23
Speaker 1: controls DraftKings.
45:26
Speaker 3: Fandel, right around the time that legalization took off, was
45:29
Speaker 3: acquired by an Irish company called Flutter. Fandel was based
45:32
Speaker 3: in Ireland to begin with, but Flutter is a conglomerate.
45:36
Speaker 3: You'll see Patty Power betting shops all over England. Patty
45:40
Speaker 3: Powers under Flutter. It's a huge company. DraftKings is based
45:44
Speaker 3: in Boston. It's an American company. They're the two giants
45:49
Speaker 3: and Fandel's leadership has changed a lot since it's founding.
45:54
Speaker 3: A lot of the people who founded DraftKings are still in,
45:56
Speaker 3: you know, in the c suite.
45:59
Speaker 1: Are either one of them publicly traded companies.
46:02
Speaker 3: Yeah, DraftKings is in the US and Flutter is in
46:05
Speaker 3: other markets.
46:08
Speaker 1: Aren't the leagues have equity stakes?
46:11
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, early on, which I don't think it's conspiratorial
46:16
Speaker 3: to think that gave them an extra motive to course
46:20
Speaker 3: their business get vastly bigger.
46:22
Speaker 2: Yeah.
46:22
Speaker 3: And there's layers to the league's stake in the gambling
46:26
Speaker 3: business that even goes beyond that. One that I think
46:29
Speaker 3: is so alarming is that the leagues have a stake
46:32
Speaker 3: in these companies that are the so called integrity monitors
46:35
Speaker 3: that are charged with flagging and investigating suspicious bets, bets
46:40
Speaker 3: that shouldn't be placed. Considering that those companies have partial
46:45
Speaker 3: owners who you know, are the leagues themselves, that's a
46:49
Speaker 3: huge conflict of interest. Not only that, but they're bigger
46:52
Speaker 3: business is an integrity monitoring, it's facilitating online bookmaking by
46:57
Speaker 3: distributing the data that allows real time betting. So there
47:02
Speaker 3: is such a disincentive for them to expose something that
47:06
Speaker 3: would profoundly damage the betting business and the leagues for
47:11
Speaker 3: being a part of it.
47:13
Speaker 1: You know, you're really just describing are you describing tobacco
47:17
Speaker 1: companies in the nineteen fifties?
47:20
Speaker 3: For a while, I was reluctant to make that comparison,
47:22
Speaker 3: just because it's so inflammatory and people like really freak
47:25
Speaker 3: out when you say that. I think the advertising is
47:29
Speaker 3: the most undeniable comparison. There's actually a group at Northeastern
47:35
Speaker 3: Law School that were instrumental in exposing industry practices in
47:39
Speaker 3: the tobacco business, and now they've set their sights on
47:42
Speaker 3: sports betting, and they made that comparison. I felt it
47:45
Speaker 3: was pretty convincing that the way celebrities and just beloved
47:50
Speaker 3: people are pushing this, saying it's harmless, suggesting the kids
47:55
Speaker 3: that it's just the thing that adults do or that
47:57
Speaker 3: people do, that has such echoes of how tobacco used
48:01
Speaker 3: to be advertised.
48:02
Speaker 1: So at the end of a lot of the podcasts
48:04
Speaker 1: I listened to, you'll you'll get the perfunctory if you've
48:07
Speaker 1: got a gambling problem in New York, call one eight
48:10
Speaker 1: hundred hope or something, and Washington, DC it's this, and
48:14
Speaker 1: Virginia's this and they go through and then go all
48:15
Speaker 1: the numbers. Did you call up any of those numbers?
48:20
Speaker 1: Did you see how they work? I mean, yeah, that
48:24
Speaker 1: would have been smart. I did talk to someone who did.
48:26
Speaker 1: He was starting a telehealth company and he wanted to
48:30
Speaker 1: investigate what exactly is out there for people. Maybe he
48:33
Speaker 1: has a little bit of a motivation to say it's
48:35
Speaker 1: terrible because his company is filling a supposed void. But
48:39
Speaker 1: he said he'd call helplines and they would direct you
48:43
Speaker 1: to people who've been out of practice for years, or
48:46
Speaker 1: they said I'm not a gambling counselor how how did
48:49
Speaker 1: I ever get on this list? Or there would he
48:52
Speaker 1: would find that they would direct you to, you know,
48:55
Speaker 1: two counselors covering a state like Colorado. That's enormous And
48:59
Speaker 1: if you're on one side of the state, you know,
49:02
Speaker 1: good luck getting weekly helped from someone on the other side.
49:04
Speaker 1: It's not at all doing the job. And then how
49:10
Speaker 1: much did you get into the prediction market aspect of things,
49:14
Speaker 1: or did you really stick to sports gambling in this book?
49:17
Speaker 3: Yeah, didn't cover it in the book for a couple
49:19
Speaker 3: of reasons. One is just timing. It's really taken off recently,
49:22
Speaker 3: and as you know, books have to be finalized quite
49:25
Speaker 3: a bit in advance. And the other was I think
49:28
Speaker 3: they are genuinely in legal limbo and might get invalidated
49:32
Speaker 3: at least in some parts of the country as far
49:34
Speaker 3: as taking bets on sports goes. So I didn't want
49:38
Speaker 3: the book to, you know, have a short shelf life.
49:41
Speaker 1: Does let me, I mean leave you with this. Europe
49:45
Speaker 1: the culture of gambling has always been much greater in
49:50
Speaker 1: the United Kingdom in general. Right, The fact that FanDuel
49:54
Speaker 1: is Irish owned is not shocking to me. We know
49:57
Speaker 1: you can bet on you could always bet on an
49:59
Speaker 1: American pola in London. You know, there's always been a looser.
50:03
Speaker 1: I mean, London is still one of the strangest casino
50:06
Speaker 1: gambling experiences I've ever had, where I'm playing black check
50:09
Speaker 1: and people are betting my hands behind me and all
50:11
Speaker 1: this stuff. Yeah, it's one of those instances. Does Europe
50:15
Speaker 1: do anything better than we do to sort of minimize
50:18
Speaker 1: this risk? Or is it or was it simply because
50:22
Speaker 1: it was embedded in their culture? They're just a little more.
50:26
Speaker 1: They've gone through growth. Are we just going through early
50:29
Speaker 1: growing pains? Is there anything to learn from how Europe's
50:31
Speaker 1: done this or is having the same problem now that
50:34
Speaker 1: this has all gone mobile.
50:36
Speaker 3: Oh, there's absolutely a ton to learn. And I think
50:39
Speaker 3: one of the most shameful things that happen with legalization here,
50:43
Speaker 3: and I guess this is not unique to gambling when
50:45
Speaker 3: it comes to American policy making, was just being totally
50:49
Speaker 3: oblivious to precedent overseas, as if this is some grand
50:53
Speaker 3: American experiment and we'll figure things out as we go.
50:58
Speaker 3: All of the things that we're debating about, you know,
51:00
Speaker 3: deceptive promotions and excessive advertising and too many ways to
51:04
Speaker 3: bed on things that are easily corruptible, all of those
51:08
Speaker 3: have been litigated in you know, public discourse or in
51:11
Speaker 3: courts in Europe, and there's been this realization that things
51:16
Speaker 3: were out of hand and they had to crack down.
51:17
Speaker 3: And now many of those same companies that were punished
51:21
Speaker 3: overseas for bad practices are doing the exact same things
51:25
Speaker 3: in the US. It's kind of galling, But yeah, as
51:30
Speaker 3: far as you know, are they smarter than us. No,
51:32
Speaker 3: They've just had more time to come to terms with
51:36
Speaker 3: how bad things can get if you don't really regulate
51:38
Speaker 3: this business aggressively.
51:42
Speaker 1: What's the what's left of the black market versus the
51:47
Speaker 1: free market? I mean, or is it still hard to
51:50
Speaker 1: assess because you basically two of the biggest states in
51:52
Speaker 1: the Union still aren't legal, Texas and California.
51:57
Speaker 3: Right, But they've got prediction market betting now, so plenty
51:59
Speaker 3: of people will be betting on the Super Bowl through
52:01
Speaker 3: prediction markets in ways that are basically indistinguishable from what
52:05
Speaker 3: you can get onsuishable.
52:07
Speaker 2: Yeah.
52:07
Speaker 1: I've looked at it, and you're like, it's the same
52:10
Speaker 1: point spread, it's the same You're just buying a quote
52:13
Speaker 1: share or something like that. You know.
52:14
Speaker 3: Yeah, they've even introduced they've even introduced so called combos
52:18
Speaker 3: for the Super Bowl that are they're parlays?
52:20
Speaker 2: Who are we kidding? Yeah, you know.
52:24
Speaker 3: I don't want to sound like a broken record with
52:26
Speaker 3: the arguments for legalization. I do think it's worthwhile, though,
52:28
Speaker 3: to assess them in light on what's happened. One of
52:31
Speaker 3: the main arguments was it would drive out the black market,
52:34
Speaker 3: that if you could bet legally, why would you bother
52:36
Speaker 3: go into a bookie or some sketchy website.
52:39
Speaker 2: That has not happened.
52:41
Speaker 3: One credible estimate I think is that about fifty billion
52:45
Speaker 3: dollars continue to be wagered illegally. That might be baffling.
52:49
Speaker 3: Even beyond the states that haven't legalized. Why are people
52:52
Speaker 3: in states with legal betting betting illegally. There will always
52:57
Speaker 3: be some inherent appeals to going under the table, you know,
53:01
Speaker 3: betting anonymously, betting on credit, betting on things you can't
53:04
Speaker 3: bet on through licensed operators. But again, the idea that
53:09
Speaker 3: we would drive this out through legalization was either naive
53:12
Speaker 3: or disingenuous. And when we're talking about corrupting sports, they said,
53:17
Speaker 3: the legal market will give us this huge window in
53:20
Speaker 3: the betting activity. I spoke with all sorts of people
53:23
Speaker 3: inside sports, including at the companies that monitor those bets,
53:28
Speaker 3: and they say, if we had a real sophisticated fixer
53:31
Speaker 3: and a gambling syndicate working with them, they would obviously
53:35
Speaker 3: still go through the black market, and we would have
53:37
Speaker 3: such a difficult time catching that.
53:39
Speaker 2: So that problem.
53:40
Speaker 1: By knowing this, only really the idiots are going to
53:44
Speaker 1: use the traceable systems of the mobile. I mean, I
53:47
Speaker 1: still think one of the most you know, the greatest
53:49
Speaker 1: trick the Silicon Valley ever pulled is if the federal
53:54
Speaker 1: government said, if everybody could please carry a device that
53:58
Speaker 1: we could track you with. No, you would get that device.
54:01
Speaker 1: But when when Tim Cook says, hey, we've got this
54:05
Speaker 1: really cool device that allows you to track all sorts
54:08
Speaker 1: of things, and here's air tags and here's all sorts
54:10
Speaker 1: of things. You know, we'll gladly submit ourselves. You know,
54:14
Speaker 1: so it does, you know, Thank goodness, we've all been
54:19
Speaker 1: dumb enough for some of these guys to allow us
54:21
Speaker 1: to carry around a GPS monitor.
54:25
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's like, in a way, legalization is like laying
54:28
Speaker 3: a trap for really stupid people and the hardened criminals,
54:33
Speaker 3: the people who know what they're doing would never be
54:35
Speaker 3: so clumsy.
54:37
Speaker 1: Well, Danny, look, it's an eye opening book. It's just
54:40
Speaker 1: one of those. And I don't I don't want this
54:44
Speaker 1: to come across the wrong way. But it's like everything
54:48
Speaker 1: you reported is like, of course I hate to say that, right, Like,
54:52
Speaker 1: and there were things I didn't know, but yet it
54:54
Speaker 1: still came across of like, oh duh, right, of course
54:58
Speaker 1: this is how it's working. Of course they're doing this, right,
55:01
Speaker 1: This is all in pursuit of the mighty dollar, right, Like,
55:05
Speaker 1: there's no doubt what the motivation is. And we are
55:09
Speaker 1: putting a generation of young men in harm's way, and
55:14
Speaker 1: I think that's the thing that out have scared the
55:16
Speaker 1: but Jesus out of all of us.
55:18
Speaker 3: Yeah, and again, Gosh, say the whole book. I know
55:22
Speaker 3: you preface it how you did. I think there's stuff
55:25
Speaker 3: that will blow people away if they read the book.
55:27
Speaker 3: And I also think even if you suspected that there
55:30
Speaker 3: are some people in the industry who are conflicted about
55:32
Speaker 3: what's happening, to hear them say it so bluntly that
55:36
Speaker 3: they feel like this is ethically problematic or like shit
55:40
Speaker 3: could really hit the fan if certain types of bets
55:43
Speaker 3: take off.
55:44
Speaker 2: I think that is sobering.
55:46
Speaker 3: Even if we sort of had a hunch that people
55:48
Speaker 3: might have felt that way, to hear them say it is.
55:50
Speaker 1: Basically what you're saying. You found people in the industry
55:52
Speaker 1: that is like, I can't believe we get to do
55:54
Speaker 1: this legally.
55:55
Speaker 2: Exactly.
55:56
Speaker 1: Yeah, Danny, the books called everybody loses, but some of
56:04
Speaker 1: us are still going to chase the wind on Super
56:06
Speaker 1: Bowl Sunday. Anyway, Danny appreciate the time.
56:08
Speaker 2: Thank you, Chuck
56:11
Speaker 1: H