Latest / The Right Time with Bomani Jones / Bill Belichick snubbed from Hall of Fame + Danny Funt on Sports Gambling's rise | 01.28

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Bill Belichick snubbed from Hall of Fame + Danny Funt on Sports Gambling's rise | 01.28 · The Right Time with Bomani Jones

• 0:05
  Speaker 1: Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the right time, A Wave Original.
• 0:08
  Speaker 1: My name is Beaumont Jones. Thanks for listening wherever you
• 0:10
  Speaker 1: get your podcast. Thanks for watching us on YouTube. Subscribe, like,
• 0:14
  Speaker 1: rate us, review us, give us five stars. You only
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: give us four stars. I'm inclined to believe you are
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: a hater. We have an interview with Danny Funt, the
• 0:21
  Speaker 1: author of Everybody Loses, a great book on how gambling
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: has infiltrated sports.
• 0:26
  Speaker 2: We'll get to that in a second. We recorded that
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  Speaker 2: a little while ago.
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  Speaker 1: In the meantime, tween time, Bill Belichick is not, we
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  Speaker 1: found out that he's not going to be a first
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  Speaker 1: ballot Hall of Famer. And I have to say, I
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  Speaker 1: am shocked that somehow Bill Belichick has become a unifying figure,
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  Speaker 1: something that I.
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  Speaker 2: Did not think was possible.
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  Speaker 1: But him not being a first ballot Hall of Famer,
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  Speaker 1: that brought everybody together. Now, look, I know one thing
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  Speaker 1: that brings people together very easily and that everybody loves,
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  Speaker 1: especially on the Internet, is the ability to say that
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  Speaker 1: other people are stupid. All right, that's the thing that
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  Speaker 1: brings the tent all there is we get to say
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  Speaker 1: somebody else is stupid. Because quite honestly, some of y'all
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  Speaker 1: rarely have the right to talk like that. You got
• 1:16
  Speaker 1: to jump on your goddamn opportunity to do that. Like
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  Speaker 1: I see on occasion that people say they feel like
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  Speaker 1: I talk about people being stupid all the time. No,
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  Speaker 1: you just already know it about your goddamn self. And
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  Speaker 1: I give you a little whiff of it.
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  Speaker 2: All right.
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  Speaker 3: And it's not just that people are stupid. It's that
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  Speaker 3: the media is stupid.
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  Speaker 2: The media is stupid, except, except, except. Oh, no, no, no, no, no.
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  Speaker 2: Don't you bring that shit over here. Not this time, okay?
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  Speaker 1: Now, I'm going to give you a handle on what I,
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  Speaker 1: I mean, this is what I think is going on.
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  Speaker 1: It seems to me to be very clear what is
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  Speaker 1: going on. And I say it seems pretty clear what's
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  Speaker 1: going on because Bill Polian gave the game away, right? Now,
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  Speaker 1: we had a report that Bill Polian, former general manager
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  Speaker 1: of the Buffalo Bills, for those of you who don't know,
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  Speaker 1: the Bills that went to the Super Bowl four times
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  Speaker 1: in a row, Polian built those teams. The better-than-expected, faster-than-expected
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  Speaker 1: Carolina Panthers that made it to the NFC Championship in
• 2:15
  Speaker 1: their second year of existence, Polian built that team. And
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  Speaker 1: then the Peyton Manning-era Indianapolis Colts. That's Bill Polian. As
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  Speaker 1: a result, Bill Polian is in the Hall of Fame.
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  Speaker 1: Bill Polian is also a Hall of Fame voter who
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  Speaker 1: has some sway in that room. Now, Ryan, I can't
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  Speaker 1: remember who reported this, but the word got out in
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  Speaker 1: the streets that Polian said that they should make Belichick
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  Speaker 1: wait for a year because of spy game.
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  Speaker 3: Yeah, this is from Don Venetta and Seth Wickersham. And
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  Speaker 3: if they're reporting it, I.
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  Speaker 3: Take that as fact. Right.
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  Speaker 1: Now, I will say this right fast. And this, I think,
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  Speaker 1: is a very important point to make. And I'm curious
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  Speaker 1: your thought on this. I don't think it's that ridiculous
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  Speaker 1: if they made the decision that Spygate is worth not
• 3:03
  Speaker 1: being a first.
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  Speaker 2: Ballot Hall of Fame.
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  Speaker 3: Okay?
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  Speaker 1: Now, what's happened with first ballot Hall of Fame stuff
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  Speaker 1: is it allows us to offer gradations of what kind
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  Speaker 1: of Hall of Fame there is.
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  Speaker 2: Because there really is just Hall of Fame, not Hall
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  Speaker 2: of Fame.
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  Speaker 3: Right?
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  Speaker 4: But.
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  Speaker 1: We got to talk about stuff on the air. You
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  Speaker 1: understand what I'm saying? We got TV shows and podcasts
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  Speaker 1: to fill out. So we got to find another topic
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  Speaker 1: of discussion or another way to level off people's greatness.
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  Speaker 1: And so the way that we then do that is
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  Speaker 1: what ballot hall of famer were you?
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  Speaker 3: OK, now with the gold standard being unanimous. Right.
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  Speaker 1: And I don't know how often, how many guys, like
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  Speaker 1: I'm thinking historically about baseball Hall of Famers. Howard Bryan
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  Speaker 1: and I talked about this in our interview about Jackie Robinson.
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  Speaker 1: Jackie Robinson was a first ballot Hall of Famer with 76%
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  Speaker 1: of the vote and he retired as the consensus greatest
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  Speaker 1: second baseman of all time.
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  Speaker 3: For reference, you have to get 75% of the ballot
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  Speaker 3: to be. So he barely made the cut. Yes.
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  Speaker 1: And so we're just getting these guys like what Rivera
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  Speaker 1: was a unanimous Hall of Famer. Like through the history
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  Speaker 1: of baseball, it was all kinds of guys that were like, eh,
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  Speaker 1: not yet.
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  Speaker 2: OK, like people just decide to do that for whatever reason.
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  Speaker 1: Now, what makes the football ballot interesting is that it's
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  Speaker 1: a lot harder to get in. on any particular ballot
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  Speaker 1: because there's some limits in terms of how many people
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  Speaker 1: can get in. 22 guys play on a field at
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  Speaker 1: a given point in time. You know, it's a lot
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  Speaker 1: of stuff that goes into getting in.
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  Speaker 3: And almost harder for coaches than players.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
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  Speaker 1: Oh, it's easily more difficult because the coaches wind up
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  Speaker 1: on this shorter ballot. There are very few coaches, ultimately,
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  Speaker 1: who wind up in.
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  Speaker 2: The Hall of Fame.
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  Speaker 1: That's why in basketball, when people are like, well, Eric
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  Speaker 1: Sproles is a Hall of Fame coach, I think he
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  Speaker 1: may have eventually gotten there, but I was like, guys,
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  Speaker 1: I need you to go look at who does or
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  Speaker 1: doesn't get in as a Hall of Fame coach.
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  Speaker 2: It's really fucking hard in order to pull it off, right?
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  Speaker 1: It's the same thing with football, but just generally speaking,
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  Speaker 1: it's like five guys get in, you got like a
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  Speaker 1: senior committee, you got all these different things that go
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  Speaker 1: on that if you get in as a first ballot
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  Speaker 1: Hall of Famer, Not being a first ballot Hall of
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  Speaker 1: Famer is not nearly the insult that being a first
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  Speaker 1: ballot Hall of Famer is a credit to you. And
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  Speaker 1: the truth is, those guys were engaged in a fairly
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  Speaker 1: intricate scheme of cheating. Right? In baseball, these guys got
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  Speaker 1: caught over there cheating. They're not letting them in at all.
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  Speaker 1: The best baseball player since World War II.
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  Speaker 2: He ain't getting in.
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  Speaker 3: Right?
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  Speaker 2: In the name of cheating.
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  Speaker 1: Now, That's a little different because it was broad and
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  Speaker 1: it was rampant and it becomes difficult.
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  Speaker 2: You're basically ignoring an entire era of history.
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  Speaker 1: But all I'm saying is we have a track record
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  Speaker 1: of kind of putting the brakes on people if the
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  Speaker 1: belief is that they engaged in some dishonorable activity.
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  Speaker 2: Okay? Belichick clearly did.
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  Speaker 1: And by the way, not only did Belichick engage in
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  Speaker 1: this dishonorable activity, he turned.
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  Speaker 2: Into a real jerk afterward.
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  Speaker 1: If you watch that Patriots documentary series, the 10-part joint
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  Speaker 1: that Bob Kraft did, put a pin in that, by
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  Speaker 1: the way.
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  Speaker 2: If you watch that, um.
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  Speaker 1: The clear change, and when Belichick became like, we're on
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  Speaker 1: the Cincinnati guy, was after Spygate. Before that, he behaved
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  Speaker 1: like a human being, not like he was raised by
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  Speaker 1: wolves and dealing with media and everything else. It was
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  Speaker 1: after that that he stopped and turned into the guy
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  Speaker 1: that we all now talk about and that we all
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  Speaker 1: now see, right? So put together the fact that he
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  Speaker 1: got caught in some shenanigans, and then he started behaving
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  Speaker 1: poorly toward a group of people that make up the
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  Speaker 1: majority of the voters. maybe they make him wait a year.
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  Speaker 1: He's going to get into the Hall of Fame, right?
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  Speaker 1: So this isn't a one or nothing sort of situation.
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  Speaker 1: So for that reason, I find myself being a little
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  Speaker 1: more surprised that he's not a first ballot Hall of
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  Speaker 1: Famer than I am bothered or than I am offended
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  Speaker 1: by the idea that he did not get it, right? Now,
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  Speaker 1: the problem is what I don't like because of how
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  Speaker 1: I was raised, because of where I'm from, because of
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  Speaker 1: what I'm about, because of what I stand for, is messy,
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  Speaker 1: petty suckers. That's what I don't like. That's what I
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  Speaker 1: don't stand for. And it is very clear to me
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  Speaker 1: that Bill Polian is the messy, petty sucker that is
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  Speaker 1: the ringleader behind this. And that it just seems like hateration,
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  Speaker 1: and holleration run rampant in that dancery, and that's why
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  Speaker 1: we're here, and that I cannot abide by. And you're like, well, gee, Beaumont,
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  Speaker 1: how do you feel so confident saying this? So, Ryan,
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  Speaker 1: as you said, said Booker Shabbat, not a reported that
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  Speaker 1: Bill Polian apparently said because of Spygate, let's make him
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  Speaker 1: wait for a year, okay?
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  Speaker 2: And Polian really carries weight in that room, all right? Don...
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  Speaker 2: then talked to Polian.
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  Speaker 1: Polian says, one, that he did not do that. Polian
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  Speaker 1: had also said that he voted for Belichick. But then
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  Speaker 1: Polian also told Don Venato that he doesn't remember if
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  Speaker 1: he voted for Belichick. But he knows he voted for
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  Speaker 1: Bob Kraft. I need you to riddle me that home, boy.
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  Speaker 2: Okay? You vote. Word. That's how we know it's you.
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  Speaker 2: All right?
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  Speaker 1: You know you voted for Bob Kraft. You were adamant
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  Speaker 1: about voting for Bob Kraft. But maybe you voted.
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  Speaker 3: I can't recall.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, I can't recall if I voted.
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  Speaker 3: He played the fifth. Right.
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  Speaker 2: Well, so this is the thing about Kraft, though.
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  Speaker 1: And this is something Vannata and Wickersham have also reported
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  Speaker 1: on and why I said put a pin in it
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  Speaker 1: talking about that documentary series. That docuseries was the beginning
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  Speaker 1: of Kraft building his case to get into the Hall
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  Speaker 1: of Fame. It's really important to him, per the reporting
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  Speaker 1: of Wickersham and Vannata, that he get into the Hall
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  Speaker 1: of Fame.
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  Speaker 2: He really, really wants it, all right?
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  Speaker 1: So you're going to have a hard time convincing me
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  Speaker 1: that that Kraft's desire to get into the Hall of
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  Speaker 1: Fame and Polian saying, I absolutely did vote for him,
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  Speaker 1: does not have some measure of influence in not voting
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  Speaker 1: for Belichick getting into the Hall of Fame. So let Polian...
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  Speaker 1: Be a friend of Krabs. Also, Polian, remembering he was
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  Speaker 1: the GM of the Colts when Colts Patriots was the
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  Speaker 1: prime rivalry in the NFL, and you were losing to
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  Speaker 1: a dude that you believe was cheating y'all. You telling
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  Speaker 1: me that you don't think this was not the opportunity
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  Speaker 1: to get his lick back? Now, one last thing, Ryan,
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  Speaker 1: before I give this to you, and this is important
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  Speaker 1: to note. it's a little bit complex for the type
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  Speaker 1: of the ballot that Belichick is on.
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  Speaker 2: All right. So this is from Mike Sandoe of the athletic.
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  Speaker 1: And he says, they're on the, what is like the
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  Speaker 1: senior ballot, the contributor ballot, the special ballot. I don't
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  Speaker 1: know what it's, what it's called, but on that ballot
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  Speaker 1: or bill Belichick, Bob craft, Roger Craig running back for
• 10:26
  Speaker 1: the 49ers back in the day, Ken Anderson quarterback for
• 10:29
  Speaker 1: the bangles back in the day, and LC Greenwood defensive
• 10:34
  Speaker 1: end for the steel curtain. OK, they're on a ballot
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  Speaker 1: that is separate from the 15 modern era finalists, and
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  Speaker 1: they're competing for one of three spots. 50 voters pick
• 10:44
  Speaker 1: three of the 50 voters each pick three guys. The
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  Speaker 1: top voter gets in no matter what. The others have
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  Speaker 1: to get at least 80 percent of the vote. So
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  Speaker 1: that's 40 out of the 50 voters, which is to
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  Speaker 1: say there are a lot of ways in which somebody
• 11:00
  Speaker 1: could wind up not getting it. But if Bob Kraft
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  Speaker 1: is the one that's at the top of the ballot
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  Speaker 1: and those other guys don't get in, including Bill Belichick,
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  Speaker 1: come on, man.
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  Speaker 2: That's shenanigans. That's shenanigans.
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  Speaker 3: Right. To your point about how bad Robert Kraft wants
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  Speaker 3: to get in, this is from the Wickersham Don Vinetta article.
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  Speaker 3: This year, Belichick was a finalist of Robert Kraft, the
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  Speaker 3: Patriots owner and Belichick's co-architect of the NFL dynasty in
• 11:28
  Speaker 3: New England. It marked the first time that Kraft, 84,
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  Speaker 3: was a Hall of Fame finalist after 14 years of
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  Speaker 3: campaigning on his behalf by the team's longtime PR man
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  Speaker 3: and other supporters.
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  Speaker 1: I would also like to note he was not the co-architect.
• 11:43
  Speaker 1: He just bought the house.
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  Speaker 3: Yeah, he bought the house. What are you talking about?
• 11:47
  Speaker 3: But the docu-series, to your point, he has clearly tried
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  Speaker 3: to set up the narrative that it was a three-man
• 11:55
  Speaker 3: group that put that team together and him, Belichick and Brady.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, but I will tell you this.
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  Speaker 1: I tell you what, he also clearly builds as a
• 12:03
  Speaker 1: one-man plan spy game. Like, he very clearly washes his
• 12:09
  Speaker 1: hands of that one, right? He puts that all the
• 12:14
  Speaker 1: way on Belichick. And Belichick wound himself doing himself a
• 12:16
  Speaker 1: disservice in that doc, if you watch it, because it
• 12:19
  Speaker 1: became clear he decided he wasn't going to give them anything.
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  Speaker 1: And then he wound up with a documentary that was
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  Speaker 1: made that had nothing to do with him.
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  Speaker 3: Right.
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  Speaker 2: You know, like he.
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  Speaker 1: Everybody else makes their case and he doesn't. He's just
• 12:31
  Speaker 1: kind of lost in the wilderness when it comes to
• 12:34
  Speaker 1: the discussion. But no, if I had to bet, Bill
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  Speaker 1: Polian decided he's not letting Bill Belichick in the Hall
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  Speaker 1: of Fame, not right now, okay? Now, this isn't even
• 12:43
  Speaker 1: the most egregious case of Hall of Fame voters acting
• 12:46
  Speaker 1: like this.
• 12:47
  Speaker 2: To me, there is no question.
• 12:48
  Speaker 1: The worst I've ever seen is that year that Morton
• 12:50
  Speaker 1: Anderson made the Hall of Fame and Terrell Owens did not, right?
• 12:55
  Speaker 2: That was, I mean, that made Terrell Owens wait like two,
• 12:57
  Speaker 2: three years.
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  Speaker 3: I think it was three. Yeah.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah. Like it was, I mean, again, Belichick is going
• 13:04
  Speaker 2: to get in.
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  Speaker 1: That's why I can't get, but so charged up about
• 13:08
  Speaker 1: it in the end, he will be a hall of
• 13:10
  Speaker 1: famer and they don't give you a different jacket for
• 13:12
  Speaker 1: being a first ballot hall of fame.
• 13:14
  Speaker 2: All right. He's going to get in. That's going to
• 13:16
  Speaker 2: take care of itself. Boom. There it is.
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  Speaker 1: But goddamn, let me tell you this right now. If
• 13:21
  Speaker 1: they let Bob craft in before they let Belichick in,
• 13:26
  Speaker 1: If they decide to be super petty and let Tom
• 13:28
  Speaker 1: Brady in, wait a couple years to get in before him,
• 13:31
  Speaker 1: don't let them put Eli Manning in before they let
• 13:34
  Speaker 1: Bill Belichick in.
• 13:35
  Speaker 2: He might not. She might do like, what's his name, did. T.O.
• 13:39
  Speaker 2: did and have his own ceremony.
• 13:41
  Speaker 1: Because this is the part to me that I think
• 13:43
  Speaker 1: is interesting and human and where it has to hurt Belichick,
• 13:48
  Speaker 1: who in that Wiggins-Shanbanada report was like six Super Bowls
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  Speaker 1: isn't enough.
• 13:52
  Speaker 2: Which, by the way, fair question.
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  Speaker 3: Good argument.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Belichick is a.
• 14:00
  Speaker 1: Like football fan doesn't even begin to describe it. You know,
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  Speaker 1: like it's like what this is and what this means
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  Speaker 1: to him and the historical value he places.
• 14:10
  Speaker 2: And he's the guy that goes back and talks about
• 14:11
  Speaker 2: like Dutch Schultz. Is it Dutch Schultz? Dutch Clark. Dutch
• 14:15
  Speaker 2: Schultz is the bang, bang, bang.
• 14:18
  Speaker 1: Gangster by far hey man they used to make a
• 14:20
  Speaker 1: lot more duchess back then you know not a lot.
• 14:22
  Speaker 3: Of duchess in the league.
• 14:23
  Speaker 1: Yeah yeah yeah i know what i know one dutch
• 14:25
  Speaker 1: and he has nothing in common with dutch schultz or
• 14:28
  Speaker 1: that dutch clark he used to be big crits manager
• 14:31
  Speaker 1: that's the dutch that i know um i can only
• 14:36
  Speaker 1: imagine how painful that is to belichick because i'll never
• 14:40
  Speaker 1: forget um it's a long story but i needed uh
• 14:45
  Speaker 1: how i wore a sap about something the week that
• 14:47
  Speaker 1: he got into the Hall of Fame and I called
• 14:49
  Speaker 1: him and I've never heard anybody happier to be anywhere
• 14:52
  Speaker 1: in my life.
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  Speaker 4: Right.
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  Speaker 2: Like the idea of like, we go into the ring, niche,
• 14:56
  Speaker 2: get lunch. Right.
• 14:57
  Speaker 1: Like all of those things, like for those guys, the
• 15:00
  Speaker 1: Hall of Fame means something. So it, I think it
• 15:04
  Speaker 1: means more to football players than it means to anybody else.
• 15:08
  Speaker 3: It's referred to as football heaven.
• 15:09
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah.
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  Speaker 2: Well, in part because football is a camaraderie sport.
• 15:12
  Speaker 3: Right. Right.
• 15:13
  Speaker 2: And so once you're there, you're just around everybody.
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  Speaker 1: And those guys go back every year in the jackets
• 15:17
  Speaker 1: and everything else. And Belichick has been exercised from the NFL, basically.
• 15:23
  Speaker 1: But you can't take that away from him once he
• 15:25
  Speaker 1: gets there. And I can only imagine how much it'll
• 15:27
  Speaker 1: mean to him to get there. And they're going to
• 15:30
  Speaker 1: let Bob Kraft in there. Like, that's what he's thinking
• 15:34
  Speaker 1: right now, whether they're going to or not. I mean,
• 15:36
  Speaker 1: that's my guess is what's going to happen.
• 15:37
  Speaker 2: They're going to let Bob Kraft in.
• 15:41
  Speaker 1: He's not even a football guy.
• 15:44
  Speaker 2: He's a fan.
• 15:45
  Speaker 1: They gonna let a fan in before they let me in?
• 15:53
  Speaker 2: By the way, has Jordan sent any tweets about this yet?
• 15:57
  Speaker 2: I bet she, boy, you know, she ride for her guy.
• 16:01
  Speaker 3: I have not seen any Jordan tweets. We got LeBron
• 16:05
  Speaker 3: tweeting about this. We got Mahomes tweeting about this. We
• 16:08
  Speaker 3: had Jimmy Johnson.
• 16:09
  Speaker 1: Nobody's more charged up about this than Jimmy Johnson.
• 16:13
  Speaker 2: Now, look, Jimmy Johnson had to wait all them years
• 16:14
  Speaker 2: to get in the Hall of Fame. Hot take.
• 16:16
  Speaker 1: I don't think he should have got in. let's go
• 16:20
  Speaker 1: with this one. Number first for Jimmy Johnson, who's what,
• 16:23
  Speaker 1: 81 years old now?
• 16:24
  Speaker 3: Something like that, yeah.
• 16:25
  Speaker 1: I would like to know the names of the assholes
• 16:27
  Speaker 1: who did not vote for him. They are too cowardly
• 16:30
  Speaker 1: to identify themselves. He is right about that second part,
• 16:32
  Speaker 1: by the way.
• 16:34
  Speaker 2: And then this one.
• 16:35
  Speaker 1: If they are using the excuse, in all caps, of Spygate,
• 16:39
  Speaker 1: that's ridiculous. Many teams, including ourselves, tried it. Howard Mudd
• 16:43
  Speaker 1: at Kansas City, who later coached for Bill Polian and
• 16:46
  Speaker 1: Tony Dungy, gave us the idea.
• 16:48
  Speaker 2: He was the best. We didn't get anything and stopped,
• 16:51
  Speaker 2: but many teams gave it a try. He was never
• 16:55
  Speaker 2: this interesting on Fox. Like, never.
• 17:00
  Speaker 1: Never.
• 17:01
  Speaker 2: But hey, man.
• 17:03
  Speaker 1: He's going to get in. But thank you, Bill Polian.
• 17:08
  Speaker 1: This week, where the Super Bowl, before the Super Bowl,
• 17:11
  Speaker 1: is normally a content wasteland.
• 17:15
  Speaker 2: But you said no, no, no. I got you.
• 17:18
  Speaker 1: Let me throw y'all this softball right fast. And I
• 17:21
  Speaker 1: don't know whether to hit it or catch it, but
• 17:23
  Speaker 1: either way it goes, we about to scope. It is
• 17:27
  Speaker 1: the time of week where we have a guest join us.
• 17:30
  Speaker 1: He is the author of Everybody Loses the Tumultuous Rise
• 17:34
  Speaker 1: of American Sports Gambling. I hate I don't have the
• 17:37
  Speaker 1: book to hold up to you because the copy I have,
• 17:39
  Speaker 1: I got such an OG copy.
• 17:40
  Speaker 2: It just looked like white pages. You understand what I'm saying?
• 17:43
  Speaker 1: I had the pleasure of blurbing this book for the
• 17:45
  Speaker 1: author named Danny Funt.
• 17:47
  Speaker 2: Danny, man, I appreciate you joining us.
• 17:48
  Speaker 3: What's up, man?
• 17:49
  Speaker 4: Big fan of the show. Thanks for having me.
• 17:51
  Speaker 2: No, man, thank you.
• 17:52
  Speaker 1: And I want to start by asking, I guess, the
• 17:54
  Speaker 1: broad question that everybody asks is with a book, which
• 17:56
  Speaker 1: is how did you decide to get into this topic?
• 18:00
  Speaker 1: Because to me, and I was just talking to Howard
• 18:02
  Speaker 1: and Brian about this yesterday, this is the topic of
• 18:05
  Speaker 1: the relevant topic of all things sports right now is
• 18:08
  Speaker 1: the effect of gambling. And I start with the beginning
• 18:11
  Speaker 1: because at some point we're going to do this thing
• 18:13
  Speaker 1: where we talk about this stuff and then we run
• 18:15
  Speaker 1: a gambling commercial.
• 18:16
  Speaker 2: But that kind of speaks to the point.
• 18:17
  Speaker 1: The prevalence of sports gambling now is unavoidable in what
• 18:22
  Speaker 1: we do. But I'm curious as to at what point
• 18:24
  Speaker 1: you decided this was something to write about.
• 18:27
  Speaker 4: The very first piece, I was just so curious how
• 18:31
  Speaker 4: nowadays if you can bet from your phone, you can
• 18:33
  Speaker 4: bet on thousands of different things within every game. What
• 18:36
  Speaker 4: does that mean for beat reporters who are in locker
• 18:39
  Speaker 4: rooms talking to coaches, have access to so much information
• 18:43
  Speaker 4: that would be hugely valuable to anyone placing a bet?
• 18:47
  Speaker 4: Are there any rules inside news organizations about sports reporters betting?
• 18:53
  Speaker 4: In particular, I got to talk to Ian Rappaport at
• 18:56
  Speaker 4: NFL Network, and he had just broken that the 49ers
• 19:00
  Speaker 4: were thinking about taking Trey Lance as opposed to Mac Jones.
• 19:04
  Speaker 4: This was like the 2022.
• 19:05
  Speaker 2: Draft, maybe? 21.
• 19:07
  Speaker 3: 21, yeah.
• 19:08
  Speaker 4: And the odds swung dramatically. Jones was the overwhelming favorite
• 19:12
  Speaker 4: to go to the Niners. Lance, at the time, wasn't
• 19:15
  Speaker 4: even thought of in the top 10. And I was like,
• 19:18
  Speaker 4: you know, if you had placed a bet on Trey
• 19:21
  Speaker 4: Lance and then put that tweet out, you could have
• 19:23
  Speaker 4: made a killing. And he's like, yeah, that'd sort of
• 19:25
  Speaker 4: be like the insider trading version of sports betting. It
• 19:29
  Speaker 4: did occur to me. He didn't do it, but he
• 19:31
  Speaker 4: said it did occur to me. And it was just
• 19:33
  Speaker 4: an example to me of like, there are so many
• 19:35
  Speaker 4: rules of the road that have not been established as
• 19:38
  Speaker 4: sports betting has exploded in newsrooms, within leagues, all over
• 19:43
  Speaker 4: the place. We're kind of like figuring things out as
• 19:45
  Speaker 4: we go. And it seemed like there were a million
• 19:48
  Speaker 4: stories to get into that. that seemed ripe for reporting.
• 19:52
  Speaker 1: How surprised were you to get in and then realize
• 19:55
  Speaker 1: you were going to write a book that would have
• 19:56
  Speaker 1: a title of Everybody Loses? Because a significant theme of
• 20:00
  Speaker 1: this book is it's hard to tell who's coming out
• 20:03
  Speaker 1: on top here.
• 20:05
  Speaker 3: Exactly.
• 20:05
  Speaker 4: And the idea that That led to that title was
• 20:09
  Speaker 4: of course, there's a staggering amount of money being lost
• 20:11
  Speaker 4: as people bet $ 150 billion a year. But the idea
• 20:16
  Speaker 4: for the title went well beyond money, right? It's like
• 20:19
  Speaker 4: losing integrity in sports. In the independence of sports media,
• 20:24
  Speaker 4: in the wellbeing of athletes who are just hounded by
• 20:26
  Speaker 4: angry gamblers on a game by game basis. And sometimes
• 20:30
  Speaker 4: much worse than that. Um, the losses are just overwhelming.
• 20:34
  Speaker 4: And then like the natural followup is so who's winning.
• 20:37
  Speaker 4: And as I did more and more reporting, I found
• 20:39
  Speaker 4: that a lot harder to answer.
• 20:41
  Speaker 2: So I think you get us to an interesting question.
• 20:44
  Speaker 1: And I think that the best way to do this
• 20:46
  Speaker 1: is probably to go through just the effect on all
• 20:48
  Speaker 1: the various entities that are involved here, whether it be
• 20:50
  Speaker 1: the companies. the leagues, the players, the fans, like, you know,
• 20:55
  Speaker 1: there's some pretty clear lines on like who the groups
• 20:57
  Speaker 1: are that you would think of that are affected, even media,
• 21:00
  Speaker 1: for example, right?
• 21:01
  Speaker 2: Like, you know, it touches us all in different ways.
• 21:04
  Speaker 1: Where I want to start is with the leagues because
• 21:07
  Speaker 1: the leagues were the people that for the longest time
• 21:10
  Speaker 1: spent the most years, came a little here, hauled a
• 21:14
  Speaker 1: little there about the dangers of gambling. Of course you have,
• 21:17
  Speaker 1: for example, the history of baseball, which speaks clearly as
• 21:20
  Speaker 1: to why they would have their concerns about gambling basketball.
• 21:23
  Speaker 1: Also you have in football, like the Paul Horning, Alex
• 21:26
  Speaker 1: Karras thing, but nothing quite as acute as it really
• 21:29
  Speaker 1: was with baseball and basketball. And then it seemed, I mean,
• 21:34
  Speaker 1: basically we saw this happen in a lot of ways
• 21:36
  Speaker 1: in a lot of places, there was momentum that was
• 21:38
  Speaker 1: building for this, but this seems to be as much
• 21:40
  Speaker 1: a post COVID thing where the leagues looked up and
• 21:42
  Speaker 1: were like, Hey, it's a lot of money that we lost. And,
• 21:45
  Speaker 1: I know how we can get it back pretty quick.
• 21:47
  Speaker 1: And then one day it seemed like everything had changed.
• 21:50
  Speaker 2: No doubt.
• 21:50
  Speaker 4: That was also a big reason why states were in
• 21:53
  Speaker 4: such a hurry to legalize because they had budget deficits
• 21:55
  Speaker 4: and they were like, we can flip a switch and
• 21:58
  Speaker 4: this industry will generate a lot of money in tax revenue.
• 22:01
  Speaker 4: I think the change of heart happened for the leagues
• 22:03
  Speaker 4: well before that though. And I really wanted to understand,
• 22:07
  Speaker 4: the answers were just so unsatisfying to me of what
• 22:11
  Speaker 4: exactly got to them that made them abandon a century
• 22:14
  Speaker 4: of saying, This was an existential threat to their sports.
• 22:18
  Speaker 4: It's interesting to me that the NBA, as you know,
• 22:21
  Speaker 4: like was the first mover in that because I wanted
• 22:25
  Speaker 4: to know, okay, which of these guys actually have real
• 22:27
  Speaker 4: convictions about gambling and which are just sort of going
• 22:30
  Speaker 4: with the flow and following what owners want or, you know,
• 22:33
  Speaker 4: what the political landscape allows. And it seems like David
• 22:37
  Speaker 4: Stern was one of the most adamant actually thinks gambling
• 22:41
  Speaker 4: is a terrible thing for sports. I heard this from
• 22:44
  Speaker 4: Chris Christie, the former governor of New Jersey, who, you know,
• 22:47
  Speaker 4: Stern is from Jersey. Christie met with Stern when he
• 22:51
  Speaker 4: was pushing for legalization there. And Stern just got really
• 22:55
  Speaker 4: worked up in those conversations, Christie said, and said like
• 22:59
  Speaker 4: the quote he had was, it treats athletes like chattel
• 23:02
  Speaker 4: gambling does. So Stern retires in 2014. His deputy, Adam Silver,
• 23:07
  Speaker 4: takes over. publishes this op-ed in the New York Times
• 23:11
  Speaker 4: that really caught the other leagues off guard because they're
• 23:13
  Speaker 4: fighting in federal court with the NBA to block New
• 23:16
  Speaker 4: Jersey from overturning a federal ban on bookmaking. Adam Silver's
• 23:22
  Speaker 4: reasons are there's a lot of betting going on under
• 23:25
  Speaker 4: the table. The number he gave for the illegal betting
• 23:28
  Speaker 4: happening is just a wild exaggeration. He said $ 400 billion
• 23:34
  Speaker 4: are being wagered illegally, which the New York Times Coincidentally,
• 23:37
  Speaker 4: since they published that op-ed, some reporters years later exposed
• 23:41
  Speaker 4: it was just a ludicrous number to quote. But then
• 23:46
  Speaker 4: in the book, I talked to a lot of people
• 23:48
  Speaker 4: who are around Adam Silver, and it seems like the
• 23:50
  Speaker 4: actual rationale for why he felt he could put his
• 23:53
  Speaker 4: neck out and say, let's legalize this, was not at
• 23:57
  Speaker 4: all some things he was bringing up in that op-ed.
• 24:00
  Speaker 1: I want to take a brief moment to imagine David
• 24:04
  Speaker 1: Stern reaming Chris Christie out on the principled idea of gambling.
• 24:11
  Speaker 1: First of all, Chris Christie is probably trying to change
• 24:13
  Speaker 1: David Stern's mind about this. And that is an intellectual
• 24:16
  Speaker 1: battle that is tilted highly. If you could bet on that,
• 24:19
  Speaker 1: you would bet on David Stern. And I'm just imagining him,
• 24:22
  Speaker 1: the guy who's been through all the wars, the guy
• 24:23
  Speaker 1: that tried to keep Connie Hawkins and Roger Brown out
• 24:26
  Speaker 1: of the NBA for as long as he could, everything else.
• 24:29
  Speaker 1: And then in comes Chris Christie with a ketchup stain
• 24:31
  Speaker 1: on his shirt. trying to talk to davis stern about
• 24:34
  Speaker 1: why it is that this gambling would be a good
• 24:36
  Speaker 1: idea now you fast forward to silver and to be
• 24:39
  Speaker 1: fair to silver regardless of what his principles were or
• 24:42
  Speaker 1: weren't he was the commissioner of a much different league
• 24:44
  Speaker 1: than stern and a commissioner of a league that has
• 24:46
  Speaker 1: a lot more money invested in it by the owners
• 24:50
  Speaker 1: than stern did like silver is the commissioner of a
• 24:54
  Speaker 1: league run by billionaires where stern was a commissioner of
• 24:57
  Speaker 1: a league run by millionaires The stakes are totally different
• 25:00
  Speaker 1: now for him. And when you go back and you
• 25:03
  Speaker 1: read his piece about it, it is the growth mandate
• 25:06
  Speaker 1: for all these leagues. He's like, OK, we got to
• 25:08
  Speaker 1: find something else. And then they come here. But it
• 25:10
  Speaker 1: really is interesting, especially now when we see the stories
• 25:13
  Speaker 1: that have surrounded basketball and our understanding of how simple
• 25:15
  Speaker 1: it is to engage in a fix with basketball. It
• 25:18
  Speaker 1: is a bit surprising that a man as smart as
• 25:21
  Speaker 1: him really leaned in as hard as he did.
• 25:24
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 25:24
  Speaker 4: And particularly, if you read the op-ed now, it's strange
• 25:28
  Speaker 4: because he's saying this has to be done at the
• 25:30
  Speaker 4: federal level. It would be a terrible idea if states
• 25:33
  Speaker 4: were the ones who are regulating sports betting. And of course,
• 25:36
  Speaker 4: Congress totally sat this the last few years out and
• 25:39
  Speaker 4: all of this is done at the state level. And
• 25:42
  Speaker 4: the NBA was lobbying states to legalize. It feels a
• 25:46
  Speaker 4: little disingenuous to say, oh, this could only work if
• 25:49
  Speaker 4: it were done through Congress and then the NBA rushes
• 25:52
  Speaker 4: to be very aggressive at lobbying states to get on board.
• 25:57
  Speaker 4: The other piece that I think was in the back
• 26:00
  Speaker 4: of his head was these what are called integrity monitors.
• 26:04
  Speaker 4: It's dominated by two companies, Genius Sports and Sport Radar,
• 26:09
  Speaker 4: were meeting with the NBA and other leagues and explaining
• 26:12
  Speaker 4: this model that had worked in Europe with European soccer,
• 26:15
  Speaker 4: where We present ourselves as we're using betting data to
• 26:21
  Speaker 4: make sure that bad things aren't happening, the wrong people
• 26:24
  Speaker 4: aren't betting. We can sniff out suspicious bets if we're
• 26:27
  Speaker 4: looking at all this stuff and catch fixers in a
• 26:31
  Speaker 4: way that we couldn't if this is under the table.
• 26:33
  Speaker 4: But really, you're going to make a ton of money
• 26:36
  Speaker 4: by selling the data to our companies that allows online
• 26:41
  Speaker 4: betting to happen, basically. You can't have online betting if
• 26:45
  Speaker 4: someone isn't providing real-time data about statistics within a game.
• 26:50
  Speaker 4: That was a huge money-making opportunity if gambling were to
• 26:54
  Speaker 4: be legalized. Mark Cuban, Ted Leonsis, and Michael Jordan invest
• 27:02
  Speaker 4: in sport radar before legalization. I talked to someone at
• 27:06
  Speaker 4: one of these integrity monitors. It seems safe to say
• 27:10
  Speaker 4: that they're betting that the NBA would embrace gambling and
• 27:13
  Speaker 4: that it would be legalized. And then that investment in
• 27:16
  Speaker 4: sport radar would be way more valuable. And the guy
• 27:19
  Speaker 4: was like, yeah, no doubt. And of course it's weird
• 27:21
  Speaker 4: that you can bet on something and then determine the outcome,
• 27:24
  Speaker 4: but that's exactly the position the NBA was in. So
• 27:29
  Speaker 4: just this whole idea that was so central to the
• 27:31
  Speaker 4: legalization case of it's going to somehow improve the integrity
• 27:35
  Speaker 4: of games because of what we'll be able to do
• 27:37
  Speaker 4: with these integrity monitors is There's way more to that story.
• 27:41
  Speaker 4: And really, they're in the business of facilitating betting through
• 27:46
  Speaker 4: that official league data. And the kind of catching bad
• 27:49
  Speaker 4: guys is in some ways just window dressing, I'd say.
• 27:53
  Speaker 2: Well, I think that makes me think of two things, right?
• 27:57
  Speaker 1: One of them being, it appears that the argument that
• 28:01
  Speaker 1: if we set up an infrastructure that almost assures that
• 28:05
  Speaker 1: people get caught that will then make people stop trying
• 28:10
  Speaker 1: to do the thing that we're trying to catch them doing,
• 28:13
  Speaker 1: which has kind of sort of worked. We've seen with
• 28:15
  Speaker 1: performance enhancing drugs. It doesn't really work in this space
• 28:19
  Speaker 1: because this is not a space of rational behavior, right?
• 28:22
  Speaker 1: And we'll get more into this, obviously, about the things
• 28:25
  Speaker 1: that then drive people and incentivize them to gamble. Another
• 28:28
  Speaker 1: thing that I think is an interesting kind of recurring
• 28:30
  Speaker 1: theme in the book, which is These people who are
• 28:34
  Speaker 1: in this to provide guardrails, or at least ostensibly in
• 28:37
  Speaker 1: this to provide guardrails, but they're profit-seeking people just like
• 28:41
  Speaker 1: everybody else. And so this goes all the way down
• 28:44
  Speaker 1: to the people who are there to help those who
• 28:46
  Speaker 1: seem like they might have gambling problems, right? Because, I mean,
• 28:50
  Speaker 1: the analogy I use is, We've legalized cocaine a bit.
• 28:53
  Speaker 1: Some people can do a little bit of cocaine and
• 28:55
  Speaker 1: just be fine. Other people, not so much. We are,
• 28:59
  Speaker 1: when we pitch gambling, even the people who are selling
• 29:02
  Speaker 1: it have to admit we're pitching something with a warning label, right?
• 29:05
  Speaker 1: We're pitching something with a 1-800 number. We know exactly
• 29:07
  Speaker 1: what it is that we are dealing with when we
• 29:10
  Speaker 1: get in this. But these people whose job it is
• 29:13
  Speaker 1: very often to help protect are not really protecting is
• 29:17
  Speaker 1: something that you found.
• 29:19
  Speaker 4: No, and like, The entanglement of these integrity monitors with
• 29:24
  Speaker 4: the leagues, it's just an enormous conflict of interest, like
• 29:28
  Speaker 4: you were saying. If the leagues have an ownership stake
• 29:33
  Speaker 4: in the companies that are responsible for blowing the whistle
• 29:36
  Speaker 4: on someone who shouldn't be betting, betting, or if the owners...
• 29:40
  Speaker 4: you know, have equity in those companies, are they really
• 29:43
  Speaker 4: going to embarrass the NBA or any other league if
• 29:47
  Speaker 4: they catch a superstar betting? I heard that, you know,
• 29:50
  Speaker 4: it's crazy coincidence that I interviewed an agent of Malik Beasley. He's,
• 29:56
  Speaker 4: they've since parted ways, but When I met with him
• 29:59
  Speaker 4: in 2024, he was repping Malik Beasley. He was about
• 30:04
  Speaker 4: to sign with the Detroit Pistons. And this guy told
• 30:08
  Speaker 4: me if it's up to the leagues to blow the
• 30:10
  Speaker 4: whistle on someone within their ranks who they catch betting,
• 30:14
  Speaker 4: it would kill the league, as he put it, if
• 30:17
  Speaker 4: they caught an all-star betting. So his words were, I
• 30:22
  Speaker 4: really doubt they would do anything more than sweep it
• 30:25
  Speaker 4: under the rug. And You know, it's hard to deny that.
• 30:28
  Speaker 4: And there's just a lot of examples of that, where
• 30:29
  Speaker 4: the people who are responsible for intervening have a financial
• 30:34
  Speaker 4: stake in biting their tongue here.
• 30:36
  Speaker 1: Well, also, the leagues are in the awkward business of
• 30:39
  Speaker 1: hoping their customers lose money.
• 30:43
  Speaker 4: Oh, no doubt. Like, I wonder, you know, where that goes,
• 30:46
  Speaker 4: because it's so expensive nowadays to have, you know, the
• 30:49
  Speaker 4: NBA package or, you know, Sunday ticket or pay for seats,
• 30:54
  Speaker 4: all these... It's very expensive to be a sports fan.
• 30:56
  Speaker 4: If you tack on something that these companies think will
• 30:59
  Speaker 4: cost the average person thousands of dollars over their lifetime
• 31:03
  Speaker 4: of betting, are you just going to burn out your fans?
• 31:07
  Speaker 4: That's definitely on people's minds, even in the industry. There's
• 31:10
  Speaker 4: an expression, you can shear a sheep for life, but
• 31:13
  Speaker 4: you can only slaughter it once. Are you basically slaughtering
• 31:16
  Speaker 4: gamblers by pushing these very unfavorable types of bets on them?
• 31:23
  Speaker 1: Well, the next interesting part, I think, of the book
• 31:25
  Speaker 1: is talking about the companies themselves. And the industry has
• 31:31
  Speaker 1: really now really become dominated by DraftKings and FanDuel. They
• 31:35
  Speaker 1: were able to get in early because they were daily
• 31:38
  Speaker 1: fantasy companies, which sounds a lot like gambling, but through
• 31:42
  Speaker 1: some technicality isn't really gambling. It's not dissimilar to a
• 31:46
  Speaker 1: lot of people in the era of cannabis legalization who
• 31:49
  Speaker 1: got in on gray market stuff. Before it went legal
• 31:52
  Speaker 1: and then those were the people who had the leg up.
• 31:54
  Speaker 1: These wound up being the two companies that stood up,
• 31:57
  Speaker 1: but they're not making that much money, if at all, often.
• 32:02
  Speaker 1: And these other companies that we see, even those with
• 32:04
  Speaker 1: really big names, like my thought was the companies who
• 32:06
  Speaker 1: had names attached to casinos would win. It would be
• 32:08
  Speaker 1: similar to the top companies in television were the top
• 32:11
  Speaker 1: companies in radio.
• 32:13
  Speaker 3: Right?
• 32:13
  Speaker 1: Like they would have the leg up on it, but
• 32:16
  Speaker 1: the companies who actually facilitate the betting, they also are
• 32:20
  Speaker 1: not really winning so much.
• 32:23
  Speaker 3: No.
• 32:23
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 32:24
  Speaker 4: That shocked me. Like the house always wins is such
• 32:26
  Speaker 4: a truism and it's true in other parts of the world.
• 32:29
  Speaker 4: Like in the UK, there are dozens of operators that
• 32:32
  Speaker 4: make profits taking sports bets and, you know, you turn
• 32:36
  Speaker 4: the lights on and run your business, uh, you know,
• 32:40
  Speaker 4: competently and you're probably going to come out ahead. Not
• 32:43
  Speaker 4: the case in the US, partly because just the fight
• 32:46
  Speaker 4: for market share was so aggressive. They were spending insane
• 32:50
  Speaker 4: amounts of money to get off the ground and to
• 32:52
  Speaker 4: win over customers. And that was unsustainable. But the other
• 32:55
  Speaker 4: piece of it is just one betting app isn't so
• 32:59
  Speaker 4: different from another one. Like there's no real reason to
• 33:01
  Speaker 4: have eight different apps that you're betting on. So if
• 33:05
  Speaker 4: FanDuel or DraftKings gives you the biggest new customer promotion
• 33:09
  Speaker 4: or they're showering you with those sorts of perks day
• 33:12
  Speaker 4: after day to keep you betting, it's hard for the
• 33:15
  Speaker 4: other companies to keep up. So like 50 plus operators
• 33:20
  Speaker 4: flooded this marketplace initially, a whole bunch of them have
• 33:23
  Speaker 4: gone out of business or pulled back from many states.
• 33:27
  Speaker 4: It seems like we're due for this to just be
• 33:29
  Speaker 4: a duopoly of FanDuel and DraftKings. But even them, as
• 33:32
  Speaker 4: you were saying, are finding that sports betting under having
• 33:37
  Speaker 4: to pay so much for licensing state by state, having
• 33:40
  Speaker 4: to pay the leagues for that official data, as ridiculous
• 33:43
  Speaker 4: as that sounds, the constant marketing spending they have to do,
• 33:49
  Speaker 4: they're going to have to push people into even more
• 33:51
  Speaker 4: profitable forms of gambling long-term, which is why FanDuel and
• 33:55
  Speaker 4: DraftKings now have online casinos, and they're pressuring more states
• 33:59
  Speaker 4: to legalize that. Maine just did recently, but definitely going
• 34:04
  Speaker 4: to be something people are hearing about across the country,
• 34:06
  Speaker 4: which is, hey, you've placed your bet on a game.
• 34:09
  Speaker 4: You're waiting for kickoff or you're seeing if it resolves.
• 34:13
  Speaker 4: Why don't you go place a bet on blackjack or
• 34:16
  Speaker 4: slots or roulette or whatever while we have you? And
• 34:20
  Speaker 4: that as profitable as sports betting can be, if you're
• 34:23
  Speaker 4: one of those two companies, the money you make off
• 34:25
  Speaker 4: online casino just blows that out of the water. So
• 34:28
  Speaker 4: I think that's definitely where this industry is headed.
• 34:31
  Speaker 1: I also think one of the big surprises for a
• 34:33
  Speaker 1: lot of us where I mentioned the thing about, you know,
• 34:35
  Speaker 1: me thinking that the big names attached to casinos would
• 34:38
  Speaker 1: be the ones winning out in the games. But we've
• 34:39
  Speaker 1: also seen the example, I think Penn National is the
• 34:43
  Speaker 1: name of it, who once was the Barstool Casino, basically.
• 34:47
  Speaker 1: And then they bought Barstool in order to put the
• 34:49
  Speaker 1: name on the casino and then basically gave Barstool back
• 34:53
  Speaker 1: to Dave Portnoy because it didn't turn into anything. ESPN
• 34:57
  Speaker 1: then lent its name and that was ESPN bet. And
• 35:00
  Speaker 1: then ESPN then decided it was actually just more profitable
• 35:03
  Speaker 1: to have a relationship with DraftKings. So these big box
• 35:07
  Speaker 1: names that people thought would draw people in on the market. Nope.
• 35:11
  Speaker 2: Nope. Nope. This seems to be a settled matter.
• 35:13
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 35:13
  Speaker 4: If anyone could challenge FanDuel and DraftKings, you know, some
• 35:18
  Speaker 4: people thought Fanatics could and their sports books doing all right,
• 35:21
  Speaker 4: but they thought they had this huge pool of people
• 35:23
  Speaker 4: who've bought Fanatics merch and They can convert them to
• 35:26
  Speaker 4: sports bettors. It's some mixed results. ESPN was the other
• 35:29
  Speaker 4: one where it's like they don't have to spend as
• 35:31
  Speaker 4: much on marketing theoretically. ESPN bet that partnership with Penn
• 35:36
  Speaker 4: could threaten this duopoly. Not at all. It was kind
• 35:39
  Speaker 4: of a disaster from the start. Pathetic market share that
• 35:43
  Speaker 4: forced them to give up on it last year. I've
• 35:46
  Speaker 4: got some good quotes in the book from people who
• 35:48
  Speaker 4: worked at ESPN bet who are like, our product was shit.
• 35:52
  Speaker 4: So people got our new customer bonus and then they
• 35:54
  Speaker 4: went back to FanDuel and DraftKings and we felt helpless. So,
• 35:58
  Speaker 4: but it was also just very embarrassing, uh, for ESPN
• 36:01
  Speaker 4: to have, you know, they're a superstar talent hawking ESPN bet, uh,
• 36:06
  Speaker 4: in studio and commercials. And yet it's, you know, something
• 36:10
  Speaker 4: most people totally ignored. And you might've thought like, okay,
• 36:13
  Speaker 4: ESPN is out of the betting game. But if you've
• 36:15
  Speaker 4: been watching, uh, you know, playoff pregame shows and all that,
• 36:19
  Speaker 4: the DraftKings ads are, you know, so in your face now.
• 36:24
  Speaker 4: Like they have really replaced whatever they were trying to
• 36:26
  Speaker 4: do with Penn with DraftKings. And I have no idea
• 36:29
  Speaker 4: how much DraftKings spent on that, but it's got to
• 36:31
  Speaker 4: be quite a lot because it's totally taken over ESPN coverage.
• 36:36
  Speaker 1: Yeah, because as I recall in reading, it took a
• 36:38
  Speaker 1: loss on the new customer bonus. Like people had figured
• 36:41
  Speaker 1: out ways to to get the new money, play their
• 36:44
  Speaker 1: game or whatever, give some wins, take the money out,
• 36:48
  Speaker 1: and then go take it to somebody else. I always
• 36:50
  Speaker 1: felt bad for ESPN on it in that it was
• 36:53
  Speaker 1: almost like they had a dude that's just walking up
• 36:54
  Speaker 1: and down.
• 36:54
  Speaker 2: Like, can I buy you a drink? Can I buy
• 36:55
  Speaker 2: you a drink? Can I buy you a drink? And
• 36:57
  Speaker 2: then you buy her a drink and she don't even
• 36:58
  Speaker 2: dance with you. You're like, yo, hey, where you going?
• 37:01
  Speaker 2: Where you going? Where you going? Thank you. You know, hey, hey, hey,
• 37:04
  Speaker 2: you're the one that said she was going to buy
• 37:05
  Speaker 2: me a drink. I ain't asking you for that shit.
• 37:07
  Speaker 3: Right, right.
• 37:08
  Speaker 4: Bonus hunters is what they call it in the industry.
• 37:11
  Speaker 4: I got a kick out of the founding CEO of
• 37:14
  Speaker 4: FanDuel lives just outside of New York City. And he
• 37:17
  Speaker 4: told me that Caesars had one of the most like overboard,
• 37:21
  Speaker 4: you know, absurd new customer promotions when New York launched
• 37:25
  Speaker 4: in 2022. I think you could claim $ 3, 300 basically just
• 37:30
  Speaker 4: by signing up. Like there was nothing more to it
• 37:32
  Speaker 4: than that. It was free money. And this FanDuel guy
• 37:36
  Speaker 4: was like, that was the only bet I've ever placed
• 37:38
  Speaker 4: with Caesars. I just pocketed their three grand. It was,
• 37:41
  Speaker 4: as he put it, the stupidest promotion I've ever seen
• 37:44
  Speaker 4: in my time working in this industry. So Caesars got
• 37:48
  Speaker 4: burned really bad because they shot up in market share
• 37:50
  Speaker 4: in New York and then crashed and spent like half
• 37:53
  Speaker 4: a billion dollars in the process.
• 37:55
  Speaker 1: So where I'm somewhat curious is that This affects my
• 38:00
  Speaker 1: business greatly because they pay the bills for a lot
• 38:02
  Speaker 1: of us. And it is, I think for a lot
• 38:04
  Speaker 1: of people, difficult to have an honest conversation because again,
• 38:08
  Speaker 1: like I said, you're going to hear an ad for
• 38:09
  Speaker 1: that stuff right after we get through talking about this.
• 38:12
  Speaker 2: I'm willing to make it awkward. Not everybody is in
• 38:15
  Speaker 2: a position where there's something that they're willing to do, but.
• 38:19
  Speaker 1: If it goes to being a duopoly, I think that
• 38:22
  Speaker 1: threatens a lot of the business that are funded by
• 38:24
  Speaker 1: this huge advertising push that we have seen for the
• 38:27
  Speaker 1: gaming companies, which by the way, is not going to
• 38:29
  Speaker 1: continue forever, right? This is a business that's in the
• 38:33
  Speaker 1: customer attainment phase. I forget the phrasing of it, but
• 38:36
  Speaker 1: then at some point it's going to turn into the
• 38:37
  Speaker 1: profitability phase.
• 38:39
  Speaker 4: No doubt. And that's already happening in some states that
• 38:41
  Speaker 4: have had legal betting for a few years. They've pulled
• 38:44
  Speaker 4: back dramatically on that new customer spending. The first place
• 38:47
  Speaker 4: it really hurt was, I cover this in the book
• 38:49
  Speaker 4: just because the dollar figures are absurd to me. The
• 38:53
  Speaker 4: amount they were spending for referrals, if on your website
• 38:58
  Speaker 4: or even if you had like a link or a
• 39:00
  Speaker 4: promo code on your podcast, the money they would pay
• 39:03
  Speaker 4: for referral fees got to the point where for every
• 39:06
  Speaker 4: customer that a news site directed to sign up with
• 39:10
  Speaker 4: a sports book, they were paying as much as $ 500
• 39:12
  Speaker 4: per person. It goes to show how much they expected
• 39:16
  Speaker 4: those people to lose long term. It even got beyond
• 39:19
  Speaker 4: that where they would give a cut of what they
• 39:21
  Speaker 4: call a revenue share. So if you direct a customer
• 39:25
  Speaker 4: to me and they sign up and start betting for
• 39:27
  Speaker 4: their lifetime that they're a Sportsbooks customer. you'll get typically 30%
• 39:32
  Speaker 4: or 45% of their lifetime losses, which could be a
• 39:36
  Speaker 4: huge amount of money, especially if they're one of these
• 39:38
  Speaker 4: VIP sports bettors. A lot of that spending has been
• 39:43
  Speaker 4: dialed back. And a lot of those sites that were
• 39:45
  Speaker 4: dependent on affiliate marketing have had huge layoffs or gone
• 39:49
  Speaker 4: out of business. And I think, uh, yeah, as you
• 39:53
  Speaker 4: were saying, like sports betting has sort of gotten hooked
• 39:55
  Speaker 4: on that level of advertising. It's unsustainable and there's no,
• 40:00
  Speaker 4: there's no, you know, delusions within sports books that, as
• 40:03
  Speaker 4: you said, they're going to have to flip this pitch
• 40:06
  Speaker 4: in part because their investors are not going to tolerate
• 40:09
  Speaker 4: losing hundreds of millions of dollars, you know, quarter after
• 40:12
  Speaker 4: quarter to establish themselves. Eventually you got to start making money. And, uh,
• 40:17
  Speaker 4: that's going to mean dialing back advertising.
• 40:20
  Speaker 1: You know, one question I always have about when these
• 40:23
  Speaker 1: things become legalized, no matter what it is. So I
• 40:27
  Speaker 1: think the cannabis market is a great example. There are
• 40:32
  Speaker 1: people who like going and talking to a human being
• 40:37
  Speaker 1: and going to their house and making a transaction. And
• 40:39
  Speaker 1: perhaps you guys will sit down and smoke a joint
• 40:41
  Speaker 1: together and just watch some stuff. And there's kind of
• 40:43
  Speaker 1: a human touch along with it. Now, Human bookies are
• 40:47
  Speaker 1: a little bit tricky because the weed man doesn't break
• 40:49
  Speaker 1: your legs, right?
• 40:50
  Speaker 2: Like you don't tend to run into a debt in
• 40:52
  Speaker 2: that situation.
• 40:53
  Speaker 1: But there are relationships there.
• 40:56
  Speaker 2: It is a bit more of a human thing.
• 40:59
  Speaker 1: And I've always think that these legal games, they get
• 41:01
  Speaker 1: tripped up because they can't give you that same sort
• 41:04
  Speaker 1: of feeling in what the thing is. But what they
• 41:06
  Speaker 1: can do is they can put the casino in your
• 41:09
  Speaker 1: pocket and it follows you everywhere you go and it
• 41:12
  Speaker 1: makes noises and it chirps and it always reminds you
• 41:15
  Speaker 1: that you're there. And I think something that the commissioner
• 41:19
  Speaker 1: of the NBA got wrong in this, and I'm curious
• 41:22
  Speaker 1: your thoughts about it. In fact, I think the book
• 41:24
  Speaker 1: gets into it, but it's one thing to legalize gambling.
• 41:29
  Speaker 1: It's another to do it within the context of a
• 41:32
  Speaker 1: smartphone world. And so that said, like in 2014, I
• 41:37
  Speaker 1: think it was a little easier to say, well, now
• 41:38
  Speaker 1: we're bringing it to the light. But I don't think
• 41:41
  Speaker 1: that the thought in the heads there, we're bringing it
• 41:43
  Speaker 1: to the light and it's going to buzz in your
• 41:45
  Speaker 1: pocket every 15 minutes.
• 41:48
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 41:48
  Speaker 4: Isn't that wild? Like it's so intuitive and yet it
• 41:51
  Speaker 4: was lost on so many lawmakers who are rushing to
• 41:55
  Speaker 4: legalize things. The person in particular who I think about
• 41:58
  Speaker 4: is Charlie Baker. who was governor of Massachusetts when they
• 42:01
  Speaker 4: legalized bookmaking, I believe in 2023, around there. And then
• 42:06
  Speaker 4: a few months later, he took the job as president
• 42:08
  Speaker 4: of the NCAA. And as he was going to campuses
• 42:11
  Speaker 4: and talking to students and athletes, he was just freaked
• 42:15
  Speaker 4: out already by the things that online betting were doing
• 42:18
  Speaker 4: to people. One in five college students says they dip
• 42:22
  Speaker 4: into tuition money to pay for bets. And Hearing stuff
• 42:26
  Speaker 4: like that, hearing athletes saying they're hounded by people they
• 42:31
  Speaker 4: go to class with or they know saying, hey, hook
• 42:35
  Speaker 4: me up and don't catch a pass in the first
• 42:37
  Speaker 4: quarter or something so I can win a bet, that
• 42:40
  Speaker 4: is just relentless and unbearable for some athletes. Baker was like,
• 42:44
  Speaker 4: all of this really stems from the fact that it's
• 42:47
  Speaker 4: totally different if you have to go to Las Vegas
• 42:50
  Speaker 4: or chase down a bookie or bet through some shady
• 42:52
  Speaker 4: offshore website than if you're banging out bets from your
• 42:56
  Speaker 4: couch on your phone and an app that you downloaded
• 42:58
  Speaker 4: on the app store. And as crazy as this is,
• 43:01
  Speaker 4: that was just lost on people like him. And he said,
• 43:04
  Speaker 4: the quote he had was shame on all of us
• 43:06
  Speaker 4: for not putting two and two together. The other thing
• 43:09
  Speaker 4: about online betting, it's not just that it's so ripe
• 43:13
  Speaker 4: for compulsive behavior. It creates all these betting opportunities that
• 43:17
  Speaker 4: are so ripe for corruption. And I really tried to
• 43:19
  Speaker 4: get that point across in the book that like, the
• 43:22
  Speaker 4: John T. Porter scandal, people betting hundreds of thousands of
• 43:26
  Speaker 4: dollars on a two-way player to how many rebounds he's
• 43:30
  Speaker 4: going to have in a random game and stacking that
• 43:33
  Speaker 4: together in a same game parlay. That's basically entirely the
• 43:37
  Speaker 4: creation of the online betting era. You could not bet
• 43:41
  Speaker 4: that in Vegas a decade ago. You couldn't even bet
• 43:43
  Speaker 4: that through an offshore site a decade ago. They wouldn't
• 43:48
  Speaker 4: risk it because they knew how easy it would be
• 43:50
  Speaker 4: for a guy making a minimum salary to fix his
• 43:55
  Speaker 4: prop bets. So these companies have invited that risk of
• 43:59
  Speaker 4: corruption by offering those sorts of bets. And again, when
• 44:02
  Speaker 4: the leagues say that legalization somehow decreases the risk of fixing,
• 44:07
  Speaker 4: we're just seeing one example after another that undermines that.
• 44:12
  Speaker 2: All right.
• 44:12
  Speaker 1: So coming up next, I want to talk more about
• 44:13
  Speaker 1: the player end of it because they They wind up
• 44:16
  Speaker 1: kind of in two places at one time in this
• 44:19
  Speaker 1: whole discussion. So we will do that after we do this.
• 44:25
  Speaker 1: It's the last call for football on FanDuel. One final Sunday,
• 44:29
  Speaker 1: one last kickoff, the final chance to place your bets
• 44:32
  Speaker 1: before the NFL season.
• 44:34
  Speaker 2: Closes its tab.
• 44:35
  Speaker 1: This is Super Bowl 60, and FanDuel is making sure
• 44:38
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• 44:41
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• 44:45
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• 44:52
  Speaker 1: over and football is officially done. Last call for football
• 44:56
  Speaker 1: on FanDuel, an official sportsbook partner of Super Bowl 60.
• 45:01
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• 45:05
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• 45:47
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• 45:54
  Speaker 1: All right, we are back with Danny Futt, the author
• 45:57
  Speaker 1: of Everybody Loses, this new book on sports gambling in America.
• 46:02
  Speaker 1: Absolutely check that out. We were talking about the relationship
• 46:04
  Speaker 1: that players have to this new world order and It's
• 46:07
  Speaker 1: two things, as you described. One, players who feel pressure
• 46:11
  Speaker 1: and hear more from fans who also, because of the smartphone,
• 46:14
  Speaker 1: have this whole new level of access to them at
• 46:16
  Speaker 1: all times to motherfuck them about what's going on on
• 46:19
  Speaker 1: the court with relation.
• 46:21
  Speaker 2: To their bets.
• 46:21
  Speaker 1: But also, occasionally, they are the bettors themselves. And so
• 46:27
  Speaker 1: now all of this has come together in a world
• 46:30
  Speaker 1: that just makes it so much easier for somebody to
• 46:33
  Speaker 1: try this new cocaine.
• 46:36
  Speaker 3: Oh, yeah.
• 46:36
  Speaker 4: I mean, the harassment stuff is so out of control.
• 46:40
  Speaker 4: I remember Jalen Brunson told The Athletic, he was like, however,
• 46:45
  Speaker 4: whatever you think they're sending us, it's way worse than that.
• 46:48
  Speaker 4: It's the most gruesome, insane things. Game after game, it's
• 46:55
  Speaker 4: become totally normal now for people to find the Venmo
• 46:57
  Speaker 4: accounts of athletes and say, hey, you struck out or
• 47:01
  Speaker 4: you bricked that game-winning shot. You owe me money to
• 47:04
  Speaker 4: make up for it. It gets way worse than that.
• 47:07
  Speaker 4: It's not just confined to the internet either. People have
• 47:10
  Speaker 4: been stalked at team hotels or their homes. JB Bickerstaff,
• 47:15
  Speaker 4: the coach of the Pistons, said that people texted his
• 47:17
  Speaker 4: personal phone that they know who his kids are and
• 47:20
  Speaker 4: where he lives and threatened him that way. The manager
• 47:24
  Speaker 4: of the San Diego Padres just resigned because, in part,
• 47:29
  Speaker 4: he said he was just worn down from getting so
• 47:32
  Speaker 4: many death threats from gamblers. And I highlighted this early
• 47:36
  Speaker 4: in the book because it's an example of how there's
• 47:39
  Speaker 4: always been betting. It was never this bad. And this
• 47:42
  Speaker 4: level of harassment and threats were nowhere near to this level.
• 47:46
  Speaker 4: And it could reach a point where, as the former
• 47:48
  Speaker 4: chief security officer of the NFL told me, as he
• 47:52
  Speaker 4: put it, it's only a matter of time before someone
• 47:54
  Speaker 4: tries to kill an athlete who cost them a bet.
• 47:57
  Speaker 4: And I'm guessing if that were to happen, we'd have
• 48:00
  Speaker 4: a whole bunch of politicians saying, we got to crack down.
• 48:03
  Speaker 4: This is way out of control. But it just seems
• 48:05
  Speaker 4: like an inevitability based on the level of abuse that
• 48:11
  Speaker 4: athletes are getting these days.
• 48:12
  Speaker 1: And then on the flip side, you talk about something
• 48:14
  Speaker 1: like Jontae Porter or somebody like Terry Rozier, players who
• 48:19
  Speaker 1: are accused– of engaging in fixing of some sort. And
• 48:24
  Speaker 1: the easiest fix, the one we talked about and you
• 48:25
  Speaker 1: mentioned earlier, was these prop bets, these over-under for irrelevant players.
• 48:30
  Speaker 1: And like, to me, somebody bets $ 20 on John Tate Porter.
• 48:34
  Speaker 2: We shutting this down.
• 48:37
  Speaker 1: Like, if you doing this, if you claim that you're
• 48:39
  Speaker 1: trying to help people with problems, The second they start
• 48:42
  Speaker 1: putting a bet on Jontae Porter, either it's a problem
• 48:44
  Speaker 1: for them or it's a problem for you, right? But
• 48:47
  Speaker 1: it seemed to me, and it seems clear the book
• 48:50
  Speaker 1: pointed this out, they didn't think any of this stuff out.
• 48:52
  Speaker 1: It was just like, hey, man, we got this way
• 48:53
  Speaker 1: to get this money right now. Move fast, break things.
• 48:55
  Speaker 2: Boom, let's go. Let's do it.
• 48:58
  Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean, I hear your point. To say nothing
• 49:01
  Speaker 4: of if you're betting on Pakistani cricket at 2 a.m.
• 49:04
  Speaker 4: or something, probably you have an issue. It just goes
• 49:07
  Speaker 4: to show same game parlays are the number one moneymaker
• 49:12
  Speaker 4: of these companies. And the degree to which it dominates
• 49:16
  Speaker 4: their business even caught people at DraftKings by surprise, they
• 49:19
  Speaker 4: told me.
• 49:20
  Speaker 3: Me.
• 49:20
  Speaker 4: They did not anticipate that would be how so many
• 49:23
  Speaker 4: people exclusively bet nowadays. And in order to make those
• 49:27
  Speaker 4: bets as attractive as possible, you want to be able
• 49:29
  Speaker 4: to combine every possible outcome within a game, including a
• 49:35
  Speaker 4: totally obscure bench player like Ajante Porter. So Yeah, they
• 49:40
  Speaker 4: were inviting trouble. And there's just so many easy ways
• 49:43
  Speaker 4: to fix now. And it's, you know, like you look
• 49:46
  Speaker 4: at Rozier, he was allegedly, these bets happened when he
• 49:50
  Speaker 4: was on the Hornets. Clearly they were tanking that season.
• 49:54
  Speaker 4: And he was, you know, if you're in that position,
• 49:56
  Speaker 4: you're like, I can hook my buddy up, help him
• 49:59
  Speaker 4: make tens of thousands of dollars instantly because I'm going
• 50:02
  Speaker 4: to remove my game from a, I'm going to remove
• 50:05
  Speaker 4: myself from a game my team is trying to lose.
• 50:09
  Speaker 4: What's the big deal? What's the harm? That's just one
• 50:12
  Speaker 4: of many reasons why making $ 150 million over the course
• 50:17
  Speaker 4: of your career in Rozier's case does not immunize you
• 50:20
  Speaker 4: from doing something stupid with gambling.
• 50:22
  Speaker 1: Well, also, I think Rozier speaks to something very important,
• 50:26
  Speaker 1: which is making a lot of money and having a
• 50:29
  Speaker 1: lot of money sound like the same thing. When Rozier
• 50:32
  Speaker 1: got busted, he had to put his house up for bond.
• 50:37
  Speaker 1: He appears to have problems himself and so the idea
• 50:41
  Speaker 1: that well we'll just we'll just talk to these guys
• 50:43
  Speaker 1: and make sure they understand that they don't need to
• 50:45
  Speaker 1: gamble gamble and that gambling is bad as though people
• 50:47
  Speaker 1: don't just generally make bad decisions in many cases the
• 50:51
  Speaker 1: leagues are now more vulnerable and to somebody the same
• 50:54
  Speaker 1: way anybody else is just got this phone just playing
• 50:57
  Speaker 1: a little game just clicking a little hair a little
• 50:59
  Speaker 1: here and there a little there.
• 51:01
  Speaker 4: Now what yeah the cleveland guardians pitchers including an all-star
• 51:05
  Speaker 4: you know very highly paid relief pitcher emmanuel classe allegedly
• 51:10
  Speaker 4: texting their collaborators from the bullpen, these college basketball players
• 51:15
  Speaker 4: who just got indicted last week, uh, for fixing games,
• 51:19
  Speaker 4: point shaving, allegedly texting during halftime, one of them on DePaul.
• 51:23
  Speaker 4: I remember he said, he allegedly said, man, that was easy, uh,
• 51:27
  Speaker 4: to fix a game, which is, you know, not surprising,
• 51:31
  Speaker 4: but yeah, so brazen and like the immediacy of it
• 51:35
  Speaker 4: with doing it on your phone. Uh, And these athletes
• 51:38
  Speaker 4: who are betting themselves, they're like, just like anyone, they're like,
• 51:41
  Speaker 4: I'm seeing nonstop ads. I see my league embracing it. Obviously,
• 51:47
  Speaker 4: in hindsight, I realized this was stupid. But at the time,
• 51:49
  Speaker 4: I just thought, what's the big deal?
• 51:52
  Speaker 1: Now, we talked about a little bit about just, you know,
• 51:55
  Speaker 1: I think how this affects fans is interesting.
• 51:58
  Speaker 2: And I think that there are a couple of levels. One,
• 52:00
  Speaker 2: I saw that you have my buddy Bob Costas.
• 52:03
  Speaker 1: Blurb your book, and Bob opened my eyes to a
• 52:07
  Speaker 1: thought process on this that I hadn't considered that has
• 52:08
  Speaker 1: really kind of changed how I look at a whole
• 52:10
  Speaker 1: lot of things, and that was none of us got
• 52:13
  Speaker 1: into this for gambling in terms of being fans of sport.
• 52:17
  Speaker 1: The reason we got into this was not so that
• 52:20
  Speaker 1: we could bet on it. If you are to watch
• 52:22
  Speaker 1: just about any sports broadcast or any sports television show,
• 52:26
  Speaker 1: you would think that's the whole reason that anybody is watching. Now,
• 52:30
  Speaker 1: I'm of the belief that these, like, I'm going to
• 52:34
  Speaker 1: get some advice for somebody on gambling. I think most
• 52:37
  Speaker 1: people are just kind of looking for the thrill. And
• 52:39
  Speaker 1: so there's inside information. There aren't that many people that are,
• 52:41
  Speaker 1: they are profit seeking, but that's not really how it works. Like,
• 52:43
  Speaker 1: I just, if you are coming to me to find
• 52:46
  Speaker 1: out what your pick should be, baby, this is, you're
• 52:49
  Speaker 1: doing this.
• 52:49
  Speaker 2: Wrong, right?
• 52:50
  Speaker 1: But a broadcast would lead you to believe the whole
• 52:53
  Speaker 1: reason to watch this is for these reasons. I think
• 52:56
  Speaker 1: it also goes in line with our increased emphasis on
• 52:59
  Speaker 1: on quantitative information or quantitative data which then becomes something
• 53:03
  Speaker 1: that you can cook up in some formula to think
• 53:05
  Speaker 1: that you know how these games are ultimately going to
• 53:07
  Speaker 1: end but i'm curious what you think about how this
• 53:10
  Speaker 1: is going to manifest itself as fans look at the
• 53:13
  Speaker 1: actual product that we get when we're consuming around sports
• 53:15
  Speaker 1: where how many of us are really doing this to
• 53:18
  Speaker 1: gamble and even if it's not making us gamble it's
• 53:20
  Speaker 1: making us talk about it when we don't want to.
• 53:23
  Speaker 4: Yeah, you know, when you were talking about what's the
• 53:25
  Speaker 4: main motivation people do this, I like what you've said
• 53:28
  Speaker 4: before about if you sit down at a blackjack table,
• 53:32
  Speaker 4: hopefully your mindset is like, I'm lucky enough to have
• 53:35
  Speaker 4: this money that I can lose to enjoy myself tonight
• 53:38
  Speaker 4: or whatever. I don't think that's how most sports bettors
• 53:42
  Speaker 4: approach sports betting. I think they're doing it to make money.
• 53:46
  Speaker 4: I think the ways they bet and the way it's
• 53:48
  Speaker 4: advertised make that clear, and there's surveys to back that up.
• 53:53
  Speaker 4: As far as media goes, yeah, like Bob Costas, he
• 53:57
  Speaker 4: said when he was calling baseball games, he opted out
• 54:00
  Speaker 4: of reading ads and he had the stature to do that. Obviously,
• 54:04
  Speaker 4: most people are not in a position where they can say,
• 54:08
  Speaker 4: I'm going to skip out on what my employer is
• 54:11
  Speaker 4: telling me to do. But it does change the nature
• 54:14
  Speaker 4: of fandom profoundly. And one thing that kind of tripped
• 54:17
  Speaker 4: me out was I had spoken with people with gambling addictions.
• 54:23
  Speaker 4: who I've said, you know, it got to a point
• 54:24
  Speaker 4: where I couldn't watch my childhood team or my favorite
• 54:27
  Speaker 4: team unless I had money on the line. Like it
• 54:29
  Speaker 4: just did nothing for me. It's kind of like they'd
• 54:33
  Speaker 4: built up a tolerance to the point that just watching
• 54:36
  Speaker 4: a game for the game's sake didn't get this, didn't,
• 54:40
  Speaker 4: it was just like, why would I, why would I
• 54:41
  Speaker 4: waste my time? In the same way, like you probably
• 54:44
  Speaker 4: wouldn't go to a horse racing, you know, you wouldn't
• 54:46
  Speaker 4: go to a racetrack just to like watch, you know,
• 54:49
  Speaker 4: the jockeys. You're doing it because you're betting something. And,
• 54:52
  Speaker 4: That used to be something you'd hear from people with
• 54:55
  Speaker 4: legitimate gambling problems. I hear so many people nowadays who
• 54:59
  Speaker 4: are just ordinary bettors who say like, the idea of
• 55:03
  Speaker 4: just watching a game because I'm a fan doesn't do
• 55:06
  Speaker 4: it for me now. If I don't have skin in
• 55:07
  Speaker 4: the game, if I'm not sweating the bet, as they say,
• 55:12
  Speaker 4: I'm not interested. And that is, I'm curious how that's
• 55:16
  Speaker 4: going to play out long-term because when we think about
• 55:19
  Speaker 4: like why did a previous era of commissioners resist legalization?
• 55:24
  Speaker 4: I don't think it wasn't because they weren't as interested
• 55:27
  Speaker 4: in making money as this generation of guys. I think
• 55:30
  Speaker 4: they maybe had a more long-term vision of what actually
• 55:34
  Speaker 4: brings their leagues value and how they can bank on
• 55:38
  Speaker 4: generation after generation, spending their money and tuning in. And
• 55:42
  Speaker 4: that seems like it's in jeopardy now.
• 55:44
  Speaker 1: Well, on this show, I always talk about how Nick
• 55:47
  Speaker 1: Saban was so good that people don't realize how crazy
• 55:49
  Speaker 1: Alabama football is because he kept the beast at bay
• 55:51
  Speaker 1: so long. And so there are going to be things
• 55:53
  Speaker 1: that ultimately come up with that team. There are people like, oh,
• 55:56
  Speaker 1: my God, it's so shocking because you've just forgotten. It's
• 55:58
  Speaker 1: been so long. Those commissioners were much closer to some
• 56:02
  Speaker 1: of the larger scandals in the faith that was eroded
• 56:06
  Speaker 1: in their games. And so it had been so long,
• 56:08
  Speaker 1: I guess, since something so big like that happened that
• 56:11
  Speaker 1: it becomes easy for people to be like, hey, well,
• 56:13
  Speaker 1: what's the worst thing that can happen? And this is
• 56:15
  Speaker 1: also tied to tech, which absolutely ignores anything that happened.
• 56:20
  Speaker 1: Forget about before they were born, anything that happened before
• 56:22
  Speaker 1: last week, right? There's no value in learning from what
• 56:25
  Speaker 1: happened previously.
• 56:26
  Speaker 2: Now, you.
• 56:28
  Speaker 1: The VIP programs was a very interesting thing in the
• 56:32
  Speaker 1: book for me to think of because I was aware
• 56:34
  Speaker 1: of a lot of these sports books having VIP programs.
• 56:37
  Speaker 1: And my mind went to where my mind normally goes
• 56:41
  Speaker 1: when you think about somebody being a VIP, which is
• 56:45
  Speaker 1: simply somebody who has a lot of money.
• 56:48
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 56:48
  Speaker 1: Those are the kind of customers that keep going back.
• 56:50
  Speaker 1: You get the black card because you make a whole
• 56:52
  Speaker 1: lot of charges, but you also pay off the charges.
• 56:54
  Speaker 2: There you go.
• 56:55
  Speaker 1: I hadn't really truly considered that what makes you a
• 56:59
  Speaker 1: VIP for a gambling operation is not so much how
• 57:03
  Speaker 1: much money you have, but how much money you are
• 57:06
  Speaker 1: inclined to lose. And the incentivization from these companies to
• 57:11
  Speaker 1: keep their losers on the hook fascinated me. So how
• 57:15
  Speaker 1: do these programs work?
• 57:17
  Speaker 4: Yeah, I had to give this a whole chapter. It's
• 57:19
  Speaker 4: probably my favorite chapter just because I've been covering this
• 57:21
  Speaker 4: for years. I did not realize the scale of this
• 57:24
  Speaker 4: and how it's really... In some respects, all these companies
• 57:27
  Speaker 4: care about like they're advertising and stuff. It's kind of
• 57:30
  Speaker 4: like a, a giant fishing net and they're hoping to
• 57:33
  Speaker 4: catch a whale and they're going to catch a lot
• 57:35
  Speaker 4: of us sardines in the process. About 2% of betters
• 57:39
  Speaker 4: account for 60 or 70% of the revenue. These VIPs
• 57:44
  Speaker 4: who are betting tens of thousands of dollars a week,
• 57:46
  Speaker 4: if not much, much more than that. And in order
• 57:49
  Speaker 4: to keep those customers happy and loyal to a specific company,
• 57:53
  Speaker 4: Places like FanDuel and DraftKings have hundreds of employees whose
• 57:57
  Speaker 4: sole job is pampering them with every experience imaginable. Throwing
• 58:03
  Speaker 4: out the first pitch at a Major League Baseball game,
• 58:05
  Speaker 4: playing pickup on an NBA court, giving the starting command
• 58:09
  Speaker 4: at a NASCAR race, having your kids take batting practice
• 58:13
  Speaker 4: on a Major League field. By the way, this is
• 58:16
  Speaker 4: part of why they're so determined to partner with teams.
• 58:19
  Speaker 4: It's not just for the billboard effect of official sponsor
• 58:22
  Speaker 4: of the New York Yankees. It's because they want access
• 58:25
  Speaker 4: to all those perks that they can give their VIP customers.
• 58:30
  Speaker 4: It even goes beyond sports. These hosts who make sure
• 58:34
  Speaker 4: these VIPs stay happy and betting so much will text
• 58:39
  Speaker 4: with them day and night about betting and all sorts
• 58:41
  Speaker 4: of other things, go out drinking, go out to dinner,
• 58:45
  Speaker 4: play golf. Really, the idea is befriend them. If they're
• 58:49
  Speaker 4: ever tempted to pull back their betting or you know,
• 58:53
  Speaker 4: say I'm, I'm overdoing it or I need to rethink
• 58:55
  Speaker 4: how much I'm losing. Not only are you going to
• 58:58
  Speaker 4: lose those VIP perks, but you're going to lose a
• 59:00
  Speaker 4: friend in a sense that FanDuel or DraftKings or whoever has,
• 59:05
  Speaker 4: offered you. And I think the best example of this
• 59:09
  Speaker 4: is a VIP host at FanDuel told me about a
• 59:12
  Speaker 4: colleague who had caught wind that a VIP customer's dog
• 59:16
  Speaker 4: had passed away, and they sent them this condolence basket
• 59:20
  Speaker 4: that included a blanket with the picture of the dog's.
• 59:23
  Speaker 2: Face on it.
• 59:24
  Speaker 4: And I just think that's a wild relationship to have
• 59:28
  Speaker 4: with your sports betting company of choice. But it just
• 59:32
  Speaker 4: goes to show the VIP business is everything to these companies.
• 59:35
  Speaker 4: And if you're one of those hosts, it puts you
• 59:38
  Speaker 4: in brutal dilemmas sometimes where you see someone who's getting
• 59:44
  Speaker 4: carried away, maybe can't afford to be losing that mountain
• 59:48
  Speaker 4: of money at such a rapid rate. And it's very
• 59:52
  Speaker 4: clear inside of these companies, unless they say, I have
• 59:55
  Speaker 4: a gambling problem, there's a stigma about intervening because you're
• 59:59
  Speaker 4: going to cut off one of your cash cows, in effect.
• 1:00:03
  Speaker 4: And that's a mess right now. And people who work
• 1:00:06
  Speaker 4: in responsible gaming at these companies or who are these
• 1:00:10
  Speaker 4: VIP hosts say, essentially, we're incentivizing irresponsible behavior. Betting irresponsibly
• 1:00:17
  Speaker 4: is a requirement to be a VIP, which is uh,
• 1:00:21
  Speaker 4: bad news. I think it's safe to say here.
• 1:00:24
  Speaker 1: I was talking about how they need to have more
• 1:00:26
  Speaker 1: relationships with a people like, like, like the wee man would, um,
• 1:00:29
  Speaker 1: responsible gaming RG. That is another thing that comes up
• 1:00:32
  Speaker 1: in the book a lot. And that is the people
• 1:00:34
  Speaker 1: inside the company whose job it is to make sure
• 1:00:38
  Speaker 1: that people bet responsibly. And I feel like RG is
• 1:00:41
  Speaker 1: somewhat synonymous with LOL.
• 1:00:44
  Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah.
• 1:00:45
  Speaker 4: I mean, first of all, I don't think bet responsibly
• 1:00:48
  Speaker 4: means anything. Like, even as hollow as saying drink responsibly
• 1:00:53
  Speaker 4: might be at the end of an alcohol ad, at
• 1:00:55
  Speaker 4: least we know what drunk driving looks like or that
• 1:00:58
  Speaker 4: you shouldn't over-serve a customer or grab someone's keys if
• 1:01:01
  Speaker 4: they're drinking too much out. I don't know what the
• 1:01:04
  Speaker 4: equivalent of that is for betting. And these companies don't
• 1:01:07
  Speaker 4: offer anything very clear to back up what bet responsibly means.
• 1:01:11
  Speaker 4: It feels just kind of a euphemism. Beyond that, they
• 1:01:15
  Speaker 4: have these responsible gaming departments that And I heard all
• 1:01:19
  Speaker 4: these people, whether it's a VIP host saying, oh, if
• 1:01:22
  Speaker 4: someone was overdoing it, I'd go to RG or marketing
• 1:01:26
  Speaker 4: would say if an ad seemed too aggressive, we'd go
• 1:01:29
  Speaker 4: to RG. Two examples that I think might make you
• 1:01:34
  Speaker 4: reconsider whether these RG departments are on top of all that.
• 1:01:38
  Speaker 4: You might remember the company PointsBet, which was acquired by Fanatics.
• 1:01:42
  Speaker 4: It was one of the most brash sports books initially.
• 1:01:45
  Speaker 4: I had been hearing all this stuff about PointsBet's RG department.
• 1:01:48
  Speaker 4: They had hundreds of thousands of customers at one point.
• 1:01:50
  Speaker 4: It seemed like a pretty big deal. And I met
• 1:01:54
  Speaker 4: the woman who was the responsible gaming manager at PointsBet.
• 1:01:57
  Speaker 4: And I said, okay, ballpark for me, how many people
• 1:02:00
  Speaker 4: were working for you in that department? How big was
• 1:02:03
  Speaker 4: your team? And she said, no need to ballpark. It
• 1:02:06
  Speaker 4: was literally just me. One person handling 14 states and
• 1:02:11
  Speaker 4: hundreds of thousands of customers, which is, as she put it,
• 1:02:15
  Speaker 4: impossible to actually make sure everyone's betting safely. The other
• 1:02:20
  Speaker 4: alarm bell came from a person who's very high up
• 1:02:24
  Speaker 4: at one of the top companies who works there and
• 1:02:27
  Speaker 4: didn't want me to put out their name or where
• 1:02:29
  Speaker 4: they work because they're criticizing their employer. But they said, basically,
• 1:02:34
  Speaker 4: When it comes to responsible gaming, they will tolerate the
• 1:02:38
  Speaker 4: lowest common denominator of customer protections. Anything beyond that, this
• 1:02:45
  Speaker 4: person said, is viewed as a competitive disadvantage, which is scary.
• 1:02:52
  Speaker 4: The baseline they're okay with going anything further is just
• 1:02:57
  Speaker 4: going to eat into their profits, which is why when
• 1:02:59
  Speaker 4: they say, oh, we can self-police We've got this under control.
• 1:03:02
  Speaker 4: We don't need regulators breathing down our necks. Hearing that,
• 1:03:07
  Speaker 4: I think, should make you skeptical.
• 1:03:09
  Speaker 1: And the last thing I want to get to, and
• 1:03:11
  Speaker 1: it was one of the more jarring things for me
• 1:03:13
  Speaker 1: to read in this, was the idea that, at least
• 1:03:17
  Speaker 1: in theory, this is a contest, right? The House sets odds,
• 1:03:21
  Speaker 1: odds that are in their favor so they can have
• 1:03:22
  Speaker 1: their vig, make sure they get their money.
• 1:03:24
  Speaker 2: Okay, got you.
• 1:03:26
  Speaker 1: But if for some reason you have determined that you
• 1:03:29
  Speaker 1: are good at this and you can come in and
• 1:03:32
  Speaker 1: you can win, they do not tell you good job.
• 1:03:36
  Speaker 1: They stop you from participating. I did not realize that part.
• 1:03:41
  Speaker 4: Oh, yeah. Which obviously flies in the face of all
• 1:03:45
  Speaker 4: their advertising. You know, I used to drive by a
• 1:03:48
  Speaker 4: billboard in Charlotte. It was a FanDuel ad that said,
• 1:03:51
  Speaker 4: turns out watching football can really pay off. And they
• 1:03:54
  Speaker 4: underlined the words pay off, which is like, as on
• 1:03:57
  Speaker 4: the nose as you could be that betting on FanDuel
• 1:03:59
  Speaker 4: is a potential way to make money, not only do
• 1:04:02
  Speaker 4: about 1% of customers actually come out ahead over time,
• 1:04:05
  Speaker 4: but if you are in that group, or even if
• 1:04:08
  Speaker 4: you show signs that you know what you're doing and
• 1:04:10
  Speaker 4: you know how to place the types of bets that
• 1:04:13
  Speaker 4: give you a shot at winning money, they'll cut down
• 1:04:16
  Speaker 4: how much you're allowed to bet down to literal pennies.
• 1:04:19
  Speaker 4: I've seen guys who can't get down a single cent
• 1:04:22
  Speaker 4: on an NFL game And this is true for ordinary people,
• 1:04:26
  Speaker 4: and it's also true for those VIPs. So I heard
• 1:04:29
  Speaker 4: a story of a guy who was betting with Fanatics
• 1:04:32
  Speaker 4: and earned VIP status in Ohio. And he told them, like,
• 1:04:36
  Speaker 4: I'm in Ohio. I'm a Pittsburgh Steelers fan. The Steelers
• 1:04:39
  Speaker 4: are playing the Browns. Could you hook me up with
• 1:04:41
  Speaker 4: some tickets? They're like, absolutely. We got you. Here's these
• 1:04:45
  Speaker 4: amazing seats for you and your wife. game comes around,
• 1:04:49
  Speaker 4: he emails them. He hadn't heard from them in a
• 1:04:51
  Speaker 4: while and he emailed them and he's like, psyched for
• 1:04:53
  Speaker 4: this game. Thank you for the free tickets. Uh, could
• 1:04:56
  Speaker 4: you throw in a parking pass? And his VIP host
• 1:05:00
  Speaker 4: very casually emailed him back and was like, sorry, um,
• 1:05:04
  Speaker 4: we realize you're no longer a VIP customer because the
• 1:05:08
  Speaker 4: bets you've been placing on the NFL disqualify you from
• 1:05:13
  Speaker 4: being considered a VIP. So we had to revoke those tickets, uh,
• 1:05:18
  Speaker 4: Too bad if you change how you're betting, maybe we'll
• 1:05:21
  Speaker 4: get you other tickets down the line. But he hadn't
• 1:05:24
  Speaker 4: broken any rules, hadn't violated any terms and conditions. Literally,
• 1:05:27
  Speaker 4: all he had done wrong to lose these free tickets
• 1:05:31
  Speaker 4: they promised him was place smart bets on football. And
• 1:05:36
  Speaker 4: you might say- So let's be clear.
• 1:05:38
  Speaker 1: He started betting differently, which is to say he started losing.
• 1:05:43
  Speaker 3: Oh, yeah.
• 1:05:43
  Speaker 4: If he started losing, they'd be like, oh, welcome back.
• 1:05:47
  Speaker 4: Here are all those perks. But yeah, his only crime
• 1:05:50
  Speaker 4: he committed was showing a little bit of competence, betting
• 1:05:54
  Speaker 4: on the NFL. So you might say like, oh, these
• 1:05:57
  Speaker 4: are profit-driven companies. They're running a business. But they don't
• 1:06:03
  Speaker 4: advertise it that way. They do not, you know, no one,
• 1:06:06
  Speaker 4: if you ask them like, do you think you'll have
• 1:06:09
  Speaker 4: a shot at winning in surveys or, you know, my interviews?
• 1:06:13
  Speaker 4: Of course, they say like, it's a fair fight. That's
• 1:06:15
  Speaker 4: the reason we legalized this was to give customers, you know,
• 1:06:19
  Speaker 4: somewhat of a, if not a level playing field, because
• 1:06:23
  Speaker 4: the house has its vig. Once you account for that,
• 1:06:26
  Speaker 4: it's a fair fight. And it's just, that's just not
• 1:06:28
  Speaker 4: the case.
• 1:06:29
  Speaker 1: All right, Danny Font, check out the book, Everybody Loses.
• 1:06:34
  Speaker 2: Let me make sure that's exactly right. Everybody Loses.
• 1:06:38
  Speaker 1: The Tumultuous Rise of American Sports Gambling. It is truly
• 1:06:42
  Speaker 1: a fantastic book.
• 1:06:43
  Speaker 2: I don't say that if I don't mean it. Please
• 1:06:45
  Speaker 2: go check it out.
• 1:06:46
  Speaker 1: I think it is an important topic, maybe the most
• 1:06:47
  Speaker 1: important topic that we have in this day in sports.
• 1:06:50
  Speaker 2: So check that out. And my man, I appreciate you
• 1:06:51
  Speaker 2: joining us.
• 1:06:52
  Speaker 4: Thank you so much.
• 1:06:53
  Speaker 2: My pleasure. No problem. And ladies and gentlemen, thanks so
• 1:06:55
  Speaker 2: much for joining us here on The Right Time.
• 1:06:58
  Speaker 1: We do this four times a week. Ryan Brumley handling
• 1:07:00
  Speaker 1: everything behind the scenes.
• 1:07:02
  Speaker 2: Thank you, sir. Remember, hit the voicemail line 323-596-7767. Follow
• 1:07:07
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• 1:07:09
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• 1:07:09
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• 1:07:10
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• 1:07:12
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• 1:07:14
  Speaker 2: And we'll talk to you guys in a couple of days.
• 1:07:16
  Speaker 2: Take it easy.