February 24, 2026 • 41 mins
Since 2018, sports betting has been legalized in 38 states. Plus, sports betting apps have brought gambling right to our fingertips. It turns out this country has a pretty long and fraught history with gambling. Albert Chen, journalist and author of the book, Billion Dollar Fantasy, helps us answer: How dangerous is sports gambling? Is it tainting the games we love to watch? And, how is technology changing the landscape?
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
A few weeks ago, I was watching the Knicks with
my buddy, and let's just say he was getting very
into it, and after a while I started to realize
that this wasn't actually about the score for him. He
kept checking his phone compulsively, and I realized he was
on a sports betting app. And he tells me he's
placed like twenty little bets on the game here and there,
and it's wild things. It's like how many free throws
(00:22):
will Mitchell Robinson make? Or which team is even going
to call the first time out? And after she finishes
telling me this, I'm just sort of like, dude, come on,
do you actually care if our team wins? The answer
apparently was not really, at least not where he might
make a few grand either way. And I guess who
can blame him? I mean, if that's the way you're
enjoying the game, fine, I guess. Since twenty eighteen, sports
(00:47):
betting has been legalized in thirty eight states, and the
sports betting apps have brought gambling right to our fingertips.
It turns out this country has a pretty long and
fraught history with gambling.
Speaker 2 (01:00):
Number of essentially like college age males, half of them
have sports gambling accounts. Oh wow, yeah, half half. It's
just become part of being a sports fan.
Speaker 1 (01:15):
Albert chen is a longtime sports journalist, former magazine editor, producer,
and author of the book Billion Dollar Fantasy, which digs
deep into the war between the sports betting apps draft
Kings and FanDuel, and is here to help me understand
how dangerous is sports betting really? Is it tainting the
games we once loved to watch? And has technology made
(01:35):
prop bets all too easy for all the wrong reasons?
Here we go again again again again. Hey, I'm Cal
Penn and this is here we Go Again, a show
that takes today's trends and headlines and asks why does
history keep repeating itself? Here we go?
Speaker 3 (02:10):
Can you guys hear me? I can hear your Cal?
How are you great? How are you? Yeah? Good? Today?
I am talking with I'm aber Chann.
Speaker 2 (02:19):
I'm a writer and journalist and author of Billion Dollar
Fantasy about the rise of Fando and Draftings.
Speaker 1 (02:27):
Albert, I'm excited to talk to you because so I'm
not a I'm not really a betting person. Like any
gambling gives me great anxiety, and so like in college,
I went to UCLA, and so we do March Madness
in Vegas because I have friends who would bet on
some of the games and I had a great time watching.
But it seems like that's all graduated now to I
think like most people have, you know, like a text
(02:49):
chain of like eighteen dudes that you work close with
in college and a lot of the conversation of sports.
But I've noticed over the last couple of years that
slowly it's also about betting on sports. And I've also
noticed that for a couple of people, they're like extra
zeros that have started getting added to these bedding conversations.
And I'm like, I would have way too much anxiety
(03:09):
for any of this. I am a sports fan, but
I am absolutely not a gambler. And so I just
figured I wanted to say that so that you had
an idea of why I was so interested in this.
And I'm also really interested in your background, particularly in
sports and journalism. Can you talk about what first got
you into sports?
Speaker 2 (03:27):
Yeah, I mean I was a huge sports fan growing up.
I grew up in Nebraska, and in the middle of Nebraska,
there's not a ton to do. I love Nebraska. Still
have a ton of friends there, but the main source
of just entertainment and a lot of just the community.
(03:48):
Just it was just a huge part of growing up
the Nebraska Cornhuskers college football and the University of Nebraska
and Lincoln. The whole thing was that, you know, every
fall Saturday, Memorial Stadium specifically the home of the Nebraska Cornhuskers,
would become the third largest city town community in the state,
(04:10):
and we would go to Cornhuskers games, watch them, of
course every Saturday. And that was kind of the root
of my relationship to sports, and then followed other sports
and then became a sports journalist.
Speaker 1 (04:24):
How did you pick teams if you guys didn't have
a professional team.
Speaker 2 (04:28):
Well, I much like a lot of people my age
growing up, I was a huge Chicago Bulls fan because
of Michael Jordan okay yea, and of course, and then
just had random I mean, I was a huge NFL fan,
followed other sports and those were just kind of because
my older brother liked the Pittsburgh Steelers, so I was
a Steelers fan.
Speaker 1 (04:50):
Okay, good reasons. How did you then make the jump
from loving sports and then actually being a being a
sports journalist and how long were you at sports Illustrated
by the way.
Speaker 2 (04:59):
I was at Sports Illustrated close to twenty years actually well,
and it was my dream job growing up, you know,
because I was a sports fan. But you know, I
love the storytelling in the magazine. I love the long
form storytelling. So started working at Sports Illustrated as a
reporter and then a writer and then later an editor
(05:20):
and covered a whole bunch of different sports, and that
again changed my relationship to sports, less as a fan,
but more professionally.
Speaker 1 (05:28):
Do you bet, by the way, as a sports.
Speaker 2 (05:30):
Fan, I do, yeah, but it's laughably small amounts. But
I do regularly bet, and it's for me.
Speaker 3 (05:38):
It is fun.
Speaker 2 (05:40):
I can see how it's incredibly dangerous and destructive, and
i've sort of I've been there, you know, for all
the moments when it was legalized first, you know, in
New Jersey, kind of in that initial rollout and kind
of experiencing that as someone who gambles.
Speaker 3 (05:58):
But I also have covered the end of as well.
Speaker 2 (06:00):
I mean, I knew these two companies, Fandom and DraftKings
since pretty much their early kind of moments and know
the founders, and so I have these different relationships to
the industry. But to answer your question. Yes, I had
money on the college football game last night.
Speaker 3 (06:20):
Okay, nice. Nice.
Speaker 1 (06:21):
So we can't really talk about sports betting without looking
at the earliest instances of gambling itself in the US.
When do we start seeing gambling become part of American culture?
Speaker 2 (06:33):
Well, what's really interesting now, I mean people talk about
how team owners are investors in these gambling companies and
like the tentacles and all the connections, and.
Speaker 3 (06:46):
But it's always been the case, you know.
Speaker 2 (06:49):
I mean you go back to sports franchises in the
early twentieth century, and a lot of these team owners
were gamblers, made money from gambling, and so there was
always this culture of gambling around games. Now, the first
early instances, I mean, you could go back centuries to
(07:12):
like kind of the first sporting events in civilization and
how there were wagers made back in the day, and
I think, like it's just always sporting events and gambling
have always been intertwined, you know. I think where the
narrative really starts to begin is when you get to
(07:35):
sports gambling scandals.
Speaker 1 (07:37):
What's the first scandal? Was it, like George Washington versus
somebody else?
Speaker 2 (07:41):
Well, the first sports big sports gambling scandal is the
nineteen nineteen Chicago White Sox gambling scandal.
Speaker 3 (07:49):
Shoeless Joe Jackson.
Speaker 2 (07:51):
The movie Eight Men Out portrayed this gambling scandal that
occurs during the nineteen nineteen World Series, and it's essentially
this baseball team that throws the World Series loses it
intentionally because of their ties to these shady, illegal gambling characters.
(08:11):
I mean it's a true story. I mean it really
derailed the sport. And what we'll talk about today actually
has a lot of connections to that moment in what ways. Well,
now you start to see the conversation turn and gambling
being discussed as this real threat, this evil that sports leagues,
(08:38):
professional sports leagues, the establishment institutions needs to distance themselves from,
because sports gambling is this evil that undermines the entirety
of the sport, Like if we have to question the
outcome of a game, then we have to question everything.
(08:59):
And so through the decades, I mean all the way
really into the two thousands twenty tens, you have sports
league commissioners saying that the biggest threat to the integrity
of sports isn't steroids, it's not concussions in the NFL,
(09:20):
it's sports gambling and it's something that we can't allow.
Speaker 1 (09:24):
Can you describe how public perception has changed over time.
Speaker 2 (09:28):
I mean, there was sort of this ridiculousness where the
leagues were so against this publicly, but they knew that
they were profiting from it. They knew a lot of
their popularity was fueled by gambling and fantasy sports. When
they're publicly saying that this is this evil that cannot
be ever legalized, but the popularity of fantasy sports kind
(09:53):
of told a different story where that, yeah, people like gambling,
I mean, and I think that like what you scene
is that you know, I think the vast majority of
sports fans have always kind of felt that gambling as
part of their kind of experience, and that I think
what you're seeing now is a bit of a turn
(10:16):
where there is a majority now that say, sports gambling
or the version that we're seeing of it now without
guardrails is bad.
Speaker 1 (10:28):
What's the legalization of gambling overall? Because there were different waves, right,
like it legalized and then banned, and then now it's
it's state specific.
Speaker 3 (10:39):
That's the thing.
Speaker 2 (10:39):
I mean, you and I could only fly out to
Vegas and bet on a sporting event, like if we
went up to a sports book in Las Vegas and
put down some money on a game. We could only
do that essentially in the state of Nevada up until
twenty seventeen, twenty eighteen. And there is sort of a
(11:03):
you know, a more of a history behind this, which
is essentially that in nineteen ninety two you have a
really significant moment, which is that Congress passes PASPA, which
is the Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act, and it
made made it illegal for states to legalize sports betting.
(11:28):
And so in that moment, you could not bet on
sports anywhere except for Nevada. There was a carve out
for the state of Nevada, largely because of the culture,
because of Vegas, and so more or less like there
be pockets of the country where you could gamble, you know,
at a tribal casino upstate, but really this was like
(11:50):
the start of a pro prohibition era essentially, where Nevada
was really running the one.
Speaker 3 (11:57):
Big speakeasy where you could play a pet.
Speaker 2 (12:00):
So you had this bizarre situation where everyone knew that
sports betting existed, and.
Speaker 3 (12:07):
Telecast talked about it.
Speaker 2 (12:09):
People had pools and gambling was in the air, but
everyone had to pretend that it actually didn't exist, and
the leagues would have to publicly say sports gambling is awful.
It's this evil that is really going to threaten the
integrity of our product. So they were against it. And
(12:30):
this was in starting in nineteen ninety two. And then
we get to an extremely significant moment, which is a
Supreme Court case that changed everything.
Speaker 1 (12:42):
That was twenty eighteen, right, that's right, yeah, okay, yes,
tell me about that.
Speaker 2 (12:47):
Well, that was Murphy versus the NCAA, and Murphy was
Phil Murphy, the governor of New Jersey when the Supreme
Court took up this case in twenty eight eighteen, but
it was former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie who was
really behind this push. And essentially New Jersey voters had
(13:10):
approved as sports betting referendum, but it just was never
able to pass. It never got to the Supreme Court,
but it finally did in twenty eighteen, and that's when
the Supreme Court voted to strike down this federal law
against nationalized sports betting, essentially PASPA, and the court basically
(13:34):
said that the federal government couldn't tell states what to
do about gambling. And this was a state's rights issue,
and you know, just to give you some context, I mean,
this was a moment that people weren't anticipating at all.
Speaker 3 (13:49):
You know.
Speaker 2 (13:49):
I wrote a book on sort of the moment leading
up to this moment, and it was about these two
gambling companies, Trandulin DraftKings that really kind of paved the
way for this moment. But they had a sort of
a business model where they were essentially pushing out a
product that a lot of people thought was a sports
gambling product. But in this climate where twenty eighteen, gambling
(14:15):
wasn't legalized, well, no one ever, including those two companies,
no one never imagined a moment where sports gambling would
essentially be legalized nationally. So this twenty eighteen Supreme Court
decision was a surprise and kind of opened this door
(14:35):
for this moment that we have now where people can
bet from the couch, you know, people can bet on
any sport at any hour of the day. And it's
just really been a pretty stunning reversal.
Speaker 1 (14:50):
And how many states now legalize sports betting.
Speaker 2 (14:53):
Thirty eight maybe thirty nine. I mean, it's just changing
so fast. I mean, what and after twenty eighteen was
a gold rush. You know, within weeks, like New Jersey
had sports books up and running. I mean, I remember
that summer of twenty eighteen, you know, going to the
fall where I was on vacation, and suddenly, you know,
(15:17):
I was just like I had my app up and running,
and I'm just scrolling through these US Open matches and
I'm like, wow, I can bet on any of them.
But not only that, but you could bet on qualifying matches.
You know, those meaningless matches before the US Open.
Speaker 3 (15:36):
You could bet on those.
Speaker 2 (15:37):
And not only that, but you could, because betting has
changed so much, you could bet on the outcome of
the next point. You can bet on these individual moments.
And you know, this is within months of this Supreme
Court decision.
Speaker 3 (15:56):
So the velocity of it was really stunning.
Speaker 2 (15:59):
I mean, you're going from twenty eighteen where it's essentially
just Nevada to you know, by last year, you had
thirty eight states all but ten where it's essentially the
guard wheels are off.
Speaker 3 (16:13):
Okay, Like, let's go.
Speaker 1 (16:21):
For those thirty eight states, do we? Or I guess
even the ones where it's illegal. How do you quantify
how many people are suddenly engaging in sports betting? Like,
how do you know what the market is and who
to hit up and what the numbers are?
Speaker 3 (16:36):
Yeah, I mean it's a good question.
Speaker 2 (16:39):
I mean, you know, I think like any number that
you see being thrown around is just like a wild guess,
pretty sort of like legalized betting across America. The total
sports wager amount was a few billion dollars, you know,
five billion dollars, you know, and that's largely coming out
of Nevada by last year, you know, pushing two hundred
(17:03):
billion dollars in a single year spent on gambway. But
that's unquestionably just like a low estimate.
Speaker 1 (17:11):
I'm just florid at that number, are there? I guess
immediate because this is also recent, What were some of
the repercussions of that, like, both in terms of what
critics would say, you know, like we're the main critics
or is it lawmakers? Is it advocacy groups? And then
on the flip side, we're talking about a significant amount
of money. Has that revenue helped businesses or communities? And
(17:34):
what are the conversations around that, especially since that meteoric rise,
right five billion to hundreds of billions?
Speaker 2 (17:41):
Yeah, I mean I think like largely I think it's
safe to say that the general narrative, and I don't
disagree with this, that the rollout of legalized sports gambling
in America has been a bit of a mess. I mean,
I think the general narrative has been that it's been
a disaster.
Speaker 3 (18:00):
I mean, I think, like it's gone from zero to.
Speaker 2 (18:04):
One hundred miles per hour in just a few years,
really months in a lot of cases, because some of
these states just like went all in, you know. I mean, like,
you know, a lot of people have made the comparison
to prohibition and sort of like the parallels to that,
and there are a lot of differences. But you know,
(18:25):
when prohibition ended in the you know, nineteen thirties, like
we didn't immediately just like handout liquor license to every
store and let beer companies advertise to kids and just
like blanket advertising. You know, the regulations took time they developed.
But what you had, and this was this is kind of.
Speaker 3 (18:46):
The big problem.
Speaker 2 (18:47):
What you had immediately was an absolute carpet bombing of
advertising and licenses and just messaging that okay, it's gone
from this thing that the leagues were telling us was
complete evil. The biggest threat to the integrity of our sport.
To now the advertising is just like it's everywhere. There
(19:12):
was one study done. This was like in twenty before
sort of the Supreme Court moment, but every ninety seconds
during an NFL Sunday there was either a fan duel
or DraftKings ad and now it's times ten. And the
problem with that is that the advertising and the messaging
is that sports gambling is fun, it's entertaining, it's harmless,
(19:37):
when in fact, yeah, I mean it can be fun,
it can be entertaining, it's definitely not harmless. It can
be dangerous. And so I think the biggest problem is
the access and the speed without guard rails. And so
you're seeing a lot of now the consequences and the impact.
Speaker 1 (20:01):
And what are the biggest consequences an impact?
Speaker 2 (20:04):
Well, I think like there's there's really two different buckets
to this. I mean, I was just home for the
holidays and hanging out with my cousins, and you know
cousin that I've known basically my entire life.
Speaker 3 (20:18):
We were just kind of catching it.
Speaker 2 (20:19):
He's like, yeah, for a few years there, I really
got in deep with sports gambling. It became a huge problem.
I lost a lot of money, and you're hearing a
lot of those stories. A lot of it is anecdotal,
but you are hearing from organizations problem gambling addictional organizations.
Speaker 3 (20:38):
The spike in cases.
Speaker 2 (20:40):
And the number of essentially like college age males half
of them have sports gambling accounts.
Speaker 3 (20:49):
Oh wow, yeah, half half.
Speaker 2 (20:52):
It's just become part of being a sports fan, right,
I mean everyone's doing it. And of course you know
you are hearing stories. I'man countless stories you know in
the media about people's lives who have been ruined, marriages,
people's four one K being blown over one NFL season,
(21:14):
and there are there's the human toll. There are those
consequences that were entirely foreseeable. And because of the marketing
and because of the messaging that this is a fun
entertainment product, has made it very problematic, and some people
have cast it as a full blown public health crisis
(21:38):
and an epidemic that needs to be addressed. It's hard
to say what level we're really at right now. What
is very clear is that it is a growing problem
and it's accelerating.
Speaker 1 (21:50):
So I still can't it over. The half of college
age males have betting apps on their phones, but can
segue to like talking about the apps. So what so,
what are the major apps, how do they actually what's
how does the technology actually work, and how does it
play into the expansion in sports betting.
Speaker 2 (22:07):
Basically, the business model for these companies were that they
wanted to put a sports book in casino, essentially in
everyone's pocket, right, I mean, it used to be just
like really actually hard to place a bet something so
simple as a sports bet, you know, you had to
go to a physical sports book. Now you download an app,
(22:31):
create an account, link it to a credit card account
or a checking account, and you're all set. You scroll
through and you see that you can bet on basically
any sporting event that is going on around the world,
and it's all real time. I mean, it is kind
of how people are consuming sports because it does serve
(22:53):
as your scoreboard for what's going on on a given
sports day, and you can kind of follow your favorite
sports teams, follow what's going on through this app, which
is very simple and very just easy to use, and
they're beautifully designed. You know, these companies, these sports gambling companies,
are tech companies and they're very good at what they do,
(23:17):
and the tech fueling these companies, the engines, Their engines
are just like you know, they're They're run by the
most sophisticated tech companies. Their algorithms are now AI fueled.
They're betting lines are all largely fueled by algorithms and AI,
and that's how they are always one step ahead of
(23:39):
the gambler.
Speaker 1 (23:40):
You mentioned some of the earlier sports betting scandals, and
I want to dive into the just the scandals around
this a little bit.
Speaker 2 (23:47):
You know, pretty much overnight there were instances of players
putting a few thousand dollars into their DraftKings or fandul
app on games and getting caught and being sup ended
for four or five games for a season, and largely
because things were happening so fast, and the laws were
(24:11):
different for every state, and things were just like murky
and the laws in New Jersey are completely like it
was legal in New Jersey, but it wasn't legal in
the state of New York. And so we went through
this period where there was just like a lot of
uncertainty and unknowns in terms of like where it was
legal and where it was in legal. So you had
(24:32):
actually just simply a lot of athletes who were like oh,
I can download my draftings and fandle account and embed
on games that are completely harmless, because like, my league
is advertising this now. And so there was a pretty
prominent NFL athlete named Calvin Ridley who was like a
(24:54):
really great wide receiver for then the Atlanta Falcons. And
so in twenty twenty two, Ridley was suspended because while
he was injured, you know, he was just like at
home injured, wasn't playing. He opened up a gambling account,
(25:14):
put a few hundred dollars down, maybe a few thousand
on an NFL game. And this is a guy who
was making over ten million dollars a year, right, so
like the money was pretty meaningless to him, and he
got caught and he was suspended for an entire season,
and that was a pretty big deal because it was
(25:37):
a star receiver and he was suspended for a whole season,
and he clearly it was just like, you know, my
league is advertising this everywhere. My league has an official
partnership with sports gambling companies, and things have just become
(25:59):
so blurred and murky that you.
Speaker 3 (26:02):
Know, what are the rules here? What were the lines?
Speaker 2 (26:05):
And so we talked about the black socks, the white
Sox betting scandal from nineteen nineteen, Well, there was an
extremely significant scandal regarding Pete Rose. Pete Rose was a
legendary baseball player and manager who was banned from Major
League Baseball because of his gambling connections and activities. He
(26:27):
was gambling as a manager, and you know, potentially gambling
on his own team, but definitely just like clearly was
gambling on baseball games while being an active manager. And
so between those two instances, baseball has always had the
clearest rules about you are not allowed to bet on games.
(26:51):
And this is their messaging to players. You know, I
covered baseball for a long time, and posted on every
wall of every Major League baseball clubhouse was rule twenty one.
Bet on any Major League Baseball game and you're suspended.
Bet on your own team and your your band for life.
(27:12):
And that rule has existed, still exists, That is still
posted in Major League Baseball clubhouses. But when those players
walk by that post, they walk out into a baseball
stadium where all over all the branding, all the branding,
FanDuel draftings, every you know, in between innings like fandual commercial,
(27:37):
like a guy talking about what picks to make and
so there's just like a confusion where okay, like is
this okay?
Speaker 3 (27:47):
Is this not okay?
Speaker 2 (27:47):
And I think, like, you know, fast forward to twenty
twenty four. You know, in Major League Baseball, there was
a pretty significant scandal where Shoho Tani's translator was stealing
money from show Hay to bet on sporting events, and
over the course of a few years, he made a
total of nineteen thousand bets. The total amount that he
(28:10):
spent on betting on sports was one hundred and fifty
million dollars. I mean, he was also a terrible gambler,
so he lost more money than he won, of course,
and his losses were in the tens of millions. I mean,
long story short, he stole essentially, based on the reports
(28:30):
and all the information that's out there, you know, close
to twenty million dollars of show he Atani's money because
he had access to Atani's accounts. Now, people say, yes,
I mean it's this guy was his translator. Is an
isolated instance, but one takeaway of that story was that
and the translator has said, this where the culture of
(28:53):
gambling on teams, and I've walked into clubhouses and this
was always the case when I was in clubhouses. It's
just like gambling just in the air, right. People are
always talking about their fantasy teams, people are talking about
NFL lines, and once the legalization happened, I mean, players
are undoubtedly betting like a lot of money on sports games.
(29:17):
Now they're banned, they're not allowed to bet on If
you're a baseball player, you can't bet on baseball games,
and they're not doing that. And if you're an NFL player,
you can't bet on NFL games. But it's murky you
can bet actually on other sports. And so like this
translator is kind of in this environment where gambling just
(29:39):
in the air, right, Like it's everywhere, and a lot
of it is just like these players who get in trouble,
these people within organizations, and it's happened with staff members, trainers,
coaches are just getting caught gambling. And you know, it's
just like in this environment that these leagues and teams
(29:59):
are just like promoting gambling everywhere, and it's just gotten
so murky and blurred that people are just confused and
don't understand the actual rules. I mean, in terms of
the year in sports, twenty twenty five was kind of
the year in in gambling scandals because it seemed like
there was a gambling scandal every day.
Speaker 1 (30:26):
I mean, I can't imagine being a player and reading
the rules and then literally, like you said, walking into
a stadium and there's all this just gambling app branding everywhere.
You certainly feel it as a fan, right, it's you download,
you doubload any sports tracking app, not just like a
betting app, but like you just want to check your
scores or something, and obviously half those pop ups are
(30:46):
all gambling related. Every sports celebrity, recent retiree hero the
first thing they do is like, there's you know, here's
your FanDuel commercial or whatever. In your research, are there,
especially with twenty twenty five being the year that it was,
are there? Is there anything being done to limit that
(31:08):
sort of behavior? And then the extension of that question, really,
which then goes back to what we were talking about
at the beginning, is do you think that regulations or
even just making gambling illegal decreases the amount of it?
Or is it like prohibition and banning abortion and all
of that where things just get driven underground.
Speaker 2 (31:27):
Yeah, I mean I think that the prevailing thought, and
I mean I agree with this is that to a
certain extent, Look, the cats out of the bag, Pandora's
box is open. You know, we're not going to go
back to a world where they're going to be large
restrictions placed on this.
Speaker 3 (31:45):
But I think there's there's clearly much.
Speaker 2 (31:47):
More of an awareness now where people are asking questions about, Okay,
is this really a good thing? Like is this like
a good thing that every college student has a casino
in their pockets? Is that really thing? I would say
probably not. And I think like the other thing is
(32:07):
just kind of the marketing. And you know, I actually
you know, I'm an eleven year old. He's a big
sports fan, and I do think about all the time
just like how the way he's growing up as a
sports fan is that just so much of the conversations
about gambling, And you know, I try, I'm just like
aware of just like I try not to have my
(32:29):
gambling app up when he's around. And I feel very
like the fact that like lines of games are now
like at the bottom of the ticker and just like
integrated it's it's a game like it's the gamification of sports,
and like so there there's that aspect of just like
what can we do to rein in the marketing. Change
(32:50):
like change the marketing in a way where it's really
not message in this way that it currently messaged. I mean,
this may be a bit extreme, but like, you know,
I could see really thinking about this in a way where,
you know, should it be kind of regulated like cigarettes,
you know, like it's legal, but there are heavy restrictions
(33:13):
on marketing, you know, and they're just like so many
levels of this. Okay, maybe there are no ads during games,
Maybe that's too extreme, But maybe you shouldn't target young users.
Maybe you shouldn't target college aged kids, you know, no
promos because these algorithms are so sophisticated. They know not
(33:35):
just that college age males are vulnerable and susceptible to this,
but which one specifically are right, Like, you know, they
can weaponize the data in that way where it's direct marketing,
but just on this exponential scale. And so yeah, I
mean there can certainly be.
Speaker 3 (33:55):
A lot done in that regard.
Speaker 2 (33:57):
I mean, I don't think there's any question about that,
but it can still be legal.
Speaker 1 (34:02):
Yeah, yeah, that reminds I mean, it's a good point
because that just reminds me of the parallel between you know,
back in the day. Like I remember freshman year at UCLA,
you couldn't take ten steps in campus before somebody was
trying to get you to sign up for a credit
card with absurd fees attached. Right, clearly like the predatory
aspect backed up by all their data that these college
(34:24):
kids don't really know much about how credit cards work.
They obviously need to pay for things. There's some amount
of disposable income by virtue of the fact that they're
college students. But whether they're working three jobs to pay
for college and their books, or whether you know they've
got parents or somebody who's bankrolling it, you'll still sign
up for a credit card. And I feel like there's
some version of that that these apps are preying on,
(34:46):
which is you know you're eighteen to twenty five, Like
for you, five bucks is five bucks, Like the thrill
of turning five into fifteen or something has got to
be you know, a it's a thrill and then be well,
I know have fifteen books that I did not have
an hour ago. So the marketing slash regulation piece of it,
(35:09):
I'm very interested to see, like what direction that goes
in in the next decade.
Speaker 2 (35:14):
Exactly, and it's also I mean related to that. It's
it's this common sense like should there be guys like
signing you up for credit cards, like you know, with
these exorbitant fees on campus and now that just doesn't
make sense. And then to the gambling aspect, it's just like,
you know, should you be able to bet on a
random college tennis match that no one is watching, no
(35:40):
one cares about except if you're related to the players
or you have some money on that match because you
maybe know something or just are a compulsive gambler and
have to bet on everything that is out there. And yes,
you can bet on college you know, basketball games and
(36:04):
some versions, you can bet on the bench player and
how many rebounds he's going to have. And I just
personally think that that can be rained in. I mean
I think, like, why is that something that people can do?
Speaker 3 (36:19):
Like is that who's that good for? Really?
Speaker 2 (36:23):
At the end of the day, you know, so the
product itself can there can be some significant changes there.
Speaker 1 (36:30):
So looking into the future, would I won't put money
on it, but what are your bets on? Where this
stuff kind of goes? Like if you were to say, okay,
in ten years from now, the regulation will be X,
Y and Z or the inverse, the deregulation will have
allowed a new wave of something. Do you do you
have a sense of any of that from your conversations,
either on the sports side or the business side with
(36:51):
these guys.
Speaker 2 (36:52):
This is just the beginning of the story. I mean,
you know, we talked about thirty eight states where it's legalized, California, Florida, Texas.
It's still illegal to bet on sports California, which is
kind of from the perspective of the gambling industry, gambling companies,
it's kind of the holy grail of sports gambling because
(37:14):
of just like the population obviously, but just the amount
of just potential in terms of the pro sports side,
the college side, and so you still have a lot
of expansion that is to come, not to say globally.
Also so from the business perspective, this is just the beginning.
(37:35):
These companies are, you know, worth now twenty billion dollars each.
They are massive gambling companies. Well guess what, They're only
going to get bigger because there are still big conquests
for them. There is a lot of uncertainty in terms
of where this goes from here, because we've already seen
(37:57):
a lot of huge scandals. We had a massive bea
scandal last year involving a player, involving in fact a coach,
Chauncey Billups, who was coaching in an NBA game and
a few days later was implicated in a scandal. And
these scandals are just the tip of the iceberg. What
(38:18):
that means for the future of the industry, for these businesses,
for the relationships between the leagues and the sports books
which are now in bed together, it's really hard to say.
Because the regulators and the integrity sort of arms that
are supposed to police this are the leagues and these
(38:42):
gaming commissions and also the companies themselves, but their incentives
are just to keep this humming along and for the
business to grow. So it's hard to say, Okay, so
there is an inevitable kind of more scandals to come,
but what does that mean? It made me absolutely nothing.
And then there's sort of the public reaction, the human
(39:05):
tole really and how that is going to play out
in terms of these addiction numbers that we're seeing that
are unquestionably on the rise, and how big they're going
to get to the point where, okay, do we need
some real regulation here, and those are big questions, you know,
can anything actually get done in terms of just laws
(39:29):
that are going to dial this back, because I think
it's becoming clear to everybody that, yeah, I mean, it
has been a mess and there needs to be some
work and guardrails that need to be put in place.
Speaker 3 (39:43):
But the big question is.
Speaker 2 (39:46):
If these very large entities with different interests are all
going to align to actually nnect some change.
Speaker 1 (39:53):
Thank you, Albert, Thank you so much. I learned so much.
Speaker 3 (39:56):
Yeah, it's fun.
Speaker 1 (40:00):
That was my guest, Albert Chen, sports journalist, former magazine editor,
producer and the author of the book Billion Dollar Fantasy.
Here we Go again as a production of iHeart Podcasts
and Snaffo Media in association with New Metric Media. Our
executive producers are me kalpen ed Helms, Mike Falbo, Alissa Martino,
(40:23):
Andy Kim, Pat Kelly, Chris Kelly, and Dylan Fagan. Meghan
tan is our producer and writer. Dave Shumka is our
producer and editor. Our consulting producer is Romin Borsolino. Tory
Smith is our associate producer. Theme music by Chris Kelly,
logo by Matt gosson Legal Review from Daniel Welsh, Caroline Johnson,
and Megan Halson. Special thanks to Glenn Bassner, Isaac Dunham,
(40:47):
Adam Horn, Lane Klein, and everyone at iHeart Podcasts, but
especially Will Pearson, Carrie Lieberman and Nikki Etoor. Thanks for listening. Everybody,
tell your friends, write a review. All of this helps.
I appreciate you listening, and until we go again, I'm
Kalpen
A few weeks ago, I was watching the Knicks with
my buddy, and let's just say he was getting very
into it, and after a while I started to realize
that this wasn't actually about the score for him. He
kept checking his phone compulsively, and I realized he was
on a sports betting app. And he tells me he's
placed like twenty little bets on the game here and there,
and it's wild things. It's like how many free throws
(00:22):
will Mitchell Robinson make? Or which team is even going
to call the first time out? And after she finishes
telling me this, I'm just sort of like, dude, come on,
do you actually care if our team wins? The answer
apparently was not really, at least not where he might
make a few grand either way. And I guess who
can blame him? I mean, if that's the way you're
enjoying the game, fine, I guess. Since twenty eighteen, sports
(00:47):
betting has been legalized in thirty eight states, and the
sports betting apps have brought gambling right to our fingertips.
It turns out this country has a pretty long and
fraught history with gambling.
Speaker 2 (01:00):
Number of essentially like college age males, half of them
have sports gambling accounts. Oh wow, yeah, half half. It's
just become part of being a sports fan.
Speaker 1 (01:15):
Albert chen is a longtime sports journalist, former magazine editor, producer,
and author of the book Billion Dollar Fantasy, which digs
deep into the war between the sports betting apps draft
Kings and FanDuel, and is here to help me understand
how dangerous is sports betting really? Is it tainting the
games we once loved to watch? And has technology made
(01:35):
prop bets all too easy for all the wrong reasons?
Here we go again again again again. Hey, I'm Cal
Penn and this is here we Go Again, a show
that takes today's trends and headlines and asks why does
history keep repeating itself? Here we go?
Speaker 3 (02:10):
Can you guys hear me? I can hear your Cal?
How are you great? How are you? Yeah? Good? Today?
I am talking with I'm aber Chann.
Speaker 2 (02:19):
I'm a writer and journalist and author of Billion Dollar
Fantasy about the rise of Fando and Draftings.
Speaker 1 (02:27):
Albert, I'm excited to talk to you because so I'm
not a I'm not really a betting person. Like any
gambling gives me great anxiety, and so like in college,
I went to UCLA, and so we do March Madness
in Vegas because I have friends who would bet on
some of the games and I had a great time watching.
But it seems like that's all graduated now to I
think like most people have, you know, like a text
(02:49):
chain of like eighteen dudes that you work close with
in college and a lot of the conversation of sports.
But I've noticed over the last couple of years that
slowly it's also about betting on sports. And I've also
noticed that for a couple of people, they're like extra
zeros that have started getting added to these bedding conversations.
And I'm like, I would have way too much anxiety
(03:09):
for any of this. I am a sports fan, but
I am absolutely not a gambler. And so I just
figured I wanted to say that so that you had
an idea of why I was so interested in this.
And I'm also really interested in your background, particularly in
sports and journalism. Can you talk about what first got
you into sports?
Speaker 2 (03:27):
Yeah, I mean I was a huge sports fan growing up.
I grew up in Nebraska, and in the middle of Nebraska,
there's not a ton to do. I love Nebraska. Still
have a ton of friends there, but the main source
of just entertainment and a lot of just the community.
(03:48):
Just it was just a huge part of growing up
the Nebraska Cornhuskers college football and the University of Nebraska
and Lincoln. The whole thing was that, you know, every
fall Saturday, Memorial Stadium specifically the home of the Nebraska Cornhuskers,
would become the third largest city town community in the state,
(04:10):
and we would go to Cornhuskers games, watch them, of
course every Saturday. And that was kind of the root
of my relationship to sports, and then followed other sports
and then became a sports journalist.
Speaker 1 (04:24):
How did you pick teams if you guys didn't have
a professional team.
Speaker 2 (04:28):
Well, I much like a lot of people my age
growing up, I was a huge Chicago Bulls fan because
of Michael Jordan okay yea, and of course, and then
just had random I mean, I was a huge NFL fan,
followed other sports and those were just kind of because
my older brother liked the Pittsburgh Steelers, so I was
a Steelers fan.
Speaker 1 (04:50):
Okay, good reasons. How did you then make the jump
from loving sports and then actually being a being a
sports journalist and how long were you at sports Illustrated
by the way.
Speaker 2 (04:59):
I was at Sports Illustrated close to twenty years actually well,
and it was my dream job growing up, you know,
because I was a sports fan. But you know, I
love the storytelling in the magazine. I love the long
form storytelling. So started working at Sports Illustrated as a
reporter and then a writer and then later an editor
(05:20):
and covered a whole bunch of different sports, and that
again changed my relationship to sports, less as a fan,
but more professionally.
Speaker 1 (05:28):
Do you bet, by the way, as a sports.
Speaker 2 (05:30):
Fan, I do, yeah, but it's laughably small amounts. But
I do regularly bet, and it's for me.
Speaker 3 (05:38):
It is fun.
Speaker 2 (05:40):
I can see how it's incredibly dangerous and destructive, and
i've sort of I've been there, you know, for all
the moments when it was legalized first, you know, in
New Jersey, kind of in that initial rollout and kind
of experiencing that as someone who gambles.
Speaker 3 (05:58):
But I also have covered the end of as well.
Speaker 2 (06:00):
I mean, I knew these two companies, Fandom and DraftKings
since pretty much their early kind of moments and know
the founders, and so I have these different relationships to
the industry. But to answer your question. Yes, I had
money on the college football game last night.
Speaker 3 (06:20):
Okay, nice. Nice.
Speaker 1 (06:21):
So we can't really talk about sports betting without looking
at the earliest instances of gambling itself in the US.
When do we start seeing gambling become part of American culture?
Speaker 2 (06:33):
Well, what's really interesting now, I mean people talk about
how team owners are investors in these gambling companies and
like the tentacles and all the connections, and.
Speaker 3 (06:46):
But it's always been the case, you know.
Speaker 2 (06:49):
I mean you go back to sports franchises in the
early twentieth century, and a lot of these team owners
were gamblers, made money from gambling, and so there was
always this culture of gambling around games. Now, the first
early instances, I mean, you could go back centuries to
(07:12):
like kind of the first sporting events in civilization and
how there were wagers made back in the day, and
I think, like it's just always sporting events and gambling
have always been intertwined, you know. I think where the
narrative really starts to begin is when you get to
(07:35):
sports gambling scandals.
Speaker 1 (07:37):
What's the first scandal? Was it, like George Washington versus
somebody else?
Speaker 2 (07:41):
Well, the first sports big sports gambling scandal is the
nineteen nineteen Chicago White Sox gambling scandal.
Speaker 3 (07:49):
Shoeless Joe Jackson.
Speaker 2 (07:51):
The movie Eight Men Out portrayed this gambling scandal that
occurs during the nineteen nineteen World Series, and it's essentially
this baseball team that throws the World Series loses it
intentionally because of their ties to these shady, illegal gambling characters.
(08:11):
I mean it's a true story. I mean it really
derailed the sport. And what we'll talk about today actually
has a lot of connections to that moment in what ways. Well,
now you start to see the conversation turn and gambling
being discussed as this real threat, this evil that sports leagues,
(08:38):
professional sports leagues, the establishment institutions needs to distance themselves from,
because sports gambling is this evil that undermines the entirety
of the sport, Like if we have to question the
outcome of a game, then we have to question everything.
(08:59):
And so through the decades, I mean all the way
really into the two thousands twenty tens, you have sports
league commissioners saying that the biggest threat to the integrity
of sports isn't steroids, it's not concussions in the NFL,
(09:20):
it's sports gambling and it's something that we can't allow.
Speaker 1 (09:24):
Can you describe how public perception has changed over time.
Speaker 2 (09:28):
I mean, there was sort of this ridiculousness where the
leagues were so against this publicly, but they knew that
they were profiting from it. They knew a lot of
their popularity was fueled by gambling and fantasy sports. When
they're publicly saying that this is this evil that cannot
be ever legalized, but the popularity of fantasy sports kind
(09:53):
of told a different story where that, yeah, people like gambling,
I mean, and I think that like what you scene
is that you know, I think the vast majority of
sports fans have always kind of felt that gambling as
part of their kind of experience, and that I think
what you're seeing now is a bit of a turn
(10:16):
where there is a majority now that say, sports gambling
or the version that we're seeing of it now without
guardrails is bad.
Speaker 1 (10:28):
What's the legalization of gambling overall? Because there were different waves, right,
like it legalized and then banned, and then now it's
it's state specific.
Speaker 3 (10:39):
That's the thing.
Speaker 2 (10:39):
I mean, you and I could only fly out to
Vegas and bet on a sporting event, like if we
went up to a sports book in Las Vegas and
put down some money on a game. We could only
do that essentially in the state of Nevada up until
twenty seventeen, twenty eighteen. And there is sort of a
(11:03):
you know, a more of a history behind this, which
is essentially that in nineteen ninety two you have a
really significant moment, which is that Congress passes PASPA, which
is the Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act, and it
made made it illegal for states to legalize sports betting.
(11:28):
And so in that moment, you could not bet on
sports anywhere except for Nevada. There was a carve out
for the state of Nevada, largely because of the culture,
because of Vegas, and so more or less like there
be pockets of the country where you could gamble, you know,
at a tribal casino upstate, but really this was like
(11:50):
the start of a pro prohibition era essentially, where Nevada
was really running the one.
Speaker 3 (11:57):
Big speakeasy where you could play a pet.
Speaker 2 (12:00):
So you had this bizarre situation where everyone knew that
sports betting existed, and.
Speaker 3 (12:07):
Telecast talked about it.
Speaker 2 (12:09):
People had pools and gambling was in the air, but
everyone had to pretend that it actually didn't exist, and
the leagues would have to publicly say sports gambling is awful.
It's this evil that is really going to threaten the
integrity of our product. So they were against it. And
(12:30):
this was in starting in nineteen ninety two. And then
we get to an extremely significant moment, which is a
Supreme Court case that changed everything.
Speaker 1 (12:42):
That was twenty eighteen, right, that's right, yeah, okay, yes,
tell me about that.
Speaker 2 (12:47):
Well, that was Murphy versus the NCAA, and Murphy was
Phil Murphy, the governor of New Jersey when the Supreme
Court took up this case in twenty eight eighteen, but
it was former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie who was
really behind this push. And essentially New Jersey voters had
(13:10):
approved as sports betting referendum, but it just was never
able to pass. It never got to the Supreme Court,
but it finally did in twenty eighteen, and that's when
the Supreme Court voted to strike down this federal law
against nationalized sports betting, essentially PASPA, and the court basically
(13:34):
said that the federal government couldn't tell states what to
do about gambling. And this was a state's rights issue,
and you know, just to give you some context, I mean,
this was a moment that people weren't anticipating at all.
Speaker 3 (13:49):
You know.
Speaker 2 (13:49):
I wrote a book on sort of the moment leading
up to this moment, and it was about these two
gambling companies, Trandulin DraftKings that really kind of paved the
way for this moment. But they had a sort of
a business model where they were essentially pushing out a
product that a lot of people thought was a sports
gambling product. But in this climate where twenty eighteen, gambling
(14:15):
wasn't legalized, well, no one ever, including those two companies,
no one never imagined a moment where sports gambling would
essentially be legalized nationally. So this twenty eighteen Supreme Court
decision was a surprise and kind of opened this door
(14:35):
for this moment that we have now where people can
bet from the couch, you know, people can bet on
any sport at any hour of the day. And it's
just really been a pretty stunning reversal.
Speaker 1 (14:50):
And how many states now legalize sports betting.
Speaker 2 (14:53):
Thirty eight maybe thirty nine. I mean, it's just changing
so fast. I mean, what and after twenty eighteen was
a gold rush. You know, within weeks, like New Jersey
had sports books up and running. I mean, I remember
that summer of twenty eighteen, you know, going to the
fall where I was on vacation, and suddenly, you know,
(15:17):
I was just like I had my app up and running,
and I'm just scrolling through these US Open matches and
I'm like, wow, I can bet on any of them.
But not only that, but you could bet on qualifying matches.
You know, those meaningless matches before the US Open.
Speaker 3 (15:36):
You could bet on those.
Speaker 2 (15:37):
And not only that, but you could, because betting has
changed so much, you could bet on the outcome of
the next point. You can bet on these individual moments.
And you know, this is within months of this Supreme
Court decision.
Speaker 3 (15:56):
So the velocity of it was really stunning.
Speaker 2 (15:59):
I mean, you're going from twenty eighteen where it's essentially
just Nevada to you know, by last year, you had
thirty eight states all but ten where it's essentially the
guard wheels are off.
Speaker 3 (16:13):
Okay, Like, let's go.
Speaker 1 (16:21):
For those thirty eight states, do we? Or I guess
even the ones where it's illegal. How do you quantify
how many people are suddenly engaging in sports betting? Like,
how do you know what the market is and who
to hit up and what the numbers are?
Speaker 3 (16:36):
Yeah, I mean it's a good question.
Speaker 2 (16:39):
I mean, you know, I think like any number that
you see being thrown around is just like a wild guess,
pretty sort of like legalized betting across America. The total
sports wager amount was a few billion dollars, you know,
five billion dollars, you know, and that's largely coming out
of Nevada by last year, you know, pushing two hundred
(17:03):
billion dollars in a single year spent on gambway. But
that's unquestionably just like a low estimate.
Speaker 1 (17:11):
I'm just florid at that number, are there? I guess
immediate because this is also recent, What were some of
the repercussions of that, like, both in terms of what
critics would say, you know, like we're the main critics
or is it lawmakers? Is it advocacy groups? And then
on the flip side, we're talking about a significant amount
of money. Has that revenue helped businesses or communities? And
(17:34):
what are the conversations around that, especially since that meteoric rise,
right five billion to hundreds of billions?
Speaker 2 (17:41):
Yeah, I mean I think like largely I think it's
safe to say that the general narrative, and I don't
disagree with this, that the rollout of legalized sports gambling
in America has been a bit of a mess. I mean,
I think the general narrative has been that it's been
a disaster.
Speaker 3 (18:00):
I mean, I think, like it's gone from zero to.
Speaker 2 (18:04):
One hundred miles per hour in just a few years,
really months in a lot of cases, because some of
these states just like went all in, you know. I mean, like,
you know, a lot of people have made the comparison
to prohibition and sort of like the parallels to that,
and there are a lot of differences. But you know,
(18:25):
when prohibition ended in the you know, nineteen thirties, like
we didn't immediately just like handout liquor license to every
store and let beer companies advertise to kids and just
like blanket advertising. You know, the regulations took time they developed.
But what you had, and this was this is kind of.
Speaker 3 (18:46):
The big problem.
Speaker 2 (18:47):
What you had immediately was an absolute carpet bombing of
advertising and licenses and just messaging that okay, it's gone
from this thing that the leagues were telling us was
complete evil. The biggest threat to the integrity of our sport.
To now the advertising is just like it's everywhere. There
(19:12):
was one study done. This was like in twenty before
sort of the Supreme Court moment, but every ninety seconds
during an NFL Sunday there was either a fan duel
or DraftKings ad and now it's times ten. And the
problem with that is that the advertising and the messaging
is that sports gambling is fun, it's entertaining, it's harmless,
(19:37):
when in fact, yeah, I mean it can be fun,
it can be entertaining, it's definitely not harmless. It can
be dangerous. And so I think the biggest problem is
the access and the speed without guard rails. And so
you're seeing a lot of now the consequences and the impact.
Speaker 1 (20:01):
And what are the biggest consequences an impact?
Speaker 2 (20:04):
Well, I think like there's there's really two different buckets
to this. I mean, I was just home for the
holidays and hanging out with my cousins, and you know
cousin that I've known basically my entire life.
Speaker 3 (20:18):
We were just kind of catching it.
Speaker 2 (20:19):
He's like, yeah, for a few years there, I really
got in deep with sports gambling. It became a huge problem.
I lost a lot of money, and you're hearing a
lot of those stories. A lot of it is anecdotal,
but you are hearing from organizations problem gambling addictional organizations.
Speaker 3 (20:38):
The spike in cases.
Speaker 2 (20:40):
And the number of essentially like college age males half
of them have sports gambling accounts.
Speaker 3 (20:49):
Oh wow, yeah, half half.
Speaker 2 (20:52):
It's just become part of being a sports fan, right,
I mean everyone's doing it. And of course you know
you are hearing stories. I'man countless stories you know in
the media about people's lives who have been ruined, marriages,
people's four one K being blown over one NFL season,
(21:14):
and there are there's the human toll. There are those
consequences that were entirely foreseeable. And because of the marketing
and because of the messaging that this is a fun
entertainment product, has made it very problematic, and some people
have cast it as a full blown public health crisis
(21:38):
and an epidemic that needs to be addressed. It's hard
to say what level we're really at right now. What
is very clear is that it is a growing problem
and it's accelerating.
Speaker 1 (21:50):
So I still can't it over. The half of college
age males have betting apps on their phones, but can
segue to like talking about the apps. So what so,
what are the major apps, how do they actually what's
how does the technology actually work, and how does it
play into the expansion in sports betting.
Speaker 2 (22:07):
Basically, the business model for these companies were that they
wanted to put a sports book in casino, essentially in
everyone's pocket, right, I mean, it used to be just
like really actually hard to place a bet something so
simple as a sports bet, you know, you had to
go to a physical sports book. Now you download an app,
(22:31):
create an account, link it to a credit card account
or a checking account, and you're all set. You scroll
through and you see that you can bet on basically
any sporting event that is going on around the world,
and it's all real time. I mean, it is kind
of how people are consuming sports because it does serve
(22:53):
as your scoreboard for what's going on on a given
sports day, and you can kind of follow your favorite
sports teams, follow what's going on through this app, which
is very simple and very just easy to use, and
they're beautifully designed. You know, these companies, these sports gambling companies,
are tech companies and they're very good at what they do,
(23:17):
and the tech fueling these companies, the engines, Their engines
are just like you know, they're They're run by the
most sophisticated tech companies. Their algorithms are now AI fueled.
They're betting lines are all largely fueled by algorithms and AI,
and that's how they are always one step ahead of
(23:39):
the gambler.
Speaker 1 (23:40):
You mentioned some of the earlier sports betting scandals, and
I want to dive into the just the scandals around
this a little bit.
Speaker 2 (23:47):
You know, pretty much overnight there were instances of players
putting a few thousand dollars into their DraftKings or fandul
app on games and getting caught and being sup ended
for four or five games for a season, and largely
because things were happening so fast, and the laws were
(24:11):
different for every state, and things were just like murky
and the laws in New Jersey are completely like it
was legal in New Jersey, but it wasn't legal in
the state of New York. And so we went through
this period where there was just like a lot of
uncertainty and unknowns in terms of like where it was
legal and where it was in legal. So you had
(24:32):
actually just simply a lot of athletes who were like oh,
I can download my draftings and fandle account and embed
on games that are completely harmless, because like, my league
is advertising this now. And so there was a pretty
prominent NFL athlete named Calvin Ridley who was like a
(24:54):
really great wide receiver for then the Atlanta Falcons. And
so in twenty twenty two, Ridley was suspended because while
he was injured, you know, he was just like at
home injured, wasn't playing. He opened up a gambling account,
(25:14):
put a few hundred dollars down, maybe a few thousand
on an NFL game. And this is a guy who
was making over ten million dollars a year, right, so
like the money was pretty meaningless to him, and he
got caught and he was suspended for an entire season,
and that was a pretty big deal because it was
(25:37):
a star receiver and he was suspended for a whole season,
and he clearly it was just like, you know, my
league is advertising this everywhere. My league has an official
partnership with sports gambling companies, and things have just become
(25:59):
so blurred and murky that you.
Speaker 3 (26:02):
Know, what are the rules here? What were the lines?
Speaker 2 (26:05):
And so we talked about the black socks, the white
Sox betting scandal from nineteen nineteen, Well, there was an
extremely significant scandal regarding Pete Rose. Pete Rose was a
legendary baseball player and manager who was banned from Major
League Baseball because of his gambling connections and activities. He
(26:27):
was gambling as a manager, and you know, potentially gambling
on his own team, but definitely just like clearly was
gambling on baseball games while being an active manager. And
so between those two instances, baseball has always had the
clearest rules about you are not allowed to bet on games.
(26:51):
And this is their messaging to players. You know, I
covered baseball for a long time, and posted on every
wall of every Major League baseball clubhouse was rule twenty one.
Bet on any Major League Baseball game and you're suspended.
Bet on your own team and your your band for life.
(27:12):
And that rule has existed, still exists, That is still
posted in Major League Baseball clubhouses. But when those players
walk by that post, they walk out into a baseball
stadium where all over all the branding, all the branding,
FanDuel draftings, every you know, in between innings like fandual commercial,
(27:37):
like a guy talking about what picks to make and
so there's just like a confusion where okay, like is
this okay?
Speaker 3 (27:47):
Is this not okay?
Speaker 2 (27:47):
And I think, like, you know, fast forward to twenty
twenty four. You know, in Major League Baseball, there was
a pretty significant scandal where Shoho Tani's translator was stealing
money from show Hay to bet on sporting events, and
over the course of a few years, he made a
total of nineteen thousand bets. The total amount that he
(28:10):
spent on betting on sports was one hundred and fifty
million dollars. I mean, he was also a terrible gambler,
so he lost more money than he won, of course,
and his losses were in the tens of millions. I mean,
long story short, he stole essentially, based on the reports
(28:30):
and all the information that's out there, you know, close
to twenty million dollars of show he Atani's money because
he had access to Atani's accounts. Now, people say, yes,
I mean it's this guy was his translator. Is an
isolated instance, but one takeaway of that story was that
and the translator has said, this where the culture of
(28:53):
gambling on teams, and I've walked into clubhouses and this
was always the case when I was in clubhouses. It's
just like gambling just in the air, right. People are
always talking about their fantasy teams, people are talking about
NFL lines, and once the legalization happened, I mean, players
are undoubtedly betting like a lot of money on sports games.
(29:17):
Now they're banned, they're not allowed to bet on If
you're a baseball player, you can't bet on baseball games,
and they're not doing that. And if you're an NFL player,
you can't bet on NFL games. But it's murky you
can bet actually on other sports. And so like this
translator is kind of in this environment where gambling just
(29:39):
in the air, right, Like it's everywhere, and a lot
of it is just like these players who get in trouble,
these people within organizations, and it's happened with staff members, trainers,
coaches are just getting caught gambling. And you know, it's
just like in this environment that these leagues and teams
(29:59):
are just like promoting gambling everywhere, and it's just gotten
so murky and blurred that people are just confused and
don't understand the actual rules. I mean, in terms of
the year in sports, twenty twenty five was kind of
the year in in gambling scandals because it seemed like
there was a gambling scandal every day.
Speaker 1 (30:26):
I mean, I can't imagine being a player and reading
the rules and then literally, like you said, walking into
a stadium and there's all this just gambling app branding everywhere.
You certainly feel it as a fan, right, it's you download,
you doubload any sports tracking app, not just like a
betting app, but like you just want to check your
scores or something, and obviously half those pop ups are
(30:46):
all gambling related. Every sports celebrity, recent retiree hero the
first thing they do is like, there's you know, here's
your FanDuel commercial or whatever. In your research, are there,
especially with twenty twenty five being the year that it was,
are there? Is there anything being done to limit that
(31:08):
sort of behavior? And then the extension of that question, really,
which then goes back to what we were talking about
at the beginning, is do you think that regulations or
even just making gambling illegal decreases the amount of it?
Or is it like prohibition and banning abortion and all
of that where things just get driven underground.
Speaker 2 (31:27):
Yeah, I mean I think that the prevailing thought, and
I mean I agree with this is that to a
certain extent, Look, the cats out of the bag, Pandora's
box is open. You know, we're not going to go
back to a world where they're going to be large
restrictions placed on this.
Speaker 3 (31:45):
But I think there's there's clearly much.
Speaker 2 (31:47):
More of an awareness now where people are asking questions about, Okay,
is this really a good thing? Like is this like
a good thing that every college student has a casino
in their pockets? Is that really thing? I would say
probably not. And I think like the other thing is
(32:07):
just kind of the marketing. And you know, I actually
you know, I'm an eleven year old. He's a big
sports fan, and I do think about all the time
just like how the way he's growing up as a
sports fan is that just so much of the conversations
about gambling, And you know, I try, I'm just like
aware of just like I try not to have my
(32:29):
gambling app up when he's around. And I feel very
like the fact that like lines of games are now
like at the bottom of the ticker and just like
integrated it's it's a game like it's the gamification of sports,
and like so there there's that aspect of just like
what can we do to rein in the marketing. Change
(32:50):
like change the marketing in a way where it's really
not message in this way that it currently messaged. I mean,
this may be a bit extreme, but like, you know,
I could see really thinking about this in a way where,
you know, should it be kind of regulated like cigarettes,
you know, like it's legal, but there are heavy restrictions
(33:13):
on marketing, you know, and they're just like so many
levels of this. Okay, maybe there are no ads during games,
Maybe that's too extreme, But maybe you shouldn't target young users.
Maybe you shouldn't target college aged kids, you know, no
promos because these algorithms are so sophisticated. They know not
(33:35):
just that college age males are vulnerable and susceptible to this,
but which one specifically are right, Like, you know, they
can weaponize the data in that way where it's direct marketing,
but just on this exponential scale. And so yeah, I
mean there can certainly be.
Speaker 3 (33:55):
A lot done in that regard.
Speaker 2 (33:57):
I mean, I don't think there's any question about that,
but it can still be legal.
Speaker 1 (34:02):
Yeah, yeah, that reminds I mean, it's a good point
because that just reminds me of the parallel between you know,
back in the day. Like I remember freshman year at UCLA,
you couldn't take ten steps in campus before somebody was
trying to get you to sign up for a credit
card with absurd fees attached. Right, clearly like the predatory
aspect backed up by all their data that these college
(34:24):
kids don't really know much about how credit cards work.
They obviously need to pay for things. There's some amount
of disposable income by virtue of the fact that they're
college students. But whether they're working three jobs to pay
for college and their books, or whether you know they've
got parents or somebody who's bankrolling it, you'll still sign
up for a credit card. And I feel like there's
some version of that that these apps are preying on,
(34:46):
which is you know you're eighteen to twenty five, Like
for you, five bucks is five bucks, Like the thrill
of turning five into fifteen or something has got to
be you know, a it's a thrill and then be well,
I know have fifteen books that I did not have
an hour ago. So the marketing slash regulation piece of it,
(35:09):
I'm very interested to see, like what direction that goes
in in the next decade.
Speaker 2 (35:14):
Exactly, and it's also I mean related to that. It's
it's this common sense like should there be guys like
signing you up for credit cards, like you know, with
these exorbitant fees on campus and now that just doesn't
make sense. And then to the gambling aspect, it's just like,
you know, should you be able to bet on a
random college tennis match that no one is watching, no
(35:40):
one cares about except if you're related to the players
or you have some money on that match because you
maybe know something or just are a compulsive gambler and
have to bet on everything that is out there. And yes,
you can bet on college you know, basketball games and
(36:04):
some versions, you can bet on the bench player and
how many rebounds he's going to have. And I just
personally think that that can be rained in. I mean
I think, like, why is that something that people can do?
Speaker 3 (36:19):
Like is that who's that good for? Really?
Speaker 2 (36:23):
At the end of the day, you know, so the
product itself can there can be some significant changes there.
Speaker 1 (36:30):
So looking into the future, would I won't put money
on it, but what are your bets on? Where this
stuff kind of goes? Like if you were to say, okay,
in ten years from now, the regulation will be X,
Y and Z or the inverse, the deregulation will have
allowed a new wave of something. Do you do you
have a sense of any of that from your conversations,
either on the sports side or the business side with
(36:51):
these guys.
Speaker 2 (36:52):
This is just the beginning of the story. I mean,
you know, we talked about thirty eight states where it's legalized, California, Florida, Texas.
It's still illegal to bet on sports California, which is
kind of from the perspective of the gambling industry, gambling companies,
it's kind of the holy grail of sports gambling because
(37:14):
of just like the population obviously, but just the amount
of just potential in terms of the pro sports side,
the college side, and so you still have a lot
of expansion that is to come, not to say globally.
Also so from the business perspective, this is just the beginning.
(37:35):
These companies are, you know, worth now twenty billion dollars each.
They are massive gambling companies. Well guess what, They're only
going to get bigger because there are still big conquests
for them. There is a lot of uncertainty in terms
of where this goes from here, because we've already seen
(37:57):
a lot of huge scandals. We had a massive bea
scandal last year involving a player, involving in fact a coach,
Chauncey Billups, who was coaching in an NBA game and
a few days later was implicated in a scandal. And
these scandals are just the tip of the iceberg. What
(38:18):
that means for the future of the industry, for these businesses,
for the relationships between the leagues and the sports books
which are now in bed together, it's really hard to say.
Because the regulators and the integrity sort of arms that
are supposed to police this are the leagues and these
(38:42):
gaming commissions and also the companies themselves, but their incentives
are just to keep this humming along and for the
business to grow. So it's hard to say, Okay, so
there is an inevitable kind of more scandals to come,
but what does that mean? It made me absolutely nothing.
And then there's sort of the public reaction, the human
(39:05):
tole really and how that is going to play out
in terms of these addiction numbers that we're seeing that
are unquestionably on the rise, and how big they're going
to get to the point where, okay, do we need
some real regulation here, and those are big questions, you know,
can anything actually get done in terms of just laws
(39:29):
that are going to dial this back, because I think
it's becoming clear to everybody that, yeah, I mean, it
has been a mess and there needs to be some
work and guardrails that need to be put in place.
Speaker 3 (39:43):
But the big question is.
Speaker 2 (39:46):
If these very large entities with different interests are all
going to align to actually nnect some change.
Speaker 1 (39:53):
Thank you, Albert, Thank you so much. I learned so much.
Speaker 3 (39:56):
Yeah, it's fun.
Speaker 1 (40:00):
That was my guest, Albert Chen, sports journalist, former magazine editor,
producer and the author of the book Billion Dollar Fantasy.
Here we Go again as a production of iHeart Podcasts
and Snaffo Media in association with New Metric Media. Our
executive producers are me kalpen ed Helms, Mike Falbo, Alissa Martino,
(40:23):
Andy Kim, Pat Kelly, Chris Kelly, and Dylan Fagan. Meghan
tan is our producer and writer. Dave Shumka is our
producer and editor. Our consulting producer is Romin Borsolino. Tory
Smith is our associate producer. Theme music by Chris Kelly,
logo by Matt gosson Legal Review from Daniel Welsh, Caroline Johnson,
and Megan Halson. Special thanks to Glenn Bassner, Isaac Dunham,
(40:47):
Adam Horn, Lane Klein, and everyone at iHeart Podcasts, but
especially Will Pearson, Carrie Lieberman and Nikki Etoor. Thanks for listening. Everybody,
tell your friends, write a review. All of this helps.
I appreciate you listening, and until we go again, I'm
Kalpen
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