# Bill Belichick snubbed from Hall of Fame + Danny Funt on Sports Gambling's rise | 01.28

An episode of [The Right Time with Bomani Jones](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/982639043), 28 Jan 2026, 1 h 07 min.

Audio: https://podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/pscrb.fm/rss/p/traffic.omny.fm/d/clips/e73c998e-6e60-432f-8610-ae210140c5b1/370fc844-36bd-4f61-8b8f-b4bb010de39a/cf9a28d4-ec8e-43a5-b754-b4bb0117674d/audio.mp3?utm_source=Podcast&in_playlist=919a7cbe-003c-4146-b592-b4bb010de3a5

In this episode, Bomani Jones reacts to the news that Bill Belichick will not be a first ballot Hall of Famer, and what does and does not bother him about that decision. Later in this conversation, Bomani Jones interviews Danny Funt, author of 'Everybody Loses: The Tumultuous Rise of American Sports Gambling.' They discuss the evolution of sports gambling in America, its impact on various stakeholders including leagues, players, and fans, and the challenges of responsible gaming in the era of the smartphone. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

## Transcript

[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
[0:28] Speaker 2: a little while ago.
[0:29] Speaker 1: In the meantime, tween time, Bill Belichick is not, we
[0:33] Speaker 1: found out that he's not going to be a first
[0:35] Speaker 1: ballot Hall of Famer. And I have to say, I
[0:39] Speaker 1: am shocked that somehow Bill Belichick has become a unifying figure,
[0:45] Speaker 1: something that I.
[0:46] Speaker 2: Did not think was possible.
[0:48] Speaker 1: But him not being a first ballot Hall of Famer,
[0:50] Speaker 1: that brought everybody together. Now, look, I know one thing
[0:54] Speaker 1: that brings people together very easily and that everybody loves,
[0:57] Speaker 1: especially on the Internet, is the ability to say that
[1:00] Speaker 1: other people are stupid. All right, that's the thing that
[1:06] Speaker 1: brings the tent all there is we get to say
[1:10] Speaker 1: somebody else is stupid. Because quite honestly, some of y'all
[1:14] 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
[1:19] Speaker 1: I see on occasion that people say they feel like
[1:22] Speaker 1: I talk about people being stupid all the time. No,
[1:25] Speaker 1: you just already know it about your goddamn self. And
[1:28] Speaker 1: I give you a little whiff of it.
[1:29] Speaker 2: All right.
[1:30] Speaker 3: And it's not just that people are stupid. It's that
[1:33] Speaker 3: the media is stupid.
[1:34] Speaker 2: The media is stupid, except, except, except. Oh, no, no, no, no, no.
[1:40] Speaker 2: Don't you bring that shit over here. Not this time, okay?
[1:45] Speaker 1: Now, I'm going to give you a handle on what I,
[1:47] Speaker 1: I mean, this is what I think is going on.
[1:48] Speaker 1: It seems to me to be very clear what is
[1:51] Speaker 1: going on. And I say it seems pretty clear what's
[1:53] Speaker 1: going on because Bill Polian gave the game away, right? Now,
[1:57] Speaker 1: we had a report that Bill Polian, former general manager
[2:03] Speaker 1: of the Buffalo Bills, for those of you who don't know,
[2:05] Speaker 1: the Bills that went to the Super Bowl four times
[2:07] Speaker 1: in a row, Polian built those teams. The better-than-expected, faster-than-expected
[2:13] 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
[2:18] Speaker 1: then the Peyton Manning-era Indianapolis Colts. That's Bill Polian. As
[2:24] Speaker 1: a result, Bill Polian is in the Hall of Fame.
[2:27] Speaker 1: Bill Polian is also a Hall of Fame voter who
[2:31] Speaker 1: has some sway in that room. Now, Ryan, I can't
[2:34] Speaker 1: remember who reported this, but the word got out in
[2:36] Speaker 1: the streets that Polian said that they should make Belichick
[2:40] Speaker 1: wait for a year because of spy game.
[2:43] Speaker 3: Yeah, this is from Don Venetta and Seth Wickersham. And
[2:46] Speaker 3: if they're reporting it, I.
[2:48] Speaker 3: Take that as fact. Right.
[2:50] Speaker 1: Now, I will say this right fast. And this, I think,
[2:52] Speaker 1: is a very important point to make. And I'm curious
[2:54] Speaker 1: your thought on this. I don't think it's that ridiculous
[2:58] Speaker 1: if they made the decision that Spygate is worth not
[3:03] Speaker 1: being a first.
[3:03] Speaker 2: Ballot Hall of Fame.
[3:05] Speaker 3: Okay?
[3:05] Speaker 1: Now, what's happened with first ballot Hall of Fame stuff
[3:08] Speaker 1: is it allows us to offer gradations of what kind
[3:12] Speaker 1: of Hall of Fame there is.
[3:13] Speaker 2: Because there really is just Hall of Fame, not Hall
[3:16] Speaker 2: of Fame.
[3:17] Speaker 3: Right?
[3:17] Speaker 4: But.
[3:18] Speaker 1: We got to talk about stuff on the air. You
[3:20] Speaker 1: understand what I'm saying? We got TV shows and podcasts
[3:23] Speaker 1: to fill out. So we got to find another topic
[3:26] Speaker 1: of discussion or another way to level off people's greatness.
[3:29] Speaker 1: And so the way that we then do that is
[3:32] Speaker 1: what ballot hall of famer were you?
[3:35] Speaker 3: OK, now with the gold standard being unanimous. Right.
[3:40] Speaker 1: And I don't know how often, how many guys, like
[3:44] Speaker 1: I'm thinking historically about baseball Hall of Famers. Howard Bryan
[3:47] Speaker 1: and I talked about this in our interview about Jackie Robinson.
[3:49] Speaker 1: Jackie Robinson was a first ballot Hall of Famer with 76%
[3:52] Speaker 1: of the vote and he retired as the consensus greatest
[3:54] Speaker 1: second baseman of all time.
[3:56] Speaker 3: For reference, you have to get 75% of the ballot
[3:59] Speaker 3: to be. So he barely made the cut. Yes.
[4:02] Speaker 1: And so we're just getting these guys like what Rivera
[4:04] Speaker 1: was a unanimous Hall of Famer. Like through the history
[4:06] Speaker 1: of baseball, it was all kinds of guys that were like, eh,
[4:09] Speaker 1: not yet.
[4:10] Speaker 2: OK, like people just decide to do that for whatever reason.
[4:13] Speaker 1: Now, what makes the football ballot interesting is that it's
[4:16] Speaker 1: a lot harder to get in. on any particular ballot
[4:20] Speaker 1: because there's some limits in terms of how many people
[4:22] Speaker 1: can get in. 22 guys play on a field at
[4:25] Speaker 1: a given point in time. You know, it's a lot
[4:28] Speaker 1: of stuff that goes into getting in.
[4:31] Speaker 3: And almost harder for coaches than players.
[4:33] Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[4:34] Speaker 1: Oh, it's easily more difficult because the coaches wind up
[4:36] Speaker 1: on this shorter ballot. There are very few coaches, ultimately,
[4:40] Speaker 1: who wind up in.
[4:41] Speaker 2: The Hall of Fame.
[4:41] Speaker 1: That's why in basketball, when people are like, well, Eric
[4:44] Speaker 1: Sproles is a Hall of Fame coach, I think he
[4:46] Speaker 1: may have eventually gotten there, but I was like, guys,
[4:48] Speaker 1: I need you to go look at who does or
[4:49] Speaker 1: doesn't get in as a Hall of Fame coach.
[4:51] Speaker 2: It's really fucking hard in order to pull it off, right?
[4:54] Speaker 1: It's the same thing with football, but just generally speaking,
[4:57] Speaker 1: it's like five guys get in, you got like a
[5:00] Speaker 1: senior committee, you got all these different things that go
[5:03] Speaker 1: on that if you get in as a first ballot
[5:05] Speaker 1: Hall of Famer, Not being a first ballot Hall of
[5:08] Speaker 1: Famer is not nearly the insult that being a first
[5:11] Speaker 1: ballot Hall of Famer is a credit to you. And
[5:15] Speaker 1: the truth is, those guys were engaged in a fairly
[5:18] Speaker 1: intricate scheme of cheating. Right? In baseball, these guys got
[5:24] Speaker 1: caught over there cheating. They're not letting them in at all.
[5:27] Speaker 1: The best baseball player since World War II.
[5:30] Speaker 2: He ain't getting in.
[5:32] Speaker 3: Right?
[5:33] Speaker 2: In the name of cheating.
[5:34] Speaker 1: Now, That's a little different because it was broad and
[5:38] Speaker 1: it was rampant and it becomes difficult.
[5:40] Speaker 2: You're basically ignoring an entire era of history.
[5:42] Speaker 1: But all I'm saying is we have a track record
[5:44] Speaker 1: of kind of putting the brakes on people if the
[5:47] Speaker 1: belief is that they engaged in some dishonorable activity.
[5:50] Speaker 2: Okay? Belichick clearly did.
[5:53] Speaker 1: And by the way, not only did Belichick engage in
[5:56] Speaker 1: this dishonorable activity, he turned.
[5:59] Speaker 2: Into a real jerk afterward.
[6:02] Speaker 1: If you watch that Patriots documentary series, the 10-part joint
[6:06] Speaker 1: that Bob Kraft did, put a pin in that, by
[6:08] Speaker 1: the way.
[6:09] Speaker 2: If you watch that, um.
[6:11] Speaker 1: The clear change, and when Belichick became like, we're on
[6:15] Speaker 1: the Cincinnati guy, was after Spygate. Before that, he behaved
[6:19] Speaker 1: like a human being, not like he was raised by
[6:21] Speaker 1: wolves and dealing with media and everything else. It was
[6:24] Speaker 1: after that that he stopped and turned into the guy
[6:27] Speaker 1: that we all now talk about and that we all
[6:29] Speaker 1: now see, right? So put together the fact that he
[6:33] Speaker 1: got caught in some shenanigans, and then he started behaving
[6:37] Speaker 1: poorly toward a group of people that make up the
[6:40] Speaker 1: majority of the voters. maybe they make him wait a year.
[6:44] Speaker 1: He's going to get into the Hall of Fame, right?
[6:47] Speaker 1: So this isn't a one or nothing sort of situation.
[6:49] Speaker 1: So for that reason, I find myself being a little
[6:52] Speaker 1: more surprised that he's not a first ballot Hall of
[6:55] Speaker 1: Famer than I am bothered or than I am offended
[6:58] Speaker 1: by the idea that he did not get it, right? Now,
[7:02] Speaker 1: the problem is what I don't like because of how
[7:07] Speaker 1: I was raised, because of where I'm from, because of
[7:11] Speaker 1: what I'm about, because of what I stand for, is messy,
[7:16] Speaker 1: petty suckers. That's what I don't like. That's what I
[7:21] Speaker 1: don't stand for. And it is very clear to me
[7:24] Speaker 1: that Bill Polian is the messy, petty sucker that is
[7:29] Speaker 1: the ringleader behind this. And that it just seems like hateration,
[7:34] Speaker 1: and holleration run rampant in that dancery, and that's why
[7:39] Speaker 1: we're here, and that I cannot abide by. And you're like, well, gee, Beaumont,
[7:44] Speaker 1: how do you feel so confident saying this? So, Ryan,
[7:46] Speaker 1: as you said, said Booker Shabbat, not a reported that
[7:49] Speaker 1: Bill Polian apparently said because of Spygate, let's make him
[7:53] Speaker 1: wait for a year, okay?
[7:55] Speaker 2: And Polian really carries weight in that room, all right? Don...
[8:03] Speaker 2: then talked to Polian.
[8:06] Speaker 1: Polian says, one, that he did not do that. Polian
[8:11] Speaker 1: had also said that he voted for Belichick. But then
[8:15] Speaker 1: Polian also told Don Venato that he doesn't remember if
[8:22] Speaker 1: he voted for Belichick. But he knows he voted for
[8:29] Speaker 1: Bob Kraft. I need you to riddle me that home, boy.
[8:36] Speaker 2: Okay? You vote. Word. That's how we know it's you.
[8:42] Speaker 2: All right?
[8:43] Speaker 1: You know you voted for Bob Kraft. You were adamant
[8:46] Speaker 1: about voting for Bob Kraft. But maybe you voted.
[8:50] Speaker 3: I can't recall.
[8:51] Speaker 2: Yeah, I can't recall if I voted.
[8:54] Speaker 3: He played the fifth. Right.
[8:56] Speaker 2: Well, so this is the thing about Kraft, though.
[8:58] Speaker 1: And this is something Vannata and Wickersham have also reported
[9:01] Speaker 1: on and why I said put a pin in it
[9:02] Speaker 1: talking about that documentary series. That docuseries was the beginning
[9:09] Speaker 1: of Kraft building his case to get into the Hall
[9:14] Speaker 1: of Fame. It's really important to him, per the reporting
[9:17] Speaker 1: of Wickersham and Vannata, that he get into the Hall
[9:21] Speaker 1: of Fame.
[9:21] Speaker 2: He really, really wants it, all right?
[9:25] Speaker 1: So you're going to have a hard time convincing me
[9:28] Speaker 1: that that Kraft's desire to get into the Hall of
[9:31] Speaker 1: Fame and Polian saying, I absolutely did vote for him,
[9:35] Speaker 1: does not have some measure of influence in not voting
[9:38] Speaker 1: for Belichick getting into the Hall of Fame. So let Polian...
[9:43] Speaker 1: Be a friend of Krabs. Also, Polian, remembering he was
[9:48] Speaker 1: the GM of the Colts when Colts Patriots was the
[9:51] Speaker 1: prime rivalry in the NFL, and you were losing to
[9:54] Speaker 1: a dude that you believe was cheating y'all. You telling
[9:58] Speaker 1: me that you don't think this was not the opportunity
[10:01] Speaker 1: to get his lick back? Now, one last thing, Ryan,
[10:03] Speaker 1: before I give this to you, and this is important
[10:05] Speaker 1: to note. it's a little bit complex for the type
[10:10] Speaker 1: of the ballot that Belichick is on.
[10:12] Speaker 2: All right. So this is from Mike Sandoe of the athletic.
[10:15] Speaker 1: And he says, they're on the, what is like the
[10:18] Speaker 1: senior ballot, the contributor ballot, the special ballot. I don't
[10:21] Speaker 1: know what it's, what it's called, but on that ballot
[10:23] 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
[10:36] Speaker 1: that is separate from the 15 modern era finalists, and
[10:39] 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
[10:48] Speaker 1: top voter gets in no matter what. The others have
[10:52] Speaker 1: to get at least 80 percent of the vote. So
[10:55] Speaker 1: that's 40 out of the 50 voters, which is to
[10:57] 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
[11:03] Speaker 1: is the one that's at the top of the ballot
[11:07] Speaker 1: and those other guys don't get in, including Bill Belichick,
[11:12] Speaker 1: come on, man.
[11:14] Speaker 2: That's shenanigans. That's shenanigans.
[11:17] Speaker 3: Right. To your point about how bad Robert Kraft wants
[11:19] Speaker 3: to get in, this is from the Wickersham Don Vinetta article.
[11:24] Speaker 3: This year, Belichick was a finalist of Robert Kraft, the
[11:26] 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,
[11:31] Speaker 3: was a Hall of Fame finalist after 14 years of
[11:35] Speaker 3: campaigning on his behalf by the team's longtime PR man
[11:38] Speaker 3: and other supporters.
[11:40] Speaker 1: I would also like to note he was not the co-architect.
[11:43] Speaker 1: He just bought the house.
[11:44] 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
[11:50] 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.
[11:59] Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, but I will tell you this.
[12:00] 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.
[12:21] Speaker 1: And then he wound up with a documentary that was
[12:23] Speaker 1: made that had nothing to do with him.
[12:26] Speaker 3: Right.
[12:26] Speaker 2: You know, like he.
[12:28] 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
[12:38] Speaker 1: Polian decided he's not letting Bill Belichick in the Hall
[12:40] 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.
[12:58] Speaker 3: I think it was three. Yeah.
[12:59] Speaker 2: Yeah. Like it was, I mean, again, Belichick is going
[13:04] Speaker 2: to get in.
[13:05] 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.
[13:20] 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
[13:51] Speaker 1: isn't enough.
[13:52] Speaker 2: Which, by the way, fair question.
[13:53] Speaker 3: Good argument.
[13:54] Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Belichick is a.
[14:00] Speaker 1: Like football fan doesn't even begin to describe it. You know,
[14:04] Speaker 1: like it's like what this is and what this means
[14:07] 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.
[14:53] Speaker 4: Right.
[14:53] 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.
[15:09] Speaker 1: Yeah.
[15:10] 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.
[15:15] 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] Speaker 1: you're in on it. If you're a new customer, bet
[44:41] Speaker 1: $ 5 and get $ 200 in bonus bets if you win.
[44:45] Speaker 1: So whether you're backing the favorite or riding with the underdog,
[44:48] Speaker 1: make it count. Because after the Super Bowl, the season's
[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] Speaker 1: Visit FanDuel.com slash Beaumonti to get started.
[45:05] Speaker 3: 21 plus and present in select states for Kansas in
[45:07] Speaker 3: affiliation with Kansas Star Casino or 18 plus and present
[45:10] Speaker 3: in D.C., Kansas, Wyoming. Opt-in requirements. Awards are non-withdrawable, restrictions apply,
[45:16] Speaker 3: including bonus and token expiration, leg requirements, and max wager amount.
[45:20] Speaker 3: See terms at sportsduel.fanduel.com. Gambling problem? Call 1-800-GAMBLER or visit
[45:26] Speaker 3: rg-help for. com. Call 1-888-789-7777 or visit ccpg.org slash chat
[45:34] Speaker 3: in Connecticut. Visit mdgamblinghelp.org in Maryland. Hope is here. Visit
[45:40] Speaker 3: gamblinghelplinema.org or call 800-327-GAMBLER. 5050 for 24-7 support in Massachusetts
[45:47] Speaker 3: or call 1-877-8-HOPE-NY or text HOPE-NY in New York.
[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] Speaker 2: the right time. Subscribe.
[1:07:09] Speaker 3: Like.
[1:07:09] Speaker 2: Rate us. Review us.
[1:07:10] Speaker 1: Give us five stars. You only give us four stars.
[1:07:12] Speaker 1: I'm inclined to believe you are a hater.
[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.

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