How Sports Gambling Apps Are Rotting Society

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Al Zone Media.

Speaker 2 (00:04):
Hello and welcome to Better Offline. I am your host
ed Ziitrum. We are sitting in my living room and
we're going to talk about sports gambling today. Now at
sports Gambling, we're focusing on the US because this is

(00:26):
a US focus podcast. There is a hell of a
lot of weird shit in England where I grew up,
and in Europe at large with gambling. We have to
focus somewhere. We're going to focus on the US. Now.
We are in my living room in Las Vegas because
it's the Super Bowl Sunday weekend. That was a great
sentence that we're keeping. But nevertheless, I have another podcast.
I have an NFL podcast football podcast called the Sixty

(00:46):
Minute Drill, and I'm joined today by my co hosts
on that podcast. To my left is a Refassan of
Wide Left. Hello, and to my right is Caleb Wilson
of Western Kabuki.

Speaker 3 (00:56):
Happy to be here.

Speaker 2 (00:57):
Okay, So the reason I wanted to focus on this
because those out I know this is happening in Europe
as well, but in America we've seen this insidious intrusion
of sports gambling apps into modern life. Now, if you're
not sports van are actually really gonna take great pains
to explain why this is an important thing, but also
why people like sports in general, so that you can

(01:18):
understand how insidious this whole thing is. So for the uninitiative,
for people that don't watch sports, you will literally be
watching basketball and you will get a strip at the
bottom that says the odds on particular plays. You'll see
this across every sport now, and it used to be
at least or if maybe you can enlighten a little
on this as well, it used to be that you
couldn't just start gambling by having a phone. There was

(01:40):
a you had to like go to a casino and
say it up.

Speaker 1 (01:42):
Yeah, no, that was the that was the whole setup.
It's more complicated than that because of the way that
we've defined sports gambling and how it doesn't include fantasy sports.
But pre twenty sixteen, you know, you couldn't really go
on your phone right gamble really quickly unless you knew
a couple of work around. There's exceptions to every rule,
but yeah, for the most part, it wasn't normalized to

(02:04):
be able to just very quickly bet on aline.

Speaker 2 (02:07):
And now you can just bet money because you have
an iPhone and a debit.

Speaker 1 (02:11):
Con yeah, and well some connect directly to your bank account.

Speaker 2 (02:15):
Oh good.

Speaker 1 (02:16):
Most places will connect to a credit card or a
debit card. You can connect some of them directly to
a PayPal account. It's very convenient, and this is probably
going to be a theme throughout the episode. But it's
frictionless in many ways. And so you can navigate through
these apps that have these like bright colors and haptic
feedback and all of these wonderful reward mechanisms we'll talk

(02:38):
about and instantly deposit, you know, twenty five dollars, bet
that twenty five dollars, lose that twenty five dollars, and
then do it again, all in this span of like
five seconds.

Speaker 2 (02:48):
And is there, like age verification, is there any efforts
to do like anything to stop people underage?

Speaker 1 (02:54):
For gambling apps, there are. For fantasy apps, there typically are,
but not universe.

Speaker 2 (03:00):
It's the separation between a gambling and a fantasy app.

Speaker 1 (03:03):
It is an entirely legal distinction. In my opinion, I
think that there isn't much of a difference. But fantasy
is legal in different states than gambling is, and so
a fantasy app is trying to distinguish itself legally from
like a gambling product by offering kind of the things
that are traditionally scored in fantasy football. And then they're

(03:26):
kind of expanding beyond that. But let's say that for now.
So you know, hey, I imagine you know that Patrick
Mahomes will pass for over two hundred and twenty five
yards in this sanse.

Speaker 2 (03:37):
The quarterback from the quarterback from Kansas City League quarterback,
the guy who throws the ball, guy catches the ball
for him. Two hundred yards would be the completed the completed.

Speaker 1 (03:46):
Yardage of those successful passes. And so you know this,
this fantasy app will be like, hey, do you think
it's more than or less than that? You go, well,
I think he's very good, so go more then, and
then you can't actually play a bet on that exactly
otherwise that would be gambling. So you have to pair
it with another pick. They call them picks and bets.

(04:08):
And so you'd say, well, alongside that, I think that
Jalen Hurts, the opposing quarterback for the Philadelphia Eagles in
this week's Super Bowl. You know, I think he'll pass
for over one hundred and ninety yards, right, And so
you combine those two and maybe three, four, five however, right,
and that is your pick them for that week, and

(04:30):
you submit it. You put like, let's help, put twenty
dollars on it, and you've got a couple of ways
to do it. In gambling, they would call them, you know,
parlays or teasers, but in fantasy, you just get like
their flex picks or all.

Speaker 2 (04:43):
And you're just betting on what a plan might do effectively.

Speaker 1 (04:46):
Yeah, and you can do that in gambling, yeah, with
real money. That's it. And so the fantasy distinction is
that you cannot pick multiple players on the same team
without adding another player on a different team.

Speaker 2 (04:57):
Oh, so they find a way to make it.

Speaker 1 (04:59):
Yeah, So it's definitely not gambling. It's just fantasy. So
you have to have multiple teams and you can't just
bet on one single outcome. I'm sorry, you can't pick
one single.

Speaker 2 (05:10):
Outcome, right, And this is all they're trying to pretend
it's skill based. Then correct, Very cool. So one of
the things I wanted to get into as well is
why people give a shit about this? So for them
not We have a lot of nonsports listeners and I'm
very very aware of this and I don't want anyone
to think this is going to be an hour of
us just talking about like really specific sports stuff. In fact,

(05:33):
I kind of want to explain to people who aren't
in sports, white people give a shit so much, Why
is why do you love sport? Like, what is the
thing that gets you excited about this and how does
that kind of lead into this sports sports gambling world.

Speaker 3 (05:46):
Kayla, Well, for me, I mean there's a lot you
know in I guess as broadly as possible, we're in
one of the most lonely times in human history, right.
This is one form of entertaining as opposed to something
like you know, reading a book or watching a TV show.
These are predominant things that you do alone. When you're

(06:06):
watching sports, particularly when you go to a game or
to tailgating, you're doing something that's that's communal in nature.
You're doing something that builds tradition. I think that anybody
who doesn't maybe they don't dislike sports, but they just
don't understand it. Go tailgating one time.

Speaker 2 (06:22):
Immediately it will click for you and tell gettang full.
The European Listeners is actually kind of a fun thing
where you just outside the stadium, drink a bunch and
eat a bunch. Yeah. People set up like grills and
smoke and it's very communal, like.

Speaker 3 (06:35):
When there's no money involved. It's like people just do this.
They spend thousands of dollars dollars off their own money
just to build social bonds.

Speaker 2 (06:42):
Into and deadly serious. So when I went to Penns
nine in two thousand and five, I remember just walking
around kind of confused. I was like, genuinely was like
do I pay? And I walked up to someone who
just had like a roast suckling pig and I'm like, wow,
what is that? He goes it's a pig. I'm like,
oh yeah, I mean and he and he was like
do you want some? I'm like what what? Sure? They're

(07:05):
like okay, and they like made me like a pile
of meat and they were like cool. And then they
just kind of turned away from me, like not in
a rude way, but they.

Speaker 1 (07:13):
Went by, like I've done with this time.

Speaker 2 (07:15):
They just gave this random person food. But I like
the tailgate example because it's the same thing in like
a bar. It's like a thing you will get upset
about together.

Speaker 1 (07:23):
Yeah, yeah, no, absolutely, And one thing that I find
kind of interesting, like you compared it to you know,
it's more communal than watching television. One thing that that
kind of a recall is you know how excited everyone
was for like the weekly release of like Game of
Thrones whenever that episode came out. And that was somewhat
unique because now that we're in a streaming error, people
don't that's like gone, yeah, and so people don't experience

(07:46):
shows in real time, but sports are always experienced in
real time. So even if you're not going to a
bar or the stadium or tailgate whatever, you are experiencing
it with an online community in real time reacting to
the same things.

Speaker 3 (07:59):
Rightyeah, Well that's that was going to bring in maybe
to my next point, like it's semiotics in a way.
That's like I can in my office put a football
on my you know, on my on my desk or
behind my desk or whatever, and somebody that comes in,
they'll know, oh ye a Seahawks fan whatever they am,
and then immediately any tension it involved in a professional
reaction is reduced. This is a person that I can

(08:21):
have a normal human conversation with that I might not
otherwise be able to have yeah.

Speaker 1 (08:26):
I think a lot of our social bonds are defined
and identified in ways that this is going to sound
so like basic like separate people, right, And it's not
separate as in so division, but as in you know,
you either identify with this or you don't, right, is

(08:46):
that Pokey?

Speaker 2 (08:47):
Yes? That you well, now we are also joined by Pokey,
one of my Bengal cats.

Speaker 1 (08:52):
Very adorable, beautiful, also mischievous. Oh yes, but yeah, like
a lot of our our our social bonds or through
these groups identities, but the identities are generally pretty harsh categories, right,
you know, male, female, right, Which is not to suggest
right that you know you can't be friends with men

(09:12):
or women, but rather that this is not an area
that typically you cross the social boundary and have some
shared experiences. It's kind of like an all or nothing thing,
and a lot of our stratifications of identity kind of
fit along those lines in a lot of ways. But
with sports, you've got kind of this like ladder of
identity that you can find at some point some level

(09:34):
of connection. It can either be you know, hey, we
have the same favorite player on the same favorite team.
Let's talk about you know how cool Patrick Mahomes is
or whatever right, Or you can go up a level
and say, hey, we're both Chiefs fans, let's talk about
how cool it is to be Chiefs fans, or you know,
up a level and say, hey we both love football.
Let's talk about you know whatever, right, And you can

(09:55):
get broader and broader and it creates something you always
have a level of conversation about. But you always immediately
can you know where the other person is coming from right,
which is invaluable I think in a lot of social interactions.

Speaker 2 (10:07):
And I would say like I got into sports pretty
much because of the Internet. Casey Kagawa, the fifth Beatle
of Better Offline, He's talked over many ideas. He also
got me into baseball. And I got into football because
I went to Penn State and the people around me
all wanted to do stuff on Saturday or leave me
at home. So I wanted to go to Penn State.
I want to go to Penn State football. I was
made to but the sport. But I got into baseball

(10:30):
almost entirely online. Like it was. Casey took me to games,
but he would send me YouTube after YouTube and help
me discover things like foolish baseball. Bailey is a legend outstanding,
incredible channel, and I don't even like baseball. I like
that channel and the way that this is computers, by
the way listeners is. I did not grow up in America.

(10:50):
I moved here in two thousand and eight. I did
a year in Penn State, so all of my understanding
of baseball in particular is completely digital. Like Ricky Henderson,
who recently passed one of the greatest players of all time,
no fucking clue who he was. I had no idea.
I had no idea who that was. He's so incredible
And the only reason I will ever be able to
see Ricky Henderson do anything is because foolish baseball Bailey

(11:14):
over there pulled together every bit of footage of this
guy who played in like the seventies and eighties, or
maybe it was just the eighties eighties, Yeah, yeah, And
I was able to discover this guy while looking at
the stats online. And I feel like that has kind
of deepened the numerous ways people can access sports and
get into sports and connect thus connect with other people.
I mean, the Reddit communities can be very funny or

(11:37):
they can be terrible.

Speaker 3 (11:39):
Some variants.

Speaker 2 (11:40):
Yeah, but I think it's something that I love trying
to explain sports to people that don't watch them more
like them or don't understand them, which leads them one
or the other, because it's like there's something genuinely lovely
about it that has It's brought a lot to my
life despite me being like very much a computer person.

Speaker 3 (11:58):
Yeah yeah, well there are like say, you're listening to
this in your cynical and that doesn't that has not
sold you on this. There are still like just utilitarian
social reasons that sports are important too for young people.
I mean, study after study after study shows that kids
that are involved in team sports or team based activities
always almost across the board, have better outcomes in life

(12:19):
because they're taught things like cooperation and you know, all
the things that you would learn in sports or other
you know, team based activities. But beyond that, you know,
sports is like the frontlines always for social issues. Yes,
historically that people don't really understand marginalized groups that don't
have a voice in politics. You are, you know, a

(12:40):
black man or a woman. None of your elected officials
look like you. They don't represent your interests. All you
have is if you're Muhammad Ali, you can use your
platform to avoid the draft. You can do Colin Kaepernick
and take a knee, the US women's soccer team fighting
for equal pay. These are things that happen in sports
because they can't necessarily happen in other avenues.

Speaker 2 (12:59):
Right, And it's and I think it makes sports important
to people on a level that things like the computer
will never be, though I personally approve in that differently
with this podcast, I feel like you get the same
attachments maybe to like Marvel comics or something, or like
whatever fandoms they may be. But sports, I feel like
goes like one level deeper because you can have a

(13:21):
history with the team, and the team can have a history,
and you can have a history with friends as a
result of watching like case And for example, my experience
of baseball has been colored very heavily by like the
last five or six years of Dodgers baseball. As Casey
has desperately tried to educate me, I now get it.
I now fully get the game. This poor guy, I mean,

(13:41):
I would bring him to baseball game. So yeah, But
it's that is something that I will always have with
one of my best friends. I love so much. And
I feel like sports is singlely unique with them.

Speaker 1 (13:54):
Yeah. Well, especially as as Kyler mentioned, we're like entering
this period of increasing social isolation. There's all kinds of
data on how unlikely it is that we're going to
interact with people in real life in social spaces in
a lot of ways. And I think that that, you know,
all plays a really significant role. But to speak to
Taka's point about like social progress and stuff like that,

(14:18):
I think people have an understanding of like these are
historical moments, but they don't always necessarily place them on
a timeline, right, So like, for example, Jackie Robinson spearheaded
the integration of baseball in nineteen forty seven.

Speaker 2 (14:31):
And what was the instgration of baseball?

Speaker 1 (14:32):
Just to Yeah, so for a long time in baseball only,
especially at the professional level, but for most of the
minor leagues.

Speaker 2 (14:39):
I'm also going to say, I'm going to guess you're
going to say a word beginning with en at some
point with this, And I want to be very clear
that when aarif says this, he is referring to a
specific thing.

Speaker 1 (14:50):
Yes, we'll get there. Yes, I just.

Speaker 2 (14:53):
Wanted a real war.

Speaker 1 (14:56):
Yeah, but there was a color barrier in Major League
baseball that prevented people of color, but specifically black people
from playing baseball. This was enforced mostly from my understanding,
without a rule. It was just everyone had an understanding.

Speaker 2 (15:18):
Everyone agreed.

Speaker 1 (15:18):
Yeah, everyone just kind of agreed we were employing. And so,
you know, with a lot of talented black baseball players
that were playing in the Negro leagues, in which there's
a Negro League Museum and Baseball Reference and a couple
of other statistical organizations have finally started recognizing those as
official professional statistics.

Speaker 2 (15:37):
Right, and they did a realignment of all the stats,
like there's two black players who were better than Tykob
who was one of the most racist men to walk
the f It's beautiful, it's wonderful.

Speaker 1 (15:46):
But yeah, so Jackie Robinson spirit hit of the integration
of Major League baseball in nineteen forty seven, which is.

Speaker 2 (15:52):
And how did he do that? Just fun? Did he like,
like what did he do to spit.

Speaker 1 (15:56):
When he started at first base? But yeah, I mean, oh,
he's just that well, I mean, he was an outstanding player.
He's one of the best players we've ever seen, and statistically,
you know whatever, But no, I mean I think was
it was it. It was the Kansas City Monarchs. And
then it was the was it the Dodgers? Are we Yeah,
it was the Bokland Dodgers. Yeah, you mentioned the Dodgers,

(16:17):
and the Dodgers came out of my mind, like am
I remembering that just because? No, it was the Brooklyn Doughters.
So the Brooklyn Dodgers decided like hey, you know, like
I'm not a historian on this particular topic, but the
Brooklyn Dodgers decided that this would be the time to
bring in a black baseball player.

Speaker 2 (16:37):
And so capitalism, Yeah, no, that.

Speaker 1 (16:40):
Definitely was a big part of it. And there's a
whole history about you know, Jackie Robinsons approach. They were
very particular about the player they selected. We don't need
to get into that. Nevertheless, though it was twenty years
prior to a lot of the stuff we associate with
the civil rights movement in the nineteen the mid nineteen sixties, right,
And I think a lot of that is just because

(17:01):
that's the the locus of a lot of social change
can occur prior to you know, the way people understanding
the mainstream in sporting arenas, right, And I think that
a lot of people always attempt to just aggregate kind
of social movements and sports without understanding that sports are
not just you know, embedded in the culture of society

(17:22):
and the fabric of society, but very often can be
like Canaritians in the coal mine for social change.

Speaker 2 (17:30):
It kind of feels like that's where the whole horrifying
attack on trans athletes is really is really making it like, Yes,
and by the way, if you agree that trans athletes
shouldn't be in sports, I have another idea for you.
So if you've followed my lost constructions, you should be
in your garage in your car now. I want to
make sure those windows are up. Check all those windows now,

(17:54):
and I want you to turn the ignition now. You
may start feeling sleepy. That means that it's working now
moving on, I feel like and the reason I really
wanted to explain what makes people love sports?

Speaker 1 (18:09):
There's one more.

Speaker 2 (18:10):
Oh no, no, sorry, sorry now that I've threatened some people,
Please continue.

Speaker 1 (18:14):
No. One of the things that really appeals to me
about sports is that it is one of the ultimate
storytelling art forms. And you can attach yourself to a
team or a player, or a larger league wide trend, whatever.
But what's really cool about sports is that it constantly
creates storylines, tensions, and conflicts that people can follow along

(18:37):
and enjoy, not just in real time, which always has
like this added kind of you know when it comes
to storytelling, but it is truly unpredictable. Like we know
about tropes in storytelling, and very often you can read
a very good book and you recognize a trope and
understand the direction that they.

Speaker 2 (18:54):
Even headed in even some modern writing kind of like
is affected by fandoms.

Speaker 1 (18:59):
Right exactly, and not that like tropes are bad are
a necessary, you know, element of writing, but it can
impact your experience because you know the direction that the
writing is going to be headed in, right, just because
you're familiar with the tropes, right, and tropes are unavoidable
in writings. Is not about that, but rather that we
can identify tropes in sports, but that doesn't mean we

(19:20):
know what the conclusion of this story is going to be.
And so when you see someone you know kind of
struggle through a lots which teams five or six times
or you know whatever and accomplish you know, this remarkable
dream or this goal which can be you know, winning
the Super Bowl. Of course that's like the classic example,
but some of the best stories are the guy made

(19:41):
the team right like it's like, there are some really
outstanding stories where it's like, you know, this person, you
know went to a junior college because he didn't have
the grades to make it because of the system he
grew up in just didn't give him access to the
resources he needs to get good grades. Goes to junior college,
gets good grades there, transfer to, you know, a Division

(20:01):
two school, and a Division two school for people unfamiliar,
are essentially multiple levels below the level that typically NFL
athletes come from. But you know, maybe they go to
a Division two school or Division three school where they're
barely even any athletic scholarships at all, and you know,
they grind it out, they work hard, they're an outstanding
star player for their program, and it comes time to
declare for the draft. They declare for the draft a team.

(20:24):
No team drafts them, you know, because there's only two
hundred and fifty six odd picks in the NFL Draft,
and so then they have to advocate for themselves as
a potentially undrafted free agent. These are people that get
a lot less consideration when it comes to making the
team make a lot less money. It's much more difficult.

Speaker 2 (20:40):
A lot of them making it through a professional team
is extremely unlikely.

Speaker 1 (20:43):
Yeah, and so they make what's called the ninety man roster,
and from the ninety man roster they cut down to
the fifty three man roster. And that process is onerous.
And maybe you know that first year, that guy, you know,
that guy from co college or whatever, doesn't make the team,
but he makes this supplementary practice squad. And then the
next year he gets another opportunity the attentry to make
the team. He makes the team. And that's the whole story,
and it rules.

Speaker 3 (21:03):
Can I interject with my favorite example of that.

Speaker 2 (21:07):
Just make sure it's like really simple.

Speaker 3 (21:09):
For Yeah, the Griffin brothers in Seattle, Oh, twin brothers
and Shaquille. Yes, the Shakim is he's disabled, it doesn't
have a he doesn't have a hand, a right hand
with the physical disability, still makes the roster. Twin brothers
both on the Seahawks. Wonderful story.

Speaker 2 (21:26):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (21:27):
And when when Shaquille was deciding which college to because
they both went to UCF, right, yeah, uh deciding so, yeah,
deciding which college to go to, he said, you have
to offer my twin brother, Shakim otherwise I'm not going
And so he was like a four star recruit or
something like that, which, again for people who are unfamiliar,
there's you know, three four and five star recruits. Five
star recruits get recruited by the blue bloods Alabama, Georgia, whoever,

(21:50):
and at the time you get a ton of under
the table money. Now you just get over the table money. Fantastic,
as they should. Yeah, but like you know, there are
several hundreds of thousands of dollars ventually that these big
programs can offer. And he said, no, I'm playing with
my brother. That's key, and UCF was like, yeah, we'll
play both of them. And Shaquima was a really good
player at the college level too, so like it turned

(22:12):
out to be a great event, But that wasn't the reason.
It was because the team wanted to respect Shakiel and
they're like, well, if there's a there's a spot for
Chaquem on our program, you know certainly he can play,
and he played his way into a spot. He's actually
one of the more unique players and not going to
get into that that has nothing to do with his hand.
One of the more unique players just from the way
that he plays and then you know, he goes to
a college all star game, the Senior Bowl, and they're like, well,

(22:34):
we'll see what you can do. We'll play you at
this position, this position, this position, this position, because you
have a really unique body type. We don't really know
what to do with that. And you know, they're playing
him in coverage and the quarterbacks are doing their job.
It feels cruel, but you got to do it. They're
throwing at his coverage at the hand that he's missing
to see how he handles not playing with the full

(22:55):
extension that you normally get. And you know, he impresses
the scouts enough that he ends up making the Seahawks
with his brother Sequille. It's outstanding.

Speaker 3 (23:03):
That might be a little bit into the weeds, but
he worked really well of Seattle scheme because of that
kind of hybrid linebacker type.

Speaker 1 (23:09):
Yeah, yeah, it's a it's a it's a body type
because in football, you have a bunch of different positions
and there are kind of body types that tend to
fit in those positions and they tend to be somewhat static,
and so there's very few teams that can fit. So
it was it was kind of like a perfect situation
to find the right team culture in Seattle that would
encourage that kind of thing, to find the right team

(23:30):
that had basically a position available for the type of
football that he played, and it emerges as this really
wonderful story where.

Speaker 3 (23:38):
To be clear, by the way, neither of them are
still in Seattle. Shaquilla is still playing was.

Speaker 1 (23:44):
He He's just played for the Vikings. His contract just
ran out, so we'll see.

Speaker 3 (23:47):
Yeah, we'll see where he But point point being very
short time together in Seattle, and it is still top
five Seahawks moments for me because of just the narrative
storytelling that you were getting at.

Speaker 2 (23:57):
And the thing is this depth is necessary understanding why
people are so emotionally attached to these teams and why
people have such cultural awareness to really explain how evil
these apps are. Yeah, because you're not just it's not
just like betting on numbers and the excitement of gambling.
It's and this is a very very overwhelmingly wanky way

(24:18):
of putting it, it's exerting control over something that you
have even less control over than numbers than odds. So Caleb,
you have and Reef, I know you've written some about
this as well, but you've definitely complained a lot in
our sports related group chat about these fucking ads as well.

(24:38):
So describe some of these ads the way they target
people for these sports betting apps.

Speaker 3 (24:43):
Well, I mean, it's kind of hard to pick one
because it's such a deluge. It's everywhere now, and it
seems like I just blinked and then it was there
for context. I didn't want to interrupt a ref what
you were saying earlier when you were explaining the fantasy stuff.
I had no idea about any of that because none
of this is even legal in Washington state. I have
never done this. I've never been able to do this right,

(25:05):
and up until I think it was yesterday when Crypto
dot Com just said, you know what, I don't care
about the laws in this on the state level. We're
just going to start doing this. And so you're probably
going to see ads for that on the Super Bowl today.
I would imagine where they're like, yeah, we're just going
to ignore the law and we're going to advertise to
you cynically that you can just just do this now.

Speaker 1 (25:26):
Despite they offer a product that is, according to them,
not gambling, which is why they can offer it in
whatever state, but it functionally is gambling. It's also not fantasy,
which is why they can offer a lot of But
if you buy a token in whether or not a
player will accomplish a particular goal or won't accomplish a
particular goal, and then the token cashes out based off

(25:47):
of the player's performance, which again is somehow not gambling.

Speaker 2 (25:53):
And on and on a real basic level, the way
they kind of trick you into believing you have more
control is saying, oh, you would pick a team. So
in fact, we've kind of gone over this, but no,
not hard to reaffirm it. Will you go, oh, I
think that these guys will all score the most, Right,
so you pick like Patrick Mahomes in the regular season,

(26:13):
Patrick Mahomes wide receiver, running back and all them, and
then you kind of submit that with a bet on it. Right.

Speaker 1 (26:20):
Yeah, Well, so there are like bets for game day, right,
but there are season long bets, and there's there there
is season long fantasy as well. But the way these
ads are kind of marketing the concept of gaming on
sports or whatever is just game day betting and sometimes

(26:41):
even live betting in game.

Speaker 2 (26:42):
And that's and that's what the most of these were
because it wasn't really clear to me, So just again
to distinguish. There are the ones where you bet on outcomes,
and then then then there were ones that you bet
on whether you have chosen the correct amount of boys,
like the correct guys that will score the most points.

Speaker 1 (26:57):
Well, again, I think they're both gambling and they almost cat.

Speaker 2 (27:00):
I'm just trying to delineate which one is the most like,
which is the one that has penetrated so far.

Speaker 1 (27:06):
Like I would say more people are sick of fantasy
ads because they've run for longer, but gambling ads have
done a lot more in the past two years to
saturate the market. But it's also kind of difficult to
tell the difference between a fantasy ad and a gambling ad.
I think most consumers that are.

Speaker 3 (27:26):
Just watching the people listening to this will not know
the difference.

Speaker 2 (27:29):
Yeah, and so sorry. I actually came into this with
a slight mistake, and this is a common one. I
think I thought I didn't know that gambling gambling was
so prevalent. I didn't. So it's how many states can
you just boot up an app?

Speaker 1 (27:43):
I want to say, it's twenty one.

Speaker 2 (27:45):
That's insane.

Speaker 3 (27:45):
So now it's fifty.

Speaker 2 (27:48):
Well, okay, it's not ignoring regulation, but just to be
clear to the listeners, non sports fans, sports fans are like,
what we are discussing is that basically in twenty one states,
anyone can pick up their phone and startling like they're
in Vegas, specifically on the outcomes of sports events.

Speaker 3 (28:04):
This individual plays like in the time that it would
take you to send a tweet, you can lose one
hundred dollars.

Speaker 1 (28:09):
Yeah, so the last I looked at was twenty one. Now,
mobile online sports betting is legal in thirty states plus DC,
well thirty one states, but it's not yet operational in Missouri,
and retail gambling, which is you have to physically go
in in additional eight states.

Speaker 3 (28:27):
Yeah, so that is legal in Washington. I have to
go to a place to gamble, and that's I guess
that's a little you know city.

Speaker 2 (28:34):
So it's looking out for one hundred million people, oh easily. Yeah, well,
especially because it includes New York and Florida.

Speaker 3 (28:40):
Oh god, we were talking about this earlier before we
started recording. Ed you were in the other room, but
I was reading about this today. Just today, one point
five billion dollars will be bet that in the Super.

Speaker 2 (28:53):
Bowl, just on the apps are in general in general,
in general, this is real rot economy share as well,
because anyone can Campbell see you've got the system that's
already not great. And the things you can bet on,
just to be clear, aren't just like guy wins game

(29:15):
or guy scores points. It's like the coin toss yet
the level of well, absurdity like with the coin toss,
but the level of absurdity and precision that on the
things with which you can bet on or absurd and
so some of them are just called novelty bets. And
the coin toss, by the way, is who whether the
coin will be heads or.

Speaker 1 (29:34):
Tails correct, or you can bet on who will win
the coin toss, which in the same arts right.

Speaker 2 (29:38):
Great, So two bets on the coin yeah, ah.

Speaker 1 (29:42):
You've got well, and then there's you can there's correlated bets.
So there's a I was offered when I logged under
fan Duel earlier, I was offered a bet on Chiefs
win the coin toss and the game.

Speaker 2 (29:53):
And when you say offered, how do you mean?

Speaker 1 (29:55):
When I logged into the app at the splash, Green
showed up telling me that there was this bet that
I would be available for. It was like a.

Speaker 2 (30:04):
Bright available for in what like I would not always.

Speaker 1 (30:09):
No if I navigated. Was there a special deal or
was it just telling you could do this? In this case,
there wasn't a special deal. It was just informing me
that and I assume. So here's my understanding of how
this operation works. Right, when they come up with like
unique bets like that one which for most games you
don't get to bet on the coin toss in most books, but.

Speaker 2 (30:34):
Books refers to the like the the operators cool.

Speaker 1 (30:36):
Yeah, uh. But when when they like come up with these, uh,
they start kind of testing which ones are the most
popular and then also using the data that they have
to determine which ones are the most profitable, which is
another way of saying which ones people lose the most
money on.

Speaker 2 (30:55):
So they are just so we're clear, advertising specific bets, yeah,
advertising specific bets and telling you and then highlighting the
ones that are the most profitable and most likely to
generate interaction. So trying to actively advertising something that you
will they ideally need you to lose on. And the
thing they're promoting.

Speaker 1 (31:15):
Is and their data tells them that tells them that
you are very likely to lose on.

Speaker 2 (31:21):
So when you say you are likely to use lose on,
are you saying that they customize it based on your
actual bets in history?

Speaker 1 (31:29):
Yes? And no. So they can. They can customize their
offers to the category of bets that you typically make
and will engineer kind of the ones that are most
profitable to them to show to you. But like the
specific ones like the one I just showed, that one's
offered everybody when you when you show up, And so

(31:50):
the specific bets they don't really they're not like, man,
this guy loses a ton of money on the Jaguars,
let's you know, for Jaguars.

Speaker 2 (31:57):
I'm surprised they don't.

Speaker 3 (31:59):
It's probably worth noting that the way that they target
these offers to you depends on whether you are a
casual gambler or if you are somebody who puts a
lot of money into this who's losing quite a bit.
In some cases, if you get if you hit a
certain threshold for how much money you've lost, they will
assign you a personal bookie who will text you directly
specific offers, and they'll even comp you that concierge.

Speaker 2 (32:21):
Yes, so this which services. So we're talking fan jewel drops.

Speaker 3 (32:25):
This was I read a story about this in NPR
the other day and this one was I believe FanDuel.

Speaker 1 (32:29):
Yeah, well, so I've covered this a little bit on
in my piece on sports.

Speaker 2 (32:33):
Gambling pooling that in the nose.

Speaker 1 (32:36):
The both FanDuel and DraftKings do this. Bet MGM, from
my understanding, has begun doing this, but yeah, specifically the
ones that have primarily an online presence, which I know
people understand. BEDMGM def like a casino in Vegas, but
like they've massively expanded their online footprint, and so the
ones that do that will interact with a lot of

(32:58):
their most valued customers. Maybe it's the best way to
put the people who are losing the most money. And
if you look into the stories of some of the
people that have been contacted by a concierge, it's very
much I mean, it's almost like beat for beat, the
script you would write for a drug dealer engaging with
an addict. And I don't say this lightly. I've lost

(33:19):
a couple of people in my life to drug addictions,
and I know other people in my life who are
currently struggling with addiction, and some of those people have
also in addition to their drug addiction, have become addicted
to gambling, not necessarily sports betting.

Speaker 2 (33:33):
And this is all exacted through software.

Speaker 3 (33:35):
This is all directly predominantly Yeah.

Speaker 1 (33:38):
And so the software will flag someone as like, hey,
this person's lost like thirty thousand dollars, you should get
more money from them, and then they'll assign a concierge
and that person will email them like hey.

Speaker 3 (33:49):
It's also possibly worth noting here that this might sound
like the people are targeting are like high rollers, but
predominantly speaking, this affects low incomers more than any other group,
how sorry, because those are the people that are typically
gambled the most.

Speaker 2 (34:05):
And that's the thing. This is inherently predatory in a
way that I don't think would be possible without the
current disial ecosystem. We have this penetration of completely impossible
consumer apps and also the kind of fuzzy legal definitions
that allow them to just do this bullshit.

Speaker 1 (34:20):
Yeah. I think it's the it's a combination of a
couple of things. One, I think the nature of gambling
is that it provides a lot of hope to people,
which is one reason that it targets people in lower
income strata. But two, the current gambling environment is frictionless, right,
like I just mentioned, And this, you know, would be

(34:43):
like something with the bed MGM live product. So let's
say we're watching the Super Bowl, right and they're on
you know, the Eagles are on the five yard line,
which is to say, they're fifteen feet away from scoring
a touchdown. And I'm in the bed MGM app, and
I'm in the live section of the bed MGM app,
and I've got zero dollars in my account. Right I
look up, I see the screen, I see that they
just made it to the five yard line, and I

(35:04):
immediately go, hey, it looks like Saquon Barkley is And
I'm going to throw a number out here that a
lot of people are not going to know how to interpret.
I'm going to skip past that in a second. But
he's minus two thirty to score a touchdown on the
next play. So I press yes, minus two thirty. I
want to bet twenty dollars on it. And immediately a

(35:24):
pop up will say, hey, you don't have enough money
in your account to bet twenty dollars? Do you want
to deposit it right away? And I go yes, and
it takes me to the deposit screen. It says, this
is your automatic like, this is your default payment method,
press yes, and you press yes, and then the twenty
five dollars gets deposited in the account. And then you
go back to the bet slip that you made and

(35:44):
you press yes. And that all occurs within three to
five seconds. And then the next play runs and Saikwon
Barkley did not score a touchdown. He went to the
three yard line and now I've just lost my money
and I want to go and it's gone and now
I want to make it back. So I'm going to
do it on the very next play.

Speaker 2 (36:00):
And it is that quick.

Speaker 1 (36:01):
It's so quick. Yeah, you could do it between So
many people do it between plays.

Speaker 2 (36:06):
Have you ever seen someone physically do this?

Speaker 3 (36:08):
Yeah, it's it's completely normal for them to be while
the game is happening.

Speaker 1 (36:12):
I've seen them do it in arenas.

Speaker 3 (36:14):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (36:15):
And this is why I wanted to do this episode
so badly, because so much of this though everyone hears sports,
and there are definitely some oh is a sports ball
on type people who can be like I don't I
don't like the sports bool. I read book, I watched
the power Point watch. But nonetheless, these people need to know.
It's like this is one of the most evil things

(36:36):
tech has done. It's it's very much like management consultants
plus tech, but this is an evil perpetuated only through technology.

Speaker 1 (36:43):
Yeah, I think for people who are unfamiliar with sports,
it would it feels like an exaggeration to say people
are like commodifying your relationship with your family. But there
are a lot of people that are closer emotionally speaking
to the teams that they follow than the family that
they have, and I don't regard that necessarily as a tragedy.
I don't have a great relationship with my family, so

(37:07):
that's just the nature of what they are taking advantage of. Yes,
they're commodifying this relationship, and to an extent, it's always
been commodified. Sports are there at a professional level to
make money, and I've always had like thoughts on the
tension between that between the relationship a team has to
like a consumer or a fan in this case, they

(37:30):
are identical things and like vice versa. But I think
that teams don't attempt to ruin their customers as lives
and the way that a lot of these books operate,
I would argue essentially everyone because smaller books get bought
at large books meaning the apps. Right, Yeah, I think
the official term is operators, but I just call them books.

(37:53):
But it is almost explicitly to ruin people's lives because
they want to extract as much money as quickly as possible.
And so there's this story in The Athletic that about
somebody who you know, began you know, gambling, and you know,
it's just kind of at first, they were a casual
better they saw like a fifty dollars promo, and typically
what these promos are is you deposit fifty dollars and

(38:15):
then you receive fifty dollars in promotional cash, which you
can only use to gamble with. And so they got
fifty three dollars. Okay, you bet with all of it,
and you know, at the end of the week he's
run out, so he deposits one hundred. There's no more
promo because he was a first time customer, got the
original promo and so on, and he just keeps going.

(38:36):
And he's got he's got a wife, he's got children,
he's got a house, right, and he bets larger and
larger sums to make up for what he had lost previously.
And he's describing the thrill of a win a lot
like you would describe a high, right, And the winds
are becoming rarer and rarer because he is betting on

(38:56):
longer and longer shot outcomes, because the long shot outcomes
have highest potential payout. So essentially what he's doing is
he's buying a ticket for the lottery, but instead of
paying one dollar at the gas station for like a
mega million's ticket, he's paying one thousand dollars for you know,
something that will multiply that by it.

Speaker 2 (39:15):
And they do special office and special bets, right, sometimes
they'll be like that'll improve like that.

Speaker 1 (39:20):
I've seen offers like that, Yeah, and so and so.
What began happening to this guy is, you know, he
started betting at odd hours of the night. He started
betting on sports. He clearly was unfamiliar with Russian tennis,
you know, uh stony and basketball.

Speaker 2 (39:36):
You can bet and this is actually the important detail.
You can bet in some cases on just the most
obtuse stuff. Yeah, just really obscurred. You can bet on
snookers like you can bet on snoocas. Is the very
strange kind of billiards variant that you have back in England. Sure,
we say snooker. Now I'm not sure which one of
us is correct anyway, continue.

Speaker 1 (39:54):
Well, you're British, so you're probably wrong, but uh yeah,
you can bet on anything almost anywhere in the world.
People have been betting on like high school games and
stuff like that, so they know, and so the app
is tracking his activity. They notice that he's making deposits
at odd times of the night. They notice that he's
betting on obscure sports that he's probably not familiar with,

(40:14):
and so in response to that, they assign him a concierge.
And the concierge emails is like, hey, you know, you're
one of our most valued customers. I want to offer
you a five hundred dollars promotion. You don't even have
to deposit anything. He's like, oh wow, that's five hundred
three dollars okay, and then he bets it all and
all withers away right right, and they're like, wow, that's
like really tough. And so he ends up losing, you know,

(40:36):
thousands and thousands and thousands of dollars and he's like
trying to hide this all from his wife and he's
taking out additional loans, personal loans at high interest, and
he decides, you know, oh man, this is awful. I'm
gonna stop. I'm about to lose the house, right, have
to find some way, and so he stops for two weeks.

Speaker 2 (40:52):
He stops.

Speaker 1 (40:52):
Then he receives an email saying, Hey, you haven't you
know you know Bet in a really long time. Is
there something that we can do to kind of repair
our relationship between the two of us, because hey, we've
become friends. Man, you and me.

Speaker 2 (41:05):
You know, we we were together.

Speaker 1 (41:08):
We're on this together.

Speaker 2 (41:09):
Man.

Speaker 1 (41:09):
I want to I want to see succeeds. So what
I've done is I've placed two thousand dollars of promotional
cash in your account. You know you can do that
what you want. And he emails back like, hey, I
you know, I think I've developed a problem. I don't
think I can do this anymore. I'm not going to
do this anymore. And you know, the guy responds with
and I'm paraphrasing from an article I read a couple

(41:31):
of months ago.

Speaker 2 (41:31):
So we we'll link We'll find it and linkage.

Speaker 1 (41:33):
Yeah, it's over at the Athletic, which is now in
your Times gig, so well, it'll be easy to find him,
but you know the guy, you know. The guy responds with,
oh wow, that you know, I you know, I wish
the best for you. That really, you know, sucks. I'm
sorry to hear that. You know, take care of yourself,
but if you ever come back, those two thousand dollars
are still there for you. And so it's just always

(41:55):
in his mind for the next couple of weeks and
he decides, oh, he's going to do it, and he
does it, and you the guy emails like, oh wow,
I'm glad to see you know that you've taken care
of it and you're back or whatever. And he's like, yeah,
I don't know if I can still you know, do this.
And he's like, okay, yeah, I understand. We don't want
you to put we don't want you to put yourself
in a bad spot, but we've got this great promotion
coming up that I just want to make sure that

(42:16):
you take advantage of if it's there, if there's some
way that you can pull together all of the you know,
pull together what you need in order to act it,
and it's just they wreck. Like he has said, multiple times,
I think I'm an addict and they say, they give
lip service to the idea that he shouldn't do anything
about it, and then they enable him.

Speaker 2 (42:32):
And this is this is done like fucking software as
a service sales. This is exactly. This is exactly. You
have a customer that's churning. You email them, you have
a look at the analytics. People aren't using it within
their company. You reach out and you say, hey, look,
so you've got a bunch of users who want using it. Hey,
we'll cut those off, we'll refund those, but have you
considered this ad on for this team? Except instead of

(42:54):
like business software, this is like life ruining gambling.

Speaker 3 (42:57):
Yeah, well the guy lost his house. Yeah, that happens
all the time. One in four Americans will be betting
on the super Bowl today. Jesus, that one point five
billion is like gotta be one of the most single
day transfers of wealth from lower income brackets upward in
human history. I mean, that's even if you're cynical about

(43:18):
the individualistic aspects of and if you're an egoist or whatever,
this is what individuals should be able to do whatever,
whatever you know as a problem that the society continues
to have as people are starting their lives later. They're
not buying houses, they're not having kids, they're not financially
stable enough to do these things. These are the same
people that are being targeted directly by these.

Speaker 2 (43:37):
Apps because the idea is it's kind of like the
crypto ads of twenty twenty two where it was like
seize the day. Like this idea that you can have
hope and accumulate wealth.

Speaker 3 (43:45):
Yeah, yeah, it exactly.

Speaker 1 (43:47):
It combines the predation on hope right with all of
the lessons we've learned from mobile gaming about the gamification
of our experiences, and.

Speaker 2 (43:58):
It is the gamification of while also on every show
you see the odds of the play and this sense
that you could have somehow influence right outcomes.

Speaker 1 (44:06):
This is one of I think one of the most
insidious things about this whole thing is that all of
the leagues or the broadcast partners that carry the league
or both have relationships with these companies, and in some
of the relationships are not sponsorships or advertising mechanisms, like
the NFL gets paid by William Hill, which is a

(44:28):
sports book slash operator to provide real time data so
that will will Hill can set lines in real time whatever. Okay,
sure find whatever. I don't care. But also, the NFL
has a relationship I believe with DraftKings. Is there is there,
it's either fand old, right, it's almost always a thing
you do. And so on the NFL network they talk

(44:50):
about the lines set by draft Kings. There are promotional
sponsored DraftKings. On the broadcast, you'll see some stuff about DraftKings.
And then on top of that, Fox Sports has a
relationship with I think F and so the broadcasters will
reference the fan duel line. And so you'll see, like
you mentioned, like at a basketball game, you'll see a
ticker at the bottom saying like, hey, you know, Victor

(45:10):
woman Yama is like plus two thirty to get a
you know, triple double this game. You know, but you
know whatever, right.

Speaker 2 (45:15):
If you don't watch basketball, Victor women Yama is like
seven foot tall.

Speaker 1 (45:20):
Yeah, they should deport them. Actually the only person in
America I think that Ice should deport everybody. Okay, we
do not.

Speaker 2 (45:26):
Actually we're not pro ice. We're like, we've not probe
deportation things.

Speaker 1 (45:30):
No, No, they should eradicate Ice before they do that.

Speaker 2 (45:33):
Okay, well me I will love that. So I it's
just I'm trying to think of the terms to put
this book because I know and I'm very obviously anxious
about this. People don't like sports. Hear this, they get,
but think of it like if you were watching Game
of Thrones, the like will ned Stark live and it's
like you can bet on the outcome and they had
a thing at the bottom of or like severance like

(45:54):
well Madam Scott find out like and it's like except
imagine if it was being written in real time, but
something you deeply cared about emotionally, or something that you
would got attached to with your friends, something that you
remember from your childhood that is now through the apps,
and it's the like only fucking app store advertised by Apple.
Apple I don't think makes a cut on these, but

(46:16):
I'm sure there's something weird there. But it is that
that abstraction layer higher than just the kind of manipulative
micro transaction to you'd see in like a free to
play game. Yeah, except the money goes so quick, like
in a snap. Yeah, it has got like you said,
like just if the thing doesn't happen, the money is gone.
You're not getting a refund. They're not going to do
this you've just gambled. They got your money.

Speaker 3 (46:37):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (46:37):
Yeah, So actually, here's a dumb question. You said, there's
the fifty dollars free credit. Aren't there people who take
advantage of that surely, like who like sign up an
account and are good at gambling? I? Yes, so how
do they know? But that's the thing. So No, But
the reason I asked this is not because I'm trying
to convince people they have any more industry. I'm trying
to find out, like what is so, like, how do

(46:59):
they make the money go? Like there money go? Because
they offer it quite a lot.

Speaker 1 (47:03):
Yeah. So there's like a couple of things. One we
found kind of psychologically that if you're offered free money, right,
even if you have to pay to get the free money, right,
you are more likely to bet the free money on
long shot odds. So as a whole, that money is
not going to turn into real money that they have

(47:24):
to pay.

Speaker 3 (47:24):
They don't give that. There's I was I didn't want
to interrupt in your talk about this earlier, but it just
kind of goes to show you they'll throw fifty bucks,
five hundred bucks, two thousand bucks at this because they
know within a statistical certainty almost that they're going to
get that money back, and then some yeah, and.

Speaker 1 (47:39):
So there's there's a percentage of customers that they retain,
and then those customers they retain, the vast majority of
the retained customers will pay back and that'll make an
that'll make up. And they've got a cost of acquisition,
like you can I mean, they're publicly traded. You can
look at their their you know, filings for like a
quarter or two whatever, and they've got a cost of acquisition.
And they talk about like reduce seeing the cost of

(48:00):
acquisition and increasing you know, or hold, which is the
percentage that they make on each bet. That it's a
whole kind of element. But one thing that is kind
of interesting about the way that they manage these books
is that if you begin winning and here's this is
going to go super in the weeds. There's a different

(48:22):
definition of winning they use for this particular determination, which
I'll get into in a second. But if you begin
winning a lot at a really high percentage, they will
start reducing your limit. And your limit is the amount
that you can bet on a single bet. And so
if I'm a new fan duel customer, I believe my

(48:42):
limit is one thousand dollars, and if I get pretty
bad at gambling, my limit will expand to two thousand
and five twenty thousand. But if I'm pretty good, they'll
start reducing my limit to, you know, five hundred and
two fifty all the way down to a dollar. And
so you get good, you actually don't really have a
lot of opportunity to make money. And so the thing

(49:04):
I was going to get at is they don't actually
determine it based off of whether or not you've made money.
They determine it based off of whether or not the
bet that you made at the time you made it
anticipated the closing line value of the bet. So markets
move right. Betting markets move based in response to who's
doing the betting, And so it's actually not critically important

(49:27):
that the people setting the odds for any particular bet
are laser precise accurate about what those odds truly are.
They have to be accurate to a certain degree. But
what ends up happening is that a certain amount of
money goes one way on a bet, and a certain
amount of money goes on another way in a bet,
and that moves the line, and over the course of
the lifetime of that bet until the game actually starts.
You get a closing line value, and if you beat

(49:48):
the closing line value, they determine that you're a sharp gambler.
And if you do that I think like sixty percent
of the time or something like that, they start reducing
your limits.

Speaker 2 (49:57):
So it's really hard to make money. Even like the
traditional idea of winning is the thing. It's like this
weird matriculated bullshit so that they could will never let
you win, then will never let you right, you never
win on your terms.

Speaker 3 (50:10):
It's even even when you win that kind of They
advertise this as like a skill based situation, and you
just need to understand that even if it was a
fair fight, if they didn't move the lines, if they
didn't do all these things that Drip was talking about,
they still have you will never outsmart them because they
have teams of analysts that make these bets, and they're

(50:31):
very good at it, and they've been doing it for
a long time, and they have algorithms to watch this stuff.

Speaker 1 (50:35):
So access to proprietary data too that you won't have
access to exactly. I mean, So, for example, there's a
product that I think is very good called pro Football
Focus Ultimate Profoble Focus is a data firm that covers
football and their Ultimate package, which gives you access to
granular level data like, you know, every individual play you

(50:59):
can see, you know, if a pass was caught at
what yard line that pass was caught, how many yards
after they catch that player you know, generated after the catch,
how many tackles that player beat on the way to
doing that?

Speaker 2 (51:11):
So that you insane the ground here? Do they have
a level below that that somehow these people or they
get access to that.

Speaker 1 (51:17):
Well, they get access to that because it's a two
hundred thousand dollars package.

Speaker 2 (51:20):
Oh so they have advantages yeah, d never even unless
we were insanely rich. Yeah, and no one who's doing
that is doing that.

Speaker 3 (51:28):
Yeah, nobody who's who's doing this has the money to
spend on that.

Speaker 1 (51:31):
Yeah, And so they get access to the proprietary data
which they can use to kind of create these models.
Those models help set the lines. It's very difficult to beat.

Speaker 3 (51:39):
And then they give that insanely granular data to a
team of analyst perverts that will then set the lines.

Speaker 2 (51:46):
Yeah, it's almost like the ultimate management consultant thing because
it's barely about sports anymore, it's not even about winning.
And another betting thing only recently understand came to understand
even was the concept of unders and OVAs, where they
will set a point amount. Like, actually, Caleb, can you
explain what an over in and under is? Because it's important

(52:07):
to explain that you can't just bet on whether someone
wins or loses.

Speaker 3 (52:10):
Yeah, I could do my best. Again, just the very
basic of what it means. Yeah, and if you may
have to correct now this because again it's not legal
in my state, so I've never actually done it. Okay,
So they don't like it's called the spread, right, So
if you're if the team is under, this is kind
of confusing. If the team is the under, that means
they're the favorite by however many points.

Speaker 1 (52:29):
Right, kind of, so we wouldn't call them the under rights.
But if the team is the favorite, they're like minus
one and a half, right or whatever. So for example,
the Chiefs in this game opened at minus one and
a half. That means that the betting line is essentially
if you subtract one and a half points from the Chiefs,
who wins the game?

Speaker 2 (52:48):
Right?

Speaker 1 (52:48):
If you bet on the Chiefs, you bet on the
Chiefs to win by at least two points or more.
If you bet in the Eagles, you either bet on
them to win out right or lose by about a
point or less.

Speaker 2 (52:57):
So you can't just bet win or lose.

Speaker 1 (52:59):
You can, but the odds are yeah, and so what
and so that's called a money line bet, where you
just bet outright on the winner of the loser. But
there are different odds for that. So that's where you
get stuff like plus two thirty and minus one ten
and minus one thy. So what plus two thirty means

(53:19):
is if I bet one hundred dollars, I will receive
and I win, I get one hundred dollars back plus
two hundred and thirty dollars. If I bet minus two thirty,
I would need to bet two hundred and thirty dollars
in order to get not just my original bet back,
but one hundred dollars. It is, So it's it's kind
of confusing.

Speaker 2 (53:38):
No, it's and I assume by design.

Speaker 1 (53:40):
Sure, I mean, this is a system that is like
sixty seventy years old, So I don't know.

Speaker 3 (53:44):
It's four people that are on the strip back. They're
the hoople heads that are seven beers deep. They're going
to say, yes, we ball put fifty on the packers
or whatever.

Speaker 1 (53:54):
Right, yeah, And so you can convert those odds into
the percentages, so like a minus. Okay, it's actually more
complicated than this, but the the minus one hand would
suggest I believe like a forty six percent or whatever
odds that you know, whatever the bet is. But the
problem is if two teams are evenly matched, so if

(54:16):
the spread is pk or pick them right, zero right
either way. So if the spread is pick them and
each team was equally likely to win, right, you would
get probably in most books, in well most books a
couple of years ago, minus one hundred and five odds.

Speaker 2 (54:35):
So the thing is, I'm sure people are a little
bit lost now because I slightly am but actually I
think that's kind of illustrative of how fucking weird this is. Yes,
these are the numbers that are just on the TV
being thrown at.

Speaker 1 (54:46):
You old minus five plus two ten and.

Speaker 2 (54:48):
You open the app and the app is screaming at
you just like, hey, you should try this. Why don't
you fucking try this?

Speaker 3 (54:54):
Saicon Barkley is minus two thirty is sure? What the hell?

Speaker 1 (54:58):
Yeah? Yeah, And like the thing is so I described
that like both of those even bets are minus one
of five. If you bet on the coin toss, it's
minus one of five, right, Like, that's the So.

Speaker 2 (55:09):
You would need to put one hundred and five dollars
down to make one hundred.

Speaker 1 (55:12):
Dollars correct gone, which obviously suggests that you know, you,
your odds of being correct have to be not just higher,
but substantially higher than what the implied odds are by
the book, because they're gonna make money on the coin flip, right, Like,
there's no question that they're making money.

Speaker 3 (55:31):
And yet, by the way, while we were talking about this,
before I googled it, hundreds of thousands of dollars will
be bet on the coin today.

Speaker 2 (55:38):
Hundreds of thousands of dollars. Yeah, that's so fucking horrible.
This is the thing Like earlier on in this show's existence,
I was definitely like mad at the tech industry, and
people like, why you're so mad? It is stuff like
this because they've managed to find a way to do
to turn gambling into online gaming, to turn it into

(55:58):
to introduce the sets of gambling and micro transaction gaming
and just the horrors of online advertising because this is
selling hope and industry over something you could never hope
to understand.

Speaker 3 (56:09):
Well, every like the stuff that we talked about, ostensibly
good aspects of sports, whether you agree or not, all
of that, even from my perspective, somebody who does love
them is being destroyed by this. Every aspect of tradition,
all the ostensible social good that could come from this
is being completely gutted by this industry. And how do
you mean, because it takes away it's like the anti sport.

(56:30):
It takes it something that could be a potentially positive thing,
and it turns into like a torment nexus, you know
what I mean?

Speaker 1 (56:36):
Yeah, yeah, Well, so, like there are a couple of
things that kind of stood out to me that like
motivated me to write about it, which was that, like
every interaction that you see in a game is no
longer taken for the implications that it has for the
team of the player, no longer taken for kind of
the narrative value that that has, but it's all concentrated

(56:57):
on this. Did someone win a bet on this kind
of question? Yeah? So, for example, ESPN, which is the
worldwide leader in sports coverage, a name they made it
for themselves and earned in fairness, they are the dominant,
they're the hegemony when it comes to sports coverage. They
have a partnership with I think it's Penn Sportsbook, So

(57:22):
they have a product called ESPN bet, which, in my opinion,
undercuts their journalistic integrity. But that's a different topic. So
they've got a bunch of social arms called ESPN Bet, right,
the kind of a TikTok channel, YouTube channel whatever. Right,
And there's this Giants game where Devin Singletary, one of

(57:42):
the running backs for the Giants, is it's near the
end of the game and he's and he broke free, right,
so he you know, he got the ball. Run, big run,
He gets past all the defenders. He broke free to
the end of the game. The Giants are already ahead,
and so if he scores, that doesn't meaningfleet change the Giants'
odds of winning, but it does give the other team

(58:04):
the balls. In fact, it might even decrease the Giants
odds of winning because the other team now has an
opportunity to respond. They've got possession and they can score points. Right,
So what he does is he runs all the way
to the five yard line and then goes down so
that the Giants retained possession, they can drain the clock
finish the game with the win. Great move, like it's

(58:27):
a tactically correct move. It's selfless, Yeah, because he benefits.
He's got like a contract incentives. And you know when
he when his contract comes up, he's going to negotiate
from new contract. The statistics, those extra five yards a touchdown, whatever,
those statistics will be used in his negotiation there. And
maybe he has a contract incentive that gives him more
money for touchdowns. Right, So he's making a selfless move

(58:50):
to improve the team's odds of winning. It's always a
good story. Some running backs will do this, maybe a
couple of times a year or whatever.

Speaker 2 (58:57):
It's awesome. I love it. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (58:59):
And and ESPN bet put out a TikTok saying, Devin
Singletary goes down to ensure the Giants hit the under
and the under is the total amount of point scored
in the game. And in that game, I forget the thing.
Maybe in the Washington the Giants and Commanders go under the

(59:22):
projected point total by the books. And I think my
opinion is that ESPN bet really poorly used the language
of their platform because it suggested that singletary did that
on purpose in order to accomplish a gambling goal, in
order for the for whoever was betting on the under

(59:43):
to cash in. And it's just that I think they
just meant he did this, and so therefore the underhit.
Either way, I don't like it.

Speaker 2 (59:52):
It's poisonous. It's poison to culture.

Speaker 3 (01:00:08):
This shouldn't be happening at all. Yeah, to begin with,
it's destroying, like the product is becoming almost unrecognizable at
this point.

Speaker 2 (01:00:14):
Can you go into more detail then?

Speaker 3 (01:00:16):
Yeah, I mean just even just a few years ago,
that would have never happened. We wouldn't have even heard
about that. Yeah, just even two seasons ago, probably, I
would say two three seasons.

Speaker 1 (01:00:24):
You might get a mention on Sports Center because Scott
Van Pelt does a bad beat kind of thing. But
it was like a fun like, oh, you know if
you bet on the under, like ooh.

Speaker 3 (01:00:34):
Whatever, it's some wacky corner of the site that's not
really that important.

Speaker 2 (01:00:38):
Versus what is likely a huge revenue media.

Speaker 3 (01:00:40):
Narrative, especially considering like and I mean I'm not going
to be the person that says the NFL is rigged.
I think that there's no evidence just to really suggest
any level of that. But as these lines get blurred,
and the NFL does have a history of there's Daniel
Day's book Interference goes into this. This is Mind You,
published in the late eighties or something, so he's talking
about the sixties and seventies when the NFL was acutely

(01:01:03):
aware of owners and players relationship with gambling sportsbooks. I'm
gonized crime and it's not conspiracy stuff. This is like
all police cases and FBI files that he's sourcing this from.
And I just think that for the league's perspective, it
is a really really bad look that these lines are
as blurred as they are now.

Speaker 2 (01:01:22):
And the thing is as well. This is again a
uniquely software based thing and a uniquely Internet culture based thing,
because you can see these stats in minu shape, the
minutiae of them. You can see them instantly. Your little
fucking phone with the beautiful Internet connection that used to
allow you to send posts to friends is now just
like an actual portal to Vegas in a more craven way. Though,

(01:01:45):
I say this, with our beautiful slot machines, which we
love so much. It feels like an evil version of gambling,
which is already fairly evil in that it is now
poisoning the actual culture around it, because so you don't
need to know anything about basketball for this. So right
now there is a big scandal going on with Miami
Heat player Terry Rosier, who's under investigation in connection with

(01:02:07):
sports betting scandal. Yep, and now there is just this
weird thing of like you said, Caleb, it isn't scripted
or anything, but all play is doing shit now with.

Speaker 3 (01:02:18):
Fizz of that, like there is more financial incentive. Here's
what I will say, there's more financial incentive than ever.
Than ever, The lines are more blurred than ever, you know.

Speaker 1 (01:02:28):
I don't yeah, And so what I don't like is
that whenever a player makes a mistake, we have to
ask that question. Right. That's the thing that really bothers me,
because now we can't think of players as people who
can make mistakes. And one of the beautiful things about
sports is recognizing the humanity in others, right, right, understanding
like that these mistakes occur, and that you know they
weigh heavily on or whatever.

Speaker 3 (01:02:48):
Rights of the phrase. Any given Sunday is right exactly.

Speaker 1 (01:02:52):
And you know, the Giants beating the Patriots and the
Patriots were undefeated. It was just an outstanding story, right,
and now you're thinking, wow, you know a lot of
people had money on the Patriots going under the Patriots throwing.

Speaker 2 (01:03:03):
And they're promoting these stories in their sites. They're saying
how much.

Speaker 3 (01:03:06):
Yeah, and so this is the media focus.

Speaker 2 (01:03:08):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:03:09):
And so that's the thing that really bothers me is
that all of this content, which already kind of hate
the word content, but all of this content is now
about gambling. So you talk about how your phone is
this poor old of Vegas, but also when you try to,
you know, get out of.

Speaker 2 (01:03:24):
You actually cannot use these apps in the which is
really funny.

Speaker 1 (01:03:27):
Yeah, I do think it's well, you can if you
go physically into the sports book and enable the sports
books app from inside this. It's very fun Yeah, it's
very funny. Crazy I found that out. But but yeah,
and so like you can, like you'll get like a notification,

(01:03:48):
Like I've got like four notifications on my phone right
now from like various fantasy whatever, and they're like, hey,
you haven't bet in like a week is here's one
hundred dollars please you could do that, or I can
just get rid of the notifications. But then the notifications
from the Athletic which I follow for my work as
a football writer, are like, hey, here are the lines
on the Super Bowl, and I get rid of that,

(01:04:09):
and then you know, the next the next notification will
be from my Google News alerts, and the Google News
alert will be, hey, did Devin Singletary do this in
order to do that? And it's just like everything is
either gambling or about content about gambling or content that
points to gambling, right, And it's like the storylines are

(01:04:30):
about gambling. The way I engage with the game is
about gambling. And the end, you know, it's my fault
for installing the fantasy apps on my phone, but then
the fantasy apps are just like it's all everything orients
itself around the ability to make money off of what
is ultimately, you know, a storytelling device, right, and it

(01:04:50):
just it sucks.

Speaker 2 (01:04:51):
And it's and so Caleb, you you don't gamble right?

Speaker 3 (01:04:55):
No, now, I depends how you define it, right. I
want to be clear about this. I play fantasy football
every year and I have.

Speaker 2 (01:05:01):
So and just just to delineate, fantasy football is not
a money based thing unless you put into a yeah
you don't.

Speaker 1 (01:05:07):
Yeah, most people play fantasy, don't put in more than
like ten bucks.

Speaker 3 (01:05:11):
We all put in about twenty to thirty bucks to
make sure everybody stays accountable, sets their lineup. It's not
really about winning money.

Speaker 2 (01:05:17):
Right, right, But it's not like in mission. You don't
have to like give your credit card or anything.

Speaker 3 (01:05:21):
You can just between it's in form.

Speaker 1 (01:05:23):
Yeah, you're like venmo or.

Speaker 2 (01:05:24):
Whatever, but that isn't really gambling. That's just like kind
of dicking around with friends, right.

Speaker 1 (01:05:27):
And he's describing what's season long fantasy.

Speaker 2 (01:05:31):
Which is separate though from the money fantasy though.

Speaker 1 (01:05:34):
Yeah, from the type of fantasy that's being promoted, which
is daily fantasy.

Speaker 2 (01:05:37):
Right.

Speaker 1 (01:05:38):
They call it daily for football, it's weekly, but whatever,
it's daily for basketball, baseball, whatever. But you can you
can set your fantasy lineup for the day that day,
put in like twenty dollars on your lineup, and then
repeat that lineup twenty times. Put in twenty dollars every
single time, right, and then at the end of the
day you'll have made or lost money, and you can

(01:05:58):
react to that and do it again the next day.
Were a season long, you do it once a year
for like twenty bucks to win you know, maybe one
hundred and fifty dollars, Like it's like, what are we doing?

Speaker 3 (01:06:09):
Yeah, I just wanted to say also that what I
described to you of like, oh, I'm gonna Venmo my
friend for fantasy you actually have to lie on all
the apps when you send your fantasy winnings because that's
illegal and they can shut down your account for that.

Speaker 1 (01:06:25):
Which is crazy because I just use emojis. Yeah, exactly, never,
it doesn't really happen.

Speaker 3 (01:06:29):
But if you they can flag it. If you say
fantasy football and like the note or whatever, they can
do that.

Speaker 1 (01:06:34):
Oh wow, I don't know. There you go.

Speaker 3 (01:06:36):
And that's more regulated than crypto dot com doing their
Rube Goldberg system.

Speaker 1 (01:06:42):
If you buy a token which is on the Heerium chain,
and that token what activates when Patrick Mahomes passes for
two hundred and twenty five.

Speaker 3 (01:06:49):
Which again, to be very clear, should be and I
think many judges would agree, is also illegal. But who's
going to stop them at this point?

Speaker 2 (01:06:58):
And I think the one of the things that I'm
sure people will find insufferable but I think it's worth
talking about, is this is another thing really heavily talked
at the guys as well. Yeah, very heteronormative, says hat
guy like, like, it's very much like for like the Fellas,
and it's very male oriented, even the color schemes and

(01:07:20):
the actors, and it's very aggressively And so you've got
this other fucking problem with guys now where guys.

Speaker 1 (01:07:26):
Just add another one.

Speaker 3 (01:07:27):
Yeah, and guess what, who's uh the outside of sports,
who's like the number one preveyor of like of ads
for this ship is like red pill guys.

Speaker 2 (01:07:36):
Yep, yeah, you know, because it's more more kind of noxious,
nebulous masculinity thing of being like, be a big strong
man and lose your mind.

Speaker 3 (01:07:43):
I don't tell your bitch wife that you lost fifty
thousand dollars or whatever. Right, Like, that's right.

Speaker 2 (01:07:48):
Rise and Grind.

Speaker 1 (01:07:51):
It's very much in the Rise and Grind and culture.
A lot of one of the I don't know if
New York has actually done this yet, but one of
the proposals in New York State was too bad and
advertisements for these apps on college campuses.

Speaker 2 (01:08:03):
Oh my god, they can legally do that.

Speaker 1 (01:08:05):
Yeah, and that's where a lot of advertise.

Speaker 2 (01:08:08):
On outside the college basketball games as well. Oh yeah, buddy, damn,
this is so fucking But actually this does kind of
play into it because it's like, what is happening to
young men who are not the fucking victims. I'm not
doing that, don't worry. It's just like things to terrorize
people one of the.

Speaker 3 (01:08:23):
Young men now, and again not saying that they shouldn't
be able to count by the victims whatever, but it
rids me of like those baby turtles that are born
in the sand and they have to race to the
ocean before the birds swoop down and eat them all.
And the birds are like crypto ads and red pill
guys that are swooping up and eating these turtles. That's
kind of and then they all just become bastards.

Speaker 2 (01:08:42):
Yeah, and the thing that happens to women is those
men right now. Yeah, maybe there's no no, no, no,
it's the I'm just saying this because anytime I bring
up the male load me in this epidemic, it's never
a kind of well, men need to be treated, No,
it's perhaps we need to look at the fucking conditions
of society itself. Right, And then.

Speaker 1 (01:09:03):
We're throwing another kind of because like one of the
natures of like one of the things about patriarchy is
that it isolates people into particular roles. Those roles for
men include things like bread winner, right, and they're the
ones that are, like, you know, in vibe with the
entrepreneurial spirit, right, which is I guess gambling is entrepreneurship.

Speaker 2 (01:09:24):
No, no, it is, though it's the same rise in
grind it is. It is because it's like you have
power over stuff that you don't have power over. You
just work hard and money will come out. Same way
with this, you just gamble.

Speaker 1 (01:09:33):
Right, yeah. And so this is kind of another one
of the pressures among the extant pressures that exist in
patriarchy that produce these responses among young men that then
those young men will like act out in the world,
often on women, but like also another young man, right yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:09:56):
Patriarchy produces the drywall punchers, right.

Speaker 2 (01:09:59):
Yeah, yeah, exactly, yeah, And then this is just that
and it's it's funny and you've mentioned the entrepreneur asper
because it really is, that's exactly that same genus of
like focusing on guys and being like, yeah, you know,
what's going wrong in your life is not actually something
caused bias system.

Speaker 1 (01:10:15):
Yeah, we shouldn't look at the system.

Speaker 2 (01:10:17):
Don't look at the system and definitely don't worry about
being responsible for this. This is all happening to you,
and instead of looking at the stuff actually happening to you,
let's just look a woman, and you know what you
actually need to do. You need to just it's neoliberalism,
but right wing. I guess, well, maybe I repeat myself,
but it's the sense of selfish kind of producer that

(01:10:38):
only comes from hard work. Well despite the fact that you, yeah,
but despite the fact that hard work is not what
any of this is. Being an entrepreneur, a successful entrepreneur
is like tons of luck, having the privilege to be
in the right place at the right time.

Speaker 1 (01:10:52):
If you look at a lot of the entrepreneurship like
YouTube videos or whatever, a lot of it's just like
drop shipping. It's like, okay, cool, just a scam.

Speaker 2 (01:11:01):
Yeah, but like there's a there's a reason.

Speaker 3 (01:11:07):
Like another episode we'll talk about drop shipping.

Speaker 1 (01:11:09):
Yeah, but like there's a reason, Like we can find
a lot of the same figures throughout all of these
like micro trends of like entrepreneurship masculinity. Like Gary Vaynerchuk
is doing like motivational drop shipping content and then he
does crypto content, and then he does NFT content, and
now he's doing sports scampling content.

Speaker 3 (01:11:29):
Sorry, but the concept of somebody who did for many
years work in e commerce and like not drop shipping
although yeah, but just like as an actual e commerce
marketing person motivational e commerce content makes me want to
blow my brains out.

Speaker 1 (01:11:42):
You know, I'm describing a thing that's.

Speaker 3 (01:11:43):
Really I know, I'm acutely aware of the thing that
you're talking about. It's like a like I feel like
like an animal the serengety where I just my predator
prey sense went off, like oh my god.

Speaker 1 (01:11:56):
But yeah, like someone like Gary Vee was in all
of those.

Speaker 2 (01:12:00):
Is he doing sports patting content? Yeah, Jesus Christ, that
man's a fucking monster.

Speaker 1 (01:12:05):
He is evil.

Speaker 2 (01:12:06):
I want to do we should do it Behind the
Bastards episode and that piece of shit. Fuck you, Gary Vaynerchuk.
I hope you hear this, you freak. You'll never You'll
never buy the jets anyway. It's just the reason. Another
reason I mean that I wanted to do this episode
is it feels uniquely part of a way in which
the Internet is being poisoned, where so much, so many

(01:12:27):
content empires now based on the same ones that do
the article that's what time is the Super Bowl? So
they can rank on Google. Now you've got oh the
right picks for sports gambling.

Speaker 3 (01:12:37):
It's the same problem, just in a different shape, right.

Speaker 2 (01:12:39):
Yeah, and it's it's really sad as well. And again
I'm gonna repeat this every time, like it's not saying
men don't. Men have fucking accountability regardless of whether they've
been twisted by the Internet, but we should at least
consider the forces twisting.

Speaker 3 (01:12:51):
You're ever gonna fix the problem, you eventually have to
look at the system in which these people are brought up, right.

Speaker 2 (01:12:56):
Right, And it's you see, it's the same thing you've
seen with red pilling. It's the same thing you see
with pretty much in any mgtow thing. It's just this
sense of, hey, you feel helpless. Do you want to
rise up against the thing that makes you feel helpless? Oh?
Oh sorry, but don't worry, we won't make you do
the inconvenient work of actually understanding things. Well.

Speaker 3 (01:13:13):
That's why, like when we're talking about this before, one
of the football or sports is important, is because even
if you're from a utilitarian perspective, you don't care about sports.
It is too big of a ground to seed to
these kinds of people. You shouldn't ever seed that ground, right,
We can't allow them to take this over.

Speaker 2 (01:13:31):
And they're trying, they're trying, really fucking a very good
job of it. And it's the reason they're able to
is because there's these noxious companies that are twisting people up,
young people, and it is not just young men, but
really it's heavily targeted against men. They grow up, they
can't get a house, They can't ever hope to get
a house. Now it's not been the case for like
fifteen twenty years. The average person just can't fucking save

(01:13:51):
the money. Meant, men are as many people are, but
like very targeted, and men told you must be big, strong,
and you must have money, good, big, and if you
don't have those things, you're not man. You're not man
at all. You're woke and.

Speaker 3 (01:14:06):
You are soy, and you are woke.

Speaker 2 (01:14:08):
And then they attack aggressively with both convenient excuses and
convenient ways to allegedly make money with these incredibly craven
marketing systems perpetuated by the app stores. It's just fucking it.
Every time I think about this. I feel a little
crazier because even coming into this, I didn't realize that
the most common thing was just straight up gambling. I

(01:14:31):
thought it was that you got they kind of like
dodged around, like t he you just bet on a
few players, right, No, it's just the straight up gambling now,
and it's everywhere. And it doesn't sound like they even
do like kys like I know your customer stuff, or
if they do, it's.

Speaker 1 (01:14:43):
Like so so gambling does do know your customer stuff.

Speaker 2 (01:14:48):
But fantasy that's despite money going into it. Yeah, fucking brilliant.
It's just like I And it's not just like we
can't even say I hope it's made illegal. They're never
gonna do that.

Speaker 1 (01:15:00):
That's definitely not happening. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:15:01):
I feel like everyone involved should be put in prison personally.
So it doesn't look like Apple.

Speaker 1 (01:15:05):
Like they did try that with the DFS people a
lot of like fifteen years ago, and about three or
four of them did, and then the rest invented DFS.
What is DFF Daily Fantasy Services. So these are so
the people that were doing online poker stuff way back
when Chris Moneymaker was big, like two thousand and four

(01:15:28):
ish I want to say they those people, it turns out,
were violating a bunch of laws about internet gambling. Three
or four of them got you know, tagged for it.
Then the rest of them left and invented Daily Fantasy, right.

Speaker 2 (01:15:44):
And it's right now, by the way, on the app store.
They don't actually advertise this stuff, so perhaps I was
wrong saying they did. But there is the like number
number let's see the number three in number four size
DraftKings and then fangil and then prize picks. Those are
the three, four and five coupaps right now.

Speaker 1 (01:16:03):
Yeah, I'm going to my prize picks promos right now.
If it's not clear I do engage in this, Yeah,
I was gonna ask you about that. Yeah, and I've
got like one million dollars super Sweat lineups.

Speaker 2 (01:16:16):
What does that?

Speaker 1 (01:16:17):
I don't know. It's a combination of like, you know,
they they like hire these influencers to like put together
well in theory, they hire these influencers to put together
their picks for the game, and then you can you
can then nail their picks essentially horrifying. But yeah, there's
tons of promos like in my.

Speaker 2 (01:16:35):
But as we wrap up RAF, so you do gamble
on this stuff? Yeah, do you win?

Speaker 1 (01:16:42):
I have net made money on the year, right, I
think a good chunk of that has been luck. Why
do you do it? It's fun like it's that's it like
one like the smallest. But the first reason is because
it's important for me to be familiar with the stuff
with the work that I do. But like, I wouldn't

(01:17:03):
be gambling as much if that was the only reason.
But no, I've been making a small amount of money
on it, and so I've been doing it. I set
like some pretty clear limits for myself because I am
always concerned about having an addictive everything we've discussed. But

(01:17:23):
what's interesting is that if I play for a couple
of weeks and then I stopped playing for weeks to
see how the apps engage me, because I get notifications,
I get emails, Like when I went to London for
the Vikings game. I also spent a week prior to
that game just taking a vacation in Ireland, right, And
so gambling is like legal in both of those places,
but or sports gaming is legal in both of those places,

(01:17:44):
but the apps I was using were not authorized in
those places, and so I couldn't do it, and I
was like, well, I'm not going to get a new app.
I'm not going to deliver it. And I had to
like bet in person in London. It was awful.

Speaker 2 (01:17:56):
Waiten to William Hill.

Speaker 1 (01:17:59):
I wouldn't. I couldn't do a place called lad Brooks.
I couldn't.

Speaker 2 (01:18:04):
Did you bet on the dogs?

Speaker 4 (01:18:05):
No?

Speaker 1 (01:18:06):
I only bet on football.

Speaker 2 (01:18:07):
There's still Do they still do greyhound rice? Yes?

Speaker 1 (01:18:09):
They definitely ever has that when I walk into the
listing country. But yeah, And so I do it because
it's it's fun. I do it because it's my work,
and I do it because so far I've made a
little bit of money. But I've been really hyper careful
about like I've got a spreadsheet like this track of
everything I've and I pay attention to what are called

(01:18:31):
like reverse line moves when the majority of the tickets
are on one side and the majority of the money
is on the other side. I think it's the number
of bets. So you would have let's say three people
bet on Saquon Barkley to get one hundred and ten
yards in this game, and then one person bets that
he's going to get fewer than that many yards. But

(01:18:52):
that person bets way more than those three people combined.
What you get is a reverse line move where the
line moves in the direction of the guy who bet
a lot of money, even though I have tickets on
that side. You pay attention to that, and you can
see maybe there's some edges here or there. It's way
in the weeds. They but they've got their hooks into
some extent. Absolutely, no, I'm I'm forsaken.

Speaker 2 (01:19:15):
This is it's so great. And you're like a very
intelligent like person, Like it's not You're not someone I
would consider easily like tricked even though you're in the system.
It's interesting how it can get its claws in.

Speaker 1 (01:19:26):
Yeah, And when when I started, I knew that I
had to set really hard limits, and I knew that
I had to make rules about you know, not chasing
you know, good money after bad. Right, And so I
set a limit for myself on the number of times
a year I can deposit, which is three. I set

(01:19:47):
a limit to how much I can put on one bet,
which is I think. I think the limit I set
was like eight percent of the total amount of money
I have in that app on each individual bet. Right.
And I say I think because I just started doing
it kind of like by feel, because it's like, oh,
i've got one hundred and fifty, I'll just put ten,

(01:20:07):
you know, so right?

Speaker 2 (01:20:08):
Yeah?

Speaker 1 (01:20:10):
But yeah, And so the only times I have broken
that limit once, but it's because I was offered an
obscene promo, which is how they get you, right. But
like as I got all deposit again because I that's
two hundred and fifty bucks, right, So I put in
two fifty, and then I bet the two hundred and
fifty promo dollars on like a minus ten thousand bet
or something like that.

Speaker 2 (01:20:30):
You did the thing they wanted you to.

Speaker 1 (01:20:32):
No, I did the opposite. It was a minus ten
thousand bets. So does that mean that means if I won,
I would get no money? But the two hundred fifty
turned from a promo into real money, and then I
just withdrew it, okay. So a minus ten thousand bet
is you have to bet ten thousand dollars to win
one hundred, okay, And so the percentage return on that
is minuscule. And so I bet the two hundred and

(01:20:53):
fifty dollars promo bet on a.

Speaker 2 (01:20:56):
Just to get the money out.

Speaker 1 (01:20:57):
Yeah, it was a ninety nine point nine percent chance
that I was going it. Yeah, and most people don't
do that, and no, because you can't do that, I
promise you.

Speaker 2 (01:21:04):
And I think and I think the funny thing is
is like this is all data and I'm not just
trying to pull it back because it's the tech podcast,
but it really is. This is just when you remove
the word sport. This is just like what crypto does.
Accept more craven and on television all the time, and
it's the same fucking people or at least the same
fucking people who do like crypto channels that kind of

(01:21:24):
do some sports shit, or they kind of flirt with
the same linguistics.

Speaker 1 (01:21:27):
It's just yeah, well disgusting the again, like the people
who were doing online poker or the people that did
dfs that ended up going into crypto and then they
go back into like the we call them pickums. Now
this this version of fantasy, which is basically also daily fantasy.
But yeah, it's the same. And so they use the
same language. Like when when you see kind of the

(01:21:49):
communications between them or the way they even even sometimes
when they talk to the public, they use like poker language,
and that's the way that they talk about crypto. It's
the way they talk about NFTs. That's the way they
talk about AI. It's the way they talk about this.

Speaker 2 (01:22:01):
It's all just one big scam. So let's wrap up that.
Or if we can people find you. You can find
me at Wide Left dot Football. That's the newsletter I run.

Speaker 1 (01:22:11):
It covers sports, politics and sports culture and sports and
all of that. Otherwise on socials, I'm at a reef
Sky at social and Blue Sky and a Ressa on
NFL on Twitter, Caleb, we can people find you.

Speaker 3 (01:22:25):
I've got a podcast called a Western Kabuki. It's kind
of an irreverent look at Internet culture.

Speaker 2 (01:22:30):
It's wonderful. I've been on multiple times.

Speaker 1 (01:22:31):
Yeah, it's incredible.

Speaker 3 (01:22:32):
Both of you have, and I thank you for that.
With a I guess a comedian Juniper and Alex Goldman
formally of reply All, where we just kind of talk
about people's relationship with with with the Internet. I guess
predominantly you can find me there at Western Kabuki. You
can find me. I'm no longer on Twitter. I'm on
a Blue Sky at bird respector.

Speaker 2 (01:22:52):
And you can find me everywhere. You're gonna hear about
off of this, Matt, I'm going to re record this
at some point, but I'm not gonna do it now.
You're just gonna have to hear gonna go do do
Do Do Do Do Do. The whole theme will go on.
It'll be amazing. Anyway. I've been at Zitchra and you
can find me a at ed zeitron dot com on
Blue Sky. I'm still on Twitter, but I don't give
a shit about it. And yeah, if you haven't done this,

(01:23:13):
please go to everyone you know tell him to download
the show, tim to download every single goddamn episode and
need the downloads. Okay, do this for me. Thank you
for listening, and then you're gonna hear me say thank
you for listening again. You're gonna be so mad. Thank
you for listening to Better Offline.

Speaker 4 (01:23:35):
The editor and composer of the Better Offline theme song
is Matasowski. You can check out more of his music
and audio projects at Mattasowski dot com, m A T
T O S O W s ki dot com. You
can email me at easy at Better Offline dot com,
or visit Better Offline dot com to find more podcast
links and of course my newsletter. I also really recommend

(01:23:56):
you go to chat dot Where's youreed dot at to
visit the discord, and go to our slash.

Speaker 2 (01:24:00):
Better off Lines to check out I'll Reddit. Thank you
so much for listening.

Speaker 1 (01:24:05):
Better Offline is a production of cool Zone Media. For
more from cool Zone Media, visit our website Coolzonemedia dot com,
or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
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Host

Ed Zitron

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