Better Offline - How Sports Gambling Apps Are Rotting Society

Episode Date: February 12, 2025

In a live-to-tape recording in Ed Zitron's living room, Wide Left writer Arif Hasan and Western Kabuki Host Caleb Wilson explain in detail the cultural power of sports, and how software has been used to poison every corner of sports with predatory gambling schemes.  The Athletic story on sports gambling: https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/5777632/2024/10/14/sports-betting-addiction-problem-fans/ Wide Left article about sports gambling: https://www.wideleft.football/p/has-legalized-gambling-poisoned-the Arif Hasan: https://bsky.app/profile/arif.bsky.socialhttps://x.com/ArifHasanNFLWide Left: https://www.wideleft.football Caleb Wilson:https://bsky.app/profile/birdrespecter.bsky.socialWestern Kabuki: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/western-kabuki/id1647062210 The 60 Minute Drill Podcast (Ed, Arif and Caleb’s NFL podcast): https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/60-minute-drill/id1768225605 --- LINKS: https://www.tinyurl.com/betterofflinelinks Newsletter: https://www.wheresyoured.at/ Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/BetterOffline/  Discord: chat.wheresyoured.at Ed's Socials: https://twitter.com/edzitron https://www.instagram.com/edzitron https://bsky.app/profile/edzitron.com https://www.threads.net/@edzitronSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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podcast. And for more behind the scenes, follow at Clifford and at TikTok podcast network on TikTok. Also Media. Hello and welcome to Better Offline. I am your host, Ed Zittron. We are sitting in my living room, and we're going to talk about sports gambling today. Now, sports gambling, we're focusing on the US because this is 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 60 Minut Drill, and I'm joined today by my co-hosts on that podcast. To my left is Arefasan of Wide Left. Hello?

And to my right is Caleb Wilson of Western Kabuki. Happy to be here. Okay. So the reason I wanted to focus on this is 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 a sports fan, we're actually really going to take great pains to explain why this is an important thing,

but also why people like sports in general so that you can understand how insidious this whole thing is. So for the un-initiative, 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, and Areef, 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. You had to go to a casino and set it up.

Yeah. No, 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-2016, you know, you couldn't really go on your phone and gamble really quickly unless you knew a couple of workarounds. There's exceptions to every rule. But for the most part, it wasn't normalized to be able to just very quickly bet on a line.

And now you can just bet money. because you have an iPhone and a debit card? Yeah. Well, some connect directly to your bank account. Oh, good. 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 bright colors and haptic feedback and all of these wonderful reward mechanisms we'll talk about. and instantly deposit, you know, $25, bet that $25, lose that $25, and then do it again all in the span of like five seconds. And is there like age verification? Is there any efforts to do like anything to stop people underage? For gambling apps there are.

For fantasy apps there typically are, but not universally. So what is the separation between a gambling and a fantasy app? It is an entirely legal distinction. In my opinion, I think that there isn't too much of it. 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 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

225 yards in this week's game. And that's the quarterback from Kansas City, lead quarterback, the guy who throws the ball, guy catches the ball for him, 200 yards would be the completed successful passes. Yeah, the completed yardage of those successful passes. And so, you know, 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 I go more than. And then you can't actually place a bet on that exactly, otherwise that would be gambling. So you have to pair it. with another pick. They call them picks and not pets.

And so you'd say, well, alongside that, I think that Jalen Hertz, the opposing quarterback for the Philadelphia Eagles in this week's Super Bowl, you know, I think he'll pass for over 190 yards. Right. And so you combine those two and maybe three, four, five, however, right?

And that is your pickum for that week, and you submit it, you put, like, let's say I'll put $20 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, like, they're flex picks or all in or whatever. And you're just betting on what a player might do effectively. Yeah, and you can do that in gambling.

Yeah, with real money. And so the fantasy distinction is that you cannot pick multiple players on the same team without adding another player on a different team. Oh, so they find a way to make it. 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.

Sorry, you can't pick one single 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 we have a lot of non-sports listeners, and I'm very, very aware of this, and I don't want to, anyone to think this is going to be an hour of us just talking about, like,

really specific sports stuff. In fact, I kind of want to explain to people who aren't. in sports, why 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, Caleb? 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 entertainment as opposed to something like, you know, reading a book or watching a TV show. these are predominantly things that you do alone.

When you're watching sports, particularly when you go to a game or to tailgating, you're doing something 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. Immediately it will click for you. And tailgating for 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 have set up like grills and smokers. It's very communal. There's no money involved. It's like, people just do this. They spend thousands of dollars of their own money just to build social bonds. And deadly serious. So when I went to Penn State in 2005, 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 was like, do you want some? I'm like, what? What? Sure.

And they 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 went back to like watching like a, I'm done with this task. They just gave this random person food. But I like the tailgating example because it's the same thing in like a bar. It's like a thing you all get upset about together.

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 I kind of, I recall, is how excited everyone was for like the weekly release of like Game of Thrones. Yeah, whenever that episode came out. And that was somewhat unique because now that we're in a streaming error, people don't.

That's kind of gone. Yeah. And so people don't experience 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 or whatever, you are experiencing it with an online community in real time reacting to the same thing. Right. Well, that's, that was going to bring in maybe to my next point.

It's semiotics in a way that's like I can in my office put a football on my, you know, on my desk or behind my desk or whatever. And somebody that comes in, they'll know, oh, a Seahawks fan, whatever they am. And then immediately any tension involved in a professional reaction is reduced. This is a person that I can have a normal human conversation with that I might not otherwise be able to have. Yeah. I think a lot of our social bonds are defined and identified in ways that, this is going to sound so basic. No, no, go.

Separate people, right? And it's not separate isn't so division, but as in, you know, you either identify with this or you don't, right? Is that Poki? Yes, you are now, we are also joined by Poki, one of my Bengal cats.

Very adorable. She's beautiful. Also mischievous. Oh, yes. But yeah, like a lot of our social bonds are through these group 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 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 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 can go up a level and say, hey, we both love football. Let's talk about football. You know, whatever, right? And you can get broader and broader. And it creates something. You always have a level of conversation about, but you always immediately, you know where the other person is coming from, which is invaluable, I think, in a lot of social interactions. 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 wanted to go to Penn State football I was made to, but I learned the sport, but I got into baseball 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 channel. 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. I moved here in 2008. I did the year at 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 over there, pulled together every bit of footage of this guy who played in like the 70s and 80s, or maybe it was just the 80s. 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 thus connect with other people. I mean, the Reddit communities can be very funny or they can be terrible. Some variants. Yeah. But I think it's something that I love trying to explain sports

to people that don't watch them or like them or don't understand them, which leads to 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. Yeah. Yeah. Well, there are, like, say you're listening to this and you're 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 because they're taught things like cooperation and, you know, all the things. that you would learn in sports or other team-based activities. But beyond that,

sports is like the front lines always for social issues. Historically, that people don't really understand marginalized groups that don't have a voice in politics. You are a 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 U.S. women's soccer team fighting for equal pay, these are things that happen in sports because they can't necessarily happen in other avenues. 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 have proven 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 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 Casey 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 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 who I love so much And I feel like sports is singly unique with that. Yeah, well, especially as, as Kayla 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 Kayla's point about, like, social progress and stuff like that, I think people have an understanding of like these are historic 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 1947. And what was the integration of baseball just to... Yeah, so for a long time in baseball, especially at the professional level, but for most of the minor leagues. I'm also going to say, I'm going to guess you're going to say a word beginning with N at some point with this. and I want to be very clear that when Arif says this, he is referring to a specific thing. Yes.

We'll get there in a second. I just wanted a real warning before that didn't surprise anyone. 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.

Just everyone agreed? Yeah, everyone just kind of agreed. Horrifying. 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. Right. And they did a realignment of all the stats. So, like, there's two black players who are better than Ty Cobb, who was one of the most of the most of, most racist men to walk the earth?

It's beautiful. It's wonderful. But yeah, so Jackie Robinson, Spearhead had the integration of Major League Baseball in 1947, which is... And how did he do that? Just, pardon me. Did he, like, what did he do to spit? Well, he started at first base, but, yeah, I mean... Oh, he was just that good?

Yeah. Well, I mean, he was an outstanding player. He's one of the best players we've ever seen, statistically, you know, off from whatever. But no, I mean, I think was it, it was the Kansas City Monarchs, and then it was the, was it the Dodgers? Are we, yeah, it was the Brooklyn Dodgers.

Yeah. You mentioned the Dodgers, and the Dodgers came out of my mind. Like, am I remembering that just because, no, it's the Brooklyn Dodgers. So the Brooklyn Dodgers decided, like, hey, you know, 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. And so capitalism? Yeah, no, that definitely was a big part of it. And there's a whole history about, you know, Jackie Robinson's approach.

They were very particular about the player they selected. We don't need to get into that. But nevertheless, though. It was 20 years prior to a lot of the stuff we associate with the civil rights movement in the mid-1960s, right? And I think a lot of that is just because that's the locus of a lot of social change can occur prior to, you know, the way people understand it in the mainstream in sporting arenas. Right. And I think that a lot of people always attempt to disaggregate kind of social movements and sports without understanding that sports are not just, you know, embedded in the culture of society and the fabric of society, but very often can be like canaries in the coal mine for social change. It kind of feels like that's where the whole horrifying attack on trans athletes is really making, 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 last instructions, you should be in your garage, in your car. Now, I want to make sure those windows are up. Check all those windows now. 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. Oh, there's one more. Oh, no, no, sorry, sorry. Now that I've threatened some people, please, continue. 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 and enjoy, not just in real time, which always has, this added kind of oomph 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 the book is headed in. Even some modern writing kind of like is affected by fandoms. Right, exactly. And not that tropes are bad, or a necessary element of writing, but it can impact your experience because you know the direction that 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. It's not about that. But rather, that we can identify tropes in sports, but that doesn't mean we know what the conclusion of this story is going to be. And so when you see someone, you know, kind of struggle through a lot, switch 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 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 a junior college, gets good grades there, transfers to, you know, a division two school, and a division two school for people I'm familiar are essentially multiple levels below the level that typically NFL athletes come from. But maybe they go to a Division 2 school

or Division 3 school where there's barely even any athletic scholarships at all. And 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. No team drafts them, you know, because there's only 256 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. So them making it to a professional team is extremely unlikely. Yeah, and so they make what's called the 90-man roster, and from the 90-man roster, they cut down to the 53-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 the supplementary practice squad, and then the next year he gets another opportunity to make the team, and he makes the team, and that's the whole story, and it rules. Can I interject with my favorite example of that? Please, please. Absolutely.

Just make sure it's like really simple for, yeah, for the non-sports people. The Griffin brothers in Seattle. Oh, Twin brothers. Shaquim and Shaquil. Yes.

The, uh, he's disabled. He doesn't have a, he doesn't have a hand, a right hand with a physical disability. Still makes the roster, twin brothers both on the Seahawks. Wonderful story.

Yeah. And when, when Shaquil was deciding which college to, because they both went to UCF, right? Yeah. I think so. Yeah, deciding which college to go to, he said you have to offer my twin brother

Shikim, 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 three, four, and five-star recruits. Five-star recruits get recruited by the Blue Bloods, Alabama, Georgia, whoever. And at the time, you get a ton of under-the-table money. Now you just get over-the-table money.

It's fantastic. Absolutely should. Yeah. But like, you know, these are several hundreds of thousands of dollars potentially that these big programs can offer. And he said, no, I'm playing with my brother. That's so cool. and UCF was like, yeah, we'll play both of them.

And Shaquim was a really good player at the college level, too. So, like, it turned out to be a great event. But that wasn't the reason. It was because the team wanted to respect Shaquille. And they're like, well, if there's a spot for Shaquim on our program, you know, certainly he can play. And he played his way into a spot. He's actually one and more unique players.

I'm 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, we'll see what you can do. will 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 extension that you normally get. And, you know, he impresses the scouts enough that he ends up making the Seahawks with his brother, Shaquille. It's an outstanding. This might be a little bit, uh, into the weeds, but he worked really well of Seattle scheme because of that kind of hybrid linebacker type. Yeah, yeah. It's a body type because in football, you've got 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 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 that had basically a position available for the type of football that he played. and it emerges as this really wonderful story.

To be clear, by the way, neither of them are still on Seattle. Shaquille is still playing out. He just played for the Vikings. His contract just ran out, so we'll see who he goes. But 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. 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 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 Arif, 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. So describe some of these ads the way they target people for these sports betting apps.

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 Areef 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. And up until, I think it was yesterday when crypto.com just said, you know what, I don't care about the laws 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 do this now, 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 it whatever. But 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 of the player's performance,

which, again, is somehow not gambling. And on a real, and on a real basic level, the way they kind of trick you into believing you have more control is by saying, oh, you would pick a team. So, in fact, we've kind of gone over.

this, but not hard to reaffirm it, where you go, oh, I think that these guys will all score the most, right? So you pick, like, Patrick Mahomes in the regular season, Patrick Mahomes, wide receiver, running back, and all them, and then you kind of submit that with a bet on it, right? Yeah, well, so there are, like, bets for game day, right? But there are season-long bets, and there's, there is season-long fantasy as well. But the way that these ads are kind of marketing the concept of gaming on sports or whatever is just game day betting and sometimes even live betting

in games 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 there are ones that you bet on whether you have chosen the correct amount of boys

like the correct guys that will score the most points well again I think they're both gambling they are both gambling

I'm just trying to delineate which one is the most, like, which is the one that has penetrated so far? 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 just watching sports. Most of the people listening to this will not know the difference. Yeah. And so, sorry, I actually came into this with a slagery. mistake, and this is a common one, I think. I thought, I didn't know that gambling gambling was so prevalent. So it's, how many states can you just boot up an app? I want to say it's 21. That's insane. So just... Well, now it's 50. Well, okay, if it's not ignoring regulation. But just to be clear to the listeners, non-sports fans, sports fans alike, what we're discussing

is that basically in 21 states, anyone can pick up their phone and start gambling like they're in Vegas, specifically on the outcomes of sports events. Individual plays. In the time that it would take you to send a tweet, you can lose $100. Yeah. So the last I looked at was 21. Now mobile online sports betting is legal in 30 states plus DC. Well, 31 states, but it's not yet operational in Missouri.

And retail gambling, which is you have to physically go in, in additional eight states. Yeah. So that is legal in Washington. I have to go to a play. to gamble. And that's, I guess that's a little, you know, less than a city is... So we're talking over 100 million people. Oh, easily. Yeah, well, especially because it includes

New York and Florida. 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, $1.5 billion will be bet on the Super Bowl. Just on the apps are in general? In general. In general. Another podcast from some

SNL, late-night comedy guy, Not quite. Unhumor me with Robert Smygel and friends. Me and hilarious guests from Jim Gaffigan to Bob Odenkirk to David Letterman, help make you funnier. This week, my guest, SNL's Mikey Day and head writer Streeter Seidel, help an a cappella band with their between songs banter. There's the worst singer in the group. The worst?

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aren't just like Guy wins game or guy scores points. It's like the coin toss. Yeah, the level of, well, absurdity, like with the coin toss, but the level of absurdity and precision 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 was, will be heads or tails? Correct.

Or you can bet on who will win the coin toss, which in the same odds, right? Great. So two bets on the coin. Yeah. You've got, well, and then there's, you can, there's correlated bets. So there's, I was offered when I logged into Fanduel earlier. I was offered a bet on Chiefs win the coin toss and the game. And when you say offered, how do you mean?

When I logged into the app, a splash screen showed up telling me that there was this bet that I would be available for. It was like a bright... Available for in what... Would you not otherwise be allowed to bet on it? No, if I navigated to... Was there a special deal or was it just telling you 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 um and books refers to the like the apps the operators cool 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 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 they ideally need you to lose on, and the thing they're promoting is... And their data tells them that you are very likely to lose on. So when you say you are likely to lose on, are you saying that they customize it based on your actual betting history? Yes and no. So 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 the specific ones, like the one I just showed, that one's offered to everybody when you show up. And so 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, throw some more Jaguars. I'm surprised they don't. 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 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 a concierge yes so does which services so we're talking fan jewel drop this was i read a story about this in npr the other day and this one was, I believe, Fandul. Yeah, well, so I've covered this a little bit in my piece on sports gambling. We'll link that in the nose.

Both Fandul and Draft Kings do this. BetMGM, from my understanding, has begun doing this. But yeah, specifically the ones that have primarily an online presence, which I know people understand bed MGM, dev like a casino in Vegas. Right, right. But, like, they've massively expanded their online footprint. And so the ones that do that will interact with a lot of, 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 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. And this is all exacted through software. This is all directly predominantly. Yeah, and so the software will flag someone as like, hey, this person's lost like $30,000. You should get more money from them. And then they'll assign a concierge and that person will email them like, hey.

It's also possibly worth noting here that this might sound like the people that are targeting are like high rollers, but predominantly speaking, this affects low-income earners more than any other group. How so? Because those are the people that are typically gamble the most. And that's the thing. This is inherently predatory in a way that I don't think would be possible without the current digital ecosystem we have.

Yes. Penetration of consumer apps and also the kind of fuzzy legal definitions that allow them to just do this bullshit. 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 it targets people in lower income strata. But two, the current gambling environment is frictionless, right? Like I just mentioned, and this would be like something with the BetMGM 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 15 feet away from scoring a touchdown. and I'm in the BEDMGM app and I'm in the live section of the BEDMGM app and I've got $0 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 immediately go, hey, it looks like Sequin Barclay 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 230 to score a touchdown on the next play. So I press, yes, minus $2.30.

I want to bet $20 on it. and immediately a pop-up will say, hey, you don't have enough money in your account to bet $20, do you want to deposit 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 $25 gets deposited in the account, and then you go back to the bet slip that you made, and you press yes. And that all occurs within three to five seconds. And then the next play runs, and Saquoan Barkley did not score a touchdown, he went to the three-yard line.

and now I've just lost my money. And it's gone. And it's gone. And now I want to make it back. So I'm going to do it on the very next play. And it is that quick. It's so quick. Yeah, you could do it between.

So many people do it between plays. Have you ever seen someone physically do this? Yeah. It's completely normal for them to be while the game is happening. I've seen them do it in arenas. Yeah. 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 like the sports ball. I read book. I watch PowerPoint. But nevertheless, these people need to know. It's like, this is one of the most evil things tech has done. It's very much like management consultants plus tech, but this is evil perpetuated only through technology.

Yeah, I think for people who are unfamiliar with sports, 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. Right. And I don't regard that necessarily as a tragedy. I don't have a great relationship with my family.

So that's just the nature of what they are taking advantage of. Right. They're commodifying this relationship. And to an extent, it's always been commodified. Sports are there at a professional level to make money. Right. 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, that are identical things and, like, vice versa. But I think that teams don't attempt to ruin their customers' lives.

And the way that a lot of these books operate, I would argue essentially every one, because smaller books get bought by large books. And books, meaning the apps, right? Yeah. I think the official term is operators, but I just call them books. Sure. 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 about somebody who began gambling. And it's just kind of at first they were a casual better. They saw like a $50 promo.

And typically what these promos are is you deposit $50 and then you receive $50. in promotional cash, which you can only use to gamble with. Right. And so, oh, $53. Okay, you bet with all of it. And, you know, at the end of the week, he's run out,

so he deposits $100. There's no more promo because he was a first-time customer that's the original promo and so on. And he just keeps going, and 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.

Right. And he's describing the thrill of a win a lot like you would describe a high, right? And the wins are becoming rarer and rarer because he is betting on longer and longer shot outcomes because the long shot outcomes have the highest potential payout. So essentially what he's doing is he's buying a ticket for the lottery, but instead of paying $1 at the gas station for like a mega million's ticket, he's paying $1,000 for something that'll multiply that by $1,000. And they do special office and special.

bets, right? Sometimes they'll be like, they'll improve, like, I've seen offers like that. Yeah, 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, Estonian basketball. And 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 obscure. You can bet on Snookers, like, you can bet on... And Snookers 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. Well, you're British, so you're probably wrong. Fair. But, yeah, you could bet on anything, almost anywhere in the world. People have been betting on, like, high school games and stuff like that.

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. 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 $500 promotion. You don't even have to deposit anything. He's like, oh, wow, that's $500 free dollars. I don't have to do it. 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, 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 going to stop, I'm about to lose the house, I've got to find some way to it. And so he stops for two weeks, he stops.

Then he receives an email saying, hey, you haven't, 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, you know, we...

This is the concierge. Yeah, this is the concierge. We're on this together, man. I want to see succeed. So what I've done is I've placed $2,000 of promotional cash in your account. You know, you can do that what you want. And he emails back, like, hey, 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 months ago. We'll find it and link it as well. It was over at The Athletic, which is now a New York Times gig. So it'll be easy to find. But, you know, the guy responds with, oh, wow, that, 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 $2,000 are still there for you. Right. And so it's just always in his mind for the next couple of weeks and he decides he's going to do it and he does it. And 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 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.

And it just, they, they wrecked, 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. And 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 aren't using it. Hey, we'll cut those off. We'll refund those.

But have you considered this add-on for this team? Except instead of like business software, this is like life-ruining gambling. Yeah. 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 1.5 billion is like, got to 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 the individualistic aspects of, 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 apps. Because the idea is, it's kind of like the crypto ads of 2022, where it was like, seize the day. Like, this idea that you can have hope and accumulate wealth. Yeah. Yeah, it combined that predation on hope, right? With all of the lessons we've learned from mobile gaming about the gamification of our experiences.

And it is the gamification of gambling, while also on every show you see the odds of the play and this sense that you could somehow influence the outcome. This is one of, I think, one of the most insidious things about this whole thing is that all of the leagues or the broadest, partners that carry the league, or both, have relationships with these companies. Jesus. And some of the relationships are not sponsorships or advertising mechanisms.

Like the NFL gets paid by William Hill, which is a sportsbook slash operator, to provide real-time data so that Will Hill can set lines in real-time. Whatever. Okay, sure, fine, whatever. I don't care. But also, the NFL has a relationship, I believe, with drafts. is there is there is there is there is either fan duels right it's almost always one of those two um and so on the nfell network they talk about the lines set by draft kings there are promotional spots or draft kings

on the broadcast you'll see some stuff about draft kings and then on top of that fox sports has a relationship with i think fan duel and so the broadcaster was referenced the fan duel line and so you'll see like you mentioned like in a basketball game you'll see a ticker at the bottom saying like hey, you know, Victor Wenyama is like plus 2.30 to get a, you know, triple double this game, you know, bet, you know, whatever, right? If you don't watch basketball, Victor Wenamah is like seven foot tall? Yeah, they should deport him. Actually, he's the only person in America, I think, that ICE should deport. Everybody else can stay.

Okay, we do not actually, we're not pro-Eightation. Thank you, Marie. They should eradicate ICE, but before they do that. Well, Mia will love that. So, I, it's just, I'm trying to think of the terms to put this, but because I know, and I'm very obviously anxious about this, people don't like sports, hear this, they get annoyed, but think of it like, if you were watching Game of Thrones, and they're like, will Ned Stark live? And it's like, you can bet on the outcome and they had a thing at the bottom, or like, severance, like, will Adam Scott find out like this? And it's like, except imagine if it was being written in real time, so different, but something

you deeply cared about emotionally, or something that you would go and attach to with your friends, something that you remember from your childhood, that is now through the apps, and it's the, like, on the fucking app store, advertised by Apple, Apple, I don't think makes a cut on these, but I'm sure there's something weird there. But it is that abstraction layer higher than just the kind of manipulative micro-transactions you'd see in like a free-to-play game. Yeah. Except the money goes so quick, like, in a snap. Yeah. It is 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 do this, you've just gambled, they got your money.

Yeah, yeah. So, actually, here's a dumb question. You said there's the $50 free credit. Aren't there people who take advantage of that, surely, who sign up an account and are good at gambling? Yes. So how do they... No, but that's the thing. No, but the reason I ask 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 they make the free money go? How does the free money go? Because they offer it quite a lot. 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 to pay out. They don't give that. I didn't want to interrupt when you were talking about this earlier, but it just kind of goes to show you they'll throw $50, $500,000, $2,000 at this because they know, within a statistical certainty, almost, that they're going to get that money back and then some. Yeah, and so there's a percentage of customers that they retain,

and on those customers they retain, the vast majority of the retained customers will pay back, and 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, you know, filings for, like, a quarter to or two or whatever, and they've got a cost of acquisition, and they talk about, like, reducing the cost of acquisition and increasing, you know,

are hold, which is the percentage that they make on each bet. 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 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 dual customer, I believe my limit is $1,000.

And if I get pretty bad at gambling, my limit will expand to $2,000, $5,000, $20,000. But if I'm pretty good, they'll start reducing my limit to, you know, $500, $250, all the way down to $1,000. And so you get good, you actually don't really have a lot of opportunity to make money. And so the thing 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 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 the closing line value, they determine that you're a sharp gambler. And if you do that, I think, like 60% of the time or something like that, they start reducing your limit.

So it's really hard to make money. It's not even like the traditional idea of winning is the thing. It's like this weird matriculated bullshit so that they can, we'll never let you win then, or never let you. You never win on your terms. It's even when you win 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 Dreef was talking about, they still have, you will never outsmart them because they have teams of analysts. that make these bets and they're very good at it

and they've been doing it for a long time and they have algorithms to watch this stuff. 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. Pro Football Focus is a data firm

that covers football and their ultimate package which gives you access to granular level data like every individual play you can see if a pass was caught at what yard line that pass was caught, how many yards after they catch that player generated after

the catch, how many tackles that player beat on the way to doing that. So, in saying the ground year, do they have a level below that somehow these people, or they get access to that? Well, they get access to that because it's a $200,000 package. Oh.

So they have advantages that we could never even, unless we were insanely rich. And no one who's doing that is doing that. Yeah, nobody who's doing this has the money to spend on that. 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. And then they give that insanely granular data to a team of analyst perverts that will then set the lines. 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 that I only recently came to understand,

came to understand even, was the concept of unders and overs where they will set a point amount. Like, actually, Caleb, can you explain what an over and an under is? Because it's important to explain that you can't just bet on whether someone wins or loses. Yeah, I can do my best. Again, just the very basic of what it means. Yeah, and I don't know if you may have to correct now this, because, again, it's not legal in my state, so I've never actually done it. Oh, okay. So they don't, like, it's called the spread, right?

So 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, right? Kind of. So we wouldn't call them the under, right? 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. Right. And if you bet on the chiefs, you bet on the chiefs to win by at least two points or more. If you're going on the Eagles, you either bet on them to win outright or lose by about a point. or less. So you can't just bet

win or lose. You can. But the odds are... Yeah. And so what... So that's called a money line bet where you just bet outright on the winner

or the loser, but there are different odds for that. So that's where you get stuff like plus 230 and minus 110 and minus 150. So what plus 230 means is if I bet $100, I will receive...

And I win, I get the $100 back, plus $230. Right. If I bet minus 230, I would need to bet $230 in order to get not just my original bet back, but $100. It is kind of confusing. No, and I assume by design. Sure.

I mean, this is a system that is like 60, 70 years old, so I don't know. But it's everywhere. Four people that are on the strip back, the hoopel heads that are seven beers deep, they're going to say, yes. We ball, put 50 on the Packers, or whatever, right? Yeah. And so you can convert those odds into the percentages. So like a minus one, okay, it's actually more complicated than this, but the minus one hand would suggest, I believe, like a 46% or whatever odds that,

you know, whatever the bet is. But the problem is if two teams are evenly matched, so if the spread is P-K or Pick-em, right, zero, right other way. So if the spread is pick-em, and each team was equally likely to win, win, right, you would get probably in most books, well, most books a couple years ago, minus 105 odds. 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.

Yeah. These are the numbers that are just on the TV being thrown at you all the time. Yeah, minus one of five plus two ten. And 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, pig? Nickaughan Barkley is minus 230. Sure. What the hell?

Yeah. Yeah. And like the thing is, so I described that like both of those even bets are minus 105. If you bet on the coin toss, it's minus 105, right? Like that's the... So you would need to put $105 down to make $100? Correct. Got it.

Which obviously suggests that, you know, 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 going to make money on the coin flip, right? Like there's no question that they're making money. 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. Hundreds of thousands of dollars. Yeah.

It's so fucking horrible. This is the thing, like, earlier on in the show's existence, I was definitely mad at the tech industry and people like, why are you so mad? It is stuff like this because they've managed to find a way to do, to turn gambling into online gaming, to introduce the concepts 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. Well, the stuff that we talked about the 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. It takes it something that could be a potentially positive thing. And it turns into like a torment nexus. You know what I mean?

Yeah. Yeah. 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 on this. Did someone win a bet on this kind of question? Right. So, for example, ESPN, which is the worldwide leader in sports coverage, a name they made up 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 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 ESPNVet, right?

They've got a TikTok channel, YouTube channel, whatever, right? And there's this Giants game where Devin Singletary, one of the running backs with the Giants, it's near the end of the game, and he broke free, right? So he got the ball, big run, he gets past all the defenders, he broke free. To the end of the game, the Giants are all. already ahead. And so if he scores, that doesn't meaningfully change the giant's odds of winning, but it does give the other team the balls. In fact, it might even decrease the giant's odds

of winning. Right. 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. Right. So that the Giants retain possession, they can drain the clock, finish the game with a win. Great move. It's a tactically correct move. It's selfless. A team-based move, yes. Yeah, because he benefits, he's got like contract incentives. And, you know, when his contract comes up, he's going to negotiate for a new contract.

The statistics, those extra five yards, a touchdown, whatever, those statistics will be used in his negotiation. And maybe he has a contract incentive that gives him more money for touchdowns, right? So he's making a selfless move to improve the team's odds of winning. Right. It's always a good story. Some running backs will do this maybe a couple times a year, whatever. It's awesome. I love it.

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 points scored in the game. And in that game, I forget heard of the thing, maybe in Washington, the Giants and commanders go under the, 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 whoever was betting on the under to cash in. And it's just like... But I think they just meant he did this and so therefore the under hit. Right. Either way, I don't like it. It's poisonous. It's poison to culture. Another podcast from some SNL late-night comedy guy.

Not quite. Unhumor me with Robert Smygel and friends. Me and hilarious guests from Jim Gaffigan to Bob Odenkirk to David Letterman, help make you funnier. This week, my guest, SNL's Mikey Day and head writer Streeter Seidel, help an acapella band with their between songs banter. There's that worst singer in the group? The worst?

Yeah. Me. Is there anything to the idea that because you're from Harvard, you only got in because your parents made a huge donation. The yard birds, right? That's the name. The Harvard Yardt Yard's, right? Do you have a name suggestion?

We're open. Since you guys are middle-aged, one erection. Listen to Humor Me with Robert Smigel and Friends on the I-Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. Humor me. I need some jokes to make me seem funny. Run a business and not thinking about podcasting, think again. More Americans listen to podcasts than ads supported streaming music from Spotify and Pandora. And as the number one podcaster, IHearts twice as large as the next two combined.

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You might have seen the skits, the reactions, my journey from basketball to college football, or my career in sports media. Well, somewhere along the way, this platform became bigger than I ever imagined. And now I'm bringing all of that excitement to my brand new podcast, The Clifford Show. This is a place for raw,

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you need to be. Listen to the Clifford Show on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. And for more behind the scenes, follow at Clifford and at TikTok Podcast Network on TikTok. This shouldn't be happening at all to begin with. It's destroying, like the product is becoming almost unrecognizable at this point. Can you go into more detail on that?

Yeah, I mean, 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. You might get a mention on Sports Center because Scott Fenpelt does a bad beat kind of thing, but it was like a fun, like, oh, you know, if you bet on the under, like, oops. Whatever.

It's some wacky. corner of the site that's not really that important. Versus what is likely a huge revenue driver. A media narrative, especially considering like, and I mean, I'm not going to be the person that says the NFL's rigged. I think that there's no evidence to really suggest any level of that. But as these lines get blurred, and the NFL does have a history of this, there's Daniel Dea's book, Interference Goes into this.

This is, mind you, published in the late 80s or something. So he's talking about the 60s and 70s when the NFL was acutely aware of owners and players his relationship with gambling sportsbooks, organized crime. And it's not conspiracy stuff. This is like all police cases and FBI files that he is 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. 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 minutiae, 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, 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. 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 Rosia, who's under investigation and connection with sports betting scandal. Yep. And now there is just this weird thing of, like you said, Caleb, it isn't scripted or anything, but are players doing shit now with fears of that? Like, there is more financial incentive. Here's what I will say. There's more financial incentive than ever.

The lines are more blurred than ever. I don't know. 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. 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 and others. Right. Right. Understanding that these mistakes occur and that they weigh heavily on, or whatever, right? The randomness of the phrase any given Sunday is for a reason. Yeah. You know, the giants beating the Patriots and the Patriots are undefeated. It was an outstanding story, right?

And now you're thinking, wow, you know, a lot of people had money on the Patriots going undefeated. Did the Patriots throw the And they're promoting these stories on their sites. They're saying how much. Yeah. And so this is the- Now that's the media focus. Yeah.

And so that's the thing that really bothers me is that all of this content, which I 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 portal to Vegas, but also when you try to, you know, get out of- You actually cannot use these apps in Nevada either, which is really funny. Yeah, I do think it's, well, you can if you go physically into the sports book and enable the sports book's app from,

inside this. It's very funny. I didn't know that. Yeah, it's very funny. That's crazy. I found that out. Nice. But yeah, and so, like, you can, like, you'll get, like, a notification. 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 $100, 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. And then, you know, 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 the under? And it's just like, everything is either gambling or content about gambling or content that points to gambling. Right. And it's like the storylines are 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 orientes itself around the ability to make money off of what is ultimately, you know, a storytelling device. Right. And it just, it sucks.

And it's, and so Caleb, you don't gamble. Right. No. Now, I, it depends how you define it, I want to be clear about this. I play fantasy football. every year and I have since I was a teenager. Just to delineate, fantasy football is not

a money-based thing unless you put into a football. Yeah, you don't... Most people who play fantasy don't put in more than like 10 bucks. We all put in about 20 to 30 bucks to make sure everybody stays accountable, sets their lineup. It's not really about winning money. Right, right, but it's not like in you don't have to like give your credit card or

anything you can just like... No, this is between friends. It's informed. Yeah, you're like Venmo or whatever. But that isn't really gambling. That's just like kind of dicking around with friends. Right, and he's describing what's season-long fantasy. Which is separate, though, from the money fantasy, though. Yeah, from the type of fantasy that's being promoted, which is daily fantasy. Right.

They call it daily for football. It's weekly, but whatever. It's daily for basketball, baseball, whatever. But you can set your fantasy lineup for the day, that day, put in like $20 on your lineup, and then repeat that lineup 20 times, put in $20 every single time, right? And then at the end of the day, you'll have made or lost money, and you can react to that and do it again the next day. where a season long, you do it once a year for like 20 bucks to win, you know, maybe $150. Like, it's like, what are we doing? Yeah.

I just wanted to say also that what I described to you of like, oh, I'm going to 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. Oh, that's crazy because I just use emojis. Yeah, exactly. It doesn't really happen. If you, they can flag it. If you say fantasy football in like the note or whatever, they can do that. Oh, wow.

I don't know them. Oh, there you go. And that's more regulated than crypto.com doing their Rube Goldberg system of crypto bets or whatever. If you buy a token, which is on the Ethereum chain and that token activates when Patrick Mahomes passes for 225. Which, again, to be very clear, it should be. And I think many judges would agree is also illegal, but who's going to stop them at this point? Right. And I think the.

And 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 targeted to guys as well. It's a very heteronormative, says, heck, guy. Like, it's very much like for like the fellas. And it's very male-oriented, even the color schemes and the actors. It's very aggressively. And so you've got this other fucking problem with guys now where guys... Just add another one.

Yeah. And guess what? who's the outside of sports who's like the number one purveyor of like uh of ads for this shit as like red pill guys yeah because it's more more kind of noxious yeah nebulous uh masculinity thing of being like be a big strong man and lose your money don't tell your bitch wife that you lost $50,000 or whatever right like that's right rise and grind that's how the means are yeah it's very much in the rise and grinding culture a lot of um it's like 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 to ban

advertisements for these apps on college campuses. Oh my God, they can legally do that. Yeah, and that's where a lot of the advertising... So they advertise them 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. It's like young men now, and again, not saying that they should... shouldn't be able to count on by the victims, whatever. But it reminds 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 swoop it up and eating these turtles. That's kind of, then they all just become bastards, you know.

Yeah, and the thing that happens to women is those men. Right, no, exactly. Yeah, maybe there's a zombie. No, no, no. It's the, I'm just saying this because any time I bring up the male lowly 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.

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. Right. And those roles for men include things like breadwinner, right? And they're the ones that are like, you know, imbibed the entrepreneurial spirit, right? Which is, I guess gambling is entrepreneurship. Yeah. No, no, it is, though.

It's the same rise and grain shit. No, 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 rate. 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 act out in the world, often on women. but also another young man. Patriarchy produces the drywall punchers, right? Yeah, exactly. Yeah, and this is just that. And it's funny, and you've mentioned the entrepreneur of spirit, because it really is 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 by a system. Yeah, we shouldn't look at the system. 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 only comes from hard work. 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. 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.

It's just a scam. Yeah. But like there's a reason like... Another episode we'll talk about drop shipping. 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 gambling content. I'm so sorry, but the concept of somebody who did for many years

work in e-commerce and, like, not drop-chipping all that. Yeah, yeah. But just like as an actual e-commerce marketing person, motivational e-commerce content makes me want to blow my brains out. But you know I'm describing a thing that's real. Yeah, of course I do. I know. I'm acutely aware of the thing that you're talking about.

It's like a, I feel like like an animal on the serengetti where I just, my predator pretense went off like oh my god but yeah like someone like gary v was in all of those is he doing sports betting content yeah Jesus Christ that man's a fucking monster he's evil I want to 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 I 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 many 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. It's the same problem, just in a different shape, right? Yeah. And it's really sad as well. And again, I'm going to repeat this every time. Like, it's not saying men have fucking accountability, regardless of whether they've been twisted by the internet.

But we should at least consider the forces twisting. If you're ever going to fix the problem, eventually you have to look at the system in which these people are brought up, right? Right. And it's the same thing you've seen with red-pilling. It's the same thing you see with pretty much 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, don't worry.

We won't make you do the inconvenient work of actually understanding things. Well, that's why, like, when we were 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 should never cede that ground, right? We can't allow them to take this over. And they're trying. They're trying really hard.

They're doing a very good job of it. And 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 15, 20 years. The average person just can't fucking save them.

money. Men are, and as many people are, but very targeted on men told, you must be big, strong, and you must have money gird big. And if you don't have those things, you're not men. You're not man at all. You're woke. You are soy and you are woke. Yeah, you're soy beta cuck. 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, 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 thought it was that they kind of like dodged around like, Tee-hee, you'll 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 K-Y, like I know-your-customer stuff. Or if they do, it's like... So gambling does do know-your-customer.

or stuff, but fantasy does. Despite money going into it. Yeah. Fucking brilliant. Yeah. It's just like, and it's not just like, we can't even say I hope it's made illegal. They're never going to do that now. Oh, that's definitely not happening.

Yeah. I feel like everyone involved should be put in prison personally. So it doesn't look like Apple. They did, they did try that with the DFS people along, like 15 years ago. And about three or four of them did. And then the rest invented DFS. What is DFA? A daily fantasy services.

So the people that were doing online poker stuff way back when Chris Moneymaker was big, like 2004-ish, I want to say. Those people, it turns out, were violating a bunch of laws about internet gambling. Three or four of them got tagged for it. Then the rest of them left and invented Daily Fantasy. Right.

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 it is the number, let's see, the number three and number four, so it's Draft Kings and then Fangel and then Price Picks. Those are the three, four, and five top apps right now. Yeah, I'm going through my prize picks promos right now. If it's not clear, I do engage in this. Yeah, I was going to ask you about that. Yeah. And I've got like one million dollar super sweat lineups. Is that? 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 hail their picks, essentially. Horrifying.

But yeah, there's like tons of promos like in my... But as we wrap up, Arif, so you do gamble on this stuff. Yeah. Do you win? I have net made money on the year. Right. I think a good chunk of that has been lost. Why do you do it?

It's fun. That's it. One, like, the smallest, but the first reason is because it's important for me to be familiar with the stuff for the work that I do. Right. But, like, I wouldn't be gambling as much if that was the only reason. Right. 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 personality. Everything we've been discussing. But what's interesting is that if I play for a couple of weeks and then I stop playing for weeks to see how the apps engage me because I get notifications, I get emails. 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, or sports gaming is legal in both of those places, but the apps I was using were not authorized. those places. Right. 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 go whatever, right? And I had to like bet in person in London. It was awful. I hated it. To walk into a William Hill or a Lab Brooks. I couldn't do a place called Ladbrooks.

I couldn't. Did you bet on the dogs? No, I only bet on football. Do they still do Greyhound racing? Yes. They definitely advertised that when I walked into the Westing country. But yeah, and so I do it because 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 that keeps track of everything I've. And I pay attention to what are called reverse line moves when the majority of the tickets are on one side, and the majority of the money is on the other side.

Tickets mean... The number of bets. So you would have, let's say, three people bet on Sequin Barclay to get 110 yards in this game. Got it. And then one person bets that he's going to get fewer than that many yards, but 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 there's more 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. But they've got their hook. looks into you at some extent. Absolutely. No, I'm forsaken. This is, it's so great. And you're like a very intelligent, like, person. Like, 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.

Yeah. And 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 a limit to how much I can put on one bet, which is, I think the limit I set was like 8% 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 150, I'll just put 10. you know so right right yeah um but uh yeah and so uh the only times i have broken that limit once

but it was because i was offered an obscene promo which is how they get you right but like it's oh i'll deposit again because like that's 250 bucks right so i put in 250 and then i bet the 250 promo dollars on like a minus 10,000 bet or something like that you did the thing they wanted you to no I did the opposite it was a minus 10,000 bet what does that mean that means if I won I would get no money. But the 250 turned from a promo into real money and then I just withdrew it. Okay. So a minus 10,000 bet is you have to bet $10,000 to win 100. Okay. And so the percentage return on that is minuscule. And so I bet the $250 promo bet on a... Just to get the money out. Yeah, it was a 99.9% chance that I was going to... Yeah, and most people don't do that.

No, because you can't do that. I promise you. And I think, and I think the funny thing is, is that like, this is all data and 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, except 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 or kind of do some sports shit, or they kind of flirt with the same linguistics. It's just disgusting. Again, like the people who were doing online poker were the people that did DFS that ended up going into crypto and then they go back into, like, we call them pickums now,

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 you see kind of the communications between them or the way they even sometimes when they talk to the public, they use like poker language. Jesus. 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. It's all just one big scam. So let's wrap up there. Arif, where can people find you? You can find me at wide left. Football. That's the newsletter I run. It covers sports, politics and sports, culture, and sports, and all of that.

Otherwise, on socials, I'm at a reef. db sky, dot social on blue sky, and a reef is on NFL on Twitter. Caleb, where can people find you? I've got a podcast called a Western Kabuki. It's kind of an irreverent look at Internet culture. It's wonderful. I've been on multiple times. Yeah, it's incredible.

Both of you have, and I thank you for that. with a, I guess, a comedian, Juniper and Alex Golden, formerly of Reply All, where we just kind of talk about people's relationship 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 Blue Sky at Bird Respector. And you can find me everywhere you're going to hear about after this.

Matt, I'm going to re-record this at some point, but I'm not going to do it now. You're just going to have to hear. It's going to go, do-do-do-do-do-do. The whole theme will go on. It'll be amazing. Anyway, I've been Ed Zittron. You can find me at Ed Zitron.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, please go to everyone you know, tell him to download the show, tell them to download every single goddamn episode. I need the downloads, okay? Do this for me. Thank you for listening. And then you're going to hear me say thank you for listening. Again, you're going to be so mad.

Thank you for listening to Better Offline. The editor and composer of the Better Offline theme song is Matt Rosowski. You can check out more of his music and audio projects. and Matasowski.com, M-A-T-T-O-S-O-S-K-I-com. You can email me at E-Z at Better Offline.com or visit Better Offline.com to find more podcast links and, of course, my newsletter. I also really recommend you go to chat. Where's Your Ed dot at to visit the Discord, and go to R-S-Better-O-Line to check out our Reddit. Thank you so much for listening.

Better Offline is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more from Cool Zone Media, visit our website, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. Another podcast from some SNL, late-night comedy guy, not quite. Unhumor me with Robert Smygel and friends. Me and hilarious guests from Bob Odenkirk to David Letterman help make you funnier. This week, my guest, SNL's Mikey Day and head writer Streeter Seidel, help an a cappella band with their between songs banter.

Where does your group perform? We do some retirement homes. Those people are starving for banter. Listen to Humor Me with Robert Smigel and friends on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Imagine an Olympics where doping is not only legal but encouraged. It's the enhanced games. Some call it grotesque. Others say it's unleashing human potential.

Either way, the podcast's Superhuman documented it all, embedded in the games and with the athletes for a full year. Within probably 10 days, I'd put on 10 pounds. I was having trouble stopping the muscle growth. Listen to Superhuman on the IHard Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. A win is a win. A win is a win. I don't care what you're saying. Yep, that's me, Clifford Taylor the 4th.

You might have seen the skits, my basketball and college football journey, or my career in sports media. Well, now I'm bringing all of that excitement to my brand new podcast, The Clifers Show. This is a place for raw, unfilled conversations with athletes, creators, and voices that not only deserve to be heard, but, celebrated. So let's get to it. Listen to the Clifford show on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. And for more behind the scenes, follow at Clifford and at TikTok podcast network on TikTok. I'm Michelle McPhee, and I've been unraveling the strangest criminal alliance I've ever reported on, a Mormon polygamist and an Armenian businessman. Multimillion dollar house, Ferraris and Lamborghinis, private jets, a billion dollar fraud. But how long can this alliance

Science last. Tell me what you know. Is somebody coming after me? Listen to Kingdom of Fraud on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is an IHeart podcast. Guaranteed human.