The Ben and Emil Show - BAES 80: The Online Gambling Bubble is About to Burst (ft. David Hill)

Episode Date: December 26, 2024

Seems like everywhere you turn these days you're being told by a celebrity just how easy it is to gamble on sports through your phone. And honestly? They're right! It's so easy! This week we have writer David Hill on to discuss the rise of online gambling and its far-reaching effects in politics, culture, sports, and of course...the gambling industry itself. Check out Dave's comprehensive article in RollingStone here: https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-sports/sports-betting-law-draftkings-fanduel-1235158334/ Follow Dave on Twitter here: https://x.com/davehill77 This week's bonus is a real doozy. https://benandemilshow.com BOSTON! we are coming to you! https://thewilbur.com/armory/artist/ben-and-emil/ NEW YORK! we are also coming to you! https://www.caveat.nyc/events/ben-and-emil-live-in-nyc-2-8-2025 LINK TO OUR DISCORD: https://discord.gg/CjujBt8g CHECK OUT OUR BONUS EPISODES: https://benandemilshow.com Subscribe to Emil's Substack: https://substack.com/@emilderosa Leave a comment to be featured as the comment of the week next week! And also, like this video, please! Thank you! __ ROCKET MONEY: Cancel your unwanted subscriptions and reach your financial goals faster with Rocket Money. Go to https://rocketmoney.com/baes today! MASTERCLASS: MasterClass has great offers during the holidays, sometimes as much as 50% off! Head to https://masterclass.com/baes for the current offer! __ Latest MEATBALL SPECIAL HERE: https://youtu.be/Euyfzwmq8WY Last week's episode HERE: https://youtu.be/rXA-Tg-VS-M We bought suits HERE: https://youtu.be/_cM1XqA9n2U This episode was shot and edited by Connor Rousseau / @ conrad_roussrad Follow us on instagram! @ benandemilshow @ bencahn @ emilderosa Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Come on. Do you have breakfast this morning? Did I have breakfast? I had a go macro bar. Cool. Dang. You know what time it is? It's 11.15.

Cool. You can ask me what I'm doing? How was last night? What was last night? I'm just how was it? Good. Cool. I was going to do a bit

I was going to do a bit about gambling Oh, man, I miss my I miss my 19 leg parlay What were the what things needed to hit Number one A car into me after losing this parlay That's what needed to hit Let me tell you man I'm losing my

I'm losing my veritable butt here I don't know I didn't think of anything funny Are you serious That can't be real I just abandoned the bit. Folks, we got a great episode for you. He said,

we need to film an intro. I have a funny bit. Oh, my God. Then I panicked. I was like, well, he's not asking me what I'm doing. Don't turn off the episode

because this one's a real fun one. It's a real fun one. We got David Hill. He's an author and journalist. You may have seen his, you may have seen his most recent work in the Rolling Stone. It's an incredible,

it's super, thorough read of the current state of the online sports betting industry and it's fascinating and he knows the stuff he's going to explain he's really he's going to teach you how to win at gambling sports gambling yes even you

a veritable idiot can gamble on sports and win big this episode is sponsored by prize picks draft kings fan duel and who else MGM bet Caesar's Palace bet just the NBA

the NFL, the N-ABA, NCAA, NBA, the MBA, the M-FL, PGA, W-T-A. Yeah, everybody's paying us exorbitant amounts of money to promote gambling. But no, this one's, Merry Christmas, first of all, to everybody, because this is coming out on Christmas, right? Is it on Christmas? Or not on Christmas, the day after Christmas. So you're probably sitting there cozyed up with your mug of hot chocolate, and I hope you're not betting on football or something like that. But anyway, let's kick off the episode, shall we? I'm working down time with Benin' Me. Tell me what's going on.

Tell me what's going on. So listen on up to Benin' Me. Tell me what's going on. Tell me what's going on. Welcome, everybody. We have a very special guest on today. His name is David Hill. He's a journalist, writer. His first book, called The Vapers, but more importantly, he wrote a, you might have seen it. It had a little moment on Twitter for sure. In Rolling Stone, all about the gambling industry, the online gambling industry and the possible bubble. David Hill is with us. Thanks so much for joining us.

It's really my pleasure. Thanks a lot for asking me to come on. So you're kind of the perfect person to have on to talk about this. It's definitely, you know, this, this gambling stuff is definitely in our wheelhouse of the show. Neither of us are really gamblers. We, um, to talk about it. I saw, you know, I've seen the articles about, uh, you know, the rise of all these, or mainly these two companies, but I didn't quite know how to, how to cover it. And you seem like the perfect person. You've got, uh, can you talk a little bit about your history with, with gambling a little bit? And maybe Hot Springs and all that stuff. You mentioned my book that I wrote The Vapers.

It's about this place that I'm from, Hot Springs, Arkansas, which is kind of a weird town. I mean, it's a national park. So if anybody knows it at all, they either know it because it's like the smallest national park in America or they know it because it's where Bill Clinton is from.

But once upon a time, Hot Springs was world famous. It was really like Las Vegas before there was a Las Vegas. It was America's gambling capital and sort of America's first real spa town. And I grew up there. You know, gambling had been run out of Hot Springs by around, you know, 1968, 69, but it sort of still was a part of the culture of the town, even when I was growing up there and well into the

90s. And so I grew up in this town full of, you know, gamblers, carnies, grifters, you know. I mean, it was really a part of my, my DNA, I guess. And so I've always been around this stuff well before, you know, 2019, when now we are all surrounded by it, whether we like it or not. So that's kind of my perspective is, I think I say in the story that I was little like the proverbial frog in the boiling pot of water. Like it, you know, I, I've been around gambling so long that I didn't really notice when it had really become a big part of the zeitgeist. Right. And you gamble a little bit yourself, right? Unfortunately, I can't help but gamble a little bit myself. Yeah. Are you good at it?

I think so. But, you know, I will say, I would say that I'm only good at it because of what I've learned covering it as a writer, you know, by hanging around with a lot of professionals for many years now and trying to just like, you know, uh, glom on to what, you know, learn whatever I can from them. I think I'd become better at it. Yeah, what do you gamble? Do you gamble on sports? Are you playing cards or what? Yeah, I mean, look, there's this old, uh, uh, there's this poker player back of the 70s named Puggy Pearson and he used to say that he would, uh, play, um, any man from any land in any game that they could name. And I kind of feel the same way.

Like, I like to play games, you know. So in addition to gambling, like, I play chess. I play a lot of board games. Like, I'm really into games. And so, you know, gambling is just another way to keep score and make things interesting. So I'm happy to gamble with anybody, anything, even if I'm taking the worst of it, just because it's fun. Holy shit, man.

Hey, you want to play some darts? I'll kick your ass at darts. I see you got a poster behind you. I'm actually pretty good at darts. This poster behind me is interesting. This is my grandfather, he traveled with the carnival, and he was a carnie. He was like a con artist, and the game that he ran in the carnival was a dart game that was like a rigged gambling dart game. It was called Razzle that, they called it the Razzle or Razzle Thazzle.

And it was a game where you would throw darts at this board, and you would get paid off based on where your dart landed. But it was a complete hustle, and you could really never win. And the math really worked against you. and so I spent years trying to find, you know, the equipment that they use in this game, and I found this eventually, and that's what that is. So, yeah, let's play darts, man. Wow, awesome. Yeah, I'm actually probably going to lose. I don't know shit about gambling. I think you might get taken. Yeah, I'll probably get taken. I mean, that's a good, that's a good spot to start. So your, you know, the article is, it's so great,

but it really, because a lot of the articles I've seen really focus on where we are now, but you really kind of go into the history of gambling. And I was wondering if you could kind of talk about that a little bit. I didn't quite realize how ingrained sports gambling was into the country and just American sports culture in general. No, gambling and sports are completely linked from the very beginning. I mean, the first sports in America were literally like two dudes like running. You know what I mean?

Like in a race that people would bet on. And they would, if somebody was super fast, he would like travel around to like, you know, they would, you know, gamblers would take this fast dude around to like bed on. on him. And then, you know, there was horse racing, of course. There was boxing, you know, prize fighting, which was also these fights were set up to gamble on. These were the earliest sports in early America, but also cockfighting was a big sport in early America, you know, like in George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, like they would cockfight, you know, and this was another thing that people did to bet on. So the whole notion of sports, you know, in early America

really was built around, you know, opportunities for people to get together and wager. gambling is also a big part of American history because like you know before you know the early Americans didn't want to pay taxes so they created lotteries to pay for everything because in a way it was a way to have a tax that wasn't a tax right kind of do these like weird raffles where everybody would pitch in some money and they you know give the winner some prize and then the rest of it they would use to build Harvard University or something you know so it's really truly always kind of been a part of the fabric of the early days of America but But sports evolved out of this.

And even like modern sports like football, you know, the sport of football, the early, earliest owners in football were all bookies and gamblers who started these teams really is an excuse to bet with each other. These are guys who made a lot of money book in baseball or betting baseball. And gambling on baseball really evolved because horse racing was the big sport in America. And there was this sort of anti-gambling wave that went around the country that led all these state governments to ban horse racing. And so as soon as they banned horse racing, all the bookies showed up at the ballpark and started taking bets on baseball. And so that was the beginning of baseball's popularity in America was when they shut down horse racing. And people realized, hey, you know, we can bet on this ridiculous game over here, too. And they all, you know, that lady took off.

And so you could just sort of track this throughout, you know, all the way up in the middle of the last century, that sports grew in popularity in America when people could bet on them and faded in popularity when people couldn't. Wow. So for those of us who don't know exactly what I, I, excuse me for going super elementary with this, but like, what is a bookie exactly? What does a bookie do? How does a bookie make money? A sports book? Sure. Well, bookie's short for bookmaker and then, you know, the idea was that they were making a, you know, there would be this book, this like ledger book that you would keep all of the different various bets that people were making in it. So that was the book that, you know, the bookmakers would make book that they would set all the, um, the bookmakers would make book that they would set all the, odds on whatever the event was that they were making book on, and then they would take and pay off bets on all these prices that they set. I mean, in a weird way, a bookmaker is kind of like a trader on Wall Street. You know what I mean? I mean, they're building a market. They're market makers, right? They're saying, here's the price that I'm offering, take, you know, come and get it, and then they adjust the price as people either take it or leave it. So that's what a bookie is in

in theory. There's this kind of old canard that the way bookies make money is by charging was known as a Vig, right? That you would have to bet $110 to win $100. And so that extra 10% is kind of the bookies commission or the Vig. That really hasn't been the case for a long time, if it ever was. I mean, the real way the bookmakers make money is by, you know, being on the right side, you know, having exposure on the right side of a bet versus the wrong side. And so it's really fascinating the more you learn about this to see the real parallel. between the gambling economy and the gambling markets and the stock market and the financial markets, which are considered far more legitimate in American society, but also are like

this sort of important underpinning of our entire economy, yet we have this sort of like bizarre version of it that exists in the gambling world that essentially mirrors it. Yeah. Well, I mean, that's probably a good place to kind of talk about how we got here. because so for most of my life, most of our lives, it was, it wasn't that easy to place a sports bet or gamble. It was siloed off in certain parts of the country, mainly Nevada, but all that has changed very rapidly in the last, I guess, five, six years. And so maybe you could explain how we got to this insane point. Yeah, there's something to do with, I've been learning about this extensively the last couple weeks.

But my understanding is that, yeah, it was illegal everywhere except for Nevada up until 2009, at which point New Jersey fought and petitioned the Supreme Court or something to legalize sports gambling. And it wasn't until 2018 when that finally got reversed. And up until that point, these online gambling websites like Draft Kings were capitalizing on fantasy sports, which is like a weird loophole. Can you speak to just all of that? Hey, gang, we want to take a quick break to talk a little bit about subscriptions.

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slash bays today. That's rocketmoney.com slash bays. Rocketmoney.com slash BA-E-S. yeah and i love how you both pronounce nevada differently that's yeah you guys represent the divide in america here he's from the west coast i grew up on the east coast so it's true that like um that it was illegal to bet on sports everywhere in america other than nevada prior to this decision which is called the known as the past but decision it doesn't mean it was hard to make a bet on sports in fact it was pretty easy actually if you were looking for it you know it was a lot like buying wheat or something like you if you just knew a guy, you could do it. And millions and millions of Americans did for a long time.

It's one of these things that kind of existed in American culture just beneath the surface. I mean, they used to advertise, you know, there used to be advertisements on games like these numbers that you could call to get picks, you know? So like, there's an assumption there that people want these picks to bet on them. There were also like, there'd always be like sports broadcasters would sort of make these like weird offhanded remarks about when a game would go over a total. And it was kind of taboo to mention like, oh, that's, you know, this game just went over, but they would sort of make references to it

and chuckle about it, right? So gambling on sports has always sort of existed just beneath the surface. You did not really have to dig too deep. You could find a bet, you know, at your local bar, you know, bowling alley, whatever, you know? For me, my exposure was always like a sports movie. It was always, it was the replacements.

The kicker was going to get killed because he placed a bet. He couldn't do it. And it was Keanu Reeves in that little, little league baseball movie where he was a you mean okay go on so that's that's my it's true there's the american popular culture has always sort of had this idea of the bookie as being this like thug who would break your legs if you lost a bit right the truth is that you know most of the bookies in america for a long time were like you know frat boys who started a sports book at their frat house or on their college campus or like some old guy at the vfW hall or whatever

or like a guy at a country club in a pro shop. Like that was who was book in sports, right? It wasn't the mob or whatever. But this all just to say that like this all existed as an underground economy for a long time. New Jersey passed a law to legalize it in their state, which, you know, they were essentially doing that in defiance of this federal prohibition. It was banned across the country by this law called passed by the Professional Amateur Sports Protection Act. And they passed this law in New Jersey so that they could challenge that law.

They wanted it to get, I guess Chris Christie, who was the governor at the time, had this idea that the Supreme Court would probably rule in their favor and overturned this. And so this case kind of winded its way through the courts, made it to the Supreme Court. And the Supreme Court found that PASPA was unconstitutional and that states should have the right to do the same thing that Nevada did and pass their own laws legalizing, betting on sports. And New Jersey was the first one because they were the, but other states were ready to go. And it just sort of spread like wildfire across the country, one state after the next. And now we're at 40? Well, yeah, I think it was like pretty immediately. I think Delaware was one of the first to go.

And then it was like within the year, there was like maybe 10. And now we're at, I think, 39 plus D.C. Yeah, and Puerto Rico, too. Puerto Rico, too. And what was the loophole that was being exploited up until that point with fantasy sports and stuff? You were able to gamble on fantasy teams? Right. So these companies, draft kings and fan duels started daily fantasy sports for money. And, you know, fantasy football had been a thing for a while. It was pretty popular. It had really grown in popularity. And in fantasy football, you like pick a lineup of players every week and you start them against another team or whatever. Daily fantasy sports was like, you know, you'd have a new lineup every time. Right. So you'd draft a new lineup for every day's slate of games. And they would, you would play these kinds. for money. And they thought they were sort of operating in this gray area saying that this was like a skill competition. This was like a contest and you weren't gambling. You were winning a prize or whatever. And they operated in this gray area for a while and got pretty big and popular. New York, I think, shut them down first. I'm not sure if New Jersey was the next one to take them on. But in doing this, they built, they laid the groundwork so that when PASPA fell and state started legalizing sports gambling, they saw that coming and they built the technology.

and the infrastructure to turn their companies into sports books pretty quickly. And because of that, they absolutely decimated all the competition, including a lot of major casino brands like MGM and Caesars and everybody else that tried to get into the game. Yeah, because from what I understand, all of those casinos, the house always makes money, the house always wins, whatever. But that only applies to things like slots, things like roulette and what. whatnot. And sports books were only incorporated as just a way to, hey, you know, you're staying at

our hotel, you're also gambling here. Yeah, we also offer a sports book, but they are very much, they're not winning as often as you would think doing sports books from what I understand. In your article, you speak to how quick so many of these not only legitimate casinos, but these apps are to cut off people who are making money. And that's kind of the whole game, which is really fucked up. That they're like, hey, yeah, come on and gamble. But if you're good at it, you're, you're done. Dickhead. Yeah, this is, this is one of the, like, this is a big controversy today with, among gamblers is that winning gamblers are getting kicked out, right? They're getting limited down to, I mean, in my case, I got limited down to a penny in the past year

while reporting the story at one sports book. The sports books are doing this because they've discovered that it's actually pretty hard to make a lot of money booking sports. And they should have known this was the case. All they had to do was look at Nevada because there was no real stand-alone sports book in Nevada. All the sports books in Nevada were owned by these big casino resorts. And they really offered as an amenity to their customers. You know, it was like a casino would only have a sports book because they felt like the

customers wanted to bet on a game. never thought that the sports book was going to make a profit. They thought that if somebody won some money in the sports book, they'd lose it in the dice pit or whatever. So this was never a big, you know, money-making proposition for any big time, you know, casino companies. The idea that these companies were going to both win a lot of money in a small margin business like booking sports and pay pretty exorbitant tax rates that they were agreeing to in all these States and still make a big profit was ridiculous. But they probably knew that. I mean, you see that the major companies here, you know, they're publicly traded now. And so it's really

about getting their share price up more than it's about returning a profit from one quarter or the next. So how did they miss the mark on that? Is that just because they're not, these are just tech companies without real, without the experience of, you know, traditional bookmakers who really understand the industry and they're just kind of in over their heads on this? Yeah, it's hard to know. I mean, I think that is one sort of way of looking at it is that these companies operate kind of more like a tech startup than, you know, like a gaming company or something. But, you know, there's another model for this business in Europe where there's a very mature industry there that's been around for a long time. It's been legal for a long

time. And they, these companies in Europe got profitable essentially by following the same pattern of like what they call ban or bankrupt, right? Like that they either, if a player, if a gambler shows a propensity to win, they just limit their bets down to nothing. If somebody shows a propensity to lose, they basically, it's Katie bar the door. They will invite them to gamble as much as they possibly can and will incentivize them to bet as much as possible. And so they generate a lot of profit from a small number of big losers.

And that's the same kind of model that we see taking shape in the United States today. The trouble is that for gamblers in America, this has never been in their experience. the experience that gamblers in America had either betting with a, you know, a local bookie or betting in Nevada or even betting with offshore sports books, is that that's not the way that these sports books operated. It's not the way that people were used to being treated. And so there's a real reaction among gamblers, a negative reaction to what they're seeing happening here with some of these new modern sports books. Is there a reaction negative because it's harder for them to win or are they genuinely concerned about Americans just absolutely?

getting addicted to gambling. Hey, everybody. You know, Emil, there's something I've been struggling with lately. It's gift ideas. I don't know what the heck to give my loved ones. I've got the perfect one for you. You really? Masterclass, baby. So I did it myself. Obviously. Let me guess, tennis. Of course. You know I'm in that Serena Williams

master class. Incredible online learning platform. loved it so much myself I mean I'm in there I'm watching Serena Williams tell me about how to have mental toughness I'm working on my ground strokes watching these incredible classes at home

So you had a trash talk That'd be a nice feature Trash Talk 101 My trash talk is insane now Yeah But so I said Holidays are coming up Yeah

I got a bunch of people Who want to learn stuff Yeah A whole family's getting them Especially from their favorite celebrity I mean like Just picture the celebrity Your loved one

Wish they could hang out with Like you I bet you wish you could hang out with Serena Williams and now you can with your masterclass me, maybe you know I don't know

how do I want to better myself I want to become a better cook a writer, an entrepreneur or an artist just like I've always wanted. You're trying to build a little company maybe we get you a little action

from self-made billionaire Mark Cuban Oh yeah, Mark Cubin I know you want to you're always trying to get more trading tips, huh? Maybe I can get you the Ray Dalio Masterclass

Wow, you know learn a couple of investment tips So, folks, Masterclass always has great offers during the holidays, sometimes up to as much as 50% off. So head over to Masterclass.com slash bays for the current offer. That's up to 50% off at Masterclass.com. Masterclass.com slash B-A-E-S. I don't think that the average gambler cares that much about gambling addiction, unfortunately.

I think that they probably should because I think they have a stake in it. And a lot of the professional gamblers that I know do care a lot about problem gambling and have been, you know, pretty active in trying to support measures to combat problem gambling. I think the average everyday American gambler who started gambling in the last like five years or whatever since post-passed, I don't think that they care that much about it. And I honestly don't think they care that much about it limiting until it happened to them like this. And now that it's happening to a broader swath of people, we're now seeing a reaction. But interestingly enough, I think everybody in America, when you tell them this is happening, most people have a pretty strong reaction. They say, well, is that legal or is that fair? You know, like, there is a sense that there's something fundamentally unfair about this practice when you first tell people like, yeah, the sports book can basically, you know, kick you out if you are good at this.

Right. And the reason people think this is unfair is because these companies advertise themselves on TV as you can win, you know, you can win at this. If you know a lot about sports, bet on it and you could win, but that's not actually what the experience is. Right. At the very least, if you're going to open up a casino on your phone, you should be able to at least win the games they're advertising. Yeah. It is pretty funny because when I've become so desensitized to these commercials and they are everywhere. They're on TV. They're on the radio. They're in the middle of sports games now. I mean, you were talking about how announcers would just kind of. of subtly mention it and it was taboo. Now they've got like the odds right there on the screen showing you like what the line, whatever the over under shit on. And it's, yeah, they've completely integrated with the leagues. Oh, it's insane. I mean, the way they've gone about it post-2018

is psycho. The integration with the leagues. The, uh, I mean, the activations from celebrities you've seen, not just athletes, like every major, every retired athlete, the Manning's. Jerome Bettis, anyone is getting in on it, but then just regular celebrities, Drake, comedians like Eric Andre and Patton Oswald. I mean, the amount of... Jamie Fox, Kevin Hart. The amount of people we get, I mean, the amount of requests we get for betting ads is crazy. And then the activations they would do, I got very jealous of, so California still does not have the gambling, but my friends in New York, because I lived in New York for a long time,

My friends in New York were all, the group chat was going crazy because I don't know if it was Fandul or Draft Kings, but you could, they wanted people so badly that they were advertising like a 30% match. So as long as you put in X amount, they'll give you 30% up to 10K. So people were just parking $10,000 in it, getting a free $3,000, betting a little bit, and then just withdrawing and being like, oh, that's so smart. I know. And I was like, I cannot wait until they legalize it here.

I get my free $3,000. Yeah. But this is just insane that they were offering this kind of... It's true. And like I found that people in my life who had nothing to do with gambling or sports just like completely random

or talking to me saying, yeah, I heard that I can make all this money like doing this. So I'm doing this now. I'm like doing matched betting, which is essentially arbitrage where you bet both sides of a game at two different sports books at two different prices

and lock up a profit. I even heard about a team of people who in, like around 2020, when these sign-up bonuses and these like new customer offers were just absolutely out of control where they formed sort of a caravan

and they went across the country and they did this in every single state that had it and they just each one of them made like 80 or 90K just like in two weeks of driving across the country and just going state to state and doing the same thing that you're describing. So there was just like this money faucet that was on for about a couple of years

that people were hoovering it all. up. But, you know, then they all went away. And now a lot of those new states that are coming on, they're not offering those same offers. I think that these sports books realized that they lost a lot of the money on that stuff. The idea was that they were willing to lose all that money because they wanted customer acquisition. They wanted to grab the customers. They had this idea that if you get them, you're going to hold on to them. But it didn't turn out to be the case. Fanduel and Draft Kings together got like about 75% of the market or more. And everybody else was fighting over what was left. And they found that people would come to them to get this bonus. But as soon as the bonus ran out, they left. You know what I mean? They went on to the next place. So a lot of the smaller players took a big bath on that. Yeah, it's very tech company, right? Get everyone in, shut out competition. I just love that their whole angle is, hey, are you a total dipshit and you don't know anything about sports? It's okay. You can gamble and make money super easy. All you got to do, download fan duel, and then all the jargon comes up. Like, you can get a, you can bet on, they just, it's Mind boggling. I don't understand how they make a book on so many. One game can have like a thousand different bets you can make. How the fuck is that?

That's hardly a joke. I mean, I saw the one ad where it's almost verbatim. You don't even need to know that much about sports. You just need a feeling. And it's like, holy shit. Whoa, you just need a feeling. But the truth is that they actually are praying on the people that are the most acceptable to this stuff are the people who think they know a shitload about sports. And so, you know, the biggest suckers out there are the ones who really think that because they, you know, eat, breathe and live and sleep, you know, football or whatever, that that means that they're somehow going to make money gambling at it. And those are the guys that I think are just going to get ground into a pulp because I've met a lot of professional gamblers in my life. And, you know, some of the most successful, wildly successful sports betters in America couldn't tell you the name of the starting lineups of any of the teams. Like, it's so data driven. and it's so just about having a model and the model spits out a number and you know what I mean? Like that it's that it's not about like following sports or following sports media or like, you know, absorbing all this like garbage that comes out of sports media.

That is nothing to do with how you beat these markets. And so I think those are the people who are the most acceptable to lose a lot of money at this because their their sort of ego is tied up in it, right? Like their identity is so rooted in sports and knowing a lot about sports that they have to win gambling on it is a way to prove that they're good at this or that they know a lot about it and it drives them to continue to gamble and bet when they clearly have no edge or no ability to really beat this game right not only that but it kind of reminds me of like if you were to go back in time to you know pilgrim days and introduce fucking beer and

cigarette well they had beer i guess but introduced to them like skittles and cigarettes boy those guys would just be blasting darts and popping skittles like nobody's business in that it's um well it's funny you say cigarettes it's poisonous to them

you do not see cigarette commercials like this it's not allowed anybody can try cigarettes have you ever wonder look how cool and easy it is to smoke a cigarette but we do see alcohol ads and I true one of the interesting things I learned about

while I was reporting the story was that in the 1970s when they first tried to advertise like beer on television during sporting events or whatever else, there was a huge outcry and people were really pissed about it. And Mothers Against Driving organized like sit-ins and stuff like that. There was like a whole protest movement to stop, to get them to stop advertising alcohol on TV. And ultimately, all those protests failed. I mean, they succeeded in that they were able to create some, you know, rules around that.

Like you can't advertise alcohol to children, you know what I mean? and you have to have these like warnings. But today, alcohol advertisements are so sort of omnipresent. We don't even notice them. In fact, a lot of times alcohol ads don't even have alcohol in them. You know what I mean? It'll just be some weird scene of like a family or something like that. It'll be a beer ad.

So it does sort of become, it's amazing how quickly these things can just sort of become a part of, you know, the part of the sort of world and we get desensitized to it. Yeah, you touched on, you touched on some of these characters. in the gambling world. I do want to talk about them because... They have such funny names. Yeah, everyone should go read it. I think I found out about it from a somewhat viral tweet

that called the article, something like the Canterbury Tales for the gambling world. And so it's just full of all these amazing characters. It opens on... I'm blanking on his name, but you guys are at a baseball game and he's live... Live gambling, like right off the crack of the bat

to try to beat... Hell yeah. Which I didn't even know this existed. Maybe you could explain what is happening. There's a, like, there's like a fan duel guy in the stadium and bedders trying to beat that guy. Yeah, so this is what they call court sighting. And so this guy, Scott, he does this a lot. And there were a number of people that do this.

I was, there was a group that I talked to who did this at Wimbledon this past year and won a lot of money. Essentially, they are at the game live watching. And, you know, you can bet sports live today. all these apps allow you to bet an event live. This is another sort of technological innovation that didn't exist prior to pass, but really, there wasn't a lot of live betting that went on in Nevada.

You know, they didn't book a, you know, they didn't have this sort of dynamic, constantly changing price as the game went on. But today, that's how it works. And it's beatable because there is this guy that's in the stadium while the game is happening who is, you know, punching into a computer or on an iPad or whatever

the what's happening on the field so that his feed can be faster than the broadcast feed. So essentially like Draft King's feed is going to be faster than what you see on TV, but it's not faster than being in the ballpark. So if you can just punch your iPad quicker than that guy can punch his, you can get an edge.

And there's a lot of people that are doing this and it's killing these sports books. They fucking hate it and they're trying to do everything they can to stop it. But they don't want to just they could push a button and make it where you're not allowed to bet when you're in the arena. But they don't want to do that because they know that a lot of the people in the arena are going to bet and lose a lot of money. And it's a big

moneymaker for them. In fact, some of these arenas around the country are putting sports books in the stadiums and in the arenas. So they can't just shut it all down. So they have to sort of profile and identify who in this arena is like court-siding us. And so I go with him to do this at a Mets game. And it was really fascinating because he has it all down to this like science. Like he knows how to read the body language of the outfielders. You know, his whole thing is like, I just got to make the call quicker than the other guy does. You know, like I got a know before him. So I have to have this like, you know, he has like these little rules about what he's what he's looking for on the field. It was pretty funny. How do you get the job at Fandall where

you just go to the games and punch in the numbers on the other? Yeah, I want that job. Oh, he's going to catch it. Yeah, okay. Yeah, one guy told me that his, his angle was that he knew where that guy sat at Barclay Center in Brooklyn and he said that he would just sit behind him and he could watch his screen. And he, so he like literally was like behind the dude and he could see his screen. Wow. That's Incredible. Oh my God. See, that speaks to something that I've always wondered about, and I'm surprised we don't see more of it, is fan interference in games when you, as gambling is becoming so intertwined with sports, I'm just shocked that there aren't more instances of people trying to disrupt the games if they've got money on the line. Like if I were, if I had, I don't know, fucking 20, 40, 60 grand riding on the Lakers. and they were about to lose at the very last minute and I were at the game, I would absolutely run onto the court and try to disrupt it.

And I'm just shocked that that doesn't add. Do you think that that kind of thing's going to happen more? That would be exciting. Yeah, probably will. I mean, there have been some examples of that. There was a story a number of years ago that went around about a tennis tournament. I don't know if it was one way, but it was something in tennis where some people who were on the rail of the tennis match

were accused of doing exactly what you're saying, trying to interfere with the game to, you know, because they had a bed on a certain side, and they were heckling and trying to rattle one of the players. You do see a lot of people at games now who are trying to communicate to the players what their parlays are and what, you know, like, we just need to. I think there was a video that went around recently of an NBA player who, like, went out and, you know, made another three-pointer because the guy in the court side told him he need another three pointer to hit his parlay. So, you know, this is a thing that we're seeing

more, more. What's kind of more nefarious is that is the examples of people who are fixing games or who are using, you know, getting athletes to throw games or shape points or whatever. And this is kind of something that's existed forever for like over a century in sports is people who will throw a game because of gamblers paying them to do it. And I think that's something that still goes on to this day. But because we now have, you know, so many more sports and so much more data and so much more technology and so many more people watching all this stuff. We're catching these people now. And so the perception from the public is, wow, this is a new. This is a new thing that's happening. When in reality, it's a thing that's always been

happening. What's new is that these people are not getting busted. Right. Could you just do a quick rundown of a parlay? Because I feel that's how a lot of, they're making a lot of money on these, right? Yeah, parley vu gambling. Well, traditionally a parlay is just a bunch, when you take a bunch of the bets that you want to make and you put them into one bet so you get a bigger price and in theory what's happening is that if you win one bet you take your bet and all the winnings and roll them over to the next bet and it's kind of like letting it ride you know so the more bets you put into your parlay the bigger the payout because the bigger the bet on that last leg of the parlay thing is you could do this all on games that are all happening at the same time and today these new sports

books offer what they call same game parlays where you can actually parlay events that are all within the same game so you can parlay the winner of the game. with, I mean, there's this famous scene in Uncut Gems where, you know, where Howard Ratner, Adam Sandler's character, makes this ridiculous parlay. And it's sort of the big, you know, the climactic scene of the movie is him sweating this parlay at the end of the movie. But, you know, it's all these things that are supposed to happen in the same game. Like, this team wins the tip.

This guy gets this many assists. This guy gets this many points. This team wins. And you parlay all those things together into the same game and get a big payout. The reason people like this is because people like the idea of betting a little and winning a lot. They like the idea of a lottery ticket. They don't want to risk very much money, but they want to win a lot of money. The problem is that these bets are incredibly hard to win,

and the payout you get at the end is not the true fair payout of what you should get. There's a big chunk that's being taken out by the sports book, but they know that most of us can't do the math to figure that out. We're just so blown away by how much money we're winning when we potentially win one of these things. And so these parlayers are really grinding people up. It's a big sucker bet that I think it's making the sports books a lot of money. But it's driven by people's design.

to not put much money at risk. Yeah, I think I'd be good at this, actually. The more I blacked out about the part about odds and stuff. All I heard was, hey, I got a shot to win big from a small thing. But seriously, though, folks, I've heard that, or I've read that pushing a lot of these companies are intentionally pushing parlayes onto customers, encouraging them to make these bets because the more legs are added to a parlay, obviously the lower the odds are for them to hit.

and they're so reliable that they can even now incorporate, they can calculate these parlays what the sports books will make from them into their profits before they're even completed. It's just, it's really evil and nefarious if you ask me.

Yeah, where it's like, you know, incredibly smart on their part, you know what I mean? From their point of view, it's like great because they are offering a product that people want. Yeah. That's bad for them. You know what I mean? Like, the problem is that the consumer in this particular market is not,

a very discriminating consumer. They're not price conscious at all. They don't really care. The people that they have are looking for kind of ridiculous things. Like, you know, they want, like, they want these things that are called. A lot of gamblers want boosts. You know, they want a sports book to give them like a little bit of an extra sugar on top when they make these bets. Even though, even with that extra sugar on top, they're still getting a bad price. If they just shopped around and went to the sports book down the street, they'd see they could get a better price down the street. So they're dealing with a sort of a customer base that really it is indiscriminate you know i mean they don't care about price at all and if they

were more price sensitive then it would be harder for these sports books to you know make a lot of money off these products but they're they're they're cleaning up because this is what people love to do they love to stack up big parlays and and this when somebody hits one of these things the sports book is going to tweet it out and promote it like they you know it's just like at a casino showing the picture of the person that won the slot jackpot or whatever because it's great it's like free PR for then, like, look, somebody actually won, you know, so come on over and bet. Yeah. Yeah, and they're not only doing that, they're also, they're incentivizing all, they're, they're incentivizing all these, uh, problem gamblers in the same way they would, uh, you know, the old school casino.

You have a story of, there's no way I'm going to remember her name, but the, maybe it was the amateur professional boxer who ended up getting hurt and then turning to gambling. She was getting the same kind of rush, uh, from the boxing ring as she was with betting. And, she kind of like almost doesn't even realize her own problem because she's she's taking people out to the free dinners and all these perks and people are going how much do you play this is this is that's the funny part is when when they treat you like a high roller it's because you're actually a big loser yeah you're losing so much that that got cut out of the piece um i went to in i went to new york to a um a party that uh one of these sports books through for their VIPs and it was uh during uh a Knicks game, but it was at like a bar near Madison Square Garden. And so I went to this thing with a guy who was a VIP at this sports book. He was invited. He took me as his guest. And this party was like full of all these VIP players. And these hosts and a host is like someone who works for the sports book whose job is to like cater to these VIPs, get them the things that they want,

give them, you know, gifts, take them on golf trips and things like that to keep them betting. And I was chatting with one of these hosts and I said, you know, if I was a VDIP and I, you know, if I was, what would it take for me to get tickets to like a game, to like a Nix game? And he goes, well, we have, you know, our sports book has a suite at MSG, but I'm just going to tell you, if you ever find yourself in our suite at Madison Square Garden during a next playoff game, that is just not a place that you want to be. And I, what I took his meaning to me is that if you're in that suite, that means you lost a lot of fucking money, right? Like, that's the only way you're going to get that ticket is if you are a big time loser.

So I'd written that in the piece, but it ended up, this piece was too long and it got cut out. But I thought that was a really revealing moment because that is the truth. Like the, like 80% of the profits comes from like less than 10% of the players. And they're what they call high value players, people that bet lots and lots of money. And some of those people are rich and can afford to lose it. But most of them are just people who are total losers and are completely addicted. You know, and that's where a lot of these profits are coming from. and they incentivize them to keep, you know, if you're a VIP, you don't get a bonus or you don't

get any sort of incentive stuff. You don't get free stuff unless you're depositing more money. Like once you start winning, you're not a VIP anymore. They stop talking to you. But if your account keeps going to zero, then they keep calling you to deposit more money. And that's where the, that's where the offers come. That's what Liz, the boxer, who I have in the piece. That's what she talks about is how, you know, they made her feel so great. They kept offering her all these things, giving her all this free stuff. And it wasn't until later that she recognized, like, none of this stuff is free. I'm paying for all this. Yeah. You know, like I'm, my life is ruined and I'm getting like these free dinners and jewelry and stuff like that, but I paid for all this.

Damn, there was this, there was this one loser, uh, sorry, uh, there was this one loser, though, um, who, uh, I think it was draft kings. He's now suing them because he was otherwise, he had never gambled in his life. And he saw an ad and downloaded the, the thing. And he gambled away a million dollars of his family's savings that they obviously could not afford to lose. And I believe the crux of his lawsuit states that their fail safes failed, essentially. Because I believe there's, there are rules in place where they're supposed to be checking your income. Yeah, they're supposed to be checking. You're supposed to submit like a W2 or something to show that this isn't all the money you've got.

His poor wife, yeah, she was quoted as saying like, he never gambled before. And now, you know, he got hooked up. Right, because the numbers obviously wouldn't add up if you're looking at the income. And this guy's just like chucking his kids' college fund into the app. He's a pilgrim with cigarettes. Yeah, we're going to see more and more of these stories, too. There was another one in Jacksonville where a guy who worked for the Jacksonville Jaguars stole millions of dollars from the Jacksonville Jaguars to gamble.

And now he's suing Van Duel or whoever's saying, you know, similar things. Like, well, they should have known that I was stealing this money because they're supposed to be checking. It's amazing how little they actually follow the very few. regulations that are set for them. And one of the things that is a problem in this sort of construct that we have now in America with sports betting is that is that it's every state has their own rules. When you hear an ad on the radio for sports betting and you hear at the end, they start reading all these phone numbers out. Like there's like 12, 13 phone numbers. That's because every state has their own gambling hotline. There's not just one hotline in America. It's every state has their

own. For some reason, every state wants to do that work themselves. Every state has different regulations. They have different groups of people who are regulating and enforcing these laws. They have different, you know, like, it's so weird how, like, we have yet to come up with sort of a uniform set of rules around this stuff. In some states, there's really nothing, no attention being paid at all to problem gambling or any of these kinds of concerns because in some states, it's all been put right on the sports. The state has basically said to the sports book, you take care of that. And in other states, they're saying, we'll take care of it and you will have to, you know, answer to us. So it's not the same everywhere you go.

But it's true that, like, they have a responsibility to check to make sure that you have a source of funds, just like when you're borrowing money to buy a house or something like that. But they do not do a good job of this. In some cases, they don't do it at all. There's just so many stories now of people who are gambling lots and lots of money that they clearly were embezzling or stealing or didn't have. And the sports book or the casino ostensibly was checking on this, but didn't care. And I think that's just going to continue. I mean, this has been going on. This was something, a problem in the casino industry for many years.

now it's going to be a problem in the sports book industry because they're trying to generate their profits from a small number of high dollar losers rather than trying to grind it out from a lot of people who are gambling responsibly just betting 100 bucks or whatever they don't want to do that because their margins like 4% and they don't want to make $4.00. They want to make $4 million. So they got to find people who are going to bet a shitload of money. And that's why we're going to continue to see these kinds of problems. It's also important to note a bit differently from the casinos is that these tech companies have an insane amount. of data on you. And they are, they're able to see when you're most likely to be checking your

account balance. I've even, because we've talked about how some of these more successful gamblers are banned from the app. I've seen some reports of successful gamblers trying to mimic behavior of losers. And, you know, they'll, they'll, like, set their alarm for the middle of the night to check, check their, uh, check their account at two in the morning. So they're, like, oh, this guy might be a sucker. We got to get. Yeah. So it's just kind of crazy that they can, they can kind of algorithmically feed you whatever it is, a little bonus to gamble on, a little like alert. So it's just so much more insidious, the way they kind of have all this access to the data value. Yeah. And it throws a quick couple stats out there, just speaking to all this money

sloshing around. Americans have put up half a trillion dollars in gambles since 2018. And it's gotten so bad that apparently for every dollar gambled, household savings is depleted by $2. And with that, you can guess correctly that we're seeing rising rates in young people getting addicted to gambling, younger people calling these gambling hotlines. Gamblers Anonymous has reported that they've got more people coming to meetings than ever before. There's a higher incidents of domestic abuse, domestic violence because of people losing their life savings, going bankrupt and probably, unfortunately, suicides. It's really sad and really wild how instead of getting regulated, especially when it comes to like sports broadcasting

and advertising, it's almost like the opposite has happened. And they've just somehow been able to completely open the spigot. Whereas, yeah, like, You had, I wonder, do you think, rather, that we're going to reach a point where some kind of group is going to step up and say, enough is enough, we need to really do something about the way that they're advertising, the frequency with which they're advertising, the messages that they're sending, the incorporation into sports. Because, yeah, like, you can't do cigarette ads anymore. You can't drink in drinking advertisements. There are so many other rules around all these other vices, except. for gambling. Yeah, well, I think that you had to think about why these states all opened their doors to sports betting in the first place. And it was to fill budget holes, right? Like there was, you know, we're living in an era where, you know, where governments are looking for any way to pay for things other than to tax people. And so, you know, this, this seemed like a gift where you see these

companies come in and say, give a sports betting. People are already doing it, you know, on the black market. So we can regulate it. It can be safer and we can pay a tax on it. And you can use those taxes to do good things, you know, hire cops and nurses and build roads or whatever, build schools and do whatever you want with it, but we'll pay you all these tax revenue. The problem, though, is that those revenues have fallen short in a lot of states of where they originally projected them to be because they're just not making the kind of money that they thought they were going to make. And it's making these states think twice about the cost of having this versus what they thought they were going to get out of it. In some states,

like in New York, though, where the tax rates are really high, New York has made billions of dollars in tax revenue off of sports betting, and they're loving it. You know what I mean? Like the state government is loving that they're getting all this money, and they're not going to turn it around because they have a very high tax regime here. But a lot of these states don't. They've been able to get very much more reasonable, for like a better term, tax rates put on them. What's interesting is that the sports book companies, the major companies like Fandol and Draft Kings, they're now going to these same state legislation. and saying, okay, so we didn't make as much money as we thought we were going to make for you guys.

We didn't pay as much in taxes as we thought. But if you allow us to turn the app into a casino and we have mobile slot machines and mobile, you know, casino games on the app, then we can definitely hit our numbers. Then we're, you know, then you don't got to worry about it. We're going to make so much money for you guys. And I saw them give one of these presentations to a group of legislators. And the presentation was really just a slideshow of like, here's how many cops that you can hire with this money.

here's how many nurses that you can hire with this. This is how many potholes you can feel. Like, that's what the whole thing was. So all you've got to do is let us flip this switch that turns the sportsbook into a casino. And boom, we're going to get all this money. So that's what I think the future looks like. And I think it's pretty scary. Yeah, that's what I really want to talk about.

Because with all this coverage of the sports betting, I feel like you were the first person I've seen to really highlight this next step. And it really freaked me out that they basically, and there's a, I hope I can find it. There's an insane quote from, I believe it's Roxy Rocksboro, which is just an incredible name. But he said, America can survive sports betting. It survived illegal betting for years. Whether it can survive a casino on everyone's phone, that I can't answer. That might be the tipping point. And the fact that they're just like, wow, we're getting hosed on this sports betting thing. We got to turn everyone's phone into a fucking slot machine is just. So dark. One of their things is also, well, hey, if you don't legalize this, people are just going to turn to the black market. But that's fucking wrong because the black market used to be a place where you had to go physically walk to and pay in cash and not have it on your fucking phone in your pocket 24-7 to gamble on thousands of different lines or whatever you call it for every fucking inning or every quarter or every at-bat or every shot. so fuck you draft kings it's true it's really it's a hobby horse it's like a boogeyman that

they're using to scare legislators into giving them whatever they want but the other thing it's interesting but the black market is that the black market for lack of a better term also never offered 50,000 bets a day you know they didn't they they didn't offer same game parlay when you bet with an offshore bookie or you bet in Vegas you just bet on who was going to win the game you know what I mean you're just betting on the total you didn't have all these crazy bets either so it made it a lot in some ways it's like we might we might we'd be better off to go back to that model than the one that we currently have. Yes.

But I do want to say this about casino gambling because one of the things that I think is weird and a little bit counterintuitive about this shift is that we've actually had casino gambling in over 40 states for a long time in America, right? So like every, almost every state has a brick and mortar casino. Casino gambling used to be something you could only do in Nevada and then in Atlantic City. Now you can do it kind of everywhere. And so it's weird when you hear Roxy's quote to think like, well, why? Why is this such a, you know, why is this such a like a,

crossing the Rubicon kind of moment when like we've had this for so long and I think your point that you were just making about like it being on a phone versus having to do it in person is kind of the key point here which is that you know that that the mobile the technology here whether we're talking about betting on sports or betting on casino stuff is like it's all like fortnight you know what I mean it's all like candy crush it's incredibly addictive it's like it's the the technology here is learning how to make us addicted to it and the the accessibility of it and the convenience of it is going to kill us, you know? So, like, the way that I see people on the highway playing Candy Crush on their phone

while they're fucking driving, like, imagine now that they're doing that and they're not only risking killing somebody by crashing their car, but also, you know, blowing their kids' college fund at the same time. Like, you know, we just sort of add on the social ills here. So I think that's what Roxy's saying he's worried about is that, you know, and the other thing about sports betting that's key is sports betting is a bet, is a type of gambling that's, uh, that's kind of winnable, right? It's like when you make a bet on sports,

you're betting against the bookmaker. The bookmaker's taking the other side of the bet. You could win. When you make a bet on a slot machine, the slot machine is programmed to return, 97% of what's put in it and keep 3% for itself. It's margins are fixed, and you can't change that.

When you play craps, the odds are fixed on the table. The house's edge will play itself out over time. But sports is very dynamic, and you can't actually win. A sports book can't actually lose money. So in a way, like, that's a form of gammoner. that I think when he says America could survive it,

I think he also means that Americans can survive this form of gambling far better than they can the rapid expansion of these kind of the fixed, you know, the types of gambling where it's essentially rigged for the house and there's no way to win. I just can't imagine being the type of person to play legalized, real, legitimate, digital on-your-phone slot machines. That's mind-boggling to me. Oh, I'm just picturing that.

that video of the old people in the casino. Oh, yeah, just kind of mindlessly tapping the thing, just all of us. I just would push back on that and say that, like, I fuck around on my phone all the time. Like, I'm insanely addicted to my phone, and I play chess on it. I look at Twitter and Instagram, and, like, there's a lot of dumb games on my phone that I cannot seem to shake, and I have to actually delete the thing off of my phone to get myself to stop doing it. So I actually think that we are all incredibly susceptible to addictive, you know,

types of things on our phones. And so the idea that we would then be playing something for money, you know, I don't think, I just, all I'm saying is I don't think any of us are safe. You know, I think none of us are safe. We've seen, I mean, we've seen some of this already. I feel like a precursor to this was everyone getting on Robin Hood during the pandemic and just like yoloing options, trades and being like, fuck it. That is safe, though. And I think, you know, I want to ask like how far off you feel we are from them just turning on. the mobile casinos, but it's impossible to answer, but it's like, it doesn't look good right now,

right? We're heading into a Trump administration where it seems like the scam economy is the economy, right? It feels, it feels very similar to like, it's, I'm sure there's an overlap in people, you know, going crazy on parlays and also getting on pump. Fun to check out the latest meme coin and do all these weird alt crypto coins and stuff it's like people are just these are the new ways to make money it's it's crazy yeah do we need god i think that we're i think we're probably farther than down the road than you would think um already there's six states that have uh passed laws that allow some form a mobile mobile casino mobile gambling uh mobile casino gambling i should say but the other thing that i don't talk about in the story that's happening right now

is there's a lot of these new companies who are starting sports books that are completely unregulated, unlicensed, and they're following what's called the sweepstakes model. So the idea behind the sports book is that you buy some sort of like chip or play money, and you're rewarded with some sort of real money chips that you can then gamble. And it's all based on the same law that protects things like a McDonald's sweepstakes or whatever, like the Monopoly game, you would play at McDonald's. and they're saying that they think that the sweepstakes law allows them to run these kinds of casinos. And some of these companies are getting very, very big, very fast.

And they're essentially just like Fanduel and Draft Kings with Daily Fantasy Sports or with New Jersey passing. They're essentially daring a state saying, come and, you know, prosecute us. They want that because they know that if they can prosecute, they get into court, they can build a big case, they might even win one. What's happening is that a lot of states are now thinking maybe we shouldn't prosecute them. maybe we should actually start to regulate those types of casinos as well. And the existing gambling companies are super nervous about this, right? They are so worried because they think that now the competition is going to be all over the place. The other thing that's happening is there are crypto sports books and crypto casinos that are popping up.

And they're functioning sort of side by side with these places too. If you go on Google in a lot of states and you just Google like legal sports book in California where you live, where there are no legal sports books, what you're going to get at the top of your list are a bunch of crypto sports. that say legal to bet in California. And so these crypto sports books are taking up a lot of market share too right now, and they're getting really big. And they don't have any of the regulations. They don't have any of the oversight.

They don't have any of the protections for customers. They aren't doing anything with responsible gambling. So I think this is already happening. In terms of the scam economy, I think that they're just going to figure out how they nibble around the edges of this big sports petting pie until they can just gobble the whole thing up. Jesus Christ. It's also, you know, I'm just,

thinking about, like, kids getting a hold of their... I feel like parents will let their kid use the credit card for the Fortnite or whatever. Yeah, for the Fortnite or whatever. Or Roblox. Fortnite skins or whatever the fuck. Just, I mean, as soon as kids start putting in the credit card for the mobile casino and just ripping slots on... I would rather my kids start smoking than start gambling.

Truly. At least one is, I don't know, I feel like one is easier to quit. and that's folks if you got a problem out there call 1-800 gambler right they'll teach you how to do it right i don't know man i mean i you know my dad used to take me to the racetrack when i was a little kid like i said in the beginning of this show i i grew up around a lot of this stuff i think that there's a way to do this stuff responsibly and i think that the problem is not ingrained in the actual activity it's in these publicly traded corporations now who have entered into this world they knew nothing about and the only way they can figure to make a

profit is by absolutely, you know, eating people alive. And I think, you know, the truth is that this is a business that existed for a long time without a lot of people like yourselves, even knowing it existed. You know what I'm saying? Where a lot of people were able to just sort of bet and it was not something that, uh, that created this, you know, this, uh, whatever, you know, hysteria around it. Now that it's so out there and in the zeitgeist the way that it is, everybody's sort of having a reaction to it. And they're saying like, oh, this thing, gambling is really fucking bad and we should purge it out of our society. I actually think that we should look at who's really creating this problem. And I think there's a few companies here who are creating this

problem because they can't figure out any other way to make money other than to essentially steal it from the most vulnerable people. But I don't think that that means that that's the only way that people can bet on sports. There's a lot of sports books that operate on a completely different model who aren't out there trying to gouge 80% of their profits from 10% of their players. And I think there's a world where this can exist and be legal and be regulated and people can do it responsibly, but I don't think that we're living in that world right now. I really appreciate your pro-responsible gambling stance. It's not, it's not something you hear often. So, I mean, what does that look like to you? Is that kind of going back to a pre-PASPA era

or pre-the-re-re-the-repeal of Paspa, where it's, you know, it's all kind of siloed in one state and you've got to use cash or going back to that or is there some new digital age? Yeah, I'm super pessimistic. I mean, I think that the toothpaste is out of the tube, unfortunately. I actually don't think, like,

I could sit here and imagine what a perfect model or a perfect world of it. I don't know that we'll ever get to it. I do think that there are some sports books who operate a different type of business model that are trying to make their profits on lower margins, on trying to take,

you know, I'm operating on volume. There's sports books offshore that are able to make a lot of profit without, you know, doing any of this kind of whatever, questionable, you know, behavior. But I think that what we're going to see is that we will see more mobile casinos in the future. We will see, you know, that sort of pivot into that world. What I hope is that the big companies like Van Nu and Draft Kings, if they get mobile casino all across the country and they just decide, well, this is our shiny object, they may leave sports betting to people

who actually want to book sports to people who actually want to bet on it. But it won't be good for society. I mean, we don't need to have a bunch of mobile casino companies. America. So how we, I think things will have to get bad or worse, you know, before they could get better because you're going to have to generate that sort of public outcry and pushback on this stuff to tell states, hey, you know what? All that tax revenue that you're generating from this activity, you should give it all back because it's actually hurting us. That's like, I think I don't think I've ever seen happen before. And if it ever does happen with this, it'll only mean that things

got really fucking bad. So unfortunately, I'm a little bit pessimistic on this. Yeah, I mean, I think would the closest thing be kind of the tobacco industry, you know, them getting sued by these states saying, hey, you're causing us to spend all this money in, uh, in health care expenses because of, uh, your product, which it's a good thing that happened, but, you know, that took maybe millions of people getting cancer from these products for that kind of thing to happen. Um, right. We are going to have to head to, do you have any, um, do you have any maybe responsible gambling tips for us before how i watch a lot of tennis how can i get into tennis gambling without my my wife

leaving me i mean i think that like the best thing i could tell you is like don't bet money that if you lose that it feels bad you know what i mean like look i think the gambling is like it's like if you can have a glass of wine with dinner or whatever i interviewed this person once for my podcast who gave me the best thing on this she was like look i go snowboarding right and she said uh i'll go away for a weekend i'll go snowboarding i'll spend you know 500 bucks or something on lift tickets. I've got equipment or whatever. At the end of the day, over the course of that weekend, all I did was go down a hill really fast a few times. But I had a good time and it cost me 500 bucks. Nobody ever thinks like there's something wrong

with me or that I'm a degenerator or that I'm a sicko because I go snowboarding on the weekend. I think you think about it like that. You should gamble how much money that actually makes it fun for you and that if you lose it, you don't feel like you did anything more than just, you know, had a good time. Yeah, but for me, it's the thrill. You know, a glass of wine at dinner. no, I want to drink two bottles. You know what I want to be flying. Like I said, whenever it takes for you to feel like you're having fun, that's what you should put in it.

You shouldn't think twice about it. Yeah. Well, we thank you so much for your time and your expertise. It's a very illuminating topic. It's definitely a big bummer in many ways. And I certainly hope it makes anybody out there, it causes people out there to think twice before they find themselves being susceptible to these ads promising quick, easy money

if you just place a bet based on your gut feeling. Also, is there anything you'd like to plug? No, I mean, people can find me at, I have a website, David Hill Online.com, where there's links to stuff I've written. I have a book that you already mentioned called The Vapers. Thanks for talking about that. It makes a great Christmas present for that dad or uncle in your life.

It seems to be very popular with people's dads. But really, I hope that folks would check it out if you want to learn more about Hot Springs, Arkansas. and yeah, and I'm on Twitter at Daveil 77. And we'll link to the article so people can check it out too. It'll be in the description of this. Thanks so much for coming on.

Really appreciate your kind of take on all this. It was really great, really illuminating. Thanks a lot. It was really a lot of fun. Also, I just got to say I did bet $50 that this episode would go 60 minutes and it looks like I won. So I cleaned up. And the parlay was that Emil would look handsome.

and it looks like I won that second leg as a parlay. You can Venmo me, you can Venmo me when I cut it, David. Okay, cool. Sounds good. All right, thank you very much, David. Thank you so much, David.