The Current - When it comes to sports betting, does everyone lose?

Episode Date: March 23, 2026

With the legalization of sports betting in Canada, and much of the United States, watching your favourite team has changed. If you don't partake, you're bombarded with ads, and if you do, it's likely changed the way you view and cheer on your team. But it's changed the game for players, officials, and sports journalists too. Author Danny Funt on his new book Everyone Loses, The Tumultuous Rise of American Sports Gambling.

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This is a CBC podcast. Hello, I'm Matt Galloway, and this is the current podcast. Whether it's the ads during the big game... Dude, did you know BetmGM has responsible gambling tools so you don't get carried away? I never get carried away. Well, there were the bobbleheads. And the playoff beer? Chili's ready.

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For Canadian fans, these messes, about sports betting are everywhere, even as the rules vary from province to province. Sports betting has changed the way we watch sports. And my next guess it says it is not for the better. Danny Funt's new book is called Everybody Loses, the Tumultuous Rise of American Sports Gambling. Danny, good morning. Good morning. Thanks for having me. Good to have you back on the program.

Do you gamble on sports? I dabble. I'll be honest, though, over the past year, I've hardly bet at all. When you talk to so many people who explain how brutal, difficult it is to make money. Eventually, even for a gambler, you realize I'm tired setting my money on fire. You say in the book that after you do it, you kind of feel gross. Yeah, it brings out this strange way of viewing money. It can almost feel like monopoly money. And sometimes you just get in the trance and I'll catch myself late at night, betting, and overestimating my chances of winning.

And then the next morning, it dawns on me, you know, what was I thinking? How did I lose all that money? so foolishly. It feels like people have been gambling on sports since sports started, but this is a different time in some ways. We're speaking in March, March Madness, the U.S. College basketball hoopla is underway, and you have people like the American Gaming Association saying that something like $3.1 billion will be gambled during this tournament. How pervasive is sports betting in 26. I think it's safe to say for many people it's become the default way of engaging with sports. This is such a market difference from how things were just several years ago when, yes, people found ways to bet under the table with a bookie or an offshore website, but they did it

discreetly. It wasn't something you heard talked about and polite company. And now for many people, it's just second nature if they turn a game on to be betting on it, or even to be betting on on games they're not watching, which might be signs that you're getting carried away. And that is largely done through apps. You don't need to go, certainly to Vegas, but you don't need to go to a betting shop or anything like that to be able to do. People can just do it from wherever they happen to be. Exactly. More than 90% of this business is now conducted online, and it opens out the door to so many new ways of betting. So one of the arguments for legalization was, as I said, we've got this robust black market. Let's just train.

transition those customers so that they're betting in a way that can be taxed and regulated. The reality is that many, many more people are betting than ever before. And they're betting in all sorts of new ways. Because when you can bet on your phone in real time, that is just an entirely new gambling experience. And from all the people I spoke with, it sounds like a distinctly more dangerous one. One of the most remarkable things about your book is the story of how quickly this changed. Early on, many of the major sports leagues were reluctant or hostile to the idea of embracing sports betting companies as sponsors and part of the broadcasts as well. You had people like Gary Bettman, who was then the general counsel for the National Basketball Association, calling it insidious. The former commissioner of Major League Baseball, Bud Seelig said it was the deadliest of all things that can happen to sport, that you create evil, you create doubt, and it destroys your sport.

What changed? It is head spinning to process how they went from speaking about it, as you just said in almost biblical terms, to now being the biggest evangelist for the spread of legal sports betting. Just one story I learned about the NBA. I learned that Toronto only got the Raptors on the condition that the city and the province wouldn't support the spread of single game sports betting. And now, of course, all that's changed. But that's how the leagues used to act, that this was an existential threat. And so what I found reporting my book is that in the U.S., the big turning point was this Supreme Court decision in 2018. And a few years later, much of Canada legalized single-game sports betting.

But long before that, the leagues had been meeting with representatives of the gambling industry who explained to them that this was. would be a lifesaver for their TV rights. The right to show professional and college sports is by far the biggest moneymaker in sports. And the leagues were worried that their audience was aging. People are banning cable subscriptions. And the gambling industry commissioned studies that demonstrated that gamblers watch more than twice as many games as traditional fans. They're watching to the ends of blowouts to see how a bet plays out. And so this would turbocharge their TV audience and reverse those trends. And that is what got to them where they said, that's too good to pass up.

And if we can find a convenient excuse like the Supreme Court decision, that will give us the cover we need to do this profound 180 on gambling. Adam Silver, the commissioner of the NBA, was kind of the guy who was at the center of that 180, right? Yeah. He wrote an op-ed in the New York Times in 2014 that came out in favor of legalization. And that's what initiated this campaign from the gambling industry to convince the other leagues to get on board. His argument was that you're bringing it out from the underground. The people are betting anyway. And so why not legalize it? Why not protect people from some shady character who's a bookie? And make it official, make it legit. It was a sly argument, though, because we have decades of experience to know that gambling corrupt sports, that athletes, no matter,

how much money they're making will succumb to the temptation to bet or to collude with gamblers to fix games. And yet Adam Silver arguing that this would somehow enhance the integrity of games was very persuasive. But I think he was being disingenuous. First, as far as the black market goes, he argued that in the U.S., $400 billion were being wagered illegally every year. Now, we know that the legal market generates about $150 billion in bets annually. So the idea that nearly three times as much had been wagered illegally, I think is ludicrous. I mentioned Gary Bettman. He eventually, of course, became the commissioner of the National Hockey League. And you quote him in the book saying, you either evolve or you become extinct, which is his explanation as to why he embraced

legalized gambling. There are others in the book who have less charitable explanation. and said, in pretty salty language, it's really just so you can make a mountain of money. You've hinted at this, but how much did the league stand to gain by embracing something that they thought would be their ruin? A considerable amount. So in the NFL's case, I mentioned these meetings. One thing that was discussed in the meetings was projections that the gambling industry with the help of Nielsen, the company that measures TV audiences and other media consumption.

They projected that the NFL would make more than two. billion U.S. dollars every season if legalization spread across the country. And I got to say, by the way, to Gary Betman's quote about you either evolve or you go extinct, I think it's such a cop out. It really sounds like the opposite of leadership. And the leagues presented it as, you know, this is the reality. We better come to terms with that. They could have said, you know, we don't like the idea of gambling. We're not going to encourage it, but it is what it is. they were actually extraordinarily hands-on in lobbying states and provinces to recognize that they should legalize and cash in on this. And I just think it's both dishonest and not really what you'd hope to hear

from a commissioner who has a lot of influence over the trajectory of sports and the business of sports. And the influence is fascinating because you have ads on, you know, the, the, the The jerseys, and this isn't in North America explicitly, but the jerseys of soccer players for gambling clubs. You have betting ads that run throughout the programs. You have the logos that are plastered across stadiums and arenas. You have odds segments during the live broadcasts. How did it become normalized so quickly? I think all that advertising played a big role.

Billions spent on that, especially normalizing it for kids. You know, in the U.S., you have A-List movie stars and so many superstars from sports, including some active players, starring in these nonstop commercials. I see these John Hamm ads everywhere. Jamie Fox, LeBron James, the list goes on. That, I think, has a big impression on kids. And I remember speaking with a lawyer who was very influential in exposing predatory tactics used by the tobacco industry to seduce people into smoking. and likening how that went down with what we're seeing with sports betting. And a point he made that I think is hard to dispute is that tobacco for so long utilized celebrity

pitchmen to make it seem cool to smoke. And I think this exact same thing is happening with gambling. It's funny, I was in Canada for a conference last year, and I met with some representatives of the gambling industry, and they were telling me how, by and large, in Canada, you don't have celebrities hawking these products. I know Connor McDavid is in some ads and there's some workarounds, but generally that's prohibited. And they were just aghast at the fact that America allows that because it can be so dangerous as far as normalizing something that even responsible adults should probably be doing in moderation. We may not have the advertising to the same degree

that you do in the United States, but we just heard this at the beginning of a conversation. We have it embedded in the coverage of the games, that you will have sports journalists who are also pitch men, pitch people for these companies. You have talked about this being in some ways like insider trading. What do you mean by that? For sports media in particular, that's just one of many things that worries me. And you're right, I should have mentioned that. That as far as making this so ubiquitous, the fact that sports media has been co-opted, a huge part of it. I heard from someone who used to work at ESPN who said, it's as if sports

media has been bribed by this mountain of advertising dollars that have been used to get sports media to promote gambling at every opportunity. But as far as insider trading goes, I was so curious from the outset that reporters have inside access to locker rooms and are speaking with coaches before games and are privy to all this information. that would be so valuable if they ever succumbed and placed a bet. And so it's just one of many things that people hadn't really thought through before legalization took off. In newsrooms, legally speaking, in sports, it's just kind of been a figure things out as we go mentality. And that has been so perilous in so many different respects.

This ascent isn't for everyone. You need grit to climb this high this often. You've got to be an underdog that always overdelivers. You've got to be 6,500 hospital staff, 1,000 doctors, all doing so much with so little. You've got to be Scarborough. Defined by our uphill battle and always striving towards new heights. And you can help us keep climbing. Donate at lovescarbro.cairbo.ca.

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The language of this matters as well. I mean, the gaming industry, it calls it gaming. It doesn't call it gambling. You're very explicit in saying that this is about betting on sports. This is about gambling. Why does that matter? It could sound symbolic. I think it's not.

I think it has a real consequence because surprisingly a number of people who bet on sports don't think of it as gambling. They think of it as investing or a side hustle, leveraging their knowledge of sports to make money. And the fact that the industry does everything it can to avoid the G word as a, I hear it called inside some of these companies, I think is in part the reason for that. Even the fact that they won't acknowledge that gambling is addictive, when we could get into that, too. But it all goes to obscuring what exactly we're doing. And I think that has a real consequence.

What do you mean they won't acknowledge that gambling is addictive? It might sound outrageous because there's decades of medical consensus that this is addictive. in the DSM, the handbook for diagnosable psychological disorders, gambling is the only addiction that's not substance-based. It's been that way since the 1980s. And yet leaders of the American Gaming Association refuse to concede that gambling can be addictive. It's remarkably audacious. Who is most susceptible to problem gambling when it comes to sports betting? Kids, for one. Kids, when, you know, the part of your brain, the prefrontal cortex that regulates risk assessment, if you're gambling before that's fully mature, you're so in danger of getting carried away. And then there's just so many cascading problems that come with that. And I spoke with Jeffrey Derevensky at McGill University, a world-renowned expert in youth problem gambling. And he said that's the thing that has him most worried is this idea that kids are being suddenly pushed toward gambling. I speak with so many educators who say everyone in their class is consumed by it, even as young as preteens. Beyond that,

I'd say young men in general in that 21 to 34 demographic are clearly the targets of so much marketing. And the statistics bear that out, that they have higher rates of problem gambling and all of the other unfortunate side effects of a gambling habit. The industry will say that this is just a way for people to have fun. You're betting 10, 20 bucks. You're not going to lose your shirt. That this is just a way, a different way to enjoy the thing that you're already watching. What do we know about how often it turns into something more serious? Well, a third of sports betters say they've felt ashamed in hindsight of how much money they've lost. half of them admit that when they've lost a bet, they've then doubled down and tried to bet again to get their money back.

It's called chasing losses, and it's a telltale sign of a gambling problem. So to hear that half of sports bettors admit to that, I think, suggest this is a much bigger problem than just the percent of people who have a full-blown gambling addiction. It's not just fans that get brought into this, but athletes as well. How often does that happen? Almost on a month-by-month basis, we're hearing indictments of athletes accused of fixing games. Notoriously, Jonte Porter of the Toronto Raptors was... Tell us the story of Jontay Porter, because this is a really interesting story for a bunch of reasons. A few years ago, Jonte Porter, who was about as obscure of a player as you could think of in the NBA,

his brother, Michael, is a much more established star, but Jonte was a bench player on the Raptors. hardly ever played. And he was accused and ultimately convicted of colluding with gamblers, who had caught wind that he was deeply in debt for gambling, and they used that to extort him, saying, Chante, rather than us out you as a gambler, and that's prohibited in the NBA, work with us so that you'll remove yourself from games with a fake injury, and we'll bet that you won't score a certain number of points or collect a certain number of rebounds, all these different prop bets that you can now bet on on someone as obscure as Jonte Porter, and we'll make a lot of money. And I saw a bet slip that they had placed where they said to make more than a million dollars on a

single game involving Jonte Porter. And ultimately, he was caught and convicted, as were the people he colluded with. But one thing that I think is so worth emphasizing is, The notion that you could make more than a million dollars on a bench player like Jonte Porter is a distinct byproduct of legal online betting. Whether in Nevada or even offshore, I've spoken with bookmakers there who say they would never dream of being on the hook for a million bucks on someone like that, specifically because they know how easy it would be for that sort of bet to be fixed. and yet these bets on individual players have become such a big moneymaker for Bet365 and Fandul and these other online sports betting giants, that they're willing to accept that risk of corruption.

And for sports and for people who aren't in the bookmaking business, that's quite a deadly tradeoff. One of the interesting things about the Jonti Porter story is, as you said, in the grand scheme of the NBA, he's a nobody. What happens when it's not a nobody that gets caught up in a scandal like this, but it's a superstar? We've seen some people who are more like household names get in trouble. Chauncey Billups, a Hall of Fame player who was most recently the head coach of the Portland Trailblazers of the NBA. He was accused, he maintains his innocence, but he was accused of colluding with mobsters to fix poker games and also to pass along. inside information about his lineup decisions with the Blazers. But even beyond that, I think the biggest risk is that the leagues and their betting partners have such a powerful incentive to sweep

something more damaging under the rug that maybe we aren't hearing about the most scandalous instances of gambling, corrupting sports. I heard that from an NBA agent, Daniel Hazan, who actually one of his top clients went on to be accused of betting on games in a similar manner to Jante Porter. This agent said, if they ever caught a superstar betting and fixing games, it would kill the league. It would kill the league. Yes. And so it would be so in their interest for the public to never hear about that. And that, I think, is the thing that sends a chill down my spine more than anything. He said it would discredit the whole league.

it discredits the morality of the game. It discredits everything. You use the word corruption to talk about this. How does all of this and the cloud of that kind of corruption affect the integrity of sports going forward? The reason that people watch sport, sure, they watch it maybe to gamble, but they also, or at the least, they used to watch it because they wanted to see who was going to win and who's going to lose. You had two teams or you had individuals who were out there competing and you wanted to know who was going to win and who was going to lose. How does the cloud affect that integrity of the game? It's why this is relevant to people, even if they aren't gambling,

because we're seeing a level of cynicism enter mainstream sports like never before. After some of these indictments, there have been surveys conducted that showed that more than half of Americans believe some athletes are now altering their play to swing the outcomes of bets. Or referees, too. Yeah, exactly. And I would guess similar levels of skepticism are existent in Canada. And it's exactly what these commissioners used to warn that you would have suspicion anytime a strange call was made or an underdog one out of nowhere or anything happened that wasn't expected. People would yell rigged. And I sometimes am watching a game and I'll search on social media the word rigged.

And I know this is unscientific, but I just see one point. post after another saying, aha, the NFL is rigged, the NBA is rigged, the NHL is rigged. That level of cynicism is so corrosive for sports and potentially such a turnoff for fans. There's a great line just finally in the book that the gas pedal is developed before the brakes and the braking system is developed. You have a quotation from a former governor of Massachusetts, who was involved in the legalization of gambling, who in hindsight says that not enough people, including himself, had considered what they were doing. And this governor says, shame on all of us. Do people have any regret for what they have unleashed? I think so. You also heard

another governor, Mike DeWine, of Ohio, say this is the biggest regret he has in office was rushing to legalize sports betting. I think people were persuaded by the leagues and by these gambling companies to act with such haste that they didn't think through the consequences. They didn't think through how putting a casino in the pocket of every American and many Canadians could be so dangerous.

And now the question becomes, what can be done about that? And fortunately, I do think there are a number of reforms short of reverting to outlawing gambling that would make this incrementally safer and less likely to damage sports. The question is, although they have that regret, will they turn down the nozzle on tax revenue in order to make things better for fans and for athletes? And that's the question. No one's going to turn down that bag of money, right? Right. Unless disaster strikes. And sadly, that's happened.

elsewhere in the world. You've seen surging addiction rates, a rash of suicides among people with addictions. Even something I write about in the book is the potential that an enraged gambler will try to murder an athlete. The number of death threats targeting athletes from gamblers who are furious that something costs the money and determined to get revenge, it seems like only a matter of time before someone tries to kill someone. And I hate to even mention that, but that's the sort of thing that might put enormous public pressure on lawmakers to do something about this. It's a fascinating book. Danny, good to talk to you. Thank you very much. Thank you. Danny Funt is a journalist and author, his latest book, is Everybody Loses the Tumultuous Rise of

American Sports Gambling. You've been listening to the current podcast. My name is Matt Galloway. Thanks for listening. I'll talk to you soon. podcast, go to cBC.ca.ca slash podcasts.