Has Sports Betting Changed the Game for the Bettor?
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From KQED in San Francisco, I'm Alexis Madrigal. With the college football championship coming up on Monday and the NFL playoffs hurtling towards the Super Bowl, we're going to take a look at the growing world of sports betting. If you pay even the most glancing attention to sports, you know the presence of DraftKings and FanDuel has completely changed sports media and the way that people talk about this form of entertainment.

Sports betting is still technically illegal in California, but since a Supreme Court decision opened the door to state-by-state legalization, most of the rest of the country has gone full steam ahead. We'll talk about how sports betting has changed the game. That's all coming up next after this news. Welcome to Forum. I'm Alexis Madrigal.

If you don't bet on sports, you may not realize how big of an industry sports betting has become. Get this: last year, 67.8 million Americans put down bets worth a total of $23 billion on the Super Bowl alone. And where once officials from leagues like Major League Baseball decried betting as a "evil" that would damage the sport, now gambling on games and players' performances is being embraced as wholesome entertainment.

So what happened over the last decade? And are there still traditional bookies operating outside the new tech-fueled sports betting industry? We'll find out. We're joined this morning by Ryan Rodenberg, professor at Florida State University, also teaches at FSU's College of Law. He's been researching and writing on sports betting for quite a long time. Thanks for joining us, Ryan. Good morning, Alexis. Happy to be here.

We're also joined by Danny Funt, a journalist who's written about sports betting for The Washington Post. His forthcoming book on sports gambling is titled Everybody Loses. Welcome, Danny. Hey, thanks for having me. And we're joined by David Purdom, a writer for ESPN who covers the sports betting industry and has for almost 20 years now. Thanks for joining us, David.

Thank you. David, you've noted Super Bowl's biggest betting event in the world. That's coming up next month. Of course, this weekend, Monday, I guess, we have the championship bowl game between Notre Dame and Ohio State. So a lot of people just watch the game. But now so many millions of people are also betting on them. What do you think the allure of sports betting is?

It just gives you a little higher stake in the game, keeps you engaged with many different ways that you can bet on games now from player props to all kinds of different wild different bets. So I just think that sports betting keeps people engaged, keeps people tuned in for longer during games.

Danny Funt, talk to me a little about the structure of the current sports betting industry. I think people might have in their head that, you know, there's Las Vegas is involved somehow and there's some, you know, barbershop bookie, but now it's like these kind of bigger players.

Yeah, so the betting business in Las Vegas that's been there since the middle of last century is definitely alive and well despite everything else that's happening across the country. But it's legal in 38 states and D.C. There are more than 50 operators taking bets across the country. FanDuel and DraftKings have an overwhelming share of that market. Around three-quarters of bets go through those two companies.

But it's just growing rapidly and more states legalize every year. So it just gets bigger and bigger. What about like the illegal sports betting market or what? Maybe it's not illegal gray market like that kind of stuff. Is that still a thing?

Absolutely. You know, we'll never know for sure how much money is bet under the table, but it's pretty safe to say tens of billions of dollars. You might remember the L.A. Dodgers superstar Shohei Ohtani's interpreter was busted for gambling with $17 million of Ohtani's money. That was through an illegal bookie. So there's still plenty of ways to bet in the black market, whether online or through some guy you know in your neighborhood. Yeah.

Ryan Rodenberg, let's talk a little bit about the legal landscape here. The industry really took off in 2018 when the Supreme Court allowed states to legalize. Before then, there was this law that prevented sports betting. Talk to us a little bit about that law. I think it's known as PASPA, maybe P-A-S-P-A. What changed there?

Yeah. So back in 1992, Congress did an act and President Bush signed the Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act. So Bill Bradley was a U.S. senator at the time, former presidential candidate. Former Princeton basketball player. Yeah, exactly. Played in the NBA for the New York Knicks.

He spearheaded the federal statute to effectively freeze in place whatever sports betting was legal at the time. And predominantly that was just Nevada. But the law...

prohibited other states from effectively changing their mind on sports betting. And over time, certain states didn't feel that that was fair to them. And beyond just New Jersey, other states were sniffing around about the possibility of starting to offer regulated sports betting like Nevada had been doing for decades. So that law conflicted with several states' aims to increase their tax base and bring tourists to their area.

And that the legal case that eventually snaked its way to the U.S. Supreme Court started in 2012. And six years later is when the Supreme Court made their decision that that 1992 federal statute was unconstitutional because it unfairly treated states by forcing them to freeze their statutes in place. Yeah.

So that's a 10th Amendment.

As opposed to having Congress regulate the space themselves. So that's that. That's how the issue arose. Got it. And then that created this situation where essentially on a state by state basis, the, you know, Louisiana or Minnesota or something could come along and say, yes, we would like to have sports betting in our state. Precisely. So when Justice Alito penned the majority opinion for the Supreme Court decision, he included a very important sentence right at the end.

And he wrote that if Congress chooses not to regulate a certain space directly, i.e. regulate sports betting, the states are free to choose to regulate as they see fit if they want to. So certain states have not elected to yet. Utah, of course, hasn't had any movement towards sports betting, but two very prominent states have yet to legalize, and that's California and Texas. Mm-hmm.

Yeah, we're going to talk about California in just a second. We are talking about the sports betting industry, how it's impacting sports and players and the people who bet on them. We're joined by Ryan Rodenberg, professor at Florida State University. Danny Funt, a journalist who's written about sports betting for The Washington Post. He's got a book coming up on sports gambling called Everybody Loses. We're also joined by David Purdom, a writer for ESPN.com.

David Purdom, I wanted to ask you a little bit about the situation here in California, in part because, you know, I listen to, say, Warriors podcasts. Warriors podcasts are often sponsored by what seemed to me to be sports betting entities. So how is it that people here in California participate in putting money on sports, but in some way that's not considered sports betting?

Well, California does not have any state-sponsored traditional sports betting, as you mentioned. Tribal gaming is very powerful in California, and so far they have resisted

legalizing sports betting. That does not mean that sports betting is not happening in California. We mentioned the illegal bookmaker that Shohei Otani's interpreter was involved in. He was based in California. There are also all sorts of types of daily fantasy sites and newer sites called sweepstakes sites that kind of use almost a subscription model that allow the

basically what looks to be very similar to sports betting. So while there is no state-sponsored sports betting in California, Californians are having no issue finding ways to bet on it. Yeah, Danny Funt, I mean, daily fantasy. Let's just take that one because I feel like that's the one I hear advertised a lot, particularly around basketball. How is it not sports betting? Like, what is it and how is it not sports betting, at least according to the regulations?

Yeah, there's definitely plenty of people, including some states, Nevada being one, that don't believe it's any different than sports betting. It's just sports betting by a different name. But, you know, that paved the way for this explosion where FanDuel and DraftKings identified essentially a loophole in federal law that fantasy sports had been around for decades, typically a season-long variety where you draft players ahead of the season, see how they go, and then, you know, either collect a little bit of money or just have bragging rights with your friends.

Daily Fantasy invented an idea of shrinking the timeline to a week of games or even a single day's slate of games. And nowadays, the sort of products that companies like Underdog and PrizePix in California offer that are under this DFS umbrella float.

look almost identical to the kind of prop bets that are so popular across the country. If you talk to people who are playing those daily fantasy games, often they'll say, I bet this or I wagered that. Understandably mistaking that, you know, technically by a legal definition, they're not wagering or gambling, they're playing fantasy. But it's a really blurry line that...

a lot of States are grappling with because they don't want, you know, a loophole there. Cause a, a prop bet, right. Would be like, you're, that is supposed to be a bet on a performance of a particular player. Steph Curry is going to hit 10, three pointers or whatever. Right. Daily fantasy. You're like, get points. If Steph Curry hits it, like how, how, how is it even different? Yeah. So originally when, as I said, DraftKings and FanDuel were, were,

you know, at the front of the explosion of daily fantasy, you would assemble a lineup as you would in, in traditional fantasy formats and collect a points based on player performance. And then if you were at the top of a pool of competitors, you might get some cash as a prize for that with this new

iteration of that it is exactly like the type of prop bets you described will Brock Purdy throw a touchdown you know will George Kittle have 80 plus yards you stack a couple of those together call it a daily fantasy game or a pick-em game but it

But, you know, it looks, again, indistinguishable from these sorts of parlay prop bets that are a huge part of the gambling business in the rest of the country. Ryan Rodenberg, as a law professor, I mean, do you see this as something where there is a meaningful distinction?

Certain state regulators certainly view it as a distinction. I mean, I'm based here in Florida and Florida regulators have sent cease and desist letters to certain operators that might blur the lines between sweepstakes and fantasy and a more traditional sports betting. At the federal level, I'm not aware of any federal prosecution, but perhaps that could be forthcoming at some point for operators that operate across state lines. Yeah.

We're talking about the sports betting industry, how it's impacting sports, the way that it all works. We're joined by Ryan Rodenberg, professor at Florida State, journalist Danny Funt, and ESPN writer David Purdom. We, of course, want to hear from you. I mean, are you a fan of sports betting? Does having a bet on the game kind of change how you watch what's happening? Maybe you've noticed changes in sports media or the way the game is played because of sports betting. Give us a call. The number is 866-733-7000.

Maybe you're a fan of the Warriors and you think a lot about...

how a player is going to do on a particular day. Have you actually done that kind of whatever we're calling it here, daily fantasy or sports betting? Love to hear that experience. Again, you can call us 866-733-6786, forum at kqed.org, or you can find us on all of the social media things, Blue Sky, Instagram, et cetera. We're KQED Forum, or you can get on the Discord community. I'm Alexis Madrigal. We'll be back with more right after the break. ♪

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Welcome back to Forum, head of the College Football Championship as well as the Super Bowl. We're talking about the sports betting industry and its growth, even here in California where sports betting is not technically legal. We're joined by David Purdom of ESPN, Danny Funt, who's a journalist who writes about sports betting for The Washington Post. Got a book coming up, I think it's next year, called Everybody Loses. Also got professor at Florida State University, Ryan Rodenberg.

Danny, I wanted to ask you about this. You know, there was a time when league officials, I think it was even Bud Selig, right? MLB, Major League Baseball commissioner called gambling an evil like that was kind of how the leagues themselves looked at this realm of activity. It's really changed. Why do you think that is?

Yeah, it's funny when you say there was a time. You might think, oh, we're talking about right after the Black Sox scandal 100 plus years ago. No, this was barely a decade ago when not just Bud Selig, but the rest of the leagues were so adamant that this was an existential threat to sports.

I think the money, for one thing, was just overwhelming, the money that was on the table if they got on board. Billions of dollars that they stood to gain, not just through partnerships, but just as David Purdom was saying, the fact that gamblers are hyper-engaged bettors. They watch a lot of sports. They pay attention to games that

a lot of the rest of the fans find, you know, irrelevant or, or blowouts. So that was very appealing. Uh, their TV rights are such an important part of the business. And if you could tell potential broadcasting partners, Hey, we found a way to, uh,

boost our audience in this dramatic way. That was a really big selling point. So behind the scenes as that Supreme Court case was playing out, they came around and it's really night and day how different the commissioners sound from their predecessors not too long ago. Yeah.

I mean, David Purdom, you've been there watching the industry grow all along. Do you think the fears of the leagues were overblown? Do you think that was just rhetoric because they wanted to maintain, I don't know, a brand that was seen as more pure somehow?

Yeah, I think it was certainly over the top. Some of the fears that they expressed during the whole legalization, they talked about, oh, if we do this, it will transpire to be a lot more match fixing and attempts to affect the integrity of the games. The argument against that, of course, as well.

Betting is still going on right now. We just don't have the visibility in it that we do. So when we got legalization, that gives us the visibility and we can detect when there is some anomalies. Jonte Porter, an NBA player who was banned recently for actually acknowledging that he manipulated his performance to impact for gambling purposes. So we now have more visibility of it.

I think the leagues probably knew that that was going to happen, but they were still trying to figure out how they could control and ultimately make the most money possible out of sports betting. Yeah. You know, when we talk about the players, Danny Fine, I mean, it's kind of fascinating because there is this incredible pressure on them in some ways to deliver for people who are betting on them.

Is there any sense that, you know, aside from, you know, like a well-known case where somebody clearly was doing things against the rules, that it's having some sort of impact on the game more broadly?

Yeah, I think that's one of the strongest examples of how things absolutely have changed in the legalization era. Although there was obviously vast illegal betting going on, this is such a stark example of the different world we're living in where so many athletes, college athletes, coaches, referees, say the harassment they get from gamblers whenever they cost them a bet is just brutal and relentless.

even in states that don't have legal betting, because obviously they're playing teams in places that do, and it's a national and global sport. So I can count four members of the San Francisco Giants even who've said they've been harassed online from people saying, hey, you owe me money because you struck out or gave up a home run or whatever else to cost me money. It's a daily annoyance, and not just an annoyance, but a legitimate threat of

players that have been stalked at their team hotels or at their homes or faced credible threats of violence. It's not just this thing that's happening online. It's really a tangible thing that they deal with on a regular basis. But also kind of playing out, it's come up in the same era that just ubiquitous social media and ubiquitous presence of players on social media has happened too, right? So is it hard to disentangle kind of those two factors?

Yeah, social media is ugly in a lot of ways beyond gambling, no doubt about it. But I think if you just hear people say, like, I'm on the court at a basketball game and I hear fans chirping about gambling to a degree I never heard before 2018 or before a certain state legalized, beyond the fact that you're right, that the Internet is a cesspool in a lot of ways, this is different. There's no question. Yeah.

We would love to hear your experience if you're a fan of sports betting or you're not quite opposed to sports betting. Really curious listeners thoughts on this. The number is 866-733-6786. That's 866-733-6786. Forum at KQED.org. You can find us on social media, Blue Sky, Instagram, etc.,

Got a bunch of comments coming in from listeners here. Nate writes in to say...

You know, this industry knows how to attract gamblers and stack the odds massively against the gambler. If you have an account in good standing with FanDuel or DraftKings, know that you are considered a, quote, safe bet, meaning you typically lose. If you win on these sites, they block your account. They don't want winners. This will be an epidemic in 10 years, and the writing is on the wall now, yet we'll discuss the pros and cons until then and blame the gambler for not having control. But like the opiate epidemic, they never had a chance."

Ryan Rodenberg, what do you think about that perspective?

It's a perspective that's also been shared with some state regulators. Massachusetts actually had a recent hearing in the Commonwealth to address that so-called issue of limiting successful bettors. There's numerous examples out there where professional gamblers who specialize in sports and others may be what's called limited by certain sports books. The broader narrative that your listener wrote in about gambling

It's caught the attention of federal lawmakers as well. There's a pending bill before Congress that seems to treat sports betting as a public health issue. And it directly addresses some of the advertisements that we see on whenever we watch a sporting event now. And they draw the analogy to the tobacco industry. So that's percolating. Others have found that to be certainly an important issue to raise.

A little bit outside of my area of expertise in terms of legal issues, but it's certainly something that's caught the attention of both state houses and federal lawmakers. I mean, one legal issue, right, is that people sometimes say, I mean, as we heard in the cannabis debates over time, that if we create a legal market for this thing that people already want to do, then it'll actually help us regulate what's happening because we'll pull things out of the black market. I mean, do you think that's like a solid argument?

It's a quite frequent argument. The one aspect that state regulated sports books cannot match others that operated before and clearly after the Supreme Court case is credit. So if you open up an account for a commercial operator that's licensed in certain states,

You can't bet on credit, but you can certainly continue to do that offshore and with, you know, with the so-called corner bookie or the barbershop bookie. So that aspect is still quite active. I don't see that ever changing in terms of state regulation. So that's one built-in mechanism that does have some responsible gambling oversight to it. Yeah.

David Purdom, as you've watched this industry roll out across the country, have you seen them do anything to kind of take on their responsibilities around what might happen to people who fall into this addiction path?

They certainly talk about it and say that, you know, identifying problem gamblers is a priority for them. But frankly, there's been case after case, story after story of examples of people that clearly were showing signs of problem gambling. And those players were treated to VIP perks.

They would get a host and that host would text message, send them texts over and over asking, hey, you haven't been betting this week, what's going on? Or let's get you some money back in your account with a bonus bet to keep you going. And those kinds of stories are just really disheartening for the industry. That's something that they need to get better on is identifying people that seem to be spiraling out of control, whether it's chasing their losses or sudden increases in the amount

that they're wagering is something that the industry as a whole needs to get better at. I mean, it's interesting because if I think about the way that Internet companies generally work, they are good at identifying those people, but solely so that they can keep getting them to do whatever it is that those people are already doing. Right. I mean, YouTube wants you to watch more YouTube. You know, Netflix wants you to watch more Netflix and a sports betting company presumably would want you to do more sports betting.

100%. And there's a line there. I'm a youth soccer coach here in Georgia, and I'm on soccer.com a lot. And if I'm not on there, they will send me a text. Hey, we haven't seen you on the site. Have you checked out our new deals? So there is a line of what is legitimate sales tactics. I think, though, that when you are selling a product,

that is known to be addictive. You have to be more responsible and take measures and not be as aggressive. And what happened when we had legalization, there was a huge rush for customer acquisition, right? All this marketing needed to get these customers on board as quickly as possible. And so some of that responsibility, in my opinion, went by the wayside.

Let's bring in a caller here. Let's bring in Damien in Santa Rosa. Welcome, Damien. Thanks so much. Well, on this topic of addiction here, you know, most of these gambling sites are populated by men and young men who are

at the most risk for you know risky and addictive behavior it's one of the fastest growing categories of people committing suicide uh... and gambling addiction have the highest rate of suicide of any of the addictions that people get in over their head and scott galloway has done some good

conversations on that and made some predictions around the negative impacts of sports sports betting but on top of that it's just an industry uh... if the way the industry makes money not just that's what everyone you know as far as those guys you know really it's not a bunch of people having one drink a day it's people drinking ten twenty thirty beers you know we can those are the people they go after its premium gaming it's not everybody playing it a few people spending lots of money on a particular item it's only fans of if any of these

you know businesses where the model is to cast a wide net but really are making your money off of the individuals that are heavily involved so i don't see it as necessarily any more predatory than any of these other industries as far as the business model goes it just it just literally have a higher rate of negative impacts of suicide on the people who participated

in it the most. So I don't have the solution, but it's pretty obvious that you can track the negative implications to this because the literal death of young men. So, you know, blood on their hands. Danny fun. I mean, how do you want to take that question? I mean, I think there's the broader context of

This is how many companies operate, essentially like finding the whales, right? Finding the people who are really going to use that product. And I think it's fascinating that Damien also mentioned, you know, your OnlyFans, all these different things that are targeting young men in this way. How would you respond? I mean, your book is called Everybody Loses. I assume you try and tackle this.

Yeah, and try to tackle it beyond just all the billions of dollars that customers are losing on gambling. It's so much bigger than that. And Damien is spot on about what's at stake here. I mean, the lifetime suicidal ideation rate for people with gambling disorder is 50%, way higher than a lot of other addictions. So you're playing with fire in a lot of ways. And...

As a lot of these companies face more and more pressure to start turning a profit, the phase of limitless spending where you can run big losses trying to acquire customers, investors are growing impatient with that. So you're going to see more and more pressure to squeeze these high-value customers for as much as they're worth and kind of neglect the rest of the betting masses that are more casual players. So that's going to put...

These issues really under a magnifying glass. You know, it's tough because there's really egregious behavior and then there's just sort of fundamentally by making gambling this accessible, are you inevitably going to increase the number of people who are betting and therefore the number of people who have problems? In states like New Jersey that have had legal sports betting the longest, they're seeing problem gambling rates much higher than the presumed

national average of 1% to 2%, especially among young men, as Damien said. So it's just by creating the old line of a casino in every pocket, it really is a game changer that you got to take quite seriously.

Ryan Rodenberg, I imagine as someone who researches sports betting, you almost have this incredible natural experiment of every state kind of coming online with their own sports betting. And you can kind of see if there are like large scale differences between populations in those states. Is that kind of research? I assume that sort of research is being done. Do we know the outcomes of it yet?

Academic research based on sports betting certainly has been the gift that just keeps on giving. There's no shortage of kind of natural experiments around the country as different states have enacted sports betting laws in very, very different ways.

To date, there's been no longitudinal studies to actually test or measure those discrete topics. I think that will likely be forthcoming. And as more states legalize, I mean, we're already up to 38 now. There'll be a handful in the coming years, I expect. Given the passage of time, I think it will be possible to test actual kind of research hypotheses that fall under some of these public health standards.

and whatnot type of questions. But it hasn't happened yet. And that kind of research would allow us perhaps to say, if you roll it out like this, you're less likely to get a spike in problem gambling. Or if you roll it out like that, you're more likely to get a spike in problem gambling.

Precisely. And with all the different states enacting different types of consumer protection type of regulations, it's going to be fairly easy to tease out those type of things. You'll actually be able to have some kind of best practices that can be gleaned from doing those type of tests.

It's just such a new industry. It just simply hasn't happened yet. I mean, it's obviously growing with the increased number of states and just the volume of wagering. So I think that'll be forthcoming soon. Yeah, yeah.

One of the questions that I've had, David, just as someone who follows sports media is these entities have become like massive advertisers in sports media. You know, one listener writes in to say, I'm surprised that we tolerate advertising for addictive and deleterious products. We banned advertising for cigarettes. How is gambling any different? These apps advertise free money for new accounts, placing bets, which is reminiscent of someone, you know, giving your first hit for free in drugs.

I mean, how dependent do you think sports media has become? Like I was saying, most of my favorite podcasts, I feel like, in sports media are now supported by the industry. Yeah, it's certainly a major source of revenue, advertising revenue for media outlets and sports leagues. I think when the sports leagues were kind of looking at this and they're looking for any kind of revenue runway they could find,

And this one was glaringly out there. Now, I do think advertising will be one of the first things that is kind of reined in and pulled back a little bit. There was a congressional hearing in December. Advertising was a topic of it. And if you look into more mature sports betting markets, like in England,

They have what's called a whistle-to-whistle ban on advertising. So if you're watching a Premier League match over there on one of the local stations, you won't see sports betting advertising, certainly not as frequently as you hear in the U.S. right now. So I do think that some sort of pullback on the advertising for sports betting is coming. Hmm.

We're talking about the sports betting industry, how it's impacting sports and bettors and players. We're joined by David Purdom, a writer with ESPN who covers the sports betting industry. Danny Funt, journalist who's written about sports betting for the Washington Post. You can keep your eye out for a forthcoming book on sports gambling by Danny called Everybody Loses. We're also joined by Ryan Rodenberg, a professor at Florida State University who also teaches at FSU College of Law and has researched and written about the sports betting industry.

Of course, we also would love to hear from you on...

on whether or not sports gambling is something that you engage in, whether it has negatively affected you or something that you feel like is a part of the way that you enjoy sports, you can give us a call. The number is 866-733-6786. Maybe you've noticed changes in how the game is played that you think are a result of sports betting. Again, the number is 866-733-6786. Forum at kqed.org. I'm Alexis Madrigal. Stay tuned.

You're used to hearing my voice on The World, bringing you interviews from around the globe. And you hear me reporting environment and climate news. I'm Carolyn Beeler. And I'm Marco Werman. We're now with you hosting The World together. More global journalism with a fresh new sound. Listen to The World on your local public radio station and wherever you find your podcasts.

Welcome back to Forum. We're talking about sports betting with a professor at Florida State University, Ryan Rodenberg, journalist Danny Funt, and writer with ESPN, David Purdom.

One listener writes in to say, I can see how this is good for sports like baseball, which can be a little slow. The MLB knows their game needs to change and have sped it up. I'm curious how sports betting may change how the game is played, like the rules of the game itself. David Prudhomme, have you noticed any movement in that direction?

Well, the rule changes in baseball certainly have been designed to speed up. At the same time, baseball is probably more invested in in-game wagering than most of the other leagues. In-game wagering is instead of placing your bets before the game, you wait during the game and maybe you see a batter come up and you can bet on whether he will get a strikeout or he will strike out or get a hit.

Some of the other rules that the baseballs is the pitch clock on the pitching on the pitcher, bigger bases that were supposed to help increase scoring. So scoring and betting kind of go hand in hand. The more scoring there is, the more options there are to bet. So I think rules like that will always come into play. Yeah.

Yes, definitely. So not only the Capital One Center in D.C. where the Wizards and the Capitals play, but

and the Mystics. But every professional sports venue in D.C. has this kind of retail sportsbook where you can go place a bet on your way or during the game. It's pretty remarkable. Yes, the Leonsis family that owns the Wizards and a couple other teams have a deal with Caesars, which operates that sportsbook. They've also put a patch on...

some of their jerseys that spawned, you know, a Caesars patch. So they're all in. They were one of the biggest evangelists to say, let's, let's, let's seize this opportunity. And it's a, it's a big part of their vision for the business of sports. They're also very big on what David was alluding to of, of,

integrating in-game wagering as a part of how fans digest the game. So they like the idea of you're watching the game and you're watching it on a screen that also is showing betting odds. And you can, I guess if you're on a tablet or clicking with your remote, you can bet and watch on the same screen to just make this as seamless as possible. So that's the vision they have. And some of us are

Wondering if that's imminent or if that's really going to catch on with too many sports fans. I mean, I guess there's a part of me that, you know, read Freakonomics a long time ago and says, like, isn't this eventually going to corrupt the game? I mean, doesn't it feel like you're just putting these kind of cross pressures, cross economic pressures on the game? I mean, what about like players unions, David Purdom? Like, are they have they gotten on board with the sports betting?

Well, they have in the fact that, you know, for the NFL, a percentage of the league's general revenue is distributed to the players, and that includes the gambling revenue they make. So players unions do get that. Um,

They have players unions have expressed a concern as well. An NFL PA rep attended and testified in that regional congressional hearing. They talked about the harassment aspect that their athletes are facing and just in general what they believe sports betting is doing to the game in terms of corrupting the game. We've only seen one instance, the John Tate Porter incident.

NBA betting scandal where we have a proven admitted person to manipulating his performance, uh, for gambling purposes. Uh, maybe there will be more that come out certainly. Um, but again, uh,

you know, we had sports betting before legalization. And if this stuff was going on, which there were numerous point shaving scandals throughout college basketball, there was a Tim Donahue NBA refereeing scandal. So some of these scandals that were happening before legalization, certainly there's going to be some here in the, in the future. But now we can see it, right? We can see when there's an unusual amount of money bet on a small conference basketball game. Whereas in the past,

When it was all done through unregulated bookmakers, offshore guys or local country club guys, they're not really apt to open up their books and say, hey, something unusual is going on here. You know, can we just explain what happened in this Jante case where he just what did he do?

So John T. Porter was a kind of a reserve center on the Toronto Raptors. He was a G League player. He would come up and play for the NBA and part time he would be in the G League. Well, he admitted that he got in debt to some bookmakers and agreed with to them that he was going to remove himself from games twice, once in January and once in March. He was going to remove himself calling, saying, hey, I'm hurt or I'm sick.

At that same time, those bettors placed a lot of bets on the unders on Jonte Porter's prop bets. There were some big, big bets on there. There was an $80,000 parlay that had the under of his points, the under on his assist, the under on his rebound, and so forth. Eventually, that kind of stuff sticks out in the regulated market. People are like, wait, why is so much money coming in on this kind of lower-level unknown player?

And so it leads to an investigation. Jaunte Porter has pled guilty to conspiracy charges and four or five men have now been arrested and charged in the case. Thanks for that. So people can kind of know the real world situation there. Let's bring in Emily in Berkeley. Welcome, Emily.

Hi, thanks for taking the call. I was hoping to get back to this question about young men and specifically boys. I'm the mother of a teenage boy, and I've noticed that participation in the sports betting apps is very prevalent amongst him and his friends. First of all, it seems that it's very easy for people to get involved.

accounts, even if they're underage. And then second, what I was really curious about is that I've noticed that the apps themselves are so gamified. It seems like they really are set up

to function pretty much like video games as if they really are targeting these underage teens. And I'm just curious if the commentators have anything to say about that and whether there might be any kind of legal repercussions from that. I certainly hope so. I really would like for these companies to be held accountable for the damage that they're doing. Jenny Funn?

Yeah, as far as gamification goes, one example I found so incredible was, I think it was Underdog, the daily fantasy operator. They added this swipe right, swipe left feature to pick the players you want to add to your lineup, just like a dating app. So yeah, they're really also removing a lot of the lingo, some of the more complicated ways of expressing odds, barriers to entry for a lot of casual fans, and I assume fans

They wouldn't say this, I wouldn't accuse it, but naturally young people who might not understand what a team being minus 180 odds is, but might know, oh, if I risk this, I stand to make 80% of what I risk, that's a little bit more coherent and understandable. So making it as...

as possible. There's no question that whether it's minors, definitely young men are the target audience. I just talked to a lot of teachers, students, sports coaches. It's clear if you talk to anyone at a high school that kids are finding ways to bet in all sorts of ways. Sometimes just...

An older relative or friend gives them access to their account. Sometimes they're using these companies that offer like a pseudo version of gambling that still allows you to risk real money. But yeah, they're a more vulnerable population. And I think if when we're talking about, well, states and the federal government crack down, if I had to bet, that would be one of the places that's most likely to face some repercussions are these ways of making gambling accessible to young people. Yeah.

Let's take Pat in San Francisco. Welcome, Pat. Hi. Thanks for taking the call. The one I wanted to make was I don't think abstinence is any way to solve a problem, right? Like for alcohol, we can acknowledge that.

It's okay in moderation to some extent, right? But some have a tendency or a leaning to get addicted to and or the fatality and dangerousness of driving while under the influence. But if we just said, so no one can have alcohol, that takes away the conversation of, hey, man, I think I'm struggling having, you know, I can't stop after one drink. I keep drinking. And so now no one can talk about it.

I get that there are I am in that target market for gambling. I'm a young man. Right. And I do. Well, hypothetically, I could bet with some buddies and it'd be all right.

But there's a conversation now. Hey, man, I can't stop betting. I need to get this money back. And all right, let's talk about you might have a problem with it. If we just say gambling is going to kill you, it's bad. That's not going to solve the issue of, hey, man, some people struggle with that. Some people don't. But let's talk about it. So thank you. Yeah. Yeah, Pat. No, I really, really appreciate that perspective. I mean, there's a...

We did try prohibition in this country with alcohol. We've tried it with marijuana. There is – it's not as clear-cut as it seems for some people that if you just ban a thing, it goes away. I mean, Ryan Rodenberg, what evidence have you seen about, I guess, the conversation changing that maybe what we're seeing isn't just –

a rise in problem gambling, but maybe people understanding more about problem gambling when you have sports betting kind of move above board.

The caller made certainly a germane point, and it really speaks to how sports betting has changed the narrative in terms of how people consume sports. And you notice this is certainly reflected in the advertisements as well. As opposed to actually participating in a sport, a lot of the ads certainly make it appear that the gamblers themselves have somehow interjected themselves into the sporting event themselves through their wagers, whether it's the

traditional pre-game bets like older people tend to make or the or the in-game bets the micro betting as the game's going on but it really speaks to how individuals consume sports and on the flip side I mean there are now sports being developed and being marketed just to provide content for the betting markets and that's something that just I never previously saw as a researcher. Yeah

You know, David over on the Discord writes, you know, as an old head who watches or listens to some game or another most every day of the year, I hate the way I consume sports when I have a bet on it, so I don't. Yes, I have some moral misgivings, but that is not what stops me. As an old school fan, I do not enjoy sitting with someone who has bet on the game. It's no longer if the team wins or loses, but if they win or lose their bet individually.

And hence, I do not have the same shared experience or camaraderie with my fellow fans if they have a bet on the game."

I would say, someone who, obviously, like many men in this country, has played fantasy football or other things, Danny Funt, I mean, honestly, that particular thing of essentially breaking apart the teams as they are in the real world and reassembling your own team in a fantasy context and then you're rooting for players, not the team that you grew up with or that you're a fan of, it does feel like that started to break apart something about the way that sports fandom worked.

Don't you think? Absolutely. And as you alluded to, that's been going on so much longer than the sports betting boom with fantasy making people interested in all sorts of players and teams that they never would have cared about beforehand.

It's tough because, you know, we talked about Senator Bill Bradley. He was such an unapologetic sentimentalist about these ideas of you should be watching players for the excellence of sports and for the values that, you know, sports convey to its audience.

And it's, does this cheapen or diminish that if you're only focused on whether you're winning or losing money, the caller or the writer made me think of a, there's a wonderful profile in GQ of the late comedian, Norm MacDonald, who was a big gambler. And I think he would say a big problem gambler. And it describes him watching a basketball game that goes to overtime. And then the team he bet on fails to cover the spread by like one point. And he's just so miserable. And

And afterward, he turns to the journalist and says, man, that would have been a really fun game to watch if we didn't have any money on it. And I think, yeah, definitely gambling makes you care more, can make you feel like you're invested in the games like you never were before. But it can also kind of muddy the reasons we care in the first place. And that's something that even people who enjoy betting grapple with. Yeah, I mean, my own just like taste,

tiny annoyance about the way that this has changed sports media is the everyone calling the starting quarterback QB1. I feel like that started in fantasy or at least started to be something that sports fans said in fantasy and then it like moved across into the way that people talk about actual play and for some reason every time I see it on ESPN or whatever I'm always like, oh god, this feels wrong.

One more serious point, Ryan Rodenberg, a listener writes in to say, you know, I feel like this is akin to cannabis legalization, you know, supposed to bring drug use into the light, get rid of the black market. But that didn't happen with pot. It's not happening at least entirely with gambling. And this listener says, I'm curious if legalization has at least brought tax revenue to the states, which is probably actually a large reason why many of them have decided to legalize it.

It certainly has. Some of the actual numbers may be smaller than what was proposed when legalization was working its way through individual state houses. But every state that has legalized certainly has reportable numbers in terms of tax revenue that comes from sports betting. It's too early to tell whether that's just a complete substitution effect in terms of

People who previously bet in an illegal market now betting in a legal market or if it's brand new sports bettors that never previously participated in gambling, that needs to be teased out more later. But states do report those numbers. Some states, it's quite robust. States have wildly different types of tax rates.

Other states, it's quite modest. And some states say perhaps we maybe overestimated the amount of revenue this would actually bring in. But it's been much like the patchwork of laws that have been enacted. It's all over the map at this point. More grist for the research mill.

David Purdom, as someone, again, who's really been there from the beginning of the rise of this particular era of sports betting, if you had to look out 10 years from now, do you think every sports league will essentially have gone full betting enabled and the whole second screen experience of betting on every single little thing? Or do you think there's a possibility that there'll actually be a pullback on sports betting?

Well, I think we're already there mostly with the sports leagues buy-in. There is already same-screen betting. There is a new technology coming out that you'll see this year where little tabs will be above Patrick Mahomes' head, and you'll be able to click on that on your phone, and it'll pop up with all the different bets that you can take. So, yeah, we're already there. I think the pullback that mostly we're going to see is in the advertising realm.

I think eventually we will see some sort of federal restrictions put on that states will be forced to adopt if they want to offer sports betting strictly on the advertising. And I guess I wanted to make one more point here. It is of note that, you know, we did see an influx, an increase.

of calls to problem gambling centers after legalization happened. But Keith White at the National Council on Problem Gambling at that congressional hearing that I brought up, he mentioned that their data is starting to show a level off, that maybe we were starting to see some sort of adjustment by society. And anytime you bring this illicit activity

out of the underground into this regulated market, society kind of struggles to see what can I do? What are the dangers? What are not the dangers? What can we do? So I think we're kind of in that adaption period a little bit. Hopefully people will figure out what they can and what the dangers are. We've been talking about the sports betting industry and how it is changing sports. We've been talking with David Pert. I'm a writer with ESPN. Thank you so much.

You got to enjoy it. Yeah. Also been joined by Danny Funt. Look out for his book, Everybody Loses. Thanks, Danny. Pleasure. And Florida State's Ryan Rodenberg. Thank you so much for joining us. You're welcome.

The 9 o'clock hour forum is produced by Grace Wan and Blanca Torres. Our intern is Brian Vo. Jennifer Ng and Aisling are engagement producers. Francesca Fenzi is our digital community producer. Judy Campbell is lead producer. Danny Bringer is our engineer. Katie Springer is the operations manager of KQED Podcast. Our vice president of news is Ethan Toven-Lindsey, and our chief content officer is Holly Kernan. I'm Alexis Madrigal. Stay tuned for another hour of Forum Ahead with Mina Kim.

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