Speaker 1: Al Zone Media.
Speaker 2: Hello and welcome to Better Offline. I am your host
Speaker 2: ed Ziitrum. We are sitting in my living room and
Speaker 2: we're going to talk about sports gambling today. Now at
Speaker 2: sports Gambling, we're focusing on the US because this is
Speaker 2: a US focus podcast. There is a hell of a
Speaker 2: lot of weird shit in England where I grew up,
Speaker 2: and in Europe at large with gambling. We have to
Speaker 2: focus somewhere. We're going to focus on the US. Now.
Speaker 2: We are in my living room in Las Vegas because
Speaker 2: it's the Super Bowl Sunday weekend. That was a great
Speaker 2: sentence that we're keeping. But nevertheless, I have another podcast.
Speaker 2: I have an NFL podcast football podcast called the Sixty
Speaker 2: Minute Drill, and I'm joined today by my co hosts
Speaker 2: on that podcast. To my left is a Refassan of
Speaker 2: Wide Left. Hello, and to my right is Caleb Wilson
Speaker 2: of Western Kabuki.
Speaker 3: Happy to be here.
Speaker 2: Okay, So the reason I wanted to focus on this
Speaker 2: because those out I know this is happening in Europe
Speaker 2: as well, but in America we've seen this insidious intrusion
Speaker 2: of sports gambling apps into modern life. Now, if you're
Speaker 2: not sports van are actually really gonna take great pains
Speaker 2: to explain why this is an important thing, but also
Speaker 2: why people like sports in general, so that you can
Speaker 2: understand how insidious this whole thing is. So for the uninitiative,
Speaker 2: for people that don't watch sports, you will literally be
Speaker 2: watching basketball and you will get a strip at the
Speaker 2: bottom that says the odds on particular plays. You'll see
Speaker 2: this across every sport now, and it used to be
Speaker 2: at least or if maybe you can enlighten a little
Speaker 2: on this as well, it used to be that you
Speaker 2: couldn't just start gambling by having a phone. There was
Speaker 2: a you had to like go to a casino and
Speaker 2: say it up.
Speaker 1: Yeah, no, that was the that was the whole setup.
Speaker 1: It's more complicated than that because of the way that
Speaker 1: we've defined sports gambling and how it doesn't include fantasy sports.
Speaker 1: But pre twenty sixteen, you know, you couldn't really go
Speaker 1: on your phone right gamble really quickly unless you knew
Speaker 1: a couple of work around. There's exceptions to every rule,
Speaker 1: but yeah, for the most part, it wasn't normalized to
Speaker 1: be able to just very quickly bet on aline.
Speaker 2: And now you can just bet money because you have
Speaker 2: an iPhone and a debit.
Speaker 1: Con yeah, and well some connect directly to your bank account.
Speaker 2: Oh good.
Speaker 1: Most places will connect to a credit card or a
Speaker 1: debit card. You can connect some of them directly to
Speaker 1: a PayPal account. It's very convenient, and this is probably
Speaker 1: going to be a theme throughout the episode. But it's
Speaker 1: frictionless in many ways. And so you can navigate through
Speaker 1: these apps that have these like bright colors and haptic
Speaker 1: feedback and all of these wonderful reward mechanisms we'll talk
Speaker 1: about and instantly deposit, you know, twenty five dollars, bet
Speaker 1: that twenty five dollars, lose that twenty five dollars, and
Speaker 1: then do it again, all in this span of like
Speaker 1: five seconds.
Speaker 2: And is there, like age verification, is there any efforts
Speaker 2: to do like anything to stop people underage?
Speaker 1: For gambling apps, there are. For fantasy apps, there typically are,
Speaker 1: but not universe.
Speaker 2: It's the separation between a gambling and a fantasy app.
Speaker 1: It is an entirely legal distinction. In my opinion, I
Speaker 1: think that there isn't much of a difference. But fantasy
Speaker 1: is legal in different states than gambling is, and so
Speaker 1: a fantasy app is trying to distinguish itself legally from
Speaker 1: like a gambling product by offering kind of the things
Speaker 1: that are traditionally scored in fantasy football. And then they're
Speaker 1: kind of expanding beyond that. But let's say that for now.
Speaker 1: So you know, hey, I imagine you know that Patrick
Speaker 1: Mahomes will pass for over two hundred and twenty five
Speaker 1: yards in this sanse.
Speaker 2: The quarterback from the quarterback from Kansas City League quarterback,
Speaker 2: the guy who throws the ball, guy catches the ball
Speaker 2: for him. Two hundred yards would be the completed the completed.
Speaker 1: Yardage of those successful passes. And so you know this,
Speaker 1: this fantasy app will be like, hey, do you think
Speaker 1: it's more than or less than that? You go, well,
Speaker 1: I think he's very good, so go more then, and
Speaker 1: then you can't actually play a bet on that exactly
Speaker 1: otherwise that would be gambling. So you have to pair
Speaker 1: it with another pick. They call them picks and bets.
Speaker 1: And so you'd say, well, alongside that, I think that
Speaker 1: Jalen Hurts, the opposing quarterback for the Philadelphia Eagles in
Speaker 1: this week's Super Bowl. You know, I think he'll pass
Speaker 1: for over one hundred and ninety yards, right, And so
Speaker 1: you combine those two and maybe three, four, five however, right,
Speaker 1: and that is your pick them for that week, and
Speaker 1: you submit it. You put like, let's help, put twenty
Speaker 1: dollars on it, and you've got a couple of ways
Speaker 1: to do it. In gambling, they would call them, you know,
Speaker 1: parlays or teasers, but in fantasy, you just get like
Speaker 1: their flex picks or all.
Speaker 2: And you're just betting on what a plan might do effectively.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and you can do that in gambling, yeah, with
Speaker 1: real money. That's it. And so the fantasy distinction is
Speaker 1: that you cannot pick multiple players on the same team
Speaker 1: without adding another player on a different team.
Speaker 2: Oh, so they find a way to make it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So it's definitely not gambling. It's just fantasy. So
Speaker 1: you have to have multiple teams and you can't just
Speaker 1: bet on one single outcome. I'm sorry, you can't pick
Speaker 1: one single.
Speaker 2: Outcome, right, And this is all they're trying to pretend
Speaker 2: it's skill based. Then correct, Very cool. So one of
Speaker 2: the things I wanted to get into as well is
Speaker 2: why people give a shit about this? So for them
Speaker 2: not We have a lot of nonsports listeners and I'm
Speaker 2: very very aware of this and I don't want anyone
Speaker 2: to think this is going to be an hour of
Speaker 2: us just talking about like really specific sports stuff. In fact,
Speaker 2: I kind of want to explain to people who aren't
Speaker 2: in sports, white people give a shit so much, Why
Speaker 2: is why do you love sport? Like, what is the
Speaker 2: thing that gets you excited about this and how does
Speaker 2: that kind of lead into this sports sports gambling world.
Speaker 3: Kayla, Well, for me, I mean there's a lot you
Speaker 3: know in I guess as broadly as possible, we're in
Speaker 3: one of the most lonely times in human history, right.
Speaker 3: This is one form of entertaining as opposed to something
Speaker 3: like you know, reading a book or watching a TV show.
Speaker 3: These are predominant things that you do alone. When you're
Speaker 3: watching sports, particularly when you go to a game or
Speaker 3: to tailgating, you're doing something that's that's communal in nature.
Speaker 3: You're doing something that builds tradition. I think that anybody
Speaker 3: who doesn't maybe they don't dislike sports, but they just
Speaker 3: don't understand it. Go tailgating one time.
Speaker 2: Immediately it will click for you and tell gettang full.
Speaker 2: The European Listeners is actually kind of a fun thing
Speaker 2: where you just outside the stadium, drink a bunch and
Speaker 2: eat a bunch. Yeah. People set up like grills and
Speaker 2: smoke and it's very communal, like.
Speaker 3: When there's no money involved. It's like people just do this.
Speaker 3: They spend thousands of dollars dollars off their own money
Speaker 3: just to build social bonds.
Speaker 2: Into and deadly serious. So when I went to Penns
Speaker 2: nine in two thousand and five, I remember just walking
Speaker 2: around kind of confused. I was like, genuinely was like
Speaker 2: do I pay? And I walked up to someone who
Speaker 2: just had like a roast suckling pig and I'm like, wow,
Speaker 2: what is that? He goes it's a pig. I'm like,
Speaker 2: oh yeah, I mean and he and he was like
Speaker 2: do you want some? I'm like what what? Sure? They're
Speaker 2: like okay, and they like made me like a pile
Speaker 2: of meat and they were like cool. And then they
Speaker 2: just kind of turned away from me, like not in
Speaker 2: a rude way, but they.
Speaker 1: Went by, like I've done with this time.
Speaker 2: They just gave this random person food. But I like
Speaker 2: the tailgate example because it's the same thing in like
Speaker 2: a bar. It's like a thing you will get upset
Speaker 2: about together.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, no, absolutely, And one thing that I find
Speaker 1: kind of interesting, like you compared it to you know,
Speaker 1: it's more communal than watching television. One thing that that
Speaker 1: kind of a recall is you know how excited everyone
Speaker 1: was for like the weekly release of like Game of
Speaker 1: Thrones whenever that episode came out. And that was somewhat
Speaker 1: unique because now that we're in a streaming error, people
Speaker 1: don't that's like gone, yeah, and so people don't experience
Speaker 1: shows in real time, but sports are always experienced in
Speaker 1: real time. So even if you're not going to a
Speaker 1: bar or the stadium or tailgate whatever, you are experiencing
Speaker 1: it with an online community in real time reacting to
Speaker 1: the same things.
Speaker 3: Rightyeah, Well that's that was going to bring in maybe
Speaker 3: to my next point, like it's semiotics in a way.
Speaker 3: That's like I can in my office put a football
Speaker 3: on my you know, on my on my desk or
Speaker 3: behind my desk or whatever, and somebody that comes in,
Speaker 3: they'll know, oh ye a Seahawks fan whatever they am,
Speaker 3: and then immediately any tension it involved in a professional
Speaker 3: reaction is reduced. This is a person that I can
Speaker 3: have a normal human conversation with that I might not
Speaker 3: otherwise be able to have yeah.
Speaker 1: I think a lot of our social bonds are defined
Speaker 1: and identified in ways that this is going to sound
Speaker 1: so like basic like separate people, right, And it's not
Speaker 1: separate as in so division, but as in you know,
Speaker 1: you either identify with this or you don't, right, is
Speaker 1: that Pokey?
Speaker 2: Yes? That you well, now we are also joined by Pokey,
Speaker 2: one of my Bengal cats.
Speaker 1: Very adorable, beautiful, also mischievous. Oh yes, but yeah, like
Speaker 1: a lot of our our our social bonds or through
Speaker 1: these groups identities, but the identities are generally pretty harsh categories, right,
Speaker 1: you know, male, female, right, Which is not to suggest
Speaker 1: right that you know you can't be friends with men
Speaker 1: or women, but rather that this is not an area
Speaker 1: that typically you cross the social boundary and have some
Speaker 1: shared experiences. It's kind of like an all or nothing thing,
Speaker 1: and a lot of our stratifications of identity kind of
Speaker 1: fit along those lines in a lot of ways. But
Speaker 1: with sports, you've got kind of this like ladder of
Speaker 1: identity that you can find at some point some level
Speaker 1: of connection. It can either be you know, hey, we
Speaker 1: have the same favorite player on the same favorite team.
Speaker 1: Let's talk about you know how cool Patrick Mahomes is
Speaker 1: or whatever right, Or you can go up a level
Speaker 1: and say, hey, we're both Chiefs fans, let's talk about
Speaker 1: how cool it is to be Chiefs fans, or you know,
Speaker 1: up a level and say, hey we both love football.
Speaker 1: Let's talk about you know whatever, right, And you can
Speaker 1: get broader and broader and it creates something you always
Speaker 1: have a level of conversation about. But you always immediately
Speaker 1: can you know where the other person is coming from right,
Speaker 1: which is invaluable I think in a lot of social interactions.
Speaker 2: And I would say like I got into sports pretty
Speaker 2: much because of the Internet. Casey Kagawa, the fifth Beatle
Speaker 2: of Better Offline, He's talked over many ideas. He also
Speaker 2: got me into baseball. And I got into football because
Speaker 2: I went to Penn State and the people around me
Speaker 2: all wanted to do stuff on Saturday or leave me
Speaker 2: at home. So I wanted to go to Penn State.
Speaker 2: I want to go to Penn State football. I was
Speaker 2: made to but the sport. But I got into baseball
Speaker 2: almost entirely online. Like it was. Casey took me to games,
Speaker 2: but he would send me YouTube after YouTube and help
Speaker 2: me discover things like foolish baseball. Bailey is a legend outstanding,
Speaker 2: incredible channel, and I don't even like baseball. I like
Speaker 2: that channel and the way that this is computers, by
Speaker 2: the way listeners is. I did not grow up in America.
Speaker 2: I moved here in two thousand and eight. I did
Speaker 2: a year in Penn State, so all of my understanding
Speaker 2: of baseball in particular is completely digital. Like Ricky Henderson,
Speaker 2: who recently passed one of the greatest players of all time,
Speaker 2: no fucking clue who he was. I had no idea.
Speaker 2: I had no idea who that was. He's so incredible
Speaker 2: And the only reason I will ever be able to
Speaker 2: see Ricky Henderson do anything is because foolish baseball Bailey
Speaker 2: over there pulled together every bit of footage of this
Speaker 2: guy who played in like the seventies and eighties, or
Speaker 2: maybe it was just the eighties eighties, Yeah, yeah, And
Speaker 2: I was able to discover this guy while looking at
Speaker 2: the stats online. And I feel like that has kind
Speaker 2: of deepened the numerous ways people can access sports and
Speaker 2: get into sports and connect thus connect with other people.
Speaker 2: I mean, the Reddit communities can be very funny or
Speaker 2: they can be terrible.
Speaker 3: Some variants.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but I think it's something that I love trying
Speaker 2: to explain sports to people that don't watch them more
Speaker 2: like them or don't understand them, which leads them one
Speaker 2: or the other, because it's like there's something genuinely lovely
Speaker 2: about it that has It's brought a lot to my
Speaker 2: life despite me being like very much a computer person.
Speaker 3: Yeah yeah, well there are like say, you're listening to
Speaker 3: this in your cynical and that doesn't that has not
Speaker 3: sold you on this. There are still like just utilitarian
Speaker 3: social reasons that sports are important too for young people.
Speaker 3: I mean, study after study after study shows that kids
Speaker 3: that are involved in team sports or team based activities
Speaker 3: always almost across the board, have better outcomes in life
Speaker 3: because they're taught things like cooperation and you know, all
Speaker 3: the things that you would learn in sports or other
Speaker 3: you know, team based activities. But beyond that, you know,
Speaker 3: sports is like the frontlines always for social issues. Yes,
Speaker 3: historically that people don't really understand marginalized groups that don't
Speaker 3: have a voice in politics. You are, you know, a
Speaker 3: black man or a woman. None of your elected officials
Speaker 3: look like you. They don't represent your interests. All you
Speaker 3: have is if you're Muhammad Ali, you can use your
Speaker 3: platform to avoid the draft. You can do Colin Kaepernick
Speaker 3: and take a knee, the US women's soccer team fighting
Speaker 3: for equal pay. These are things that happen in sports
Speaker 3: because they can't necessarily happen in other avenues.
Speaker 2: Right, And it's and I think it makes sports important
Speaker 2: to people on a level that things like the computer
Speaker 2: will never be, though I personally approve in that differently
Speaker 2: with this podcast, I feel like you get the same
Speaker 2: attachments maybe to like Marvel comics or something, or like
Speaker 2: whatever fandoms they may be. But sports, I feel like
Speaker 2: goes like one level deeper because you can have a
Speaker 2: history with the team, and the team can have a history,
Speaker 2: and you can have a history with friends as a
Speaker 2: result of watching like case And for example, my experience
Speaker 2: of baseball has been colored very heavily by like the
Speaker 2: last five or six years of Dodgers baseball. As Casey
Speaker 2: has desperately tried to educate me, I now get it.
Speaker 2: I now fully get the game. This poor guy, I mean,
Speaker 2: I would bring him to baseball game. So yeah, But
Speaker 2: it's that is something that I will always have with
Speaker 2: one of my best friends. I love so much. And
Speaker 2: I feel like sports is singlely unique with them.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Well, especially as as Kyler mentioned, we're like entering
Speaker 1: this period of increasing social isolation. There's all kinds of
Speaker 1: data on how unlikely it is that we're going to
Speaker 1: interact with people in real life in social spaces in
Speaker 1: a lot of ways. And I think that that, you know,
Speaker 1: all plays a really significant role. But to speak to
Speaker 1: Taka's point about like social progress and stuff like that,
Speaker 1: I think people have an understanding of like these are
Speaker 1: historical moments, but they don't always necessarily place them on
Speaker 1: a timeline, right, So like, for example, Jackie Robinson spearheaded
Speaker 1: the integration of baseball in nineteen forty seven.
Speaker 2: And what was the instgration of baseball?
Speaker 1: Just to Yeah, so for a long time in baseball only,
Speaker 1: especially at the professional level, but for most of the
Speaker 1: minor leagues.
Speaker 2: I'm also going to say, I'm going to guess you're
Speaker 2: going to say a word beginning with en at some
Speaker 2: point with this, And I want to be very clear
Speaker 2: that when aarif says this, he is referring to a
Speaker 2: specific thing.
Speaker 1: Yes, we'll get there. Yes, I just.
Speaker 2: Wanted a real war.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but there was a color barrier in Major League
Speaker 1: baseball that prevented people of color, but specifically black people
Speaker 1: from playing baseball. This was enforced mostly from my understanding,
Speaker 1: without a rule. It was just everyone had an understanding.
Speaker 2: Everyone agreed.
Speaker 1: Yeah, everyone just kind of agreed we were employing. And so,
Speaker 1: you know, with a lot of talented black baseball players
Speaker 1: that were playing in the Negro leagues, in which there's
Speaker 1: a Negro League Museum and Baseball Reference and a couple
Speaker 1: of other statistical organizations have finally started recognizing those as
Speaker 1: official professional statistics.
Speaker 2: Right, and they did a realignment of all the stats,
Speaker 2: like there's two black players who were better than Tykob
Speaker 2: who was one of the most racist men to walk
Speaker 2: the f It's beautiful, it's wonderful.
Speaker 1: But yeah, so Jackie Robinson spirit hit of the integration
Speaker 1: of Major League baseball in nineteen forty seven, which is.
Speaker 2: And how did he do that? Just fun? Did he like,
Speaker 2: like what did he do to spit.
Speaker 1: When he started at first base? But yeah, I mean, oh,
Speaker 1: he's just that well, I mean, he was an outstanding player.
Speaker 1: He's one of the best players we've ever seen, and statistically,
Speaker 1: you know whatever, But no, I mean I think was
Speaker 1: it was it. It was the Kansas City Monarchs. And
Speaker 1: then it was the was it the Dodgers? Are we Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was the Bokland Dodgers. Yeah, you mentioned the Dodgers,
Speaker 1: and the Dodgers came out of my mind, like am
Speaker 1: I remembering that just because? No, it was the Brooklyn Doughters.
Speaker 1: So the Brooklyn Dodgers decided like hey, you know, like
Speaker 1: I'm not a historian on this particular topic, but the
Speaker 1: Brooklyn Dodgers decided that this would be the time to
Speaker 1: bring in a black baseball player.
Speaker 2: And so capitalism, Yeah, no, that.
Speaker 1: Definitely was a big part of it. And there's a
Speaker 1: whole history about you know, Jackie Robinsons approach. They were
Speaker 1: very particular about the player they selected. We don't need
Speaker 1: to get into that. Nevertheless, though it was twenty years
Speaker 1: prior to a lot of the stuff we associate with
Speaker 1: the civil rights movement in the nineteen the mid nineteen sixties, right,
Speaker 1: And I think a lot of that is just because
Speaker 1: that's the the locus of a lot of social change
Speaker 1: can occur prior to you know, the way people understanding
Speaker 1: the mainstream in sporting arenas, right, And I think that
Speaker 1: a lot of people always attempt to just aggregate kind
Speaker 1: of social movements and sports without understanding that sports are
Speaker 1: not just you know, embedded in the culture of society
Speaker 1: and the fabric of society, but very often can be
Speaker 1: like Canaritians in the coal mine for social change.
Speaker 2: It kind of feels like that's where the whole horrifying
Speaker 2: attack on trans athletes is really is really making it like, Yes,
Speaker 2: and by the way, if you agree that trans athletes
Speaker 2: shouldn't be in sports, I have another idea for you.
Speaker 2: So if you've followed my lost constructions, you should be
Speaker 2: in your garage in your car now. I want to
Speaker 2: make sure those windows are up. Check all those windows now,
Speaker 2: and I want you to turn the ignition now. You
Speaker 2: may start feeling sleepy. That means that it's working now
Speaker 2: moving on, I feel like and the reason I really
Speaker 2: wanted to explain what makes people love sports?
Speaker 1: There's one more.
Speaker 2: Oh no, no, sorry, sorry now that I've threatened some people,
Speaker 2: Please continue.
Speaker 1: No. One of the things that really appeals to me
Speaker 1: about sports is that it is one of the ultimate
Speaker 1: storytelling art forms. And you can attach yourself to a
Speaker 1: team or a player, or a larger league wide trend, whatever.
Speaker 1: But what's really cool about sports is that it constantly
Speaker 1: creates storylines, tensions, and conflicts that people can follow along
Speaker 1: and enjoy, not just in real time, which always has
Speaker 1: like this added kind of you know when it comes
Speaker 1: to storytelling, but it is truly unpredictable. Like we know
Speaker 1: about tropes in storytelling, and very often you can read
Speaker 1: a very good book and you recognize a trope and
Speaker 1: understand the direction that they.
Speaker 2: Even headed in even some modern writing kind of like
Speaker 2: is affected by fandoms.
Speaker 1: Right exactly, and not that like tropes are bad are
Speaker 1: a necessary, you know, element of writing, but it can
Speaker 1: impact your experience because you know the direction that the
Speaker 1: writing is going to be headed in, right, just because
Speaker 1: you're familiar with the tropes, right, and tropes are unavoidable
Speaker 1: in writings. Is not about that, but rather that we
Speaker 1: can identify tropes in sports, but that doesn't mean we
Speaker 1: know what the conclusion of this story is going to be.
Speaker 1: And so when you see someone you know kind of
Speaker 1: struggle through a lots which teams five or six times
Speaker 1: or you know whatever and accomplish you know, this remarkable
Speaker 1: dream or this goal which can be you know, winning
Speaker 1: the Super Bowl. Of course that's like the classic example,
Speaker 1: but some of the best stories are the guy made
Speaker 1: the team right like it's like, there are some really
Speaker 1: outstanding stories where it's like, you know, this person, you
Speaker 1: know went to a junior college because he didn't have
Speaker 1: the grades to make it because of the system he
Speaker 1: grew up in just didn't give him access to the
Speaker 1: resources he needs to get good grades. Goes to junior college,
Speaker 1: gets good grades there, transfer to, you know, a Division
Speaker 1: two school, and a Division two school for people unfamiliar,
Speaker 1: are essentially multiple levels below the level that typically NFL
Speaker 1: athletes come from. But you know, maybe they go to
Speaker 1: a Division two school or Division three school where they're
Speaker 1: barely even any athletic scholarships at all, and you know,
Speaker 1: they grind it out, they work hard, they're an outstanding
Speaker 1: star player for their program, and it comes time to
Speaker 1: declare for the draft. They declare for the draft a team.
Speaker 1: No team drafts them, you know, because there's only two
Speaker 1: hundred and fifty six odd picks in the NFL Draft,
Speaker 1: and so then they have to advocate for themselves as
Speaker 1: a potentially undrafted free agent. These are people that get
Speaker 1: a lot less consideration when it comes to making the
Speaker 1: team make a lot less money. It's much more difficult.
Speaker 2: A lot of them making it through a professional team
Speaker 2: is extremely unlikely.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and so they make what's called the ninety man roster,
Speaker 1: and from the ninety man roster they cut down to
Speaker 1: the fifty three man roster. And that process is onerous.
Speaker 1: And maybe you know that first year, that guy, you know,
Speaker 1: that guy from co college or whatever, doesn't make the team,
Speaker 1: but he makes this supplementary practice squad. And then the
Speaker 1: next year he gets another opportunity the attentry to make
Speaker 1: the team. He makes the team. And that's the whole story,
Speaker 1: and it rules.
Speaker 3: Can I interject with my favorite example of that.
Speaker 2: Just make sure it's like really simple.
Speaker 3: For Yeah, the Griffin brothers in Seattle, Oh, twin brothers
Speaker 3: and Shaquille. Yes, the Shakim is he's disabled, it doesn't
Speaker 3: have a he doesn't have a hand, a right hand
Speaker 3: with the physical disability, still makes the roster. Twin brothers
Speaker 3: both on the Seahawks. Wonderful story.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: And when when Shaquille was deciding which college to because
Speaker 1: they both went to UCF, right, yeah, uh deciding so, yeah,
Speaker 1: deciding which college to go to, he said, you have
Speaker 1: to offer my twin brother, Shakim otherwise I'm not going
Speaker 1: And so he was like a four star recruit or
Speaker 1: something like that, which, again for people who are unfamiliar,
Speaker 1: there's you know, three four and five star recruits. Five
Speaker 1: star recruits get recruited by the blue bloods Alabama, Georgia, whoever,
Speaker 1: and at the time you get a ton of under
Speaker 1: the table money. Now you just get over the table money. Fantastic,
Speaker 1: as they should. Yeah, but like you know, there are
Speaker 1: several hundreds of thousands of dollars ventually that these big
Speaker 1: programs can offer. And he said, no, I'm playing with
Speaker 1: my brother. That's key, and UCF was like, yeah, we'll
Speaker 1: play both of them. And Shaquima was a really good
Speaker 1: player at the college level too, so like it turned
Speaker 1: out to be a great event, But that wasn't the reason.
Speaker 1: It was because the team wanted to respect Shakiel and
Speaker 1: they're like, well, if there's a there's a spot for
Speaker 1: Chaquem on our program, you know certainly he can play,
Speaker 1: and he played his way into a spot. He's actually
Speaker 1: one of the more unique players and not going to
Speaker 1: get into that that has nothing to do with his hand.
Speaker 1: One of the more unique players just from the way
Speaker 1: that he plays and then you know, he goes to
Speaker 1: a college all star game, the Senior Bowl, and they're like, well,
Speaker 1: we'll see what you can do. We'll play you at
Speaker 1: this position, this position, this position, this position, because you
Speaker 1: have a really unique body type. We don't really know
Speaker 1: what to do with that. And you know, they're playing
Speaker 1: him in coverage and the quarterbacks are doing their job.
Speaker 1: It feels cruel, but you got to do it. They're
Speaker 1: throwing at his coverage at the hand that he's missing
Speaker 1: to see how he handles not playing with the full
Speaker 1: extension that you normally get. And you know, he impresses
Speaker 1: the scouts enough that he ends up making the Seahawks
Speaker 1: with his brother Sequille. It's outstanding.
Speaker 3: That might be a little bit into the weeds, but
Speaker 3: he worked really well of Seattle scheme because of that
Speaker 3: kind of hybrid linebacker type.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, it's a it's a it's a body type
Speaker 1: because in football, you have a bunch of different positions
Speaker 1: and there are kind of body types that tend to
Speaker 1: fit in those positions and they tend to be somewhat static,
Speaker 1: and so there's very few teams that can fit. So
Speaker 1: it was it was kind of like a perfect situation
Speaker 1: to find the right team culture in Seattle that would
Speaker 1: encourage that kind of thing, to find the right team
Speaker 1: that had basically a position available for the type of
Speaker 1: football that he played, and it emerges as this really
Speaker 1: wonderful story where.
Speaker 3: To be clear, by the way, neither of them are
Speaker 3: still in Seattle. Shaquilla is still playing was.
Speaker 1: He He's just played for the Vikings. His contract just
Speaker 1: ran out, so we'll see.
Speaker 3: Yeah, we'll see where he But point point being very
Speaker 3: short time together in Seattle, and it is still top
Speaker 3: five Seahawks moments for me because of just the narrative
Speaker 3: storytelling that you were getting at.
Speaker 2: And the thing is this depth is necessary understanding why
Speaker 2: people are so emotionally attached to these teams and why
Speaker 2: people have such cultural awareness to really explain how evil
Speaker 2: these apps are. Yeah, because you're not just it's not
Speaker 2: just like betting on numbers and the excitement of gambling.
Speaker 2: It's and this is a very very overwhelmingly wanky way
Speaker 2: of putting it, it's exerting control over something that you
Speaker 2: have even less control over than numbers than odds. So Caleb,
Speaker 2: you have and Reef, I know you've written some about
Speaker 2: this as well, but you've definitely complained a lot in
Speaker 2: our sports related group chat about these fucking ads as well.
Speaker 2: So describe some of these ads the way they target
Speaker 2: people for these sports betting apps.
Speaker 3: Well, I mean, it's kind of hard to pick one
Speaker 3: because it's such a deluge. It's everywhere now, and it
Speaker 3: seems like I just blinked and then it was there
Speaker 3: for context. I didn't want to interrupt a ref what
Speaker 3: you were saying earlier when you were explaining the fantasy stuff.
Speaker 3: I had no idea about any of that because none
Speaker 3: of this is even legal in Washington state. I have
Speaker 3: never done this. I've never been able to do this right,
Speaker 3: and up until I think it was yesterday when Crypto
Speaker 3: dot Com just said, you know what, I don't care
Speaker 3: about the laws in this on the state level. We're
Speaker 3: just going to start doing this. And so you're probably
Speaker 3: going to see ads for that on the Super Bowl today.
Speaker 3: I would imagine where they're like, yeah, we're just going
Speaker 3: to ignore the law and we're going to advertise to
Speaker 3: you cynically that you can just just do this now.
Speaker 1: Despite they offer a product that is, according to them,
Speaker 1: not gambling, which is why they can offer it in
Speaker 1: whatever state, but it functionally is gambling. It's also not fantasy,
Speaker 1: which is why they can offer a lot of But
Speaker 1: if you buy a token in whether or not a
Speaker 1: player will accomplish a particular goal or won't accomplish a
Speaker 1: particular goal, and then the token cashes out based off
Speaker 1: of the player's performance, which again is somehow not gambling.
Speaker 2: And on and on a real basic level, the way
Speaker 2: they kind of trick you into believing you have more
Speaker 2: control is saying, oh, you would pick a team. So
Speaker 2: in fact, we've kind of gone over this, but no,
Speaker 2: not hard to reaffirm it. Will you go, oh, I
Speaker 2: think that these guys will all score the most, Right,
Speaker 2: so you pick like Patrick Mahomes in the regular season,
Speaker 2: Patrick Mahomes wide receiver, running back and all them, and
Speaker 2: then you kind of submit that with a bet on it. Right.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Well, so there are like bets for game day, right,
Speaker 1: but there are season long bets, and there's there there
Speaker 1: is season long fantasy as well. But the way these
Speaker 1: ads are kind of marketing the concept of gaming on
Speaker 1: sports or whatever is just game day betting and sometimes
Speaker 1: even live betting in game.
Speaker 2: And that's and that's what the most of these were
Speaker 2: because it wasn't really clear to me, So just again
Speaker 2: to distinguish. There are the ones where you bet on outcomes,
Speaker 2: and then then then there were ones that you bet
Speaker 2: on whether you have chosen the correct amount of boys,
Speaker 2: like the correct guys that will score the most points.
Speaker 1: Well, again, I think they're both gambling and they almost cat.
Speaker 2: I'm just trying to delineate which one is the most like,
Speaker 2: which is the one that has penetrated so far.
Speaker 1: Like I would say more people are sick of fantasy
Speaker 1: ads because they've run for longer, but gambling ads have
Speaker 1: done a lot more in the past two years to
Speaker 1: saturate the market. But it's also kind of difficult to
Speaker 1: tell the difference between a fantasy ad and a gambling ad.
Speaker 1: I think most consumers that are.
Speaker 3: Just watching the people listening to this will not know
Speaker 3: the difference.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and so sorry. I actually came into this with
Speaker 2: a slight mistake, and this is a common one. I
Speaker 2: think I thought I didn't know that gambling gambling was
Speaker 2: so prevalent. I didn't. So it's how many states can
Speaker 2: you just boot up an app?
Speaker 1: I want to say, it's twenty one.
Speaker 2: That's insane.
Speaker 3: So now it's fifty.
Speaker 2: Well, okay, it's not ignoring regulation, but just to be
Speaker 2: clear to the listeners, non sports fans, sports fans are like,
Speaker 2: what we are discussing is that basically in twenty one states,
Speaker 2: anyone can pick up their phone and startling like they're
Speaker 2: in Vegas, specifically on the outcomes of sports events.
Speaker 3: This individual plays like in the time that it would
Speaker 3: take you to send a tweet, you can lose one
Speaker 3: hundred dollars.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so the last I looked at was twenty one. Now,
Speaker 1: mobile online sports betting is legal in thirty states plus DC,
Speaker 1: well thirty one states, but it's not yet operational in Missouri,
Speaker 1: and retail gambling, which is you have to physically go
Speaker 1: in in additional eight states.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so that is legal in Washington. I have to
Speaker 3: go to a place to gamble, and that's I guess
Speaker 3: that's a little you know city.
Speaker 2: So it's looking out for one hundred million people, oh easily. Yeah, well,
Speaker 2: especially because it includes New York and Florida.
Speaker 3: Oh god, we were talking about this earlier before we
Speaker 3: started recording. Ed you were in the other room, but
Speaker 3: I was reading about this today. Just today, one point
Speaker 3: five billion dollars will be bet that in the Super.
Speaker 2: Bowl, just on the apps are in general in general,
Speaker 2: in general, this is real rot economy share as well,
Speaker 2: because anyone can Campbell see you've got the system that's
Speaker 2: already not great. And the things you can bet on,
Speaker 2: just to be clear, aren't just like guy wins game
Speaker 2: or guy scores points. It's like the coin toss yet
Speaker 2: the level of well, absurdity like with the coin toss,
Speaker 2: but the level of absurdity and precision that on the
Speaker 2: things with which you can bet on or absurd and
Speaker 2: so some of them are just called novelty bets. And
Speaker 2: the coin toss, by the way, is who whether the
Speaker 2: coin will be heads or.
Speaker 1: Tails correct, or you can bet on who will win
Speaker 1: the coin toss, which in the same arts right.
Speaker 2: Great, So two bets on the coin yeah, ah.
Speaker 1: You've got well, and then there's you can there's correlated bets.
Speaker 1: So there's a I was offered when I logged under
Speaker 1: fan Duel earlier, I was offered a bet on Chiefs
Speaker 1: win the coin toss and the game.
Speaker 2: And when you say offered, how do you mean?
Speaker 1: When I logged into the app at the splash, Green
Speaker 1: showed up telling me that there was this bet that
Speaker 1: I would be available for. It was like a.
Speaker 2: Bright available for in what like I would not always.
Speaker 1: No if I navigated. Was there a special deal or
Speaker 1: was it just telling you could do this? In this case,
Speaker 1: there wasn't a special deal. It was just informing me
Speaker 1: that and I assume. So here's my understanding of how
Speaker 1: this operation works. Right, when they come up with like
Speaker 1: unique bets like that one which for most games you
Speaker 1: don't get to bet on the coin toss in most books, but.
Speaker 2: Books refers to the like the the operators cool.
Speaker 1: Yeah, uh. But when when they like come up with these, uh,
Speaker 1: they start kind of testing which ones are the most
Speaker 1: popular and then also using the data that they have
Speaker 1: to determine which ones are the most profitable, which is
Speaker 1: another way of saying which ones people lose the most
Speaker 1: money on.
Speaker 2: So they are just so we're clear, advertising specific bets, yeah,
Speaker 2: advertising specific bets and telling you and then highlighting the
Speaker 2: ones that are the most profitable and most likely to
Speaker 2: generate interaction. So trying to actively advertising something that you
Speaker 2: will they ideally need you to lose on. And the
Speaker 2: thing they're promoting.
Speaker 1: Is and their data tells them that tells them that
Speaker 1: you are very likely to lose on.
Speaker 2: So when you say you are likely to use lose on,
Speaker 2: are you saying that they customize it based on your
Speaker 2: actual bets in history?
Speaker 1: Yes? And no. So they can. They can customize their
Speaker 1: offers to the category of bets that you typically make
Speaker 1: and will engineer kind of the ones that are most
Speaker 1: profitable to them to show to you. But like the
Speaker 1: specific ones like the one I just showed, that one's
Speaker 1: offered everybody when you when you show up, And so
Speaker 1: the specific bets they don't really they're not like, man,
Speaker 1: this guy loses a ton of money on the Jaguars,
Speaker 1: let's you know, for Jaguars.
Speaker 2: I'm surprised they don't.
Speaker 3: It's probably worth noting that the way that they target
Speaker 3: these offers to you depends on whether you are a
Speaker 3: casual gambler or if you are somebody who puts a
Speaker 3: lot of money into this who's losing quite a bit.
Speaker 3: In some cases, if you get if you hit a
Speaker 3: certain threshold for how much money you've lost, they will
Speaker 3: assign you a personal bookie who will text you directly
Speaker 3: specific offers, and they'll even comp you that concierge.
Speaker 2: Yes, so this which services. So we're talking fan jewel drops.
Speaker 3: This was I read a story about this in NPR
Speaker 3: the other day and this one was I believe FanDuel.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, so I've covered this a little bit on
Speaker 1: in my piece on sports.
Speaker 2: Gambling pooling that in the nose.
Speaker 1: The both FanDuel and DraftKings do this. Bet MGM, from
Speaker 1: my understanding, has begun doing this, but yeah, specifically the
Speaker 1: ones that have primarily an online presence, which I know
Speaker 1: people understand. BEDMGM def like a casino in Vegas, but
Speaker 1: like they've massively expanded their online footprint, and so the
Speaker 1: ones that do that will interact with a lot of
Speaker 1: their most valued customers. Maybe it's the best way to
Speaker 1: put the people who are losing the most money. And
Speaker 1: if you look into the stories of some of the
Speaker 1: people that have been contacted by a concierge, it's very
Speaker 1: much I mean, it's almost like beat for beat, the
Speaker 1: script you would write for a drug dealer engaging with
Speaker 1: an addict. And I don't say this lightly. I've lost
Speaker 1: a couple of people in my life to drug addictions,
Speaker 1: and I know other people in my life who are
Speaker 1: currently struggling with addiction, and some of those people have
Speaker 1: also in addition to their drug addiction, have become addicted
Speaker 1: to gambling, not necessarily sports betting.
Speaker 2: And this is all exacted through software.
Speaker 3: This is all directly predominantly Yeah.
Speaker 1: And so the software will flag someone as like, hey,
Speaker 1: this person's lost like thirty thousand dollars, you should get
Speaker 1: more money from them, and then they'll assign a concierge
Speaker 1: and that person will email them like hey.
Speaker 3: It's also possibly worth noting here that this might sound
Speaker 3: like the people are targeting are like high rollers, but
Speaker 3: predominantly speaking, this affects low incomers more than any other group,
Speaker 3: how sorry, because those are the people that are typically
Speaker 3: gambled the most.
Speaker 2: And that's the thing. This is inherently predatory in a
Speaker 2: way that I don't think would be possible without the
Speaker 2: current disial ecosystem. We have this penetration of completely impossible
Speaker 2: consumer apps and also the kind of fuzzy legal definitions
Speaker 2: that allow them to just do this bullshit.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I think it's the it's a combination of a
Speaker 1: couple of things. One, I think the nature of gambling
Speaker 1: is that it provides a lot of hope to people,
Speaker 1: which is one reason that it targets people in lower
Speaker 1: income strata. But two, the current gambling environment is frictionless, right,
Speaker 1: like I just mentioned, And this, you know, would be
Speaker 1: like something with the bed MGM live product. So let's
Speaker 1: say we're watching the Super Bowl, right and they're on
Speaker 1: you know, the Eagles are on the five yard line,
Speaker 1: which is to say, they're fifteen feet away from scoring
Speaker 1: a touchdown. And I'm in the bed MGM app, and
Speaker 1: I'm in the live section of the bed MGM app,
Speaker 1: and I've got zero dollars in my account. Right I
Speaker 1: look up, I see the screen, I see that they
Speaker 1: just made it to the five yard line, and I
Speaker 1: immediately go, hey, it looks like Saquon Barkley is And
Speaker 1: I'm going to throw a number out here that a
Speaker 1: lot of people are not going to know how to interpret.
Speaker 1: I'm going to skip past that in a second. But
Speaker 1: he's minus two thirty to score a touchdown on the
Speaker 1: next play. So I press yes, minus two thirty. I
Speaker 1: want to bet twenty dollars on it. And immediately a
Speaker 1: pop up will say, hey, you don't have enough money
Speaker 1: in your account to bet twenty dollars? Do you want
Speaker 1: to deposit it right away? And I go yes, and
Speaker 1: it takes me to the deposit screen. It says, this
Speaker 1: is your automatic like, this is your default payment method,
Speaker 1: press yes, and you press yes, and then the twenty
Speaker 1: five dollars gets deposited in the account. And then you
Speaker 1: go back to the bet slip that you made and
Speaker 1: you press yes. And that all occurs within three to
Speaker 1: five seconds. And then the next play runs and Saikwon
Speaker 1: Barkley did not score a touchdown. He went to the
Speaker 1: three yard line and now I've just lost my money
Speaker 1: and I want to go and it's gone and now
Speaker 1: I want to make it back. So I'm going to
Speaker 1: do it on the very next play.
Speaker 2: And it is that quick.
Speaker 1: It's so quick. Yeah, you could do it between So
Speaker 1: many people do it between plays.
Speaker 2: Have you ever seen someone physically do this?
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's it's completely normal for them to be while
Speaker 3: the game is happening.
Speaker 1: I've seen them do it in arenas.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: And this is why I wanted to do this episode
Speaker 2: so badly, because so much of this though everyone hears sports,
Speaker 2: and there are definitely some oh is a sports ball
Speaker 2: on type people who can be like I don't I
Speaker 2: don't like the sports bool. I read book, I watched
Speaker 2: the power Point watch. But nonetheless, these people need to know.
Speaker 2: It's like this is one of the most evil things
Speaker 2: tech has done. It's it's very much like management consultants
Speaker 2: plus tech, but this is an evil perpetuated only through technology.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think for people who are unfamiliar with sports,
Speaker 1: it would it feels like an exaggeration to say people
Speaker 1: are like commodifying your relationship with your family. But there
Speaker 1: are a lot of people that are closer emotionally speaking
Speaker 1: to the teams that they follow than the family that
Speaker 1: they have, and I don't regard that necessarily as a tragedy.
Speaker 1: I don't have a great relationship with my family, so
Speaker 1: that's just the nature of what they are taking advantage of. Yes,
Speaker 1: they're commodifying this relationship, and to an extent, it's always
Speaker 1: been commodified. Sports are there at a professional level to
Speaker 1: make money, and I've always had like thoughts on the
Speaker 1: tension between that between the relationship a team has to
Speaker 1: like a consumer or a fan in this case, they
Speaker 1: are identical things and like vice versa. But I think
Speaker 1: that teams don't attempt to ruin their customers as lives
Speaker 1: and the way that a lot of these books operate,
Speaker 1: I would argue essentially everyone because smaller books get bought
Speaker 1: at large books meaning the apps. Right, Yeah, I think
Speaker 1: the official term is operators, but I just call them books.
Speaker 1: But it is almost explicitly to ruin people's lives because
Speaker 1: they want to extract as much money as quickly as possible.
Speaker 1: And so there's this story in The Athletic that about
Speaker 1: somebody who you know, began you know, gambling, and you know,
Speaker 1: it's just kind of at first, they were a casual
Speaker 1: better they saw like a fifty dollars promo, and typically
Speaker 1: what these promos are is you deposit fifty dollars and
Speaker 1: then you receive fifty dollars in promotional cash, which you
Speaker 1: can only use to gamble with. And so they got
Speaker 1: fifty three dollars. Okay, you bet with all of it,
Speaker 1: and you know, at the end of the week he's
Speaker 1: run out, so he deposits one hundred. There's no more
Speaker 1: promo because he was a first time customer, got the
Speaker 1: original promo and so on, and he just keeps going.
Speaker 1: And he's got he's got a wife, he's got children,
Speaker 1: he's got a house, right, and he bets larger and
Speaker 1: larger sums to make up for what he had lost previously.
Speaker 1: And he's describing the thrill of a win a lot
Speaker 1: like you would describe a high, right, And the winds
Speaker 1: are becoming rarer and rarer because he is betting on
Speaker 1: longer and longer shot outcomes, because the long shot outcomes
Speaker 1: have highest potential payout. So essentially what he's doing is
Speaker 1: he's buying a ticket for the lottery, but instead of
Speaker 1: paying one dollar at the gas station for like a
Speaker 1: mega million's ticket, he's paying one thousand dollars for you know,
Speaker 1: something that will multiply that by it.
Speaker 2: And they do special office and special bets, right, sometimes
Speaker 2: they'll be like that'll improve like that.
Speaker 1: I've seen offers like that, Yeah, and so and so.
Speaker 1: What began happening to this guy is, you know, he
Speaker 1: started betting at odd hours of the night. He started
Speaker 1: betting on sports. He clearly was unfamiliar with Russian tennis,
Speaker 1: you know, uh stony and basketball.
Speaker 2: You can bet and this is actually the important detail.
Speaker 2: You can bet in some cases on just the most
Speaker 2: obtuse stuff. Yeah, just really obscurred. You can bet on
Speaker 2: snookers like you can bet on snoocas. Is the very
Speaker 2: strange kind of billiards variant that you have back in England. Sure,
Speaker 2: we say snooker. Now I'm not sure which one of
Speaker 2: us is correct anyway, continue.
Speaker 1: Well, you're British, so you're probably wrong, but uh yeah,
Speaker 1: you can bet on anything almost anywhere in the world.
Speaker 1: People have been betting on like high school games and
Speaker 1: stuff like that, so they know, and so the app
Speaker 1: is tracking his activity. They notice that he's making deposits
Speaker 1: at odd times of the night. They notice that he's
Speaker 1: betting on obscure sports that he's probably not familiar with,
Speaker 1: and so in response to that, they assign him a concierge.
Speaker 1: And the concierge emails is like, hey, you know, you're
Speaker 1: one of our most valued customers. I want to offer
Speaker 1: you a five hundred dollars promotion. You don't even have
Speaker 1: to deposit anything. He's like, oh wow, that's five hundred
Speaker 1: three dollars okay, and then he bets it all and
Speaker 1: all withers away right right, and they're like, wow, that's
Speaker 1: like really tough. And so he ends up losing, you know,
Speaker 1: thousands and thousands and thousands of dollars and he's like
Speaker 1: trying to hide this all from his wife and he's
Speaker 1: taking out additional loans, personal loans at high interest, and
Speaker 1: he decides, you know, oh man, this is awful. I'm
Speaker 1: gonna stop. I'm about to lose the house, right, have
Speaker 1: to find some way, and so he stops for two weeks.
Speaker 2: He stops.
Speaker 1: Then he receives an email saying, Hey, you haven't you
Speaker 1: know you know Bet in a really long time. Is
Speaker 1: there something that we can do to kind of repair
Speaker 1: our relationship between the two of us, because hey, we've
Speaker 1: become friends. Man, you and me.
Speaker 2: You know, we we were together.
Speaker 1: We're on this together.
Speaker 2: Man.
Speaker 1: I want to I want to see succeeds. So what
Speaker 1: I've done is I've placed two thousand dollars of promotional
Speaker 1: cash in your account. You know you can do that
Speaker 1: what you want. And he emails back like, hey, I
Speaker 1: you know, I think I've developed a problem. I don't
Speaker 1: think I can do this anymore. I'm not going to
Speaker 1: do this anymore. And you know, the guy responds with
Speaker 1: and I'm paraphrasing from an article I read a couple
Speaker 1: of months ago.
Speaker 2: So we we'll link We'll find it and linkage.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's over at the Athletic, which is now in
Speaker 1: your Times gig, so well, it'll be easy to find him,
Speaker 1: but you know the guy, you know. The guy responds with,
Speaker 1: oh wow, that you know, I you know, I wish
Speaker 1: the best for you. That really, you know, sucks. I'm
Speaker 1: sorry to hear that. You know, take care of yourself,
Speaker 1: but if you ever come back, those two thousand dollars
Speaker 1: are still there for you. And so it's just always
Speaker 1: in his mind for the next couple of weeks and
Speaker 1: he decides, oh, he's going to do it, and he
Speaker 1: does it, and you the guy emails like, oh wow,
Speaker 1: I'm glad to see you know that you've taken care
Speaker 1: of it and you're back or whatever. And he's like, yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't know if I can still you know, do this.
Speaker 1: And he's like, okay, yeah, I understand. We don't want
Speaker 1: you to put we don't want you to put yourself
Speaker 1: in a bad spot, but we've got this great promotion
Speaker 1: coming up that I just want to make sure that
Speaker 1: you take advantage of if it's there, if there's some
Speaker 1: way that you can pull together all of the you know,
Speaker 1: pull together what you need in order to act it,
Speaker 1: and it's just they wreck. Like he has said, multiple times,
Speaker 1: I think I'm an addict and they say, they give
Speaker 1: lip service to the idea that he shouldn't do anything
Speaker 1: about it, and then they enable him.
Speaker 2: And this is this is done like fucking software as
Speaker 2: a service sales. This is exactly. This is exactly. You
Speaker 2: have a customer that's churning. You email them, you have
Speaker 2: a look at the analytics. People aren't using it within
Speaker 2: their company. You reach out and you say, hey, look,
Speaker 2: so you've got a bunch of users who want using it. Hey,
Speaker 2: we'll cut those off, we'll refund those, but have you
Speaker 2: considered this ad on for this team? Except instead of
Speaker 2: like business software, this is like life ruining gambling.
Speaker 3: Yeah, well the guy lost his house. Yeah, that happens
Speaker 3: all the time. One in four Americans will be betting
Speaker 3: on the super Bowl today. Jesus, that one point five
Speaker 3: billion is like gotta be one of the most single
Speaker 3: day transfers of wealth from lower income brackets upward in
Speaker 3: human history. I mean, that's even if you're cynical about
Speaker 3: the individualistic aspects of and if you're an egoist or whatever,
Speaker 3: this is what individuals should be able to do whatever,
Speaker 3: whatever you know as a problem that the society continues
Speaker 3: to have as people are starting their lives later. They're
Speaker 3: not buying houses, they're not having kids, they're not financially
Speaker 3: stable enough to do these things. These are the same
Speaker 3: people that are being targeted directly by these.
Speaker 2: Apps because the idea is it's kind of like the
Speaker 2: crypto ads of twenty twenty two where it was like
Speaker 2: seize the day. Like this idea that you can have
Speaker 2: hope and accumulate wealth.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, it exactly.
Speaker 1: It combines the predation on hope right with all of
Speaker 1: the lessons we've learned from mobile gaming about the gamification
Speaker 1: of our experiences, and.
Speaker 2: It is the gamification of while also on every show
Speaker 2: you see the odds of the play and this sense
Speaker 2: that you could have somehow influence right outcomes.
Speaker 1: This is one of I think one of the most
Speaker 1: insidious things about this whole thing is that all of
Speaker 1: the leagues or the broadcast partners that carry the league
Speaker 1: or both have relationships with these companies, and in some
Speaker 1: of the relationships are not sponsorships or advertising mechanisms, like
Speaker 1: the NFL gets paid by William Hill, which is a
Speaker 1: sports book slash operator to provide real time data so
Speaker 1: that will will Hill can set lines in real time whatever. Okay,
Speaker 1: sure find whatever. I don't care. But also, the NFL
Speaker 1: has a relationship I believe with DraftKings. Is there is there,
Speaker 1: it's either fand old, right, it's almost always a thing
Speaker 1: you do. And so on the NFL network they talk
Speaker 1: about the lines set by draft Kings. There are promotional
Speaker 1: sponsored DraftKings. On the broadcast, you'll see some stuff about DraftKings.
Speaker 1: And then on top of that, Fox Sports has a
Speaker 1: relationship with I think F and so the broadcasters will
Speaker 1: reference the fan duel line. And so you'll see, like
Speaker 1: you mentioned, like at a basketball game, you'll see a
Speaker 1: ticker at the bottom saying like, hey, you know, Victor
Speaker 1: woman Yama is like plus two thirty to get a
Speaker 1: you know, triple double this game. You know, but you
Speaker 1: know whatever, right.
Speaker 2: If you don't watch basketball, Victor women Yama is like
Speaker 2: seven foot tall.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they should deport them. Actually the only person in
Speaker 1: America I think that Ice should deport everybody. Okay, we
Speaker 1: do not.
Speaker 2: Actually we're not pro ice. We're like, we've not probe
Speaker 2: deportation things.
Speaker 1: No, No, they should eradicate Ice before they do that.
Speaker 2: Okay, well me I will love that. So I it's
Speaker 2: just I'm trying to think of the terms to put
Speaker 2: this book because I know and I'm very obviously anxious
Speaker 2: about this. People don't like sports. Hear this, they get,
Speaker 2: but think of it like if you were watching Game
Speaker 2: of Thrones, the like will ned Stark live and it's
Speaker 2: like you can bet on the outcome and they had
Speaker 2: a thing at the bottom of or like severance like
Speaker 2: well Madam Scott find out like and it's like except
Speaker 2: imagine if it was being written in real time, but
Speaker 2: something you deeply cared about emotionally, or something that you
Speaker 2: would got attached to with your friends, something that you
Speaker 2: remember from your childhood that is now through the apps,
Speaker 2: and it's the like only fucking app store advertised by Apple.
Speaker 2: Apple I don't think makes a cut on these, but
Speaker 2: I'm sure there's something weird there. But it is that
Speaker 2: that abstraction layer higher than just the kind of manipulative
Speaker 2: micro transaction to you'd see in like a free to
Speaker 2: play game. Yeah, except the money goes so quick, like
Speaker 2: in a snap. Yeah, it has got like you said,
Speaker 2: like just if the thing doesn't happen, the money is gone.
Speaker 2: You're not getting a refund. They're not going to do
Speaker 2: this you've just gambled. They got your money.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So actually, here's a dumb question. You said, there's
Speaker 2: the fifty dollars free credit. Aren't there people who take
Speaker 2: advantage of that surely, like who like sign up an
Speaker 2: account and are good at gambling? I? Yes, so how
Speaker 2: do they know? But that's the thing. So No, But
Speaker 2: the reason I asked this is not because I'm trying
Speaker 2: to convince people they have any more industry. I'm trying
Speaker 2: to find out, like what is so, like, how do
Speaker 2: they make the money go? Like there money go? Because
Speaker 2: they offer it quite a lot.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So there's like a couple of things. One we
Speaker 1: found kind of psychologically that if you're offered free money, right,
Speaker 1: even if you have to pay to get the free money, right,
Speaker 1: you are more likely to bet the free money on
Speaker 1: long shot odds. So as a whole, that money is
Speaker 1: not going to turn into real money that they have
Speaker 1: to pay.
Speaker 3: They don't give that. There's I was I didn't want
Speaker 3: to interrupt in your talk about this earlier, but it just
Speaker 3: kind of goes to show you they'll throw fifty bucks,
Speaker 3: five hundred bucks, two thousand bucks at this because they
Speaker 3: know within a statistical certainty almost that they're going to
Speaker 3: get that money back, and then some yeah, and.
Speaker 1: So there's there's a percentage of customers that they retain,
Speaker 1: and then those customers they retain, the vast majority of
Speaker 1: the retained customers will pay back and that'll make an
Speaker 1: that'll make up. And they've got a cost of acquisition,
Speaker 1: like you can I mean, they're publicly traded. You can
Speaker 1: look at their their you know, filings for like a
Speaker 1: quarter or two whatever, and they've got a cost of acquisition.
Speaker 1: And they talk about like reduce seeing the cost of
Speaker 1: acquisition and increasing you know, or hold, which is the
Speaker 1: percentage that they make on each bet. That it's a
Speaker 1: whole kind of element. But one thing that is kind
Speaker 1: of interesting about the way that they manage these books
Speaker 1: is that if you begin winning and here's this is
Speaker 1: going to go super in the weeds. There's a different
Speaker 1: definition of winning they use for this particular determination, which
Speaker 1: I'll get into in a second. But if you begin
Speaker 1: winning a lot at a really high percentage, they will
Speaker 1: start reducing your limit. And your limit is the amount
Speaker 1: that you can bet on a single bet. And so
Speaker 1: if I'm a new fan duel customer, I believe my
Speaker 1: limit is one thousand dollars, and if I get pretty
Speaker 1: bad at gambling, my limit will expand to two thousand
Speaker 1: and five twenty thousand. But if I'm pretty good, they'll
Speaker 1: start reducing my limit to, you know, five hundred and
Speaker 1: two fifty all the way down to a dollar. And
Speaker 1: so you get good, you actually don't really have a
Speaker 1: lot of opportunity to make money. And so the thing
Speaker 1: I was going to get at is they don't actually
Speaker 1: determine it based off of whether or not you've made money.
Speaker 1: They determine it based off of whether or not the
Speaker 1: bet that you made at the time you made it
Speaker 1: anticipated the closing line value of the bet. So markets
Speaker 1: move right. Betting markets move based in response to who's
Speaker 1: doing the betting, And so it's actually not critically important
Speaker 1: that the people setting the odds for any particular bet
Speaker 1: are laser precise accurate about what those odds truly are.
Speaker 1: They have to be accurate to a certain degree. But
Speaker 1: what ends up happening is that a certain amount of
Speaker 1: money goes one way on a bet, and a certain
Speaker 1: amount of money goes on another way in a bet,
Speaker 1: and that moves the line, and over the course of
Speaker 1: the lifetime of that bet until the game actually starts.
Speaker 1: You get a closing line value, and if you beat
Speaker 1: the closing line value, they determine that you're a sharp gambler.
Speaker 1: And if you do that I think like sixty percent
Speaker 1: of the time or something like that, they start reducing
Speaker 1: your limits.
Speaker 2: So it's really hard to make money. Even like the
Speaker 2: traditional idea of winning is the thing. It's like this
Speaker 2: weird matriculated bullshit so that they could will never let
Speaker 2: you win, then will never let you right, you never
Speaker 2: win on your terms.
Speaker 3: It's even even when you win that kind of They
Speaker 3: advertise this as like a skill based situation, and you
Speaker 3: just need to understand that even if it was a
Speaker 3: fair fight, if they didn't move the lines, if they
Speaker 3: didn't do all these things that Drip was talking about,
Speaker 3: they still have you will never outsmart them because they
Speaker 3: have teams of analysts that make these bets, and they're
Speaker 3: very good at it, and they've been doing it for
Speaker 3: a long time, and they have algorithms to watch this stuff.
Speaker 1: So access to proprietary data too that you won't have
Speaker 1: access to exactly. I mean, So, for example, there's a
Speaker 1: product that I think is very good called pro Football
Speaker 1: Focus Ultimate Profoble Focus is a data firm that covers
Speaker 1: football and their Ultimate package, which gives you access to
Speaker 1: granular level data like, you know, every individual play you
Speaker 1: can see, you know, if a pass was caught at
Speaker 1: what yard line that pass was caught, how many yards
Speaker 1: after they catch that player you know, generated after the catch,
Speaker 1: how many tackles that player beat on the way to
Speaker 1: doing that?
Speaker 2: So that you insane the ground here? Do they have
Speaker 2: a level below that that somehow these people or they
Speaker 2: get access to that.
Speaker 1: Well, they get access to that because it's a two
Speaker 1: hundred thousand dollars package.
Speaker 2: Oh so they have advantages yeah, d never even unless
Speaker 2: we were insanely rich. Yeah, and no one who's doing
Speaker 2: that is doing that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, nobody who's who's doing this has the money to
Speaker 3: spend on that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And so they get access to the proprietary data
Speaker 1: which they can use to kind of create these models.
Speaker 1: Those models help set the lines. It's very difficult to beat.
Speaker 3: And then they give that insanely granular data to a
Speaker 3: team of analyst perverts that will then set the lines.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's almost like the ultimate management consultant thing because
Speaker 2: it's barely about sports anymore, it's not even about winning.
Speaker 2: And another betting thing only recently understand came to understand
Speaker 2: even was the concept of unders and OVAs, where they
Speaker 2: will set a point amount. Like, actually, Caleb, can you
Speaker 2: explain what an over in and under is? Because it's important
Speaker 2: to explain that you can't just bet on whether someone
Speaker 2: wins or loses.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I could do my best. Again, just the very
Speaker 3: basic of what it means. Yeah, and if you may
Speaker 3: have to correct now this because again it's not legal
Speaker 3: in my state, so I've never actually done it. Okay,
Speaker 3: So they don't like it's called the spread, right, So
Speaker 3: if you're if the team is under, this is kind
Speaker 3: of confusing. If the team is the under, that means
Speaker 3: they're the favorite by however many points.
Speaker 1: Right, kind of, so we wouldn't call them the under rights.
Speaker 1: But if the team is the favorite, they're like minus
Speaker 1: one and a half, right or whatever. So for example,
Speaker 1: the Chiefs in this game opened at minus one and
Speaker 1: a half. That means that the betting line is essentially
Speaker 1: if you subtract one and a half points from the Chiefs,
Speaker 1: who wins the game?
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 1: If you bet on the Chiefs, you bet on the
Speaker 1: Chiefs to win by at least two points or more.
Speaker 1: If you bet in the Eagles, you either bet on
Speaker 1: them to win out right or lose by about a
Speaker 1: point or less.
Speaker 2: So you can't just bet win or lose.
Speaker 1: You can, but the odds are yeah, and so what
Speaker 1: and so that's called a money line bet, where you
Speaker 1: just bet outright on the winner of the loser. But
Speaker 1: there are different odds for that. So that's where you
Speaker 1: get stuff like plus two thirty and minus one ten
Speaker 1: and minus one thy. So what plus two thirty means
Speaker 1: is if I bet one hundred dollars, I will receive
Speaker 1: and I win, I get one hundred dollars back plus
Speaker 1: two hundred and thirty dollars. If I bet minus two thirty,
Speaker 1: I would need to bet two hundred and thirty dollars
Speaker 1: in order to get not just my original bet back,
Speaker 1: but one hundred dollars. It is, So it's it's kind
Speaker 1: of confusing.
Speaker 2: No, it's and I assume by design.
Speaker 1: Sure, I mean, this is a system that is like
Speaker 1: sixty seventy years old, So I don't know.
Speaker 3: It's four people that are on the strip back. They're
Speaker 3: the hoople heads that are seven beers deep. They're going
Speaker 3: to say, yes, we ball put fifty on the packers
Speaker 3: or whatever.
Speaker 1: Right, yeah, And so you can convert those odds into
Speaker 1: the percentages, so like a minus. Okay, it's actually more
Speaker 1: complicated than this, but the the minus one hand would
Speaker 1: suggest I believe like a forty six percent or whatever
Speaker 1: odds that you know, whatever the bet is. But the
Speaker 1: problem is if two teams are evenly matched, so if
Speaker 1: the spread is pk or pick them right, zero right
Speaker 1: either way. So if the spread is pick them and
Speaker 1: each team was equally likely to win, right, you would
Speaker 1: get probably in most books, in well most books a
Speaker 1: couple of years ago, minus one hundred and five odds.
Speaker 2: So the thing is, I'm sure people are a little
Speaker 2: bit lost now because I slightly am but actually I
Speaker 2: think that's kind of illustrative of how fucking weird this is. Yes,
Speaker 2: these are the numbers that are just on the TV
Speaker 2: being thrown at.
Speaker 1: You old minus five plus two ten and.
Speaker 2: You open the app and the app is screaming at
Speaker 2: you just like, hey, you should try this. Why don't
Speaker 2: you fucking try this?
Speaker 3: Saicon Barkley is minus two thirty is sure? What the hell?
Speaker 1: Yeah? Yeah, And like the thing is so I described
Speaker 1: that like both of those even bets are minus one
Speaker 1: of five. If you bet on the coin toss, it's
Speaker 1: minus one of five, right, Like, that's the So.
Speaker 2: You would need to put one hundred and five dollars
Speaker 2: down to make one hundred.
Speaker 1: Dollars correct gone, which obviously suggests that you know, you,
Speaker 1: your odds of being correct have to be not just higher,
Speaker 1: but substantially higher than what the implied odds are by
Speaker 1: the book, because they're gonna make money on the coin flip, right, Like,
Speaker 1: there's no question that they're making money.
Speaker 3: And yet, by the way, while we were talking about this,
Speaker 3: before I googled it, hundreds of thousands of dollars will
Speaker 3: be bet on the coin today.
Speaker 2: Hundreds of thousands of dollars. Yeah, that's so fucking horrible.
Speaker 2: This is the thing Like earlier on in this show's existence,
Speaker 2: I was definitely like mad at the tech industry, and
Speaker 2: people like, why you're so mad? It is stuff like
Speaker 2: this because they've managed to find a way to do
Speaker 2: to turn gambling into online gaming, to turn it into
Speaker 2: to introduce the sets of gambling and micro transaction gaming
Speaker 2: and just the horrors of online advertising because this is
Speaker 2: selling hope and industry over something you could never hope
Speaker 2: to understand.
Speaker 3: Well, every like the stuff that we talked about, ostensibly
Speaker 3: good aspects of sports, whether you agree or not, all
Speaker 3: of that, even from my perspective, somebody who does love
Speaker 3: them is being destroyed by this. Every aspect of tradition,
Speaker 3: all the ostensible social good that could come from this
Speaker 3: is being completely gutted by this industry. And how do
Speaker 3: you mean, because it takes away it's like the anti sport.
Speaker 3: It takes it something that could be a potentially positive thing,
Speaker 3: and it turns into like a torment nexus, you know
Speaker 3: what I mean?
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, Well, so, like there are a couple of
Speaker 1: things that kind of stood out to me that like
Speaker 1: motivated me to write about it, which was that, like
Speaker 1: every interaction that you see in a game is no
Speaker 1: longer taken for the implications that it has for the
Speaker 1: team of the player, no longer taken for kind of
Speaker 1: the narrative value that that has, but it's all concentrated
Speaker 1: on this. Did someone win a bet on this kind
Speaker 1: of question? Yeah? So, for example, ESPN, which is the
Speaker 1: worldwide leader in sports coverage, a name they made it
Speaker 1: for themselves and earned in fairness, they are the dominant,
Speaker 1: they're the hegemony when it comes to sports coverage. They
Speaker 1: have a partnership with I think it's Penn Sportsbook, So
Speaker 1: they have a product called ESPN bet, which, in my opinion,
Speaker 1: undercuts their journalistic integrity. But that's a different topic. So
Speaker 1: they've got a bunch of social arms called ESPN Bet, right,
Speaker 1: the kind of a TikTok channel, YouTube channel whatever. Right,
Speaker 1: And there's this Giants game where Devin Singletary, one of
Speaker 1: the running backs for the Giants, is it's near the
Speaker 1: end of the game and he's and he broke free, right,
Speaker 1: so he you know, he got the ball. Run, big run,
Speaker 1: He gets past all the defenders. He broke free to
Speaker 1: the end of the game. The Giants are already ahead,
Speaker 1: and so if he scores, that doesn't meaningfleet change the Giants'
Speaker 1: odds of winning, but it does give the other team
Speaker 1: the balls. In fact, it might even decrease the Giants
Speaker 1: odds of winning because the other team now has an
Speaker 1: opportunity to respond. They've got possession and they can score points. Right,
Speaker 1: So what he does is he runs all the way
Speaker 1: to the five yard line and then goes down so
Speaker 1: that the Giants retained possession, they can drain the clock
Speaker 1: finish the game with the win. Great move, like it's
Speaker 1: a tactically correct move. It's selfless, Yeah, because he benefits.
Speaker 1: He's got like a contract incentives. And you know when
Speaker 1: he when his contract comes up, he's going to negotiate
Speaker 1: from new contract. The statistics, those extra five yards a touchdown, whatever,
Speaker 1: those statistics will be used in his negotiation there. And
Speaker 1: maybe he has a contract incentive that gives him more
Speaker 1: money for touchdowns. Right, So he's making a selfless move
Speaker 1: to improve the team's odds of winning. It's always a
Speaker 1: good story. Some running backs will do this, maybe a
Speaker 1: couple of times a year or whatever.
Speaker 2: It's awesome. I love it. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And and ESPN bet put out a TikTok saying, Devin
Speaker 1: Singletary goes down to ensure the Giants hit the under
Speaker 1: and the under is the total amount of point scored
Speaker 1: in the game. And in that game, I forget the thing.
Speaker 1: Maybe in the Washington the Giants and Commanders go under the
Speaker 1: projected point total by the books. And I think my
Speaker 1: opinion is that ESPN bet really poorly used the language
Speaker 1: of their platform because it suggested that singletary did that
Speaker 1: on purpose in order to accomplish a gambling goal, in
Speaker 1: order for the for whoever was betting on the under
Speaker 1: to cash in. And it's just that I think they
Speaker 1: just meant he did this, and so therefore the underhit.
Speaker 1: Either way, I don't like it.
Speaker 2: It's poisonous. It's poison to culture.
Speaker 3: This shouldn't be happening at all. Yeah, to begin with,
Speaker 3: it's destroying, like the product is becoming almost unrecognizable at
Speaker 3: this point.
Speaker 2: Can you go into more detail then?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean just even just a few years ago,
Speaker 3: that would have never happened. We wouldn't have even heard
Speaker 3: about that. Yeah, just even two seasons ago, probably, I
Speaker 3: would say two three seasons.
Speaker 1: You might get a mention on Sports Center because Scott
Speaker 1: Van Pelt does a bad beat kind of thing. But
Speaker 1: it was like a fun like, oh, you know if
Speaker 1: you bet on the under, like ooh.
Speaker 3: Whatever, it's some wacky corner of the site that's not
Speaker 3: really that important.
Speaker 2: Versus what is likely a huge revenue media.
Speaker 3: Narrative, especially considering like and I mean I'm not going
Speaker 3: to be the person that says the NFL is rigged.
Speaker 3: I think that there's no evidence just to really suggest
Speaker 3: any level of that. But as these lines get blurred,
Speaker 3: and the NFL does have a history of there's Daniel
Speaker 3: Day's book Interference goes into this. This is Mind You,
Speaker 3: published in the late eighties or something, so he's talking
Speaker 3: about the sixties and seventies when the NFL was acutely
Speaker 3: aware of owners and players relationship with gambling sportsbooks. I'm
Speaker 3: gonized crime and it's not conspiracy stuff. This is like
Speaker 3: all police cases and FBI files that he's sourcing this from.
Speaker 3: And I just think that for the league's perspective, it
Speaker 3: is a really really bad look that these lines are
Speaker 3: as blurred as they are now.
Speaker 2: And the thing is as well. This is again a
Speaker 2: uniquely software based thing and a uniquely Internet culture based thing,
Speaker 2: because you can see these stats in minu shape, the
Speaker 2: minutiae of them. You can see them instantly. Your little
Speaker 2: fucking phone with the beautiful Internet connection that used to
Speaker 2: allow you to send posts to friends is now just
Speaker 2: like an actual portal to Vegas in a more craven way. Though,
Speaker 2: I say this, with our beautiful slot machines, which we
Speaker 2: love so much. It feels like an evil version of gambling,
Speaker 2: which is already fairly evil in that it is now
Speaker 2: poisoning the actual culture around it, because so you don't
Speaker 2: need to know anything about basketball for this. So right
Speaker 2: now there is a big scandal going on with Miami
Speaker 2: Heat player Terry Rosier, who's under investigation in connection with
Speaker 2: sports betting scandal. Yep, and now there is just this
Speaker 2: weird thing of like you said, Caleb, it isn't scripted
Speaker 2: or anything, but all play is doing shit now with.
Speaker 3: Fizz of that, like there is more financial incentive. Here's
Speaker 3: what I will say, there's more financial incentive than ever.
Speaker 3: Than ever, The lines are more blurred than ever, you know.
Speaker 1: I don't yeah, And so what I don't like is
Speaker 1: that whenever a player makes a mistake, we have to
Speaker 1: ask that question. Right. That's the thing that really bothers me,
Speaker 1: because now we can't think of players as people who
Speaker 1: can make mistakes. And one of the beautiful things about
Speaker 1: sports is recognizing the humanity in others, right, right, understanding
Speaker 1: like that these mistakes occur, and that you know they
Speaker 1: weigh heavily on or whatever.
Speaker 3: Rights of the phrase. Any given Sunday is right exactly.
Speaker 1: And you know, the Giants beating the Patriots and the
Speaker 1: Patriots were undefeated. It was just an outstanding story, right,
Speaker 1: and now you're thinking, wow, you know a lot of
Speaker 1: people had money on the Patriots going under the Patriots throwing.
Speaker 2: And they're promoting these stories in their sites. They're saying
Speaker 2: how much.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and so this is the media focus.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: And so that's the thing that really bothers me is
Speaker 1: that all of this content, which already kind of hate
Speaker 1: the word content, but all of this content is now
Speaker 1: about gambling. So you talk about how your phone is
Speaker 1: this poor old of Vegas, but also when you try to,
Speaker 1: you know, get out of.
Speaker 2: You actually cannot use these apps in the which is
Speaker 2: really funny.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I do think it's well, you can if you
Speaker 1: go physically into the sports book and enable the sports
Speaker 1: books app from inside this. It's very fun Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: very funny. Crazy I found that out. But but yeah,
Speaker 1: and so like you can, like you'll get like a notification,
Speaker 1: Like I've got like four notifications on my phone right
Speaker 1: now from like various fantasy whatever, and they're like, hey,
Speaker 1: you haven't bet in like a week is here's one
Speaker 1: hundred dollars please you could do that, or I can
Speaker 1: just get rid of the notifications. But then the notifications
Speaker 1: from the Athletic which I follow for my work as
Speaker 1: a football writer, are like, hey, here are the lines
Speaker 1: on the Super Bowl, and I get rid of that,
Speaker 1: and then you know, the next the next notification will
Speaker 1: be from my Google News alerts, and the Google News
Speaker 1: alert will be, hey, did Devin Singletary do this in
Speaker 1: order to do that? And it's just like everything is
Speaker 1: either gambling or about content about gambling or content that
Speaker 1: points to gambling, right, And it's like the storylines are
Speaker 1: about gambling. The way I engage with the game is
Speaker 1: about gambling. And the end, you know, it's my fault
Speaker 1: for installing the fantasy apps on my phone, but then
Speaker 1: the fantasy apps are just like it's all everything orients
Speaker 1: itself around the ability to make money off of what
Speaker 1: is ultimately, you know, a storytelling device, right, and it
Speaker 1: just it sucks.
Speaker 2: And it's and so Caleb, you you don't gamble right?
Speaker 3: No, now, I depends how you define it, right. I
Speaker 3: want to be clear about this. I play fantasy football
Speaker 3: every year and I have.
Speaker 2: So and just just to delineate, fantasy football is not
Speaker 2: a money based thing unless you put into a yeah
Speaker 2: you don't.
Speaker 1: Yeah, most people play fantasy, don't put in more than
Speaker 1: like ten bucks.
Speaker 3: We all put in about twenty to thirty bucks to
Speaker 3: make sure everybody stays accountable, sets their lineup. It's not
Speaker 3: really about winning money.
Speaker 2: Right, right, But it's not like in mission. You don't
Speaker 2: have to like give your credit card or anything.
Speaker 3: You can just between it's in form.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you're like venmo or.
Speaker 2: Whatever, but that isn't really gambling. That's just like kind
Speaker 2: of dicking around with friends, right.
Speaker 1: And he's describing what's season long fantasy.
Speaker 2: Which is separate though from the money fantasy though.
Speaker 1: Yeah, from the type of fantasy that's being promoted, which
Speaker 1: is daily fantasy.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: They call it daily for football, it's weekly, but whatever,
Speaker 1: it's daily for basketball, baseball, whatever. But you can you
Speaker 1: can set your fantasy lineup for the day that day,
Speaker 1: put in like twenty dollars on your lineup, and then
Speaker 1: repeat that lineup twenty times. Put in twenty dollars every
Speaker 1: single time, right, and then at the end of the
Speaker 1: day you'll have made or lost money, and you can
Speaker 1: react to that and do it again the next day.
Speaker 1: Were a season long, you do it once a year
Speaker 1: for like twenty bucks to win you know, maybe one
Speaker 1: hundred and fifty dollars, Like it's like, what are we doing?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I just wanted to say also that what I
Speaker 3: described to you of like, oh, I'm gonna Venmo my
Speaker 3: friend for fantasy you actually have to lie on all
Speaker 3: the apps when you send your fantasy winnings because that's
Speaker 3: illegal and they can shut down your account for that.
Speaker 1: Which is crazy because I just use emojis. Yeah, exactly, never,
Speaker 1: it doesn't really happen.
Speaker 3: But if you they can flag it. If you say
Speaker 3: fantasy football and like the note or whatever, they can
Speaker 3: do that.
Speaker 1: Oh wow, I don't know. There you go.
Speaker 3: And that's more regulated than crypto dot com doing their
Speaker 3: Rube Goldberg system.
Speaker 1: If you buy a token which is on the Heerium chain,
Speaker 1: and that token what activates when Patrick Mahomes passes for
Speaker 1: two hundred and twenty five.
Speaker 3: Which again, to be very clear, should be and I
Speaker 3: think many judges would agree, is also illegal. But who's
Speaker 3: going to stop them at this point?
Speaker 2: And I think the one of the things that I'm
Speaker 2: sure people will find insufferable but I think it's worth
Speaker 2: talking about, is this is another thing really heavily talked
Speaker 2: at the guys as well. Yeah, very heteronormative, says hat
Speaker 2: guy like, like, it's very much like for like the Fellas,
Speaker 2: and it's very male oriented, even the color schemes and
Speaker 2: the actors, and it's very aggressively And so you've got
Speaker 2: this other fucking problem with guys now where guys.
Speaker 1: Just add another one.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and guess what, who's uh the outside of sports,
Speaker 3: who's like the number one preveyor of like of ads
Speaker 3: for this ship is like red pill guys.
Speaker 2: Yep, yeah, you know, because it's more more kind of noxious,
Speaker 2: nebulous masculinity thing of being like, be a big strong
Speaker 2: man and lose your mind.
Speaker 3: I don't tell your bitch wife that you lost fifty
Speaker 3: thousand dollars or whatever. Right, Like, that's right.
Speaker 2: Rise and Grind.
Speaker 1: It's very much in the Rise and Grind and culture.
Speaker 1: A lot of one of the I don't know if
Speaker 1: New York has actually done this yet, but one of
Speaker 1: the proposals in New York State was too bad and
Speaker 1: advertisements for these apps on college campuses.
Speaker 2: Oh my god, they can legally do that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and that's where a lot of advertise.
Speaker 2: On outside the college basketball games as well. Oh yeah, buddy, damn,
Speaker 2: this is so fucking But actually this does kind of
Speaker 2: play into it because it's like, what is happening to
Speaker 2: young men who are not the fucking victims. I'm not
Speaker 2: doing that, don't worry. It's just like things to terrorize
Speaker 2: people one of the.
Speaker 3: Young men now, and again not saying that they shouldn't
Speaker 3: be able to count by the victims whatever, but it
Speaker 3: rids me of like those baby turtles that are born
Speaker 3: in the sand and they have to race to the
Speaker 3: ocean before the birds swoop down and eat them all.
Speaker 3: And the birds are like crypto ads and red pill
Speaker 3: guys that are swooping up and eating these turtles. That's
Speaker 3: kind of and then they all just become bastards.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and the thing that happens to women is those
Speaker 2: men right now. Yeah, maybe there's no no, no, no,
Speaker 2: it's the I'm just saying this because anytime I bring
Speaker 2: up the male load me in this epidemic, it's never
Speaker 2: a kind of well, men need to be treated, No,
Speaker 2: it's perhaps we need to look at the fucking conditions
Speaker 2: of society itself. Right, And then.
Speaker 1: We're throwing another kind of because like one of the
Speaker 1: natures of like one of the things about patriarchy is
Speaker 1: that it isolates people into particular roles. Those roles for
Speaker 1: men include things like bread winner, right, and they're the
Speaker 1: ones that are, like, you know, in vibe with the
Speaker 1: entrepreneurial spirit, right, which is I guess gambling is entrepreneurship.
Speaker 2: No, no, it is, though it's the same rise in
Speaker 2: grind it is. It is because it's like you have
Speaker 2: power over stuff that you don't have power over. You
Speaker 2: just work hard and money will come out. Same way
Speaker 2: with this, you just gamble.
Speaker 1: Right, yeah. And so this is kind of another one
Speaker 1: of the pressures among the extant pressures that exist in
Speaker 1: patriarchy that produce these responses among young men that then
Speaker 1: those young men will like act out in the world,
Speaker 1: often on women, but like also another young man, right yeah.
Speaker 3: Patriarchy produces the drywall punchers, right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, exactly, yeah, And then this is just that
Speaker 2: and it's it's funny and you've mentioned the entrepreneur asper
Speaker 2: because it really is, that's exactly that same genus of
Speaker 2: like focusing on guys and being like, yeah, you know,
Speaker 2: what's going wrong in your life is not actually something
Speaker 2: caused bias system.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we shouldn't look at the system.
Speaker 2: Don't look at the system and definitely don't worry about
Speaker 2: being responsible for this. This is all happening to you,
Speaker 2: and instead of looking at the stuff actually happening to you,
Speaker 2: let's just look a woman, and you know what you
Speaker 2: actually need to do. You need to just it's neoliberalism,
Speaker 2: but right wing. I guess, well, maybe I repeat myself,
Speaker 2: but it's the sense of selfish kind of producer that
Speaker 2: only comes from hard work. Well despite the fact that you, yeah,
Speaker 2: but despite the fact that hard work is not what
Speaker 2: any of this is. Being an entrepreneur, a successful entrepreneur
Speaker 2: is like tons of luck, having the privilege to be
Speaker 2: in the right place at the right time.
Speaker 1: If you look at a lot of the entrepreneurship like
Speaker 1: YouTube videos or whatever, a lot of it's just like
Speaker 1: drop shipping. It's like, okay, cool, just a scam.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but like there's a there's a reason.
Speaker 3: Like another episode we'll talk about drop shipping.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but like there's a reason, Like we can find
Speaker 1: a lot of the same figures throughout all of these
Speaker 1: like micro trends of like entrepreneurship masculinity. Like Gary Vaynerchuk
Speaker 1: is doing like motivational drop shipping content and then he
Speaker 1: does crypto content, and then he does NFT content, and
Speaker 1: now he's doing sports scampling content.
Speaker 3: Sorry, but the concept of somebody who did for many
Speaker 3: years work in e commerce and like not drop shipping
Speaker 3: although yeah, but just like as an actual e commerce
Speaker 3: marketing person motivational e commerce content makes me want to
Speaker 3: blow my brains out.
Speaker 1: You know, I'm describing a thing that's.
Speaker 3: Really I know, I'm acutely aware of the thing that
Speaker 3: you're talking about. It's like a like I feel like
Speaker 3: like an animal the serengety where I just my predator
Speaker 3: prey sense went off, like oh my god.
Speaker 1: But yeah, like someone like Gary Vee was in all
Speaker 1: of those.
Speaker 2: Is he doing sports patting content? Yeah, Jesus Christ, that
Speaker 2: man's a fucking monster.
Speaker 1: He is evil.
Speaker 2: I want to do we should do it Behind the
Speaker 2: Bastards episode and that piece of shit. Fuck you, Gary Vaynerchuk.
Speaker 2: I hope you hear this, you freak. You'll never You'll
Speaker 2: never buy the jets anyway. It's just the reason. Another
Speaker 2: reason I mean that I wanted to do this episode
Speaker 2: is it feels uniquely part of a way in which
Speaker 2: the Internet is being poisoned, where so much, so many
Speaker 2: content empires now based on the same ones that do
Speaker 2: the article that's what time is the Super Bowl? So
Speaker 2: they can rank on Google. Now you've got oh the
Speaker 2: right picks for sports gambling.
Speaker 3: It's the same problem, just in a different shape, right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and it's it's really sad as well. And again
Speaker 2: I'm gonna repeat this every time, like it's not saying
Speaker 2: men don't. Men have fucking accountability regardless of whether they've
Speaker 2: been twisted by the Internet, but we should at least
Speaker 2: consider the forces twisting.
Speaker 3: You're ever gonna fix the problem, you eventually have to
Speaker 3: look at the system in which these people are brought up, right.
Speaker 2: Right, And it's you see, it's the same thing you've
Speaker 2: seen with red pilling. It's the same thing you see
Speaker 2: with pretty much in any mgtow thing. It's just this
Speaker 2: sense of, hey, you feel helpless. Do you want to
Speaker 2: rise up against the thing that makes you feel helpless? Oh?
Speaker 2: Oh sorry, but don't worry, we won't make you do
Speaker 2: the inconvenient work of actually understanding things. Well.
Speaker 3: That's why, like when we're talking about this before, one
Speaker 3: of the football or sports is important, is because even
Speaker 3: if you're from a utilitarian perspective, you don't care about sports.
Speaker 3: It is too big of a ground to seed to
Speaker 3: these kinds of people. You shouldn't ever seed that ground, right,
Speaker 3: We can't allow them to take this over.
Speaker 2: And they're trying, they're trying, really fucking a very good
Speaker 2: job of it. And it's the reason they're able to
Speaker 2: is because there's these noxious companies that are twisting people up,
Speaker 2: young people, and it is not just young men, but
Speaker 2: really it's heavily targeted against men. They grow up, they
Speaker 2: can't get a house, They can't ever hope to get
Speaker 2: a house. Now it's not been the case for like
Speaker 2: fifteen twenty years. The average person just can't fucking save
Speaker 2: the money. Meant, men are as many people are, but
Speaker 2: like very targeted, and men told you must be big, strong,
Speaker 2: and you must have money, good, big, and if you
Speaker 2: don't have those things, you're not man. You're not man
Speaker 2: at all. You're woke and.
Speaker 3: You are soy, and you are woke.
Speaker 2: And then they attack aggressively with both convenient excuses and
Speaker 2: convenient ways to allegedly make money with these incredibly craven
Speaker 2: marketing systems perpetuated by the app stores. It's just fucking it.
Speaker 2: Every time I think about this. I feel a little
Speaker 2: crazier because even coming into this, I didn't realize that
Speaker 2: the most common thing was just straight up gambling. I
Speaker 2: thought it was that you got they kind of like
Speaker 2: dodged around, like t he you just bet on a
Speaker 2: few players, right, No, it's just the straight up gambling now,
Speaker 2: and it's everywhere. And it doesn't sound like they even
Speaker 2: do like kys like I know your customer stuff, or
Speaker 2: if they do, it's.
Speaker 1: Like so so gambling does do know your customer stuff.
Speaker 2: But fantasy that's despite money going into it. Yeah, fucking brilliant.
Speaker 2: It's just like I And it's not just like we
Speaker 2: can't even say I hope it's made illegal. They're never
Speaker 2: gonna do that.
Speaker 1: That's definitely not happening. Yeah.
Speaker 2: I feel like everyone involved should be put in prison personally.
Speaker 2: So it doesn't look like Apple.
Speaker 1: Like they did try that with the DFS people a
Speaker 1: lot of like fifteen years ago, and about three or
Speaker 1: four of them did, and then the rest invented DFS.
Speaker 1: What is DFF Daily Fantasy Services. So these are so
Speaker 1: the people that were doing online poker stuff way back
Speaker 1: when Chris Moneymaker was big, like two thousand and four
Speaker 1: ish I want to say they those people, it turns out,
Speaker 1: were violating a bunch of laws about internet gambling. Three
Speaker 1: or four of them got you know, tagged for it.
Speaker 1: Then the rest of them left and invented Daily Fantasy, right.
Speaker 2: And it's right now, by the way, on the app store.
Speaker 2: They don't actually advertise this stuff, so perhaps I was
Speaker 2: wrong saying they did. But there is the like number
Speaker 2: number let's see the number three in number four size
Speaker 2: DraftKings and then fangil and then prize picks. Those are
Speaker 2: the three, four and five coupaps right now.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm going to my prize picks promos right now.
Speaker 1: If it's not clear I do engage in this, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I was gonna ask you about that. Yeah, and I've
Speaker 1: got like one million dollars super Sweat lineups.
Speaker 2: What does that?
Speaker 1: I don't know. It's a combination of like, you know,
Speaker 1: they they like hire these influencers to like put together
Speaker 1: well in theory, they hire these influencers to put together
Speaker 1: their picks for the game, and then you can you
Speaker 1: can then nail their picks essentially horrifying. But yeah, there's
Speaker 1: tons of promos like in my.
Speaker 2: But as we wrap up RAF, so you do gamble
Speaker 2: on this stuff? Yeah, do you win?
Speaker 1: I have net made money on the year, right, I
Speaker 1: think a good chunk of that has been luck. Why
Speaker 1: do you do it? It's fun like it's that's it like
Speaker 1: one like the smallest. But the first reason is because
Speaker 1: it's important for me to be familiar with the stuff
Speaker 1: with the work that I do. But like, I wouldn't
Speaker 1: be gambling as much if that was the only reason.
Speaker 1: But no, I've been making a small amount of money
Speaker 1: on it, and so I've been doing it. I set
Speaker 1: like some pretty clear limits for myself because I am
Speaker 1: always concerned about having an addictive everything we've discussed. But
Speaker 1: what's interesting is that if I play for a couple
Speaker 1: of weeks and then I stopped playing for weeks to
Speaker 1: see how the apps engage me, because I get notifications,
Speaker 1: I get emails, Like when I went to London for
Speaker 1: the Vikings game. I also spent a week prior to
Speaker 1: that game just taking a vacation in Ireland, right, And
Speaker 1: so gambling is like legal in both of those places,
Speaker 1: but or sports gaming is legal in both of those places,
Speaker 1: but the apps I was using were not authorized in
Speaker 1: those places, and so I couldn't do it, and I
Speaker 1: was like, well, I'm not going to get a new app.
Speaker 1: I'm not going to deliver it. And I had to
Speaker 1: like bet in person in London. It was awful.
Speaker 2: Waiten to William Hill.
Speaker 1: I wouldn't. I couldn't do a place called lad Brooks.
Speaker 1: I couldn't.
Speaker 2: Did you bet on the dogs?
Speaker 4: No?
Speaker 1: I only bet on football.
Speaker 2: There's still Do they still do greyhound rice? Yes?
Speaker 1: They definitely ever has that when I walk into the
Speaker 1: listing country. But yeah, And so I do it because
Speaker 1: it's it's fun. I do it because it's my work,
Speaker 1: and I do it because so far I've made a
Speaker 1: little bit of money. But I've been really hyper careful
Speaker 1: about like I've got a spreadsheet like this track of
Speaker 1: everything I've and I pay attention to what are called
Speaker 1: like reverse line moves when the majority of the tickets
Speaker 1: are on one side and the majority of the money
Speaker 1: is on the other side. I think it's the number
Speaker 1: of bets. So you would have let's say three people
Speaker 1: bet on Saquon Barkley to get one hundred and ten
Speaker 1: yards in this game, and then one person bets that
Speaker 1: he's going to get fewer than that many yards. But
Speaker 1: that person bets way more than those three people combined.
Speaker 1: What you get is a reverse line move where the
Speaker 1: line moves in the direction of the guy who bet
Speaker 1: a lot of money, even though I have tickets on
Speaker 1: that side. You pay attention to that, and you can
Speaker 1: see maybe there's some edges here or there. It's way
Speaker 1: in the weeds. They but they've got their hooks into
Speaker 1: some extent. Absolutely, no, I'm I'm forsaken.
Speaker 2: This is it's so great. And you're like a very
Speaker 2: intelligent like person, Like it's not You're not someone I
Speaker 2: would consider easily like tricked even though you're in the system.
Speaker 2: It's interesting how it can get its claws in.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And when when I started, I knew that I
Speaker 1: had to set really hard limits, and I knew that
Speaker 1: I had to make rules about you know, not chasing
Speaker 1: you know, good money after bad. Right, And so I
Speaker 1: set a limit for myself on the number of times
Speaker 1: a year I can deposit, which is three. I set
Speaker 1: a limit to how much I can put on one bet,
Speaker 1: which is I think. I think the limit I set
Speaker 1: was like eight percent of the total amount of money
Speaker 1: I have in that app on each individual bet. Right.
Speaker 1: And I say I think because I just started doing
Speaker 1: it kind of like by feel, because it's like, oh,
Speaker 1: i've got one hundred and fifty, I'll just put ten,
Speaker 1: you know, so right?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 1: But yeah, And so the only times I have broken
Speaker 1: that limit once, but it's because I was offered an
Speaker 1: obscene promo, which is how they get you, right. But
Speaker 1: like as I got all deposit again because I that's
Speaker 1: two hundred and fifty bucks, right, So I put in
Speaker 1: two fifty, and then I bet the two hundred and
Speaker 1: fifty promo dollars on like a minus ten thousand bet
Speaker 1: or something like that.
Speaker 2: You did the thing they wanted you to.
Speaker 1: No, I did the opposite. It was a minus ten
Speaker 1: thousand bets. So does that mean that means if I won,
Speaker 1: I would get no money? But the two hundred fifty
Speaker 1: turned from a promo into real money, and then I
Speaker 1: just withdrew it, okay. So a minus ten thousand bet
Speaker 1: is you have to bet ten thousand dollars to win
Speaker 1: one hundred, okay, And so the percentage return on that
Speaker 1: is minuscule. And so I bet the two hundred and
Speaker 1: fifty dollars promo bet on a.
Speaker 2: Just to get the money out.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it was a ninety nine point nine percent chance
Speaker 1: that I was going it. Yeah, and most people don't
Speaker 1: do that, and no, because you can't do that, I
Speaker 1: promise you.
Speaker 2: And I think and I think the funny thing is
Speaker 2: is like this is all data and I'm not just
Speaker 2: trying to pull it back because it's the tech podcast,
Speaker 2: but it really is. This is just when you remove
Speaker 2: the word sport. This is just like what crypto does.
Speaker 2: Accept more craven and on television all the time, and
Speaker 2: it's the same fucking people or at least the same
Speaker 2: fucking people who do like crypto channels that kind of
Speaker 2: do some sports shit, or they kind of flirt with
Speaker 2: the same linguistics.
Speaker 1: It's just yeah, well disgusting the again, like the people
Speaker 1: who were doing online poker or the people that did
Speaker 1: dfs that ended up going into crypto and then they
Speaker 1: go back into like the we call them pickums. Now
Speaker 1: this this version of fantasy, which is basically also daily fantasy.
Speaker 1: But yeah, it's the same. And so they use the
Speaker 1: same language. Like when when you see kind of the
Speaker 1: communications between them or the way they even even sometimes
Speaker 1: when they talk to the public, they use like poker language,
Speaker 1: and that's the way that they talk about crypto. It's
Speaker 1: the way they talk about NFTs. That's the way they
Speaker 1: talk about AI. It's the way they talk about this.
Speaker 2: It's all just one big scam. So let's wrap up that.
Speaker 2: Or if we can people find you. You can find
Speaker 2: me at Wide Left dot Football. That's the newsletter I run.
Speaker 1: It covers sports, politics and sports culture and sports and
Speaker 1: all of that. Otherwise on socials, I'm at a reef
Speaker 1: Sky at social and Blue Sky and a Ressa on
Speaker 1: NFL on Twitter, Caleb, we can people find you.
Speaker 3: I've got a podcast called a Western Kabuki. It's kind
Speaker 3: of an irreverent look at Internet culture.
Speaker 2: It's wonderful. I've been on multiple times.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's incredible.
Speaker 3: Both of you have, and I thank you for that.
Speaker 3: With a I guess a comedian Juniper and Alex Goldman
Speaker 3: formally of reply All, where we just kind of talk
Speaker 3: about people's relationship with with with the Internet. I guess
Speaker 3: predominantly you can find me there at Western Kabuki. You
Speaker 3: can find me. I'm no longer on Twitter. I'm on
Speaker 3: a Blue Sky at bird respector.
Speaker 2: And you can find me everywhere. You're gonna hear about
Speaker 2: off of this, Matt, I'm going to re record this
Speaker 2: at some point, but I'm not gonna do it now.
Speaker 2: You're just gonna have to hear gonna go do do
Speaker 2: Do Do Do Do Do. The whole theme will go on.
Speaker 2: It'll be amazing. Anyway. I've been at Zitchra and you
Speaker 2: can find me a at ed zeitron dot com on
Speaker 2: Blue Sky. I'm still on Twitter, but I don't give
Speaker 2: a shit about it. And yeah, if you haven't done this,
Speaker 2: please go to everyone you know tell him to download
Speaker 2: the show, tim to download every single goddamn episode and
Speaker 2: need the downloads. Okay, do this for me. Thank you
Speaker 2: for listening, and then you're gonna hear me say thank
Speaker 2: you for listening again. You're gonna be so mad. Thank
Speaker 2: you for listening to Better Offline.
Speaker 4: The editor and composer of the Better Offline theme song
Speaker 4: is Matasowski. You can check out more of his music
Speaker 4: and audio projects at Mattasowski dot com, m A T
Speaker 4: T O S O W s ki dot com. You
Speaker 4: can email me at easy at Better Offline dot com,
Speaker 4: or visit Better Offline dot com to find more podcast
Speaker 4: links and of course my newsletter. I also really recommend
Speaker 4: you go to chat dot Where's youreed dot at to
Speaker 4: visit the discord, and go to our slash.
Speaker 2: Better off Lines to check out I'll Reddit. Thank you
Speaker 2: so much for listening.
Speaker 1: Better Offline is a production of cool Zone Media. For
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