Speaker 1: Pushkin. So, as I explained last episode, we've created this experiment.
Speaker 1: My producer Lydia Jean Kott has partnered up with one
Speaker 1: of the world's smartest sports gamblers, Rufus Peabody is his name.
Speaker 1: Over the past fifteen years, Rufus has made many millions
Speaker 1: of dollars betting on sports. He's had the occasional losing week,
Speaker 1: but never a losing month, much less a losing year.
Speaker 1: Unlike all but a handful of sports gamblers, Rufus Peabody
Speaker 1: has always had an edge. The deal was this, Rufus
Speaker 1: would turn LJ into one of his mules. He'd send
Speaker 1: her money and the bets he'd like to make, and
Speaker 1: she'd make them on sports that she knows nothing about,
Speaker 1: like golf. She just opened as many a counts with
Speaker 1: sports gambling companies as she could and get as much
Speaker 1: money down as they take. I didn't have the first
Speaker 1: clue how this would work out. I started to think
Speaker 1: it wouldn't work out at all, especially after DraftKings froze
Speaker 1: Lj's account after just two bets, and fan Duel came
Speaker 1: in right after and refused to accept anything but small bets.
Speaker 1: But there are right now dozens of these gambling apps,
Speaker 1: and three weeks into her new career as a pro gambler,
Speaker 1: lj's life is obviously still kind of nuts, so nuts
Speaker 1: that she's no longer keeping me up to date on it,
Speaker 1: but I can see it on my phone. There's this
Speaker 1: text thread that's the length of an epic poem. My
Speaker 1: producer has this whole other life after dark. I wake
Speaker 1: up in the morning and I find I have two
Speaker 1: hundred and seventy four new messages on Telegram, and I
Speaker 1: can't figure out. I mean, it's oh, it's just you
Speaker 1: and Rufus going back and forth. Well, what's going on?
Speaker 2: Okay? So I mean I placed a bunch of bets
Speaker 2: this weekend?
Speaker 1: How many bets?
Speaker 2: So many bets?
Speaker 1: Actually, how many bets?
Speaker 2: Okay, total, I've total.
Speaker 3: I've placed one hundred and ten thousand dollars since we started,
Speaker 3: which is pretty good.
Speaker 2: It's my salary.
Speaker 1: She's bet the equivalent of her annual salary. The sports
Speaker 1: bookies that will still take her big bets are the
Speaker 1: ones she's lost money to. These places seem to warn
Speaker 1: her business more than ever.
Speaker 3: Like every five seconds I get a bonus and they're
Speaker 3: always like, open your app now to get this, and
Speaker 3: I'm like, no.
Speaker 1: She's somehow gotten her debit card tied to her gambling accounts.
Speaker 1: She's been moving so much money around that her own
Speaker 1: bank is trying to shut her down.
Speaker 3: I've basically locked my debit card, which I didn't know
Speaker 3: is a thing. So then when I tried to buy
Speaker 3: a coffee, it got declined, which has never happened to me.
Speaker 1: How did you pay for your coffee?
Speaker 2: The barista covered me.
Speaker 3: Really yeah, he was like, I'm sorry, this seems like
Speaker 3: a bad situation for you.
Speaker 1: Not a bad situation because LJ is now that most
Speaker 1: coveted of things a sports betting VIP. A lady named
Speaker 1: Courtney at MGM texted her with the news, which is odd.
Speaker 1: Lj's only made like forty nine thousand dollars worth of
Speaker 1: bets at bet MGM and she's only lost like eight
Speaker 1: grand to them. But they've assigned her a personal concierge
Speaker 1: and invited her to see Charlie XCX at Madison Square
Speaker 1: Garden just handed her to tickets worth thousands of dollars.
Speaker 1: I actually have no idea who Charlie XCX is. To me,
Speaker 1: it sounds like a new model of Mountain Bike. But
Speaker 1: Lj's thrilled and also worried. What if these people discover
Speaker 1: who she really is? What if they realize she's their
Speaker 1: worst nightmare.
Speaker 4: It'll be just like going to any hosted VIP and
Speaker 4: then at Medicine's Gay God.
Speaker 2: Okay, like I've never done that.
Speaker 1: That's the altar voice if someone we're calling Beckett like
Speaker 1: Rufus Peabody, Beckett's a player with an edge. Unlike Rufus,
Speaker 1: Beckett has on several occasions managed to become a VIP.
Speaker 5: You know.
Speaker 4: Lvy boxes and suites, and you'll be told where to go,
Speaker 4: and you'll go up onto a special floor and ushered
Speaker 4: into a large room which has been reserved by that
Speaker 4: MGM for all of their corporate hospitality stuff, whether it
Speaker 4: be a sports event for a music event. There will
Speaker 4: be a few other people in the VIP provent there,
Speaker 4: and there will be a few other people that work
Speaker 4: for that MGM, and there will be free food and
Speaker 4: free booze and a great view of the band.
Speaker 1: Beckett gives LJ a goal fake being a degenerate gambler
Speaker 1: so well that they raise her betting limits from like
Speaker 1: five to fifty thousand dollars a pop, but La is
Speaker 1: still fixated on how to act like a VIP.
Speaker 3: I don't know, Like I guess, should I pretend to
Speaker 3: be someone other than myself? No? I feel like I
Speaker 3: could just be myself a podcast producer in New York
Speaker 3: who is just a little wealthier than I actually am
Speaker 3: in real life, and enjoys batting a little more than
Speaker 3: I do in real life.
Speaker 5: And we love golf.
Speaker 2: We love golf.
Speaker 1: That's Ariela Markowitz, another producer on our show, who's flying
Speaker 1: in from California to be lj's plus one at Charlie XCX,
Speaker 1: and who is so into it.
Speaker 5: How sophisticated should our golf vocabulary be? I feel like
Speaker 5: I should start reading more.
Speaker 4: I mean, you know, if you try and become convustant
Speaker 4: in it, I think that just leads to all risks,
Speaker 4: because if then something you know doesn't make sense, and
Speaker 4: then you're drawn into a deeper conversation about stuff that
Speaker 4: you you know you don't feel comfortable talking about. I
Speaker 4: just I just wanted.
Speaker 2: Okay, well peppered in if we need to.
Speaker 4: And we got some light peppering.
Speaker 2: Do you have any backstories for us? It's toll like,
Speaker 2: how we're wealthy.
Speaker 4: I would, I would keep it vague, but I would,
Speaker 4: you know, family wealth or you know, in saving fears,
Speaker 4: something like that. Maybe you'd been investing for a while
Speaker 4: and you got bought it, so you pulled your money
Speaker 4: out of the stock bucket and decided to gammel with
Speaker 4: it instead.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that seems like gonna be a really hard thing
Speaker 3: for me to pull off.
Speaker 2: Thing casually for me, I'm.
Speaker 6: Like a dead relative. They gave me money, I'm stupid,
Speaker 6: got a honor. May their memory be a blessing?
Speaker 1: Like is that what you do?
Speaker 2: You go and say stuff like that, like have you
Speaker 2: done that?
Speaker 4: Yeah? I mean I've I've set all kinds of things
Speaker 4: to all kinds of people. I don't want to give
Speaker 4: away too much.
Speaker 1: He really doesn't. He doesn't want us to use his
Speaker 1: real name or his real voice, and he's certainly not
Speaker 1: going to tell us all his secrets. But even he's interested.
Speaker 1: He's never seen anyone with no interest in sports or
Speaker 1: gambling try to fake being a degenerate sports gambler.
Speaker 2: I'm gonna I might try just the no Lie route.
Speaker 3: Bee.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I totally improve. I think that's the way it did.
Speaker 4: Beckett approved slowly if that could approved?
Speaker 1: Beckett approved, and I did too. I'm Michael Lewis, and
Speaker 1: this is against the rules. Can I just pause for
Speaker 1: a moment to ponder this strange situation? Just how weird?
Speaker 1: This new sports gambling market now is the biggest sports books,
Speaker 1: Fan Duels and DraftKings, the two companies that basically control
Speaker 1: this market, have gotten so expert at spotting smart gamblers
Speaker 1: and kicking them out that they've already mostly kicked out LJ,
Speaker 1: which of course is not exactly a human tragedy. But
Speaker 1: you might think that the sports gambling companies could also
Speaker 1: use their shrewd algorithms to identify people with gambling problems
Speaker 1: and kicked them out too. As it turns out, not
Speaker 1: so much.
Speaker 7: My name is Jeff. I'm from New Jersey.
Speaker 1: What else? Jeff Gordon is one of those people who
Speaker 1: no one bothered to identify, As he says, he grew
Speaker 1: up in New Jersey. He didn't play sports, but he
Speaker 1: was a sports fan as a kid. He prided himself
Speaker 1: on his sports knowledge, and in early twenty sixteen, he
Speaker 1: saw a billboard ad for a Draft Kings fantasy basketball tournament.
Speaker 1: He was twenty four years old. He paid thirty bucks
Speaker 1: to enter the tournament, and to his delight, he finished
Speaker 1: second overall out of fifty thousand players. This further convinced
Speaker 1: him that he could predict whatever would happen on a
Speaker 1: basketball court better than other fans.
Speaker 7: It was one hundred thousand dollars, which to me, it
Speaker 7: was a lot of money for a thirty dollars bet.
Speaker 1: It is a lot of money for a thirty dollars
Speaker 1: to everybody, it's a lot of money for a thirty
Speaker 1: dollars bet. I mean, that's incredible.
Speaker 7: Yeah, it kind of I have a concept of what
Speaker 7: money is, but at the time it was like water.
Speaker 7: You can go through that very quickly. I think I was.
Speaker 7: I think I bought myself a car and the rest
Speaker 7: of the money was gambled away with it, I want
Speaker 7: to say a couple months, not.
Speaker 1: Even gambled away in fantasy leagues.
Speaker 7: In fantasy leagues and the daily fantasy tournaments in sports betting.
Speaker 1: When was the first time you thought I have a problem.
Speaker 7: When I was watching the six figures turn to five figures,
Speaker 7: to four to three and it hit about four figures
Speaker 7: in my bank account, I said, this is bad.
Speaker 1: But Jeff didn't stop or even really slow down, just
Speaker 1: the reverse. Because the year after his big win, New
Speaker 1: Jersey legalized mobile sports gambling. By twenty nineteen, everyone in
Speaker 1: New Jersey now had a casino in their pockets, and
Speaker 1: Jeff had zero ability to ignore it.
Speaker 7: When you hear that these that you can bet on
Speaker 7: in game parlays, you can do in game betting, player
Speaker 7: bet like, it's just crazy. When that was introduced, I wasn't,
Speaker 7: as I didn't have as much money as I did
Speaker 7: when it was really daily fantasy, but I was still
Speaker 7: involved heavily.
Speaker 1: He started losing money that he didn't have. He scrounged
Speaker 1: for money wherever he could, took out loans, and he
Speaker 1: did stuff he never imagined himself capable of.
Speaker 7: My wife and I were saving for our wedding. We
Speaker 7: had an account, and I dipped from that account and
Speaker 7: that was pretty low, dipped into some other money that
Speaker 7: I shouldn't have gotten my hands on.
Speaker 1: What did it feel like when you were doing it?
Speaker 7: During the time, all I cared about was getting that
Speaker 7: next bet in. But once that that was in there,
Speaker 7: once I lost, I felt like such a slimy, nasty
Speaker 7: case of garbage because I soooped to such a low
Speaker 7: level to get a bet in.
Speaker 1: You didn't need an algorithm to see that Jeff had
Speaker 1: a problem. But an algorithm could easily have spotted it.
Speaker 7: It's all about the action for the convulsion. For me,
Speaker 7: I'll speak for myself, it's not about the money.
Speaker 1: Does everybody kind of agree? It's not about the money.
Speaker 7: Absolutely. One of my favorite sayings is, we could fill
Speaker 7: this room up with one hundred dollars bills and it
Speaker 7: still wouldn't be good enough for us.
Speaker 1: Jeff doesn't have a drinking problem. Jeff doesn't do drugs,
Speaker 1: Jeff doesn't feel the appeal of any other addictive behaviors.
Speaker 1: It's just sports gambling. But the pull is strong, so
Speaker 1: strong that even after his wife throws him out of
Speaker 1: their home, even after he's forced to move back in
Speaker 1: with his parents, even then, he still keeps on punching
Speaker 1: his bets into DraftKings and FanDuel. It made me what
Speaker 1: I feel.
Speaker 7: It was a monster, and it's hard to it's very
Speaker 7: hard for me to to to say, like to let myself,
Speaker 7: to forgive myself, so to speak, because of all the
Speaker 7: relationships I've strained, the money I've taken, and it's just
Speaker 7: it effect. It just made me an angry, angry person,
Speaker 7: very irritable, just like dope sick. Almost. I want to say, like,
Speaker 7: I've never been dope sick, but it was like, unless
Speaker 7: you're in action, you're not. Actually you don't feel human.
Speaker 1: The sports gambling companies have this phrase responsible gaming. The
Speaker 1: idea is to everyone else off of the hook of
Speaker 1: worrying too much about the Jeffs of the world, whose
Speaker 1: behavior is totally unaffected by the warnings.
Speaker 8: Gambling addiction can make change seem out of reach, but
Speaker 8: help is closer than you think. Ready for a fresh start,
Speaker 8: visit ny dot gov bard slash ny responsible gaming to
Speaker 8: learn more.
Speaker 1: These PSAs are a little like the safety talks on airplanes,
Speaker 1: blasted at everyone and listened to by no one anyway.
Speaker 1: At some point into a sports gambling life, Jeff began
Speaker 1: having suicidal thoughts. He'd made plenty of bets and lost
Speaker 1: piles of money, but no one from the sports betting
Speaker 1: company's picked up on it. No one called, no one
Speaker 1: suggested he take a break. Did you ever feel like
Speaker 1: they were trying to detect that you had a problem
Speaker 1: so they could get rid of you or get you
Speaker 1: to help.
Speaker 7: H I would not say that. No, no, they would
Speaker 7: the more money you spent, I feel like the more
Speaker 7: you get the emails, I know that they had those
Speaker 7: cool They have cool off periods, but it's very easy
Speaker 7: to turn off a cool off or it's very easy
Speaker 7: to use another account if you have if you truly
Speaker 7: want to, if you want to, if you want to gamble,
Speaker 7: you're going to find a way to sports bet.
Speaker 1: It actually didn't occur to Jeff that the new sports
Speaker 1: gambling industrial complex for any responsibility at all for what
Speaker 1: had happened to him, that he was at the mercy
Speaker 1: of these new commercial forces that in some earlier age
Speaker 1: he might never have encountered. He just blamed himself. Who
Speaker 1: wasn't until his wife persuaded him to join Gambler's anonymous
Speaker 1: that he saw just how toxic the environment was.
Speaker 7: I see people come in, young, young kids, and they're
Speaker 7: they're they're getting emails spammed to them from from FanDuel
Speaker 7: and DraftKings. They're they're just getting bombarded. It's it's so enticing,
Speaker 7: it's so enticing, and that's just the world that we
Speaker 7: live in.
Speaker 1: You have to adapt and defend yourself exactly.
Speaker 7: That's all I can do is keep going to the program,
Speaker 7: keep going to meetings, speak, be around like minded people
Speaker 7: who want to get better and want to do the
Speaker 7: right thing, Because I know if I go back down
Speaker 7: that road, I'm going to end up doing the shady
Speaker 7: stuff that got me to the point of nearly taking
Speaker 7: my life. I would go to sleep every night praying
Speaker 7: that I didn't I don't wake up.
Speaker 1: Just this one guy with a problem, who my producer
Speaker 1: sort of randomly found in an online chat room full
Speaker 1: of problem gamblers, and he was brave enough to talk
Speaker 1: with us. One guy with a problem you pick up
Speaker 1: in a chat room isn't exactly science or even social science,
Speaker 1: but this one guy happens to be almost perfectly representative
Speaker 1: of a very big social problem.
Speaker 9: What's really interesting about gambling in general and sports gambling
Speaker 9: is a subset of gambling. Gambling in general is the
Speaker 9: way in which is sort of the most efficient kind
Speaker 9: of addiction.
Speaker 1: Charles fan Lehman of the Manhattan Institute, which calls itself
Speaker 1: a right of center think tank. So I guess Charles
Speaker 1: is just done a right of center dive into a
Speaker 1: bunch of new academic research about sports gambling.
Speaker 9: I think about slot machines which are just like designed
Speaker 9: to slowly gently take you down to zero. It's like
Speaker 9: you're can have a complicated relationship with marijuana, you get
Speaker 9: a complicated relationship with heroin, as it turns out. But
Speaker 9: like gambling addiction, if you gamble compulsively, you just keep
Speaker 9: doing it until you have lost all of your money.
Speaker 9: It's very efficient, and so it's very informative.
Speaker 1: It's informative because its outcomes are so clean, but it's
Speaker 1: also informative because of the way sports gambling has rolled
Speaker 1: out over the past five years, state by state. If
Speaker 1: the states had legalized sports gambling all at once, its
Speaker 1: effects would be harder to study. But this is like
Speaker 1: a giant natural experiment. You have data being generated in
Speaker 1: states that have approved gambling side by side with states
Speaker 1: that have it. Walk me through some of the research
Speaker 1: that has sort of affected the way you think about it.
Speaker 9: The sort of bottom line is that economic outcomes get
Speaker 9: much worse, and more precisely, households on average become much
Speaker 9: more precarious, and in particular, the kinds of households that
Speaker 9: are already at risk of precarity become much more precarious.
Speaker 9: And what I mean by that is, their risks of
Speaker 9: defaulting on credit go up, their risk of going to
Speaker 9: delinquency goes up, their risk of bankruptcy goes up twenty
Speaker 9: five to thirty percent, which is a big jump from
Speaker 9: a low baseline.
Speaker 1: One jeff is disturbing. A million jeffs is a big
Speaker 1: social problem, and what the research is showing is that
Speaker 1: every day America has a lot more jefs.
Speaker 9: One of the sort of shocking numbers is for every
Speaker 9: dollars spent on sports gambling, two dollars of investment are
Speaker 9: foregone money transferred into your like Schwab account or whatever.
Speaker 9: People are spending it today rather than on tomorrow. And
Speaker 9: then the point about you know, the most precarious is
Speaker 9: that when you sort of dig down into who is
Speaker 9: most affected, it is generally a young men who across
Speaker 9: a variety of indicators, are prone to risky behaviors, self
Speaker 9: harming risky behaviors. And b it is often those households
Speaker 9: that already have problems with credit, already have some history
Speaker 9: of bankruptcy or delinquency. And so there's people who are
Speaker 9: sort of already primed to not make the most responsible decisions,
Speaker 9: have gas poort on the fire.
Speaker 1: Of course, a gambling problem first reveals itself as a
Speaker 1: money problem, But when a money problem is caused by
Speaker 1: a gambling problem, there are some shocking side effects.
Speaker 9: When the home team has an upset loss an fell game,
Speaker 9: there is a statistically significant increase in rates of into
Speaker 9: a partner of violence domestic violence. The increases even larger
Speaker 9: in states that have sports gambling. And the point is like,
Speaker 9: not only is sports gambling sort of leading people who
Speaker 9: might not have great judgment into really terrible situations for themselves,
Speaker 9: it is contributing to these terrible situations for the people
Speaker 9: who are They are surrounded with their loved ones, their partners, etc.
Speaker 1: It's amplifying fan emotion.
Speaker 9: Yes, if you know it feels bad to lose a
Speaker 9: big bet, it feels particularly bad if you have everything
Speaker 9: riding on it. And if you're the sort of person
Speaker 9: who has everything writing on it, maybe it's not great
Speaker 9: that you were able to place a big bet from
Speaker 9: your phone in the first place.
Speaker 1: The argument that people made back before sports gambling became
Speaker 1: legal is that Americans were already betting on sports. Legalize
Speaker 1: it and regulate it, and it'd be easier to identify
Speaker 1: people with gambling problems and help them to get help.
Speaker 1: What happened instead is that more people are developing gambling
Speaker 1: problems because more people are gambling. I mean, that's why
Speaker 1: in states that legalized sports gambling, the savings rate falls
Speaker 1: and the bankruptcy rate rises. So you've got to kind
Speaker 1: of ask why is this social experiment going so wrong?
Speaker 10: Ohio generally is the caboose when it comes to gambling,
Speaker 10: and that's not a bad place to be because you
Speaker 10: learn so much from all of the states that have
Speaker 10: come before.
Speaker 1: Meet Matt Schuler, Ohio's sports gambling regulator. Ohio only legalized
Speaker 1: sports betting last year, but it already allows seventeen different
Speaker 1: mobile sports gaming apps. Up till now, Matt's job has
Speaker 1: been to regulate casinos in the state. This new form
Speaker 1: of gambling, well, it's added a whole new wing to
Speaker 1: Matt's duties. Not all of the states that legalize sports
Speaker 1: gambling have someone like Matt, but most of them do
Speaker 1: someone who's never regulated sports gambling and is being asked
Speaker 1: to figure it out quickly. Most of these regulator types
Speaker 1: declined to come on podcasts, But since he's been in
Speaker 1: his new job, that's seen some stuff that he really
Speaker 1: feels the need to talk about.
Speaker 10: So here's an example of something I think is rather
Speaker 10: dastard One of the sports books in our state. If
Speaker 10: you place three straight wagers, whether it's on different teams
Speaker 10: or different aspects of a game with the same team,
Speaker 10: that app will automatically take your three separate straight bets
Speaker 10: and turn it into a parlay bet. In a parlay,
Speaker 10: you have to get all three of those right to win. Now,
Speaker 10: you might have won two out of three and actually
Speaker 10: you won something. But when you roll it into a
Speaker 10: parlay automatically, sometimes they don't even know that happened.
Speaker 1: The better doesn't even have to approve.
Speaker 10: No, that's bizarre. I think it's sinister.
Speaker 1: The apps all have a lot of these little nudges,
Speaker 1: not just to place bets, but to place certain kinds
Speaker 1: of bets. Parle bets tend to make more money for
Speaker 1: the sports betting companies because it's easier to trick people
Speaker 1: into taking bad odds on these bets. Parley bets are
Speaker 1: long shot bets, and the human mind is notoriously horrible
Speaker 1: at thinking about long shots. Offer most people fifty to
Speaker 1: one odds, and they get so excited that they don't
Speaker 1: notice that they should really be getting one hundred to one.
Speaker 1: What else needs to be done that isn't being done?
Speaker 1: Like where else do you? When you look out, you
Speaker 1: say like, I can't believe that's allowed.
Speaker 10: All operators are required at least here in Ohio, and
Speaker 10: I'm sure this is the case elsewhere to use the
Speaker 10: very kind of sophisticated data they collect on their customers
Speaker 10: to identify those that are engaging in problematic handling behavior,
Speaker 10: chasing bets and losing and betting double and losing and
Speaker 10: trying to dig themselves out of this hole. That has
Speaker 10: a good purpose to it if you're going to limit
Speaker 10: a player. But what we're seeing is the expert gamblers
Speaker 10: are the ones that they're shutting the door to.
Speaker 1: Let me put this another way, the new sports gambling
Speaker 1: companies are using their state mandates to limit problem gamblers
Speaker 1: as cover to limit expert gamblers while not doing much
Speaker 1: of anything about the problem gamblers. This, of course, drives
Speaker 1: Matt nuts in casinos. He could see the problem gamblers.
Speaker 1: He could give casino employees a checklist of signs to
Speaker 1: watch for in their customers, anger, distress, drug abuse. He
Speaker 1: could find the casinos if they ignored those signs. With
Speaker 1: these new sports books, you can't see the gamblers. All
Speaker 1: you can see are the social problems.
Speaker 10: We know there is a big problem with a predatory
Speaker 10: approach to people who are inclined to lose and double
Speaker 10: down and lose that and go further and further and
Speaker 10: further without intervention. And how are we as a regular
Speaker 10: to be able to distinguish types of behavior where banning
Speaker 10: someone for the right reasons because they have a gambling
Speaker 10: problem are able to be conducted versus those that are
Speaker 10: being banned because they're too good, leaving this population of
Speaker 10: vulnerable individuals in the middle who are just losing their money.
Speaker 10: And that's what we are working on. It's going to
Speaker 10: be a long term project for us in other states.
Speaker 1: A long term project. That's a polite way of saying,
Speaker 1: no one's doing anything about it. And Matt knows this.
Speaker 10: I ordered Pizza Hut one night, and when I got
Speaker 10: my receipt from Pizza Hut, it also gave me a
Speaker 10: promotion to get on sports book, and he gave me
Speaker 10: some bonus bets. And of course, being the regulator of
Speaker 10: the Casino Control Commission, I thought to myself, how in
Speaker 10: the world. Do they know whether I am on a
Speaker 10: self exclusion list, whether I am eighteen or otherwise should
Speaker 10: not be getting these promotions. Well, the truth of the
Speaker 10: matter is they weren't screening. They just did it. And
Speaker 10: another sports book did it with Uber where you go
Speaker 10: and do your Uber transaction. The next thing you know,
Speaker 10: you're getting a promotion to bet with some bonus bets
Speaker 10: attached to it. And so I had my minor son
Speaker 10: do it. He got the same thing.
Speaker 1: Matt belongs to a kind of sports gambling support group.
Speaker 1: Its members are all sports gambling regulators in other states.
Speaker 1: These people get on the phone to talk about what
Speaker 1: they're seeing and how hard it is to do anything
Speaker 1: about it, and how frustrating it is because these businesses
Speaker 1: are doing with their customers is so obviously predatory. I mean,
Speaker 1: everyone knows that the group most at risk of contracting
Speaker 1: gambling problems are young men. That's why you attach bets
Speaker 1: to late night pizzas and inflate their egos.
Speaker 10: They call them VIPs. VIP doesn't mean that they're expert gamblers.
Speaker 10: What it means is they're really likely to keep gambling
Speaker 10: and losing their money. And so different sports books you
Speaker 10: can see what they do. In states where they're trying
Speaker 10: to get market share, they will expend a bunch of
Speaker 10: promotional bonus bets on their VIP population to encourage them
Speaker 10: to get into the game. Let me be the skunk
Speaker 10: at the picnic, okay and say, if you are a
Speaker 10: VIP with a sports book, you are their bread and butter.
Speaker 10: And if you're getting bonus bets and you boy, and
Speaker 10: if you have like bedding ambassador that's your own personal
Speaker 10: contact at the sports book, you are definitely losing money
Speaker 10: and you're going to keep losing money because why would
Speaker 10: you be a VIP.
Speaker 1: It's an excellent question. I'm going to jump in here
Speaker 1: and say what I've been saying the past few episodes.
Speaker 1: The sports books that control two thirds of the market,
Speaker 1: DraftKings and Fan Duel, they're still declining our requests for
Speaker 1: an interview. But if anyone wants to respond to what
Speaker 1: Matt's saying here that basically VIPs or profit centers with
Speaker 1: gambling problems, you know where to find me. Our lines
Speaker 1: are open. Oh and our VIPs they're ready to place
Speaker 1: more bags.
Speaker 9: That talk is like an a girl talk.
Speaker 4: Okay, this girl is so permanent.
Speaker 7: Yeah, this is obviously incredibly broad.
Speaker 2: That's very bright.
Speaker 5: Yeah, that top is like literally like Brie Covin.
Speaker 1: Apparently it's Brat's Summer, whatever that means. My producer LJ
Speaker 1: is at this moment trying on outfits with her fellow
Speaker 1: producer Ariella and their fashionista friend Jay because they're about
Speaker 1: to join MGM at MSG to see CSF.
Speaker 6: That's like a very virtual outfit because I don't know,
Speaker 6: it's like he was expensive taste, but you're a little
Speaker 6: bit clueless because I feel like it's not the.
Speaker 11: Most like Charlie I.
Speaker 1: I obviously wasn't there for any of this, but I
Speaker 1: was there the next day when LJ called. It was
Speaker 1: the day of the concert. She had Ariella with her,
Speaker 1: and they were no longer sounding like the girls of
Speaker 1: Brat Summer. So I want to know what happened.
Speaker 5: Oh, well, we're going to lj's friend's house to get
Speaker 5: out fits for the show because she has this.
Speaker 11: Like amazing Sex and the City esque wardrobe.
Speaker 5: And then once we're there, LJ starts feeling like something's
Speaker 5: really off, so we call her VIP Courtisan Courtney. She
Speaker 5: doesn't pick up.
Speaker 1: Even as LJ was picking out her wardrobe. She continued
Speaker 1: to lay down college football bets with Rufus Peabody. These
Speaker 1: were distinctly not the bets of a VIP. I mean,
Speaker 1: they were big bets, many thousands of dollars, but they
Speaker 1: were also smart bets. The odds generally moved in her
Speaker 1: favor after she'd made them. For instance, LJ took betmgm's
Speaker 1: early line of UCLA in twenty five points against LSU.
Speaker 1: The closing line was twenty one and a half. That
Speaker 1: bet looked smart, maybe too smart.
Speaker 3: I texted her and called no answer. I was like,
Speaker 3: maybe I'm being paranoid. She just doesn't work over the weekends,
Speaker 3: which I think is the case. Then at nine eighteen,
Speaker 3: I got a text from her that said, Hi, Lydia,
Speaker 3: I am very sorry, but unfortunately we are no longer
Speaker 3: able to offer you the tickets for tonight due to
Speaker 3: the fact that your account has factored down during the
Speaker 3: last week. If there are any changes in the future,
Speaker 3: I would love to welcome you back to our program,
Speaker 3: but I am unable to do anything at this point.
Speaker 1: LJ will never know what happened. She'll text Courtney, she'll
Speaker 1: call Courtney, she'll do everything but figure out where Courtney
Speaker 1: lives to leave the head of a horse on her doorstep.
Speaker 1: Courtney will no longer want to be her friend, her
Speaker 1: VIP concierge because LJ is no longer a VIP.
Speaker 3: I felt like, like, honestly, I felt like analyzing a
Speaker 3: breakup because I was like, look at how good we were,
Speaker 3: and then what happened Fortney.
Speaker 2: My AI girlfriend? Why did she give me tickets? Why
Speaker 2: did you stop talking to me?
Speaker 1: I didn't want to say what I was thinking just then,
Speaker 1: but LJ always knows anyway when I'm thinking before I
Speaker 1: say it, before.
Speaker 2: You say, you should not have done those bets.
Speaker 3: Beckett says that that's been a situation with all of
Speaker 3: my bets, and he doesn't think that that made any difference,
Speaker 3: like that they were going to just do a sweep.
Speaker 2: I got caught up in a sweep, and then that's
Speaker 2: why I got kicked out.
Speaker 1: That seems rash of them to have invited you in
Speaker 1: the first place. If they were going to do a
Speaker 1: sweep that would sweep.
Speaker 5: You out, I'll say it is they've broke their promise
Speaker 5: and our hearts and our hearts and.
Speaker 1: Put you on an airplane across country for no reason.
Speaker 2: Luckily I was able to cancel my blow drive.
Speaker 1: I still wish she hadn't made those extra bets. She
Speaker 1: could have waited, gotten inside the VIP machine, seen some things,
Speaker 1: at least met a few other VIPs. But none of
Speaker 1: that's going to happen now, and probably never will. This
Speaker 1: world LJ was trying to enter is not just filled
Speaker 1: with problem gamblers. It's built for the problem gambler. This
Speaker 1: VIP machine, it's getting smarter every day. It's a bit
Speaker 1: like watching the slow march of an artificial intelligence. Today
Speaker 1: it sounds dumb, tomorrow will steal your wife and children
Speaker 1: and empty your bank accounts. Smart gamblers like rufus, like LJ,
Speaker 1: are a temporary nuisance, a momentary inconvenience. The machine will
Speaker 1: get better and better at identifying and getting rid of them,
Speaker 1: so that in the end, the VIP lounge is what
Speaker 1: it was always meant to be. A party of guys
Speaker 1: with a pizza promotion in one hand and a ride
Speaker 1: share bonus bet in the other. So we no longer belong.
Speaker 1: We are factored down. Nobody's outside the velvet ropes, weak
Speaker 1: in status but still strong in desire.
Speaker 2: Imagine that we're at the concert.
Speaker 1: You know at the concert got you got bet MGM
Speaker 1: on either side of your VIP courtesans and they're they're
Speaker 1: they're laughing, they're handing you drinks, they're loving everything you do.
Speaker 1: They think that you're just taking.
Speaker 5: Oh my god, I can see it in my head
Speaker 5: to a tears coming.
Speaker 11: To my eye?
Speaker 2: What would you be thinking a lot too? Okay? This
Speaker 2: song really sums up how I feel.
Speaker 11: Do you realizes I could have been a wanted change
Speaker 11: your life? You could have had a back girl by
Speaker 11: your side. You could have had a bad girl, could
Speaker 11: have had a bad girl, bad girl. Do you even
Speaker 11: know no reasons why you have to let me go?
Speaker 3: You could have had a by your side, You could
Speaker 3: have had a m all right, Wow, I feel like
Speaker 3: a real VIP.
Speaker 1: Against the Rules is written and hosted by me Michael
Speaker 1: Lewis and produced by Lydia Gene Coott, Catherine Gerardeau and
Speaker 1: Ariela Markowitz. Our editors Julia Barton, Our engineer is Jake Krski.
Speaker 1: Our music was composed by Matthias Bossi and John Evans
Speaker 1: of stell Wagon Cinfinet. Our fact checker is Lauren Vespoli.
Speaker 1: Against the Rules is a production of Pushkin Industries. To
Speaker 1: find more Pushkin podcasts, listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to podcasts. And if you'd like
Speaker 1: to listen to ad free and learn about other exclusive offerings,
Speaker 1: don't forget to sign up for a Pushkin Plus subscription
Speaker 1: at pushkin dot fm, slash Plus, or on our Apple
Speaker 1: show page.
Speaker 3: I feel like I'm more nervous Scenariola because I feel
Speaker 3: like it's actually really.
Speaker 2: Hard to pretend that you're someone you're not.
Speaker 1: We'll see everybody on the streets of New York are
Speaker 1: pretending to be someone. There not You're the only one
Speaker 1: in New York City's not pretending to be someone and
Speaker 1: they're not lean into We're just I'm just having fun.
Speaker 1: It's like and and if you can give off the
Speaker 1: odor of I have family money?
Speaker 2: Yeah, but how do you give off the odor if
Speaker 2: I have family money?
Speaker 1: Giggle a lot.
Speaker 5: Four people.
Speaker 9: I hate laughter.
Speaker 1: Don't do things like ask them to pack up the leftovers.
Speaker 6: Okay, I mean I shouldn't be putting pieces of bread
Speaker 6: into my purse.
Speaker 3: Don't steal the toilet paper from the bathroom and try
Speaker 3: and bring it home.
Speaker 1: Don't do that, don't do the things that podcast producers
Speaker 1: normally do.