Speaker 1: Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartRadio. Welcome back to
Speaker 1: the show, fellow Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always so
Speaker 1: much for tuning in. This is a mid game announcement.
Speaker 1: We are part way through a series on the inspiring
Speaker 1: ridiculous history of fantasy sports.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, why don't we just go ahead and join
Speaker 2: ourselves already in progress.
Speaker 1: So they embarked upon making their dream manifest, making their
Speaker 1: fantasy reality. They had a few ideas that didn't quite
Speaker 1: take off, like a restaurant guide, a billing system based
Speaker 1: on Java architecture. Along the way, they added a new
Speaker 1: guide to the band, a guy named Matt fort Now,
Speaker 1: and they started saying, look, we can build websites for you.
Speaker 1: If you were someone who wants to have an online presence,
Speaker 1: come to us. They were originally thinking about fantasy baseball
Speaker 1: at all. It took a fantasy baseball player to contact them,
Speaker 1: and this guy said to them, could you build me
Speaker 1: a website that makes it easier for me to share
Speaker 1: stuff with my fellow fantasy football league? Can you help me?
Speaker 1: Can you help me present this information in a more
Speaker 1: approachable way? And don't worry, I don't need you. Guys
Speaker 1: to do the math. I have a system. I will
Speaker 1: calculate the results myself.
Speaker 2: Real quick, y'all. Is commissioner Is that like sort of
Speaker 2: the dungeon master of the whole the whole deal.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, they're They're the person who runs the league. So
Speaker 3: it's very much more of an administrative position than anything
Speaker 3: where it's just like you know, so like in our league,
Speaker 3: like I tell my buddy Ronnie, like you're you're in charge,
Speaker 3: but he kind of runs stuff a lot by a
Speaker 3: lot of us was to kind of do it. But look,
Speaker 3: you know, at the end of the day, because obviously
Speaker 3: the online stuff does all the calculations. Now you don't
Speaker 3: do that yourself, right, But.
Speaker 2: Well, yeah, and that's the whole deal. This is this
Speaker 2: product or this platform that they were working on was
Speaker 2: ultimately dubbed commissioner because it was a way of doing
Speaker 2: the work of that individual and making everybody a little
Speaker 2: more freed up to have fun with it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly, And that was the result of an ongoing evolution. Now,
Speaker 1: our guy we mentioned earlier, Bizarres, he had already had
Speaker 1: some experience. He played one year of fantasy football, and
Speaker 1: he went to the commissioner, the admin in charge of
Speaker 1: his league and said, hey, man, you know, just between us,
Speaker 1: how long do you spend setting everything up for us
Speaker 1: to play this game? And the commissioner takes a second,
Speaker 1: choose it over and says, I'm looking at it, about
Speaker 1: eight hours per week on this and then this is
Speaker 1: what leads to that evolution you're mentioning there. Bizaris and
Speaker 1: his buddy say, wait, what if we can do all
Speaker 1: that work for the commissioner. You can set up your
Speaker 1: own lineups instead of having to call this guy and
Speaker 1: waste eight hours of his week. We can calculate the stats,
Speaker 1: we can put the standings up there. We can do
Speaker 1: all of this online.
Speaker 2: And this would be a big deal. This would be
Speaker 2: an incredibly powerful tool to offer fantasy players. So at
Speaker 2: the time, there were already some fantasy stats services, but
Speaker 2: they were expensive because of how niche it was. They
Speaker 2: charged about three hundred bucks a season. The partners put
Speaker 2: their heads together inside it, they would also match that price,
Speaker 2: but they would give a lot more bang for those bucks.
Speaker 2: They would make it a much better service that was
Speaker 2: currently available, and it would be the first entirely online
Speaker 2: version of this.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and it's it's a fantastic idea. It's phenomenal.
Speaker 2: Well, it's the perfect example of being on the ground
Speaker 2: floor of something where you see a need and you
Speaker 2: recognize it because it's something that you're into and you
Speaker 2: know it would be something that you would like to have.
Speaker 2: It's just the perfect example of like a AHA moment
Speaker 2: in business.
Speaker 1: Right, it's a light bulb moment. However, asterisk, it's a
Speaker 1: great idea that they have not actually created just yet.
Speaker 2: No, no, this is cocktail napkin stuff for sure, chicken
Speaker 2: chicken wing napkin stuff.
Speaker 1: Right, everybody's two beers deep and the vibe is great.
Speaker 1: Will this carry through tomorrow?
Speaker 2: They have you said?
Speaker 3: You said chip chicken wing naptin. We have to discuss this.
Speaker 3: I'm sorry. The table, what sauce is on there? Or
Speaker 3: what sauce is there's probably multiple sauces.
Speaker 2: In New York City. It would probably be just like
Speaker 2: a good bustle buffalo wing. Yeah, yeah, probably buffalo.
Speaker 3: There would be like a spicy barbicue you as well,
Speaker 3: because or I hope, yeah, okay, it's mostly it's ficy
Speaker 3: hot sauce and it's like is it kind of like
Speaker 3: just like soaked in it, Like it's dried out afterwards.
Speaker 3: But it's the entire things that kind of reddish nap.
Speaker 2: I don't know what what What kind of wing did
Speaker 2: Cuba Gooding Junior force us to eat?
Speaker 1: Oh god, he was so specific about that. No, we'll
Speaker 1: keep it in. This is.
Speaker 2: For another day.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think we've talked about that on the show.
Speaker 1: They were talking about was very kind to us, quite
Speaker 1: kind of kindness, let's say, mercurial perhaps, but everybody goes
Speaker 1: through things. Uh, it was. I believe it was a
Speaker 1: wet barbecue.
Speaker 2: Actually, I think you're right. It was definitely. I want
Speaker 2: to say though it was a regular old buffalo, but
Speaker 2: it was wet for sure.
Speaker 1: It was.
Speaker 2: I can't I can't truly speak with authority there, but
Speaker 2: I remember it being a wet wing. It had a
Speaker 2: kick to it, Yeah, did right, little kick, so as
Speaker 2: did Kuba. Cuba was kicked up a couple of notches himself.
Speaker 3: Yes, yeah, I remember it being a wet wing. That
Speaker 3: is the tagline for the episodes.
Speaker 1: Waitne yes, So these guys are having a great time
Speaker 1: with their chicken wigs. God, we're gonna close the lunch
Speaker 1: and they said, Okay, the baseball season's coming up. Let's
Speaker 1: assume we have a few months to prepare. But then
Speaker 1: two days later, after they have this light bulb moment,
Speaker 1: this epiphany, they say, holy crap, guys, did you know
Speaker 1: that we can buy ad space in the back page
Speaker 1: of the largest fantasy magazine, fantasy sports magazine itself. And
Speaker 1: this is to that earlier comparison about getting in on
Speaker 1: the ground floor. This would be like if our fearless
Speaker 1: leader Conall Brn had a meeting with us about maybe
Speaker 1: starting podcast and then went to the New York Times
Speaker 1: the next Thursday and took out a full page ad
Speaker 1: same podcast We're happening.
Speaker 2: Mm hmm, yeah, spoke called putting the car before the horse.
Speaker 1: For sure, they had they had the idea, they were
Speaker 1: doing the legwork. They saw, as you said, the market opportunity.
Speaker 1: But they had not written a single line of code.
Speaker 1: They were just so committed. They had such faith in
Speaker 1: their idea that they went ahead and pulled the advertisement.
Speaker 2: Well, this is classic fake it till you make it
Speaker 2: type stuff. So they indeed had twenty four hours to
Speaker 2: submit the thing. They had not made a company name yet,
Speaker 2: they had no artwork, all that good stuff. They designed
Speaker 2: the ad saying that they would update the stats daily,
Speaker 2: they would extend American Express, Visa and MasterCard, and they
Speaker 2: also promised a whole bunch of other bells and whistles
Speaker 2: that they had no implementation of whatsoever.
Speaker 1: Right, I love improv man. They were just yes through
Speaker 1: the whole thing. If you had dropped by that meeting
Speaker 1: when they were having their frantic brain trust to make
Speaker 1: this ad, you could have said almost anything and they
Speaker 1: probably would have been like, yeah, put it in. That's
Speaker 1: a great point. Anyway, they do succeed. They launched commissioner
Speaker 1: dot com right around New Year's Eve. The ball drops
Speaker 1: in Times Square ringing in nineteen ninety seven, just one
Speaker 1: hectic month. This is the moment in our film adaptation
Speaker 1: where we get the montage right. This is where we
Speaker 1: see just snippets of their frenetic process. Bizarre Is still
Speaker 1: has a day job. He's working at Banker's Trust, and
Speaker 1: per his own later reports, he say that during this
Speaker 1: month he slept it best in average of an.
Speaker 2: Hour a night.
Speaker 1: I don't know, I don't know.
Speaker 2: If that's physically possible. Yeah, it seems like a bit
Speaker 2: of lore, a little bit of myth making. But I
Speaker 2: think it's safe to say that in order to get
Speaker 2: something like this off the ground and the ridiculously tight
Speaker 2: timeline that they set for themselves, sleep would certainly be secondary.
Speaker 1: Yeah, agreed, right, priorities, and he has responded to this.
Speaker 1: Bizarres later said, this sounds like hyperbole, but it isn't.
Speaker 1: I worked all day every day, about twenty three hours.
Speaker 1: Once we launched, I gave myself three hours of sleep
Speaker 1: a night because we had to get ready for the
Speaker 1: baseball season.
Speaker 2: I think sure that could work. In the article, Scheckter
Speaker 2: talks about a moment when Bizarres took a twenty minute
Speaker 2: nap in a bathroom stall. This does not necessarily bode
Speaker 2: well in terms of the efficacy of these micronap Let's
Speaker 2: just say only to notice that he had rested his
Speaker 2: head against the toilet paper dispenser because his forehead now
Speaker 2: read if role is empty slide cover to write one
Speaker 2: of the molded plastic jobs, right.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And that happens at his day job at Banker's Trust.
Speaker 1: By this point, the fantasy football idea that they're working
Speaker 1: on has started to turn a profit. Not a big profit,
Speaker 1: but it started to make a little money. And this
Speaker 1: inspires Bizarres and co. He is confident that he can
Speaker 1: leave his job at Banker's Trust and focus all of
Speaker 1: his energy on commissioner dot com. He's the software developer.
Speaker 2: Every time I hear commissioner, I just think Commissioner Gordon
Speaker 2: right inescapable. So back to that piece, Bizarres was the
Speaker 2: software developer, while Gersh was the business guy. He handled
Speaker 2: vendors and all of the marketing efforts. They had an
Speaker 2: office in a building that was not up to spec,
Speaker 2: say the The writer says that it should have been condemned.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and this is the kind of warst story that
Speaker 1: you'll hear later in tales of Silicon Valley startups.
Speaker 2: Classic startup lore.
Speaker 1: Of course, no heat, no hot water. We're sleeping next
Speaker 1: to our computers to stay warm, peeing in jugs. Mice
Speaker 1: are there, you know what I mean. We're probably we're
Speaker 1: probably splitting a pizza as a celebration this first baseball.
Speaker 1: Lots of lots of robin noodles, maybe nag if you're fancy.
Speaker 1: By the way, keynote, just a little pro tip for
Speaker 1: our fellow Ramin fans. A dash of sesame oil not
Speaker 1: too much.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and the egg, no question, crack it right, in there.
Speaker 1: I think we're accidentally played here, we're doing it again,
Speaker 1: because we clearly had a very heavy, heavily reliant Romen
Speaker 1: based period of our own lives.
Speaker 2: Well, so it's that up against lunch situation that you mentioned.
Speaker 1: Oh gosh, yeah, rotisserie Romin chichicken wings. Okay, so you're
Speaker 1: absolutely right, their first time out, their first time around
Speaker 1: the block. This initial baseball season, they snagged two hundred
Speaker 1: paid customers, each paying three hundred dollars, as you mentioned,
Speaker 1: per season, and then they had separately one hundred subscribers
Speaker 1: for football at the same price.
Speaker 2: Interesting, Okay, so at this point it was secondary football.
Speaker 1: Yeah, at this point it was at this point there
Speaker 1: were more baseball customers for Commissioner dot com.
Speaker 2: So they were still kind of testing the waters to
Speaker 2: see what was going to be their most popular offering.
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly, and they met with results. The next baseball season,
Speaker 1: they have eight hundred separate leagues. That's enormous growth, and
Speaker 1: part of that is because these guys were so nimble
Speaker 1: and so responsive. Anytime a customer came to them with
Speaker 1: the request that was not absolute wing nuts stuff, they
Speaker 1: made it happen. They made it so shout out to Picard.
Speaker 2: Indeed this Max approves.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's for you, Max. So this puts them streets
Speaker 1: ahead of other people in the space like ESPN and
Speaker 1: sports Line. At this time, they're trying to do their
Speaker 1: own kind of fantasy thing and they only have one
Speaker 1: set of rules that people can play. So because these
Speaker 1: guys are so adaptable, with Commissioner dot Com, they're able
Speaker 1: to relocate to a newer office that's not quite as terrible.
Speaker 1: It's not great, it's just their fewer mice.
Speaker 2: And this was just the beginning. I mean, it's nineteen
Speaker 2: ninety eight. Commissioner not Gordon, and CBS would eventually partner
Speaker 2: up to create CBS sports Line Commissioner dot com in
Speaker 2: all caps. As Max points out, this is early dot
Speaker 2: com days. So in its very first year, the fee
Speaker 2: was dropped from three hundred bucks to only one hundred
Speaker 2: because ad revenue was supplementing that. So they were able
Speaker 2: to decrease the subscription fee, which of course was a
Speaker 2: value add and helped up their numbers, but the ad
Speaker 2: revenue ended up being way more than they bargained for
Speaker 2: in like a really good way.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, man, this is the kind of story that
Speaker 1: becomes folklore. If you've ever started your own business, you
Speaker 1: know how difficult it is to succeed in the first place, right,
Speaker 1: you know how unimaginably amazing it is to meet this
Speaker 1: level of success. So soon, this fee approach that they
Speaker 1: have is really speaking to the market. They have ten
Speaker 1: thousand football leagues. Very soon after it becomes the dominant
Speaker 1: business for cbssportsline dot com. One month they got a
Speaker 1: check for five hundred thousand dollars, and this clock's to
Speaker 1: the big guys, the fatcats, and the established sports industry.
Speaker 1: Sports Line comes to them and says, we want to
Speaker 1: buy you out.
Speaker 2: If you can't beat them, buy them. On December seventh,
Speaker 2: nineteen ninety nine, Cbssportsline dot Com Boughtcommissioner dot Com for
Speaker 2: forty six million dollars. And it was a massive sea
Speaker 2: change in the lives of our heroes.
Speaker 1: And shout out to Bizarres, who later says, when I
Speaker 1: checked my bank ballot that day, I half expected to
Speaker 1: see twelve dollars or whatever in my checking account, but
Speaker 1: there were a lot of zeros. It was the most surreal.
Speaker 2: Thing, big moment. So with Commissioner dot com launching the
Speaker 2: first modern ish fantasy platform. Sorry I'm screaming the commons
Speaker 2: in all caps is still test to me.
Speaker 1: It's on purpose all caps, it is, yeah, but it
Speaker 1: just makes you feel like you're supposed to yell at.
Speaker 2: The fantasy industry was off to a great start, and
Speaker 2: it began to exponentially increase in popularity, as Keithan Baboo
Speaker 2: writes for The Miami Student, who stays they are the
Speaker 2: oldest college newspaper west of the Alleghanies. I love anything
Speaker 2: that claims to be something the best of something west
Speaker 2: of the Alleghanies. This is very fun. Flex is my
Speaker 2: points out.
Speaker 1: I love those big claims for the Mason Dixon Line.
Speaker 1: As long as they have a caveat, It's always the
Speaker 1: caveat for me.
Speaker 2: Dude.
Speaker 1: It's like I am the world champion bingo player in
Speaker 1: the southeastern North Ohio Cincinnati.
Speaker 2: Area, the largest hot dog sculpture in the Chicago Land area.
Speaker 1: Exactly right, especially when it's really specific geography, like this
Speaker 1: is the world's fourth largest frying pad in this part
Speaker 1: of Missouri.
Speaker 2: Largest Adirondack chair in the Rockies. Exactly Also, I'm a
Speaker 2: big fan of the Tri State area. Anything that refers
Speaker 2: to the Tri State area.
Speaker 1: Oh, I love it. I'm a sucker for that, man.
Speaker 1: That's why I love to take road trips, avoiding interstates.
Speaker 1: That's where you see a lot of.
Speaker 2: The cool stuff. That's what you should all do, all
Speaker 2: those fun roadside attractions. See rock City if you can.
Speaker 1: Yeah, oh man, rock City. So anyway, as Babu was reporting,
Speaker 1: fantasy sports has a culture that you can trace throughout
Speaker 1: the late twentieth century, but it isn't until the advent
Speaker 1: of the Internet that it becomes wide scale popular. If
Speaker 1: you look at our friends from a fixa from Fantasy
Speaker 1: Sports and Gaming Association, you'll see that from nineteen ninety
Speaker 1: one to nineteen ninety four, something between one and three
Speaker 1: million people somehow participated in fantasy sports, but by two
Speaker 1: thousand and three that number had more than trebled. The
Speaker 1: figure rose to fifteen point two million people, and.
Speaker 2: As recently as twenty twenty two, the number has ballooned
Speaker 2: to more than the sixty two million people sixty two
Speaker 2: point five to be I don't know.
Speaker 1: Man, we might need to hop on the train here,
Speaker 1: because otherwise what happens when we're some of the last
Speaker 1: people who are not actively playing these games.
Speaker 2: It's not for me, but I do because I just
Speaker 2: don't have the I just don't have the knowledge to
Speaker 2: really enjoy it. And I've just never been a sports guy.
Speaker 2: I do, like you said, been enjoy the electric energy
Speaker 2: at like live sporting events, and I really do appreciate
Speaker 2: the folks that drill down into this kind of stuff.
Speaker 2: But for me, I'm more into stats around like video games,
Speaker 2: you know, like leveling up characters and doing character builds
Speaker 2: and all of that, and also like music trivia and
Speaker 2: movie trivia, So I do use similar parts of my brain,
Speaker 2: do I think the parts of the brain that are
Speaker 2: used in this kind of stuff. But it's just not
Speaker 2: for me. But I really dig the history of it,
Speaker 2: the bootstrappiness of it, all the scrappiness of this company,
Speaker 2: and you know, love people with passion about anything.
Speaker 1: Did I tell you, because I think I've mentioned this
Speaker 1: off air a little bit earlier, But I won a
Speaker 1: World Cup fantasy football league no way, Yeah, totally by
Speaker 1: accident too, because like you, I am, by no means
Speaker 1: a stat wizard in the world of sports. But when
Speaker 1: Argentina took the Cup recently, I accidentally made some enemies
Speaker 1: in this league that they invited me to because everybody
Speaker 1: knew that I was just guessing and woefully uninformed. So
Speaker 1: shout out to that.
Speaker 2: That is really interesting that you point that out, because
Speaker 2: we're going to get to a question that we sort
Speaker 2: of raised at the top, where does this intersect with gambling?
Speaker 2: And a big difference or differentiator in this from the
Speaker 2: perspective of the fantasy sports industry is that this is
Speaker 2: entirely considered to be a game of skill. Yes, yeah,
Speaker 2: absolutely arguably though right because you can certainly still be
Speaker 2: successful at it wildly, so to your point, Ben, just
Speaker 2: by rolling the dice.
Speaker 3: And to be and to jump in real quick. So
Speaker 3: nol they actually for many many years has changed now.
Speaker 3: But like the thing that stuff like FanDuel and DraftKings
Speaker 3: were using was a special exemption in the law that
Speaker 3: deemed that fantasy sports were not gambling. So for example,
Speaker 3: my fantasy football league, we have like two hundred fifty
Speaker 3: dollars problem and it's pretty big for a fantasy league. Yeah,
Speaker 3: but it's seventeen weeks plus like the three weeks beforehand
Speaker 3: and whatnot.
Speaker 2: So it's like you do get paid you buy it's
Speaker 2: so it is still kind of gam I mean.
Speaker 3: Game, but it's considered a game of skill because it's
Speaker 3: a lot of it's not lucky because it's just like
Speaker 3: really hard to win, like especially a highly competitive league
Speaker 3: without that. But it's also the buy in. Reason why
Speaker 3: you do it buy in the league is a like
Speaker 3: we don't we joke like it's nice to get the money.
Speaker 3: I bought a new monitor and stuff like that with
Speaker 3: the winnings last year. But the reason why you do
Speaker 3: it buy in most leagues is because if you do
Speaker 3: for free, people just stop playing.
Speaker 2: It's a barrier to entry.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: You don't want like any any old jabroni off the
Speaker 2: street to jack up your league.
Speaker 1: And they give up four weeks in, right. That's because
Speaker 1: really this is a social activity between friends, you know, and.
Speaker 3: Nothing's worse than like you play a team in a
Speaker 3: league that's like really good in week one and they
Speaker 3: smoke you, and then they stop playing in week four
Speaker 3: and then everyone else beats up on them. Well I
Speaker 3: had to play them in week one and they they
Speaker 3: and then they quit afterwards.
Speaker 2: Quick question, are there ways if you don't have a
Speaker 2: group of friends, Are there like open public leagues that
Speaker 2: you can be a part of the probably quite large? Yeah, Okay,
Speaker 2: got it.
Speaker 3: Well, the standard league size viusually around like ten or twelve.
Speaker 3: In football, there's just there's just not there's just not
Speaker 3: that many players.
Speaker 2: So there's matchmaking basically, is what I'm saying. Exact way, it's.
Speaker 3: Match making exactly.
Speaker 1: No.
Speaker 3: Then one last thing, I want to just drop on
Speaker 3: this because you hit it on this perfectly. It's like
Speaker 3: fantasy is sports is way more in nerdom than people
Speaker 3: want to admit that it is. It's a pretty nerdy thing.
Speaker 3: I would say, that's find of way. I think I've
Speaker 3: always gravitated towards it because I am a nerdy person.
Speaker 3: I love stats and stuff like that. And you said
Speaker 3: matchmaking right there, I'm like, yeah, it's it's it's it's
Speaker 3: just like that Madden is like the nerdiest game of
Speaker 3: all times.
Speaker 2: All of my parallels are video game and like nerdy
Speaker 2: board game related. And it's a really good point, Max.
Speaker 2: It does seem like there's a lot more intersections between
Speaker 2: those communities than your average you know, roughneck sports fan
Speaker 2: might admit, right, it's.
Speaker 1: Numbers versus numbers. Really it's quantitative analysis, and this is
Speaker 1: this is where we see again. I love that point, Max.
Speaker 1: This is where we see something that gives lie to
Speaker 1: the stereotype of maybe sports fans being meat heeadsh or dunderheads.
Speaker 1: Next right, these guys are in the world of sport
Speaker 1: them Overall, these fantasy sports players are often seen as niche,
Speaker 1: nerdy people, and this starts to change in more recent decades.
Speaker 1: In two thousand and six, a guy named Matthew Berry
Speaker 1: starts two shows on ESPN, Fantasy Insider and Fantasy Football.
Speaker 1: Now these give people fantasy football analytics every Sunday morning,
Speaker 1: and this normalizes fantasy league pursuits. It also shows that
Speaker 1: there's a demand for televised fantasy content. It makes me
Speaker 1: think of so to continue the video game comparison, Remember
Speaker 1: when e sports became a big thing. It was because
Speaker 1: they were televised and they were streams, and it became
Speaker 1: normalized to be For.
Speaker 2: The longest time, I thought esports had to be sports
Speaker 2: based video games, but esports refers to the entire genre
Speaker 2: of competitive gaming, whatever the type of game might be.
Speaker 1: Exactly right, like watching people, I love watching games like
Speaker 1: Mortal Kombat or All StarCraft Smash Pros Smash Pros, and
Speaker 1: I love hearing the excited announcers who are like, oh,
Speaker 1: that's a block. Oh he's doing a puttish.
Speaker 2: Well, if you're ever in Atlanta, and I'm sure there
Speaker 2: are other versions of this that are very similar. Momo
Speaker 2: Con is as one of my favorite nerddom fandom conferences
Speaker 2: around here, and it incorporates esports in a very big way.
Speaker 2: It's a huge part of what it's about. And you
Speaker 2: can spectate and it is that had never done that
Speaker 2: before and I was fascinated. So it is its own
Speaker 2: type of sport.
Speaker 1: Absolutely, yeah, I think we're all we're all big fans
Speaker 1: of this, even if we're not experts in the respective fields. Now,
Speaker 1: we wanted to end our series with one of the
Speaker 1: big questions, and we teased at the top and kind
Speaker 1: of throughout this gambling all right, So recent years, folks
Speaker 1: were recording this in twenty twenty five. Recent years, changes
Speaker 1: in US federal and state laws have kind of opened
Speaker 1: up sports gambling. They've paved the way for sports gambling.
Speaker 1: One of the most notable examples of this is something
Speaker 1: called daily Fantasy.
Speaker 2: Which is funny because it's using that fantasy term. I
Speaker 2: don't know, some of this stuff feels a little predatory
Speaker 2: to me.
Speaker 1: I agree, I agree we've had because it's a bit
Speaker 1: bit of like a that intersection, it can be dangerous
Speaker 1: for some people.
Speaker 2: And you could argue, some could that if people have
Speaker 2: that gambling bug or that you know, that addictive gene,
Speaker 2: fantasy sports could very well be a gateway drug into
Speaker 2: the kind of online gambling that can wreck people. And
Speaker 2: I think with some of these recent changes in the
Speaker 2: law that's more true now than ever.
Speaker 1: Yeah, because we're talking about look to Max's point about
Speaker 1: the length of time commitment for a lot of fantasy leagues,
Speaker 1: things like daily fantasy are arguably hacking people's neurochemical processes
Speaker 1: because now you've got instant gratification, you've got that instant
Speaker 1: opportunity for dopamine. Instead of playing a season long term
Speaker 1: or committing to seventeen weeks, you can draft a team
Speaker 1: for a week or just a day, or just make
Speaker 1: something and make a prediction on a single game and
Speaker 1: you can win money. So how is that not gambling?
Speaker 2: It's a philosophical question, isn't it. That's a certain point,
Speaker 2: But also it is, you know it is.
Speaker 1: I mean, that's the thing, right, We're being so diplomatic here.
Speaker 1: Sports betting is not a there are definitely legal ways
Speaker 1: to do it, and there are gray market ways to
Speaker 1: do it. But sports betting in this daily fantasy kind
Speaker 1: of perspective, it's not the same thing as the season
Speaker 1: long fantasy leagues. They're very different. Some experts have said
Speaker 1: they believe people are doing daily fantasy because they couldn't
Speaker 1: quite yet legally gamble. All right, is fantasy sport?
Speaker 2: Uh?
Speaker 1: Is it gambling? Is it a game of skill? Shout
Speaker 1: out to everybody who checked checked in on our ongoing
Speaker 1: conversation about gambling in shady gas stations on stuff they
Speaker 1: don't want you to know.
Speaker 2: So is it gambling? Is it sport?
Speaker 3: The answer is yes, it's both. But it's like it's
Speaker 3: you know, it's it's a minutia. It's like, you know,
Speaker 3: in like what proportion of it? And I mean, I'm
Speaker 3: not a daily fantasy player. I'm not a fan of
Speaker 3: it is too much of the gambling spectrum. I like
Speaker 3: the skill. I like building my team out for the
Speaker 3: years long. But I will make an argument for daily
Speaker 3: sports right here, which is my very very very dear
Speaker 3: friend Kevin Cool, who I don't think you guys have
Speaker 3: met him, but you guys have heard me talk about
Speaker 3: He's my friend I just saw on in Portland for
Speaker 3: a while. Him and I worked together for a number
Speaker 3: for about a year in a bar in Atlanta on
Speaker 3: we'd work Wednesday nights together and Wednesdays were so stupid
Speaker 3: slow and the NBA slate like always sucked, and so
Speaker 3: we had to find a way to get through it,
Speaker 3: and so we played a lot of daily fantasy about
Speaker 3: like you know, it was like the Utah Jazz versus
Speaker 3: the Minnesota timber Wolves. Do we care about either of
Speaker 3: those teams? No, no one does. Okay, there are some
Speaker 3: people out there here are fans of these teams, but no,
Speaker 3: there's no one does. Portland Trailblazers might be a better example,
Speaker 3: and he's from Portland, so he can say that now.
Speaker 3: But it was something to make this game interesting and
Speaker 3: it was fun, and it's a way I became much
Speaker 3: closer friends with this guy. That's kind of what fantasy is.
Speaker 3: It's a lot of times about finding a community a
Speaker 3: friendship at people with similar interests. It's same as nerding
Speaker 3: nerding on gaming and talking about Star Trek and Chicken Wings.
Speaker 1: Yes, podcasts podcast right, Oh, I can't believe we're still
Speaker 1: doing this low these many years, managers do have to
Speaker 1: not just roll the dice. Right, The story that I
Speaker 1: shared about the World Cup is very much a cartoonish outlier.
Speaker 1: Everybody else who has playing this stuff is doing deep research,
Speaker 1: not just facts and statistics, but game theory, a little
Speaker 1: bit of psychological analysis or as you said, little tea
Speaker 1: leaf reading.
Speaker 2: And that's the thing though about this philosophical quandary around gambling,
Speaker 2: because there are a lot of gambling games that there
Speaker 2: are people that are better at it than others. Surely,
Speaker 2: I mean, poker involves some chance, but it also involves
Speaker 2: reading the room, reading people's tells, like so many little minute,
Speaker 2: you know, micro gestures and things that go into being
Speaker 2: a good poker player, not to mention, like adherence to
Speaker 2: certain patterns and having certain types of strategy or whatever. Right, Like,
Speaker 2: it's not all chance, but it's also not all skill.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And they jump in here to talk about like
Speaker 3: that dopamine rushia you were talking about as well, which
Speaker 3: is like taking I one of my biggest I consider
Speaker 3: myself blessed that I don't have that itch. Gambling doesn't
Speaker 3: scratch thatn inche for me, And but I have a
Speaker 3: lot of people in my life who do have that itch,
Speaker 3: and I've seen them, and a lot of them. I
Speaker 3: know a lot of people who don't gamble for that reason,
Speaker 3: and I know a lot of people who are in
Speaker 3: a lot of physics have caused a lot of physical
Speaker 3: harm to themselves and the people around them because of
Speaker 3: that itch. And that The thing about it is when
Speaker 3: you're playing in a fantasy league, there are people who
Speaker 3: play fantasy who do have that itch. And you'll hear
Speaker 3: like you'll I've been in the leagues before where it's
Speaker 3: like five hundred dollars buy in and like monthly things,
Speaker 3: and then like they're talking after the season, we should
Speaker 3: over like a thousand now, and it's like, well, okay, maybe,
Speaker 3: and they're talking about like the prize winnings and stuff.
Speaker 3: But the truth is you're playing in like a standard league.
Speaker 3: The return is so long and it takes so little
Speaker 3: relative that it just doesn't really appeal to people.
Speaker 2: That makes sense.
Speaker 3: But like twenty dollars, there's like twelve hundred dollars lineups
Speaker 3: you can play and like DraftKings execondly, I think you
Speaker 3: play DraftKings Atlanta right now.
Speaker 2: But yep, no big pass. But let's also not forget that,
Speaker 2: you know, there's certain arguments to be made that playing
Speaker 2: the stock market in a certain way is absolutely gambling.
Speaker 2: And it all depends on your strategy and your long
Speaker 2: game and how you know whether you're a day trader,
Speaker 2: whether you're trying to like do mean stocks and all
Speaker 2: of that kind of thing. I mean, people lose their
Speaker 2: shirt on the stock market all the time, and it
Speaker 2: can scratch that itch in the same way.
Speaker 1: What's your loss tolerance, what's your risk a version? We
Speaker 1: do want to shout out to study from the Massachusetts
Speaker 1: Institute of Technology back in twenty eighteen. They looked at
Speaker 1: the win loss records of thousands of fantasy players over
Speaker 1: multiple seasons, and they concluded, based on the math, that
Speaker 1: the game of fantasy football is inherently a contest that
Speaker 1: rewards skill. If you're looking at these United States, you'll
Speaker 1: see that the definition or differentiation between a game of
Speaker 1: skill or a game of chance has gone down to
Speaker 1: the state level. So in forty five states right now,
Speaker 1: more or less the determination between gambling and a game
Speaker 1: of skill is whether there is, as we said, more
Speaker 1: skill than luck in a contest. The waters have been
Speaker 1: pretty muddied with things like Draft Kings and fan Duel
Speaker 1: and full disclosure folks on several shows in the past.
Speaker 1: I believe we have done ads for at least DraftKings,
Speaker 1: if not Fan Duel.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I do remember doing Draft Kings, and every time
Speaker 2: you run one of those, every time you hear them,
Speaker 2: you're gonna hear that fine print about God of gambling
Speaker 2: to the addiction, you know, call this hotline. So there's
Speaker 2: parts of the law that do require that sort of disclosure.
Speaker 1: I will go on record again apologizing to all my
Speaker 1: friends in the real world old who heard those trojan
Speaker 1: ads I had to do. That was that was awkward
Speaker 1: for a lot of people. But you know, protection is important. Okay,
Speaker 1: So we've already talked about the appeal of playing fantasy sports.
Speaker 1: We've talked about the history, which is both inspiring and
Speaker 1: arguably ridiculous. We wanted to end by noting that there
Speaker 1: are other fantasy sports than golf and baseball and foot curling.
Speaker 1: Max said us, what about curly? What else we got?
Speaker 3: It's like it's a compiler. I don't know if you
Speaker 3: actually join curling leagues there, but there is a list
Speaker 3: of curling leagues out there.
Speaker 1: You got to be the change. Right, We'll start our
Speaker 1: own curly league. We've got NASCAR and f one. We've
Speaker 1: got oh, like we said, e sports, there's a League
Speaker 1: of Legends, fantasy league, a Fantasy League of Legends league.
Speaker 2: It's a fantasy game and a fantasy league. Got PGA Tour,
Speaker 2: which makes sense. Max admits to have had his time
Speaker 2: in the past playing fantasy golf and request that we
Speaker 2: insert a joke about how the PGA is a flock
Speaker 2: of cowards who are now in bed with the Saudi theocracy.
Speaker 3: Haven't research that in a very long time, but.
Speaker 2: That one there they.
Speaker 3: Separated from Live Golf, which Lived Golf Saudi, then they
Speaker 3: remerged back in.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: We do check out our episode on sports swashing on
Speaker 1: stuff they don't want.
Speaker 3: You to do, and that seems like much more in
Speaker 3: y'all spectrum than it is in mine on for sure.
Speaker 2: Check that one out, and do also check out the
Speaker 2: episode I think been mentioned that at one point earlier
Speaker 2: about weird sketchy stuff that goes on at gas stations,
Speaker 2: because we do talk about in Georgia in particular, that
Speaker 2: line between what makes a machine a gambling machine or
Speaker 2: a skill based machine.
Speaker 1: Ed also if you're listening and you are not part
Speaker 1: of this crazy thing we call the United States. You're
Speaker 1: already well aware that cricket is much more popular globally
Speaker 1: than baseball, so it should come as to a surprise
Speaker 1: that there are fantasy leagues for cricket. There are also
Speaker 1: fantasy leagues for rugby, and as we learned right as
Speaker 1: we were going into this episode, there are also some
Speaker 1: fantasy leagues for sumo wrestling.
Speaker 2: Amazing. Yeah, I really I'm excited for you and your
Speaker 2: sumo adventures to come. Ben.
Speaker 1: We'll see, man, I can't wait. I say this every
Speaker 1: time these things come up, but I can't wait for
Speaker 1: the three of us to get on a road trip
Speaker 1: together and take a ridiculous history abroad. One day. Soon
Speaker 1: we got a dream big, just like those guys at
Speaker 1: that bar who said they were going to start a
Speaker 1: fantasy league.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they did a good job, they did, agree.
Speaker 1: And speaking of great jobs, big thanks to our super producer,
Speaker 1: mister Max Williams, our research associate for this series, Max Williams,
Speaker 1: as well as Alex Williams, who composed this bang in track.
Speaker 2: That's right. Thanks to Christopher Hasiotis and need Jeff codes
Speaker 2: here and Spara, Jonathan Stricklin, The Quiztor, Aj Bahamas, Jacobs,
Speaker 2: The Pustling.
Speaker 1: And I think that's our show. Oh my gosh, I'm
Speaker 1: so excited for lunch Man.
Speaker 2: We'll see you next time, folks. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio,
Speaker 2: visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen
Speaker 2: to your favorite shows.