Speaker 1: Pushkin.
Speaker 2: All right, here, we are welcome to the third and
Speaker 2: final part of our season. In this last part, we'll
Speaker 2: be giving you secret tips so you can make a killing.
Speaker 3: I was able to completely change my life around, from
Speaker 3: making zero dollars to now making one hundreds of thousands
Speaker 3: of dollars from sports betting. During this entire journey, I
Speaker 3: found seven key habits I wish I knew earlier.
Speaker 2: Just seven key habits. How hard can it be? I
Speaker 2: mean even Eric Andre is doing it.
Speaker 1: No, it's broncos times.
Speaker 2: I'd take the over, take the over over to YouTube.
Speaker 4: Everybody's gonna hate me for this.
Speaker 5: But day three oh seven of betting one hundred dollars
Speaker 5: every single day of the year, I won five hundred
Speaker 5: dollars yesterday.
Speaker 2: Every day is a new day, but it only counts
Speaker 2: as a day if you put some money down on it.
Speaker 2: You need to be more like me or Kevin Hart.
Speaker 2: All run, lady, like it's the birth of your child.
Speaker 6: Michael. Yeah, yeah, you're in the wrong script.
Speaker 2: Oh oh, go.
Speaker 5: To V two.
Speaker 2: I mean, you know, I never never realized how important
Speaker 2: was to have an editor. Thank you, Julia. Yeah, so
Speaker 2: that was the old script. I guess I wrote that
Speaker 2: somehow before we decided to be the only podcast that
Speaker 2: refuses ads from sports gambling companies. Ah, here's the new one.
Speaker 2: Here it is. Welcome to the third and final part
Speaker 2: of our season. It's it's not about how to make
Speaker 2: a killing gambling on sports, No, it's about how to
Speaker 2: prevent sports gambling from killing you. There we go. That's better.
Speaker 7: Okay, let's roll the theme.
Speaker 2: I'm Michael Lewis, and this is against the rules. In
Speaker 2: the first part of this season, we told the story
Speaker 2: of how sports gambling came to be legalized and normalized
Speaker 2: in the United States. In part two, we laid out
Speaker 2: how the new sports gambling industrial complex works, how it
Speaker 2: came to be dominated by two companies, Fan Duel and
Speaker 2: Draft Kings, and exquisitely designed to maximize both the number
Speaker 2: of and the stupidity of sports bets that Americans make.
Speaker 2: I don't think anybody consciously set out to create as
Speaker 2: many gambling related tragedies in the United States as possible,
Speaker 2: but in effect, that's what this new industry is doing.
Speaker 2: Now we're going to turn to the future like where
Speaker 2: all this might be headed. And the best way to
Speaker 2: see the future is always just to look a bit
Speaker 2: more closely at the present. We're going to start our
Speaker 2: tour of the present on a basketball.
Speaker 4: Court gambling signs and gambling advertisements. We can't even watch
Speaker 4: playbacks of our game without seeing you know, FANDUL DraftKings
Speaker 4: or whoever advertising you know, the player props or futures
Speaker 4: going on.
Speaker 2: That's Larry Nance, junior first round pick of the Los
Speaker 2: Angeles Lakers back in twenty fifteen. Now he's a power
Speaker 2: forward for the Atlanta Hawks. The NBA forbids its players
Speaker 2: from gambling on basketball, but they still have to live
Speaker 2: in the same world as the rest of us.
Speaker 4: I know, obviously no betting, no tipping, no fixing, but
Speaker 4: it's like, come on, guys, you just at least try
Speaker 4: to hide it from us, like you know, this is
Speaker 4: still a passion of ours? Is the job of ours
Speaker 4: that you know you're making just to share almost like
Speaker 4: a mockery of it.
Speaker 2: Feels like are you ever made aware of like the
Speaker 2: specific bets people might have made on you, like the
Speaker 2: prop bets social media?
Speaker 4: Will you if you log into social media before or
Speaker 4: after any game, Before the game you have people begging
Speaker 4: you to hit a certain amount of rebounds or points
Speaker 4: or whatever it is. And after the game you either
Speaker 4: have somebody praising you or absolutely cursing you out for
Speaker 4: it being your fault that they lost money.
Speaker 2: Is it different than it was when they were just
Speaker 2: upset or happy that the team won?
Speaker 4: Oh significantly significantly. Yeah, it's the kind of language used
Speaker 4: is drastically different than just like losing a basketball game
Speaker 4: or having a poor performance. But now like when when
Speaker 4: somebody thinks you lost the money because you know, it's
Speaker 4: my job to get your seven rebounds tonight, you know,
Speaker 4: then then they they get very animated if you don't
Speaker 4: hit that number.
Speaker 2: So it's it's kind of it gets personal, oh very much.
Speaker 4: So yeah, at tax on, family, at tax on just
Speaker 4: anything they can lash out on, they will use and
Speaker 4: lash out.
Speaker 2: So what do you do to defend yourself? I mean,
Speaker 2: I mean, I don't mean physically. I'm just like just
Speaker 2: like to make sure this isn't making your life miserable?
Speaker 4: Oh, I I mean I didn't. I didn't ask you
Speaker 4: to put money on me for me, Like I honestly,
Speaker 4: I have no desire to hit anybody's number. I hope,
Speaker 4: I hope nobody ever bets on me ever, Like I
Speaker 4: genuinely hope nobody ever bets on me because I just
Speaker 4: don't care about your specific agenda. So you can tweet
Speaker 4: at me anything you want, and my honest reaction is like,
Speaker 4: shouldn't have bet.
Speaker 2: Now. Larry Nance isn't even close to the focus of
Speaker 2: gambling interest in basketball. I love watching him play, but
Speaker 2: he usually comes off the bench and hardly anyone accepts
Speaker 2: sports gamblers pay attention to how many points scores. But
Speaker 2: even he senses the new danger in the air.
Speaker 4: We played in Memphis, I think, and when we were
Speaker 4: staying there that night and I didn't hit my player prop,
Speaker 4: which I don't know why you're betting on me, but
Speaker 4: I got a message while we were in Memphis that
Speaker 4: was like, hey, better not leave your hotel room to night.
Speaker 4: And it was just like, you know what. I don't
Speaker 4: know if that's credible or not, but regardless, I'm probably
Speaker 4: gonna stay in my hotel room tonight.
Speaker 2: This moment in Larry's story, it reminded me of someone
Speaker 2: we heard from a few episodes ago, Jeff Gordon, the
Speaker 2: recovering gambling addict. As a kid, Jeff had been a
Speaker 2: huge basketball fan, but after he started gambling on the sport,
Speaker 2: his love curdled into something else.
Speaker 6: What triggered my mind that I think I have a
Speaker 6: problem is I was pissed at the player because I
Speaker 6: was a quarter of a point away from being in
Speaker 6: first place and winning more money. And I was pissed
Speaker 6: that I that that player didn't score one more basket
Speaker 6: or you won't give more more as this, And I
Speaker 6: just remember hating Andrea Iguidala for so long, and it's
Speaker 6: like why.
Speaker 2: Of course, fans have always wanted things from players, there's
Speaker 2: nothing new about that. What's new is the tone of
Speaker 2: their desire. Less a want, more a need.
Speaker 4: Like you know, when you go sign autographs or something
Speaker 4: pregame or go sign autographs for people getting on the
Speaker 4: bus and be like, hey, how's how's Zion feeling the
Speaker 4: night or as a nasty fall? How is he? And
Speaker 4: you got to look at him and go like, fine,
Speaker 4: you know, just one work fun, fine, good.
Speaker 2: I don't know more and more what fans want is
Speaker 2: information an edge.
Speaker 4: There's been multiple occasions where like you can tell someone's
Speaker 4: come up look digging for information. When you don't give
Speaker 4: it to them, they're like come on, man, like come on,
Speaker 4: just you know, help me out this one time, like
Speaker 4: I don't know, you.
Speaker 2: Know, the players always know stuff that would be useful
Speaker 2: to gamblers. The players are also seeing gambling happening all
Speaker 2: around them, on them to larry. It seems pretty clear
Speaker 2: what's coming next.
Speaker 4: I think there's gonna be a lot of players getting
Speaker 4: in trouble. A lot, I mean a lot of players
Speaker 4: getting in trouble.
Speaker 2: Trouble, that's what's coming. We've already seen a trickle of it.
Speaker 2: But the waters are rising, and you can feel the
Speaker 2: flood on its way, and so can everyone involved in
Speaker 2: any sport that's being gambled upon. The entire sports industrial
Speaker 2: complex is a bit like those poor people in western
Speaker 2: North Carolina who were told they lived in a flood
Speaker 2: zone but had never seen a flood, and then came
Speaker 2: the rain. One of the amazing things about the new
Speaker 2: sports gambling industry is just how totally unconstrained it is.
Speaker 2: Zero restrictions on advertising, for example, zero punishment for pushing
Speaker 2: gambling on people already prone to gambling addiction, zero consequences
Speaker 2: for designing diabolical apps that nudge gamblers into making dumber
Speaker 2: and dumber bets. We're still at a stage where the
Speaker 2: industry is promising to police itself, and apart from limiting
Speaker 2: the bets of sharp sports gamblers, there is really only
Speaker 2: one thing the industry is doing to prevent maximum havoc.
Speaker 2: It's trying really hard to catch and punish anyone who
Speaker 2: trades on inside information. Each and every one of the
Speaker 2: states that have legalized sports betting also now employs a
Speaker 2: sports betting insider trading detective. This person is called an
Speaker 2: integrity monitor.
Speaker 7: So all you're doing is monitoring the market for abnormalities.
Speaker 7: When abnormalities are identified, you send those abnormalities out for
Speaker 7: requests for information from every licensed operator in the country. Hey,
Speaker 7: did you also see any abnormal aging here?
Speaker 2: That's Matthew Holt who created the first so called independent
Speaker 2: licensed integrity monitor. Because Matthew got there first, Matthew's company
Speaker 2: took the best name, US Integrity. And so tell me
Speaker 2: what you're monitoring in the marketplace.
Speaker 7: For number one, and the easiest would be, Hey, Michael
Speaker 7: bets one hundred dollars a game on average on football,
Speaker 7: So we have a you know, we have a betting
Speaker 7: pattern for Michael. We know he likes the bet football
Speaker 7: usually bets one hundred to two hundred dollars, but now
Speaker 7: he wants to bet twenty thousand dollars on the first
Speaker 7: set of a tennis match. Hmmm, very abnormal. Or you know,
Speaker 7: Michael bets one hundred to three hundred dollars on baseball
Speaker 7: every day, but now he wants to bet fifteen thousand
Speaker 7: on first round KO in an MMA match. Well, he
Speaker 7: never bets MMA, and he never bets more than a
Speaker 7: few hundred dollars.
Speaker 6: Boom.
Speaker 7: That's going to trigger someone to look into that match.
Speaker 2: These new sports gambling companies have more data on their
Speaker 2: customers than all the casinos in history combined. The integrity
Speaker 2: monitor sitsts through most of it hunting for betters who
Speaker 2: clearly know something they shouldn't.
Speaker 7: Why are we getting all these new accounts signing up
Speaker 7: just to bet one wager? Severe odds movement is something
Speaker 7: that definitely triggers the system and would have an analyst
Speaker 7: further investigate.
Speaker 2: These integrity monitors are behind the recent uptick in sports
Speaker 2: gambling scandals. One week, Johntae Porter of the Toronto Raptors
Speaker 2: NBA team fakes an injury and pulls himself out of
Speaker 2: a game so as creditors can make money betting that
Speaker 2: he won't score as many points as he could have.
Speaker 2: Next thing, you know, a wide receiver from the New
Speaker 2: England Patriots named kay Jan Boudet is arrested for placing
Speaker 2: eight nine hundred bets while he was a student at LSU.
Speaker 2: Some of those bets were on his own games. Back
Speaker 2: in the old days, people who argued for legalizing sports
Speaker 2: gambling said they could prevent these kinds of scandals. Once
Speaker 2: insider trading was easier to detect, no one would dare
Speaker 2: do it. Well, not really. Instead, it seems that the
Speaker 2: easier it is to trade on inside sports information, the
Speaker 2: more insider trading there will be.
Speaker 7: Brad Bohannon was a college baseball coach at the University
Speaker 7: of Alabama who with a group of his friends had
Speaker 7: got into some gambling debt and they came up with
Speaker 7: an idea to make some money. They were playing LSU
Speaker 7: on a Friday night when LSU was the number one
Speaker 7: team in the country, and the coach came up with
Speaker 7: an idea that he wouldn't tell anyone. He was going
Speaker 7: to make a pitching change to a basically an outfielder
Speaker 7: relief pitcher who had not started any games and didn't
Speaker 7: have any experience.
Speaker 2: Corrupt sports bets are a bit like weird sex acts.
Speaker 2: You hear about them and think, nah, no way anyone
Speaker 2: would do that. But a good rule of thumb in
Speaker 2: life is that anything some human being has imagined, some
Speaker 2: human being has done. And apparently some human being imagined
Speaker 2: the college baseball coach hired to teach and improve a
Speaker 2: bunch of young men rigging a game against his own players.
Speaker 7: When one of the better is attempted to place a
Speaker 7: six figures wager at a sports book, you know, the
Speaker 7: people behind the counter started asking him questions. You know,
Speaker 7: they realized that he was actually communicating with the coach
Speaker 7: on the phone at the time. We were able to
Speaker 7: collect that evidence, video, surveillant evidence and end up showing
Speaker 7: that they were putting together a pretty big scheme and
Speaker 7: they had four people betting in four different places.
Speaker 2: It doesn't sound like they were that smart about it.
Speaker 1: They weren't.
Speaker 7: No, and at the end of the day, you know,
Speaker 7: sometimes we joke that we certainly catch America's dumb as criminals.
Speaker 2: That's one point about integrity monitors. They're pretty good at
Speaker 2: catching the dumb insider traders. People who work for pro
Speaker 2: sports teams placing bets from inside their training facilities, for example,
Speaker 2: and they were instantly caught by the sports apps geolocation
Speaker 2: feature and reported to the league office. I'm told that's
Speaker 2: happened a lot, But there's just no way that everyone
Speaker 2: trading on inside sports information is that dumb. If you
Speaker 2: were the the Alabama coach and you were advising the
Speaker 2: people how to place the bets so that they didn't
Speaker 2: get detected, what would you tell them?
Speaker 7: Number One, you want to try to place the bets
Speaker 7: in person if possible, because you know, again, once you
Speaker 7: sign up for an account, there's this huge digital footprint
Speaker 7: with all of your information. Make sure that it's across
Speaker 7: state lines.
Speaker 2: Why do you want to make sure it's across state lines.
Speaker 7: Because at the end of the day, and if it's
Speaker 7: different operators across state lines. What we are seeing right
Speaker 7: now is more competition in the integrity landscape.
Speaker 2: The integrity landscape, I love that phrase. The integrity landscape
Speaker 2: in sports gambling is complicated, less like a wheatfield in
Speaker 2: Kansas than a rainforest in Borneo. There are a bunch
Speaker 2: of companies like US and Integrity. Each state with legal
Speaker 2: sports books hires its own integrity monitor with its own
Speaker 2: set of data on wagers.
Speaker 7: And let's say that I knew that there's five big
Speaker 7: sports books, and I can use a different sports book
Speaker 7: in each state, and of those five big sports books,
Speaker 7: three of them use different integrity monitoring providers. Well, suddenly,
Speaker 7: one bet at one sports book might not trigger the alert.
Speaker 7: But if each integrity monitor only saw one or two
Speaker 7: of the bets, and each operator also only saw one
Speaker 7: of the bets, they're not likely to report and you're
Speaker 7: more likely to get away with it.
Speaker 2: Still, it's true that they're catching a lot more people
Speaker 2: trading on inside information than ever have been caught in
Speaker 2: the history of sports. Matthew says that they're now like
Speaker 2: one hundred and fifty bus a year. So these integrity
Speaker 2: monitors are kind of doing for illicit sports gambling with
Speaker 2: the Kinsey report once did for sex, showing us all
Speaker 2: what everybody else is doing and is there a pattern
Speaker 2: to why they do it?
Speaker 7: You know, it's crazy some of it. You know, it
Speaker 7: just goes to the competitive nature of athletes in general.
Speaker 7: When you think of like Calvin Ridley and Jamison Williams
Speaker 7: and some of the NFL suspensions, just as examples. Those
Speaker 7: guys were betting such inconsequential amounts of money. Calvin Ridley
Speaker 7: was hurt. He wasn't even playing. He certainly wasn't trying
Speaker 7: to manipulate any matches.
Speaker 2: The insider trading is often totally irrational. I mean, you
Speaker 2: think that a guy making millions of dollars as a
Speaker 2: player wouldn't risk them by making sports bets. But they do.
Speaker 2: And you would think that if they're going to take
Speaker 2: that risk, they at least make very big bets. But
Speaker 2: they don't.
Speaker 7: Hunter Deckers, the starting quarterback at Iowa State who lost
Speaker 7: his eligibility. His average bet size was seven dollars and
Speaker 7: twenty two cents. Seven dollars and twenty two cents, and
Speaker 7: he lost his entire collegiate career.
Speaker 1: Why and why? I don't know. Just use boredom, I guess. Yeah.
Speaker 7: You know, some of those guys, especially in college, lives
Speaker 7: such regimented life. You get up, you have team practice
Speaker 7: and breakfast, and you're basically told what to do all day.
Speaker 7: Every day is scheduled out for you. But the one
Speaker 7: thing they can't control is those little gaps you have
Speaker 7: in this device that's in your hands. Oh, I got
Speaker 7: fifteen three minutes. I can't actually go anywhere and do
Speaker 7: anything in that fifteen to eighteen minutes, but I could
Speaker 7: take out my phone and mess around.
Speaker 2: One way to think of sports gambling is as a
Speaker 2: massive new market for information. All sorts of information that
Speaker 2: no one thought twice about can now be used immediately
Speaker 2: to make money, and not just information that most people
Speaker 2: used to pay zero attention to, like I don't know
Speaker 2: whether the quarterback for some obscure college football team just
Speaker 2: came down with pneumonia. I'm talking about information that would
Speaker 2: never have occurred to anyone ever in the history of
Speaker 2: man to have financial value.
Speaker 7: We saw some significant betting on this basketball game. The
Speaker 7: line move like four points.
Speaker 2: This was a college basketball game before which the odds
Speaker 2: shifted in a big way even though there was no
Speaker 2: new public information.
Speaker 7: And then one of these syndicate betters called us and said, hey,
Speaker 7: I heard that this team is stuck on the tarmac
Speaker 7: with mechanical issues. They're going to make it to the arena,
Speaker 7: but not in time for warm ups. And we know
Speaker 7: in football and basketball, if you miss your stretching slash
Speaker 7: warm ups, those teams lose every time.
Speaker 2: Is that true? Every time?
Speaker 1: You know that it is.
Speaker 7: Yeah, they lose over ninety percent of the time and
Speaker 7: usually can't blowout fashion.
Speaker 2: Moments after the pilot announced the delay of the team's flight,
Speaker 2: the sports book started seeing bets from people who had
Speaker 2: obviously heard about it because it took the integrity monitor
Speaker 2: only seven minutes to get the news, and in.
Speaker 7: That timeframe, you know, it somehow got in the hands
Speaker 7: of syndicate betters who bet all this money, and one
Speaker 7: of them even had time after making all those bets
Speaker 7: to call us and give us a heads up to like, hey,
Speaker 7: if this keeps happening, you know, here's what's going on.
Speaker 7: Information moves so fast.
Speaker 2: So fast that the modern world really hasn't gotten its
Speaker 2: mind around it, so fast that there's no way it
Speaker 2: won't run wild over any integrity landscape. The various sports
Speaker 2: leagues are really trying hard to prevent this from happening.
Speaker 2: They want to turn the American fan into a habitual gambler,
Speaker 2: to keep everything else about American sports as it was
Speaker 2: before gambling invaded, and well, good luck with that. First,
Speaker 2: let's just talk about how you chose where you were
Speaker 2: going to go, Like you could have gone to any
Speaker 2: college in America. You go to Kansas, right Why.
Speaker 8: I just Kansas because we had two possible weekends where
Speaker 8: we could do this reporting trip because of our production schedule,
Speaker 8: and I was looking for were places that had games
Speaker 8: that were a big deal for students, like on those
Speaker 8: weekends that had direct flights from like New York and California.
Speaker 2: That's of course, lydia Jan caught my producer. I usually
Speaker 2: hate the sort of journalism we're about to do, you know,
Speaker 2: where some reporter or pundit talks to some supposedly representative
Speaker 2: person or visit some supposedly typical place to take the
Speaker 2: pulse of the nation. But we made an exception here
Speaker 2: because going to the University of Kansas felt more like
Speaker 2: testing a scientific theory. The theory was that you could
Speaker 2: pick any random college and so long as it had
Speaker 2: fraternities and a football team, you'd find some huge potholes
Speaker 2: in the integrity landscape. Right now, five hundred and twenty
Speaker 2: thousand athletes compete in twenty four different sports at hundreds
Speaker 2: of colleges, and you can place bets on lots of them,
Speaker 2: not just on the teams or on the games, but
Speaker 2: on the kids, Like whether the freshman guard on the
Speaker 2: Temple University hoops team will score more than ten points
Speaker 2: in tomorrow morning's game. And if you saw him passed
Speaker 2: out at a frat party the night before, a prop
Speaker 2: bet might seem like the opportunity of a lifetime. So
Speaker 2: we dropped LJ at random into a college, the University
Speaker 2: of Kansas. She'd just been basically kicked out of all
Speaker 2: the sports books for committing the sin of placing smart
Speaker 2: sports bets, so she now had time on her hands
Speaker 2: to talk to the people the sports gambling companies just love.
Speaker 8: So yeah, So the first thing I did is I
Speaker 8: went to this kind of student coffee shop in Lawrence,
Speaker 8: and I met with two student reporters, and one of
Speaker 8: them was Chad Cushing. He's a multimedia editor at the
Speaker 8: University Daily.
Speaker 1: Cansen. It's everywhere. It's absolutely everywhere.
Speaker 5: I mean any morning of the game day in class,
Speaker 5: especially for bad basketball. I mean, the most guaranteed thing
Speaker 5: you could say to break the ice on most if
Speaker 5: you find another boy that you said next to is like, Hey,
Speaker 5: what's what's the place?
Speaker 2: You know?
Speaker 1: What what's money line?
Speaker 6: Money hawks?
Speaker 5: Money line hawks? Money line people get That's Ben Hook.
Speaker 8: He's a sophomore and the sports editor like tattoos.
Speaker 6: So money line is they win out right.
Speaker 1: It's just you ticking the winner.
Speaker 5: And if if the Hawks are going to win, the
Speaker 5: Jayhawks are going to win Hawks money line.
Speaker 1: People get Hawks money line like tattoos.
Speaker 8: Many people get Hawks money line tattoos.
Speaker 5: I've seen crazy. Yeah, I means Hawks money line. Yeah
Speaker 5: on the yeah, on the inside.
Speaker 9: Yeah, Hawks, I'm made.
Speaker 1: I'm made good money on Hawks money long last year.
Speaker 2: So so you you talk to the journalists, and the
Speaker 2: journalists lead you to the real people.
Speaker 8: Yes, they tell me that where I need to be
Speaker 8: is in the in this place called.
Speaker 2: The Triangle like that like the Bermuda Triangle.
Speaker 8: Exactly, and it's three bars kind of in the middle
Speaker 8: of nowhere, like not near anything else that don't really card.
Speaker 8: So like I heard that freshmen work as the bouncers
Speaker 8: of these bars, and they'll accept anything as an id,
Speaker 8: even like a Pokemon card.
Speaker 2: Taking me back, You're taking me way back. You're taking
Speaker 2: you back to it as like twelve years old in
Speaker 2: New Orleans.
Speaker 8: And I'm supposed to be there at like in the
Speaker 8: Friday afternoon because they have something called free beer Fridays.
Speaker 2: And So Friday afternoon, before the big game against arch
Speaker 2: rival Kansas State, Lydia Jean enters the Bermuda Triangle.
Speaker 10: Hod Buck come back.
Speaker 2: Why but it's a good clot.
Speaker 8: The fraternities have set up these tables in front of
Speaker 8: the bars where they have plates of shaving cream, and
Speaker 8: if you pay five dollars, you can throw the plate
Speaker 8: onto their faces. Uh huh, I guess to raise money
Speaker 8: for cancer.
Speaker 2: One day someone will study all the things Americans have
Speaker 2: done to raise money for cancer research and notice that
Speaker 2: some of them almost certainly cause cancer.
Speaker 8: So there's like long line outside of these bars, and
Speaker 8: then there's people congregating around these tables of shaving cream plates.
Speaker 2: Okay, how are you feeling in this crowd?
Speaker 4: Oh?
Speaker 10: Terrified?
Speaker 2: Absolutely terrified.
Speaker 8: Yeah, Like every single cell in my body was like,
Speaker 8: do not be here.
Speaker 2: But I did my best to stay. I knew she'd stay.
Speaker 2: I've said this before and I'll say it again. My
Speaker 2: producer has the gift forgetting the story. People forget just
Speaker 2: how dangerous she is.
Speaker 8: Are you guys winning overall?
Speaker 4: Probably not?
Speaker 5: Probably, I've got a lot of cats.
Speaker 2: Up in fun though, Like, how do cut down?
Speaker 1: Are we talking overall?
Speaker 6: Yeah? I'm talking hundreds, probably in the lower hundreds, I
Speaker 6: would say, lower hundreds.
Speaker 3: Know what's your guys' strategy.
Speaker 10: It's wedding strategy.
Speaker 11: I am just wait for someone who's due, and then
Speaker 11: you just hammer it.
Speaker 2: Two related points here, most of these people are under
Speaker 2: twenty one years old, so whoever's accepting their bets is
Speaker 2: breaking Kansas state law. Also, none of them have any
Speaker 2: idea what they're doing. Still, it's obviously a total blast.
Speaker 2: Everyone's just hammering everything while getting hammered. You ought to
Speaker 2: make the Kansas mascot a hammer. Are they at all
Speaker 2: nervous about talking about what they're doing?
Speaker 8: So I will say that I eventually started being like,
Speaker 8: don't tell me your names, because when I asked them,
Speaker 8: I originally I would say, can you introduce yourself? And
Speaker 8: then that I kind of felt like I was getting
Speaker 8: like marketing material, like it's so bad what they're doing
Speaker 8: to the youth or whatever. So eventually I was like,
Speaker 8: don't tell me your name and tell me about sports
Speaker 8: setting and then the interviews got a lot better. But
Speaker 8: before I went to the Triangle, I actually spoke to
Speaker 8: this guy who used to be on the football team.
Speaker 2: His name is Jack.
Speaker 10: Jackson being friends with people who weren't athletes. To'd be like, oh, like,
Speaker 10: what do you think about Do you think we're gonna
Speaker 10: blah blah blah blah blah, Like are we gonna cover it?
Speaker 2: You feel like people were like trying to, like in
Speaker 2: this squirrely.
Speaker 10: Way, get yes, yes, yes, and k you did a
Speaker 10: very good job of media training every single one of us,
Speaker 10: even like my closest friends. They'd be like, oh, what's
Speaker 10: like the game plan? I'd be like, I don't know.
Speaker 10: I can't tell you, Like, I'm not gonna get in
Speaker 10: trouble over something silly.
Speaker 2: There are a few laws that ban insider trading in sports.
Speaker 2: You can't get put in jail for it or even fine.
Speaker 2: You can only get in trouble with your team, or
Speaker 2: your school, or your league, or of course your sports bookie.
Speaker 2: He'll toss you out if you win too much. And
Speaker 2: so the players might feel a bit frightened to share
Speaker 2: inside dope, but the fans, they have no reason not
Speaker 2: to dig for whatever they can find.
Speaker 8: I found this one guy, for example, who told me
Speaker 8: that his roommate was on the football team and that
Speaker 8: he was planning to bet on the game. Are gonna
Speaker 8: ask your former roommate for anie like intel on the player.
Speaker 11: Yeh yeah, yeah, Well he's in uh drive there right now,
Speaker 11: he's on the bus, So I'm gonna text him layer
Speaker 11: and I'd be like, what sha I put money on?
Speaker 8: He think he'll tell you? He'll tell you anything.
Speaker 11: Oh yeah, he definitely will.
Speaker 10: Oh oh yeah, he definitely.
Speaker 9: He always does.
Speaker 8: Because what he tell you helped me make money.
Speaker 11: A couple of them were in college than lad because
Speaker 11: he's college athletes, so he knows a lot more things
Speaker 11: than I do.
Speaker 2: But like NFL, he doesn't know shit right, you're right.
Speaker 8: But he's a player, so if he tells you stuff
Speaker 8: about the team, he'll know that's correct, and that has
Speaker 8: helped you make money.
Speaker 11: Before fifty bucks.
Speaker 8: I went up to a lot of people and I
Speaker 8: heard so often that they had some way of getting
Speaker 8: inside information. A lot of times they like had me
Speaker 8: turn off the mic that I was actually googling how
Speaker 8: many people are on the football team because I was like,
Speaker 8: how is it possible that they're talking to so many
Speaker 8: people that everyone feels like they have some sort of
Speaker 8: in on the football team. So, like I have tape
Speaker 8: of me saying like have you ever gotten inside information?
Speaker 8: And the guy is like three times and then he
Speaker 8: runs away. Do you think would you say, like, mind
Speaker 8: that information about people on the team.
Speaker 10: Is that anything that I've been saris.
Speaker 2: To play their No, here's one bet I'd like to
Speaker 2: make DraftKings. Make me a market on the number of
Speaker 2: sports bets that get placed each week on college football
Speaker 2: games by college students who think they have inside information.
Speaker 2: I don't mean winning bets. It's actually not as easy
Speaker 2: as it looks to make money trading on inside information.
Speaker 2: I just want the over on bets that threaten the
Speaker 2: integrity landscape. It's it's so preposterous, right We think, oh,
Speaker 2: the bad guys, they got them, and then every roommate
Speaker 2: of every football player in the United States is getting
Speaker 2: inside information.
Speaker 8: Oh yeah, I just felt I went up to a
Speaker 8: guy with a mic and I was like, do you
Speaker 8: have inside information? And he was like, I'm texting for
Speaker 8: it right now.
Speaker 2: How do we refer to you in the podcast? Governor Baker,
Speaker 2: President Baker, Charlielie?
Speaker 1: Is that all right?
Speaker 2: This is Charlie Baker, former governor of Massachusetts who recently
Speaker 2: became president of the NCAA, which has got to be
Speaker 2: at least in the running for the world's worst job.
Speaker 2: But Charlie took it and did the same thing he
Speaker 2: did when he became governor of Massachusetts. He hit the
Speaker 2: road and talked to people to hear their problems.
Speaker 12: We have colleges all over New England and just started
Speaker 12: talking to him about what was on their minds, and
Speaker 12: a lot of them brought up not so much sports betting,
Speaker 12: but the harassment around it.
Speaker 2: Charlie heard so many complaints and so soon after he
Speaker 2: took the job that he commissioned to study.
Speaker 1: The numbers came back and they were huge.
Speaker 12: You know, sixty percent of eighteen to twenty two year
Speaker 12: olds about on sports, and the numbers were higher for
Speaker 12: those that were on college campuses. That just puts college
Speaker 12: athletes basically in the midst of a whole community that
Speaker 12: is betting on sports. Whether they're betting on their games
Speaker 12: or betting on other people's games, they're betting on sports.
Speaker 12: A lot of the kids on campus better on their
Speaker 12: own teams, why because they're more familiar with them. They
Speaker 12: think they know them better, and they think it's a
Speaker 12: better opportunity for them to win.
Speaker 2: And the athletes you were talking to when you first
Speaker 2: took the job. Some of them brought up the pressures
Speaker 2: caused by the gambling interests.
Speaker 12: Oh absolutely, it was just all kinds of trash being
Speaker 12: talked at them based on their performance and how much
Speaker 12: somebody lost or how much it costs somebody, or I'll
Speaker 12: meet you outside your dorm the next time I see you,
Speaker 12: And I mean really just awful stuff.
Speaker 2: The NCAA now has filing cabinets filled with horrible things
Speaker 2: that sports gamblers have said and done to college athletes.
Speaker 2: I was hoping Charlie would let me rifle through them,
Speaker 2: but he wouldn't. But still I got a glimpse of
Speaker 2: what's inside from the guy who guards them. His name
Speaker 2: is Clint hunker Brow. He's Charlie's head of risk management,
Speaker 2: which is another job.
Speaker 1: You really what we see messages.
Speaker 13: One that we flagged this last year during our workaround
Speaker 13: March Madness is if you don't get twenty two points
Speaker 13: and twelve rebounds, everyone you know and love will be dead.
Speaker 13: So it's a far cry from normal fandom. You know,
Speaker 13: you suck, I hope you lose the game, and you
Speaker 13: know others that we've seen, and I apologize for the language,
Speaker 13: but you know, we heard about one over March Madness
Speaker 13: that was kill yourself for taking that three, you fucking
Speaker 13: worthless loser, Slit your fucking throat, and it goes on
Speaker 13: from then.
Speaker 1: Jesus.
Speaker 13: So again, it's not just oh, gosh, you cost me
Speaker 13: fifty bucks or things that are pretty innocuous like that.
Speaker 13: They're very specific, they're very threatening. You know, we've heard
Speaker 13: about a lot of student athletes receiving Benmo requests after
Speaker 13: games where it's like, you know, you f and this
Speaker 13: you f and that you cost me five thousand, pay
Speaker 13: up or I'll be waiting for you outside the facilities.
Speaker 13: So just really really specific, abusive, threatening messages with clearly
Speaker 13: a gambling neccess to them.
Speaker 2: The NCAA has pushed for all the states that allow
Speaker 2: prop bets on college athletes to eliminate those bets. Very
Speaker 2: few have done so, and Charlie Baker keeps hearing these
Speaker 2: horror stories.
Speaker 12: A kid will talk to me about, you know, having
Speaker 12: a dorm mate, a fraternity brother, a friend of a
Speaker 12: friend who comes up to him and says, look, you
Speaker 12: know I need the money and I don't want you
Speaker 12: to lose the game.
Speaker 1: All you really need to.
Speaker 12: Do is just don't take the first shot, you know,
Speaker 12: miss your first free throw.
Speaker 1: Just you know, small stuff. That's all I need to you.
Speaker 2: It may seem trivial if some college basketball player misses
Speaker 2: his first free throw in a game, and until roughly
Speaker 2: five years ago, no one would have thought twice about it.
Speaker 2: But now you could bet tens of thousands of dollars
Speaker 2: on whether or not that free throw is good.
Speaker 1: And the problem with that is there's no end to that.
Speaker 12: And you never want, especially an eighteen year old or
Speaker 12: a seventeen or nineteen year old, to be put in
Speaker 12: a position where they're being socially pressured by people they're
Speaker 12: going to see every single day who are claiming that
Speaker 12: this is a moment of desperation for them.
Speaker 2: Back in the nineteen seventies, Charlie Baker played hoops at Harvard.
Speaker 2: He wasn't on the team at the time, but in
Speaker 2: nineteen seventy eight, Harvard lost a shockingly close game to
Speaker 2: a much stronger Boston College team. It turned out that
Speaker 2: several of the Boston College players had taken money from
Speaker 2: the Lukes crime family to shave points to make the
Speaker 2: final score much closer than it should have been. Fixing
Speaker 2: games is, of course, the ultimate act of insider trading.
Speaker 2: The gambler knows for sure what will happen. But the
Speaker 2: Boston College players still screwed up. They won a game
Speaker 2: or two by too much, and the mafia allegedly sent
Speaker 2: them amat message you can't play basketball with broken hands. Still,
Speaker 2: the Boston College players successfully rigged the Harvard game, and
Speaker 2: after it they got caught. One was sentenced to prison
Speaker 2: for a decade. But that was just a weird, one
Speaker 2: off example. Now, the same kind of force is everywhere
Speaker 2: in sports. It's just the mob that's different.
Speaker 12: It could be people who are you know, who live
Speaker 12: in the dorm next to you. It could be people
Speaker 12: who live right off campus and walk through campus when
Speaker 12: you walk past every single day when I talked to them.
Speaker 1: The biggest thing.
Speaker 12: About it is the challenge associated with not looking over
Speaker 12: your shoulder or not assuming that anybody you don't know
Speaker 12: could be one of these people, or the people you
Speaker 12: do know could be some of these people.
Speaker 2: So here we are in a new world where college
Speaker 2: athletes walk around their campuses with just a little bit
Speaker 2: of the same uneasy feeling as the Boston College players
Speaker 2: must have had when they pissed off the look crime family.
Speaker 2: And the only question really is just how much that
Speaker 2: feeling will be amplified.
Speaker 1: So we're just getting into this space.
Speaker 12: And that's the other thing I'd say when people say
Speaker 12: to me, well, social media has always been obnoxious and nasty,
Speaker 12: that's true, but boy, in this world it has gotten
Speaker 12: a lot nastier in the course of the past couple
Speaker 12: of years.
Speaker 2: My heart is palputating Clint Hunkerbrow again, Charlie's risk officer.
Speaker 13: You know, I think that the biggest worry that keeps
Speaker 13: me up at night is really looking, you know, ten
Speaker 13: years down the road, twenty years down the road back
Speaker 13: and there's a whole generation of young people that you know,
Speaker 13: went to college and ultimately found themselves gambling and had
Speaker 13: just extremely negative consequences on their lives, from their finances
Speaker 13: to their aspirations to their relationships.
Speaker 1: Like we're failing a generation.
Speaker 13: If that's what we look back at ten to twenty years,
Speaker 13: and that's the picture that we see.
Speaker 2: The integrity landscape in sports gambling. Here's maybe its most
Speaker 2: important feature. How hard it is to see all this
Speaker 2: new stuff is going on around us. But it's not
Speaker 2: like drinking or smoking or even drug use, even as
Speaker 2: sports gambling poisons the relationship between fans and athletes, even
Speaker 2: as it seeps like a fog into American college life,
Speaker 2: the drug itself is invisible. But in this strange new landscape,
Speaker 2: one thing is clear what it lacks. Integrity Against the
Speaker 2: Rules is written and hosted by me Michael Lewis and
Speaker 2: produced by Lydia Genet, Catherine Gerardeau, and Ariela Markowitz. Our
Speaker 2: editor is Julia Barton. Our engineer is Jake Gorski. Our
Speaker 2: music was composed by Matthias Bossi and John Evans of
Speaker 2: stell Wagon Cinfinet. Our fact checker is Lauren vest Polling.
Speaker 2: Against the Rules is a production of Pushkin Industries. To
Speaker 2: find more Pushkin podcasts, listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple
Speaker 2: Podcasts or wherever you listen to podcasts. And if you'd
Speaker 2: like to listen to ad free and learn about other
Speaker 2: exclusive offerings, don't forget to sign up for a Pushkin
Speaker 2: Plus subscription at pushkin, dot fm, slash Plus or on
Speaker 2: our Apple show page.
Speaker 8: How do you like decide what.
Speaker 1: To put money on?
Speaker 12: What was your.
Speaker 9: I think you kind of gotta like do some research.
Speaker 9: I a lot of Twitter research, got yeah, emotions, emotions.
Speaker 9: Yet it's a lot Twitter people like on Twitter that do,
Speaker 9: like do act actual.
Speaker 1: Research on it.
Speaker 8: And are you and you said you're doing You've done
Speaker 8: pretty well.
Speaker 1: No, I've done terrible.
Speaker 9: M