You're listening to Comedy Central. Wow. What's up, Yes Edition listeners, Ryan Chan corresponding for The Daily Show. You're about to hear an episode of one of our original Daily Show podcasts, Beyond the Scenes, hosted by Roy Wood Jr. It's the podcast where we dive deep into the segments and topics from the Daily Show with the show's writers, producers and experts. We're in the midst of NCAA's match Madness and this episode features Michael Costa and ESPN's David Purdham talking about the explosion of legal life sports gambling, the risk of gambling addiction, and how to enforce responsible gambling. If you like the show, check out the Beyond the Scenes podcast wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to Beyond the Scenes the podcast. It goes a little deeper into segments and topics that originally aired on The Daily Show. This is what you gotta think of this podcast, Like, this podcast is like when you go to a Super Bowl party and you're there to root for your team, but you're also there for the commercials, to have time show the chicken wings and endless pitchers of beer, and to bet how soon your friend Garrite's going to pass out from autumn tequila shots. Wake up, Gary stopped being a bitch. It was just fourteen shots. That's what this podcast is. I'm Roy Wood Jr. And today we're talking about this weekend Super Bowl and the legalization of sports betting Roll mcclip. Since the Supreme Court cleared the way for sports betting in the States, other than in Nevada, a growing number of states have legalized sports gambling. Sports betting revenue expected to go from two point five billion dollars this year to nearly nineteen billion in twenty twenty three. The NCAA and professional sports leads had long opposed sports betting, saying it could hurt the integrity of the game, but as soon as the Supreme Court freed states to legalize sports betting last May, the pro leagues immediately reversed course. Within months of the ruling, the NBA, Major League Baseball, and the National Hockey League all made deals with MGM in the NFL partnered up with Caesar's Palace. Today, I'm joined by Daily Show correspondent Michael Costa. Costa is always good to have you on. How you doing brother, Thanks for having me appreciate it. Good to see you, and we are also joined by gambling industry reporter for ESPN, David Purdam. David, how are you doing. I'm great man, Thanks for having me on. Now, David, let's talk about the Super Bowl. You know, super Bowl vv X, l XIED whatever. The held Roman numerals are so stupid that Romans don't even use them anymore anyway, the Super Bowl remains one of the biggest sports betting days of the year, and sports betting is now legal and over thirty states. How did this evolve from an underground world of giving numbers to your bookie and then your bookie line and seeing your team didn't cover, to the mainstream industry at field world that we know today. It was a slow process us for sure, especially compared to other jurisdictions around the world. You know, sports betting was legal in the UK for a long time. Bookmakers are respected profession over there, while over here, as you said, you know, most of sports betting for the longest of times was done in your bar rooms, your bowling alleys or with your country club bookmaker. Now we got over thirty states that have legalized it, and we're catching up quickly. In the next day decade, we're going to get big states like California, Texas, Florida. They're going to get in a game, and once they do, this is going to be home to one of the largest betting look markets in the world. Hundreds of billions of dollars are going to be bet annually. What was the biggest catalysts that god? Ess there it kind of drove the acceptance. I believe it was fantasy sports and the sports league's embrace of people wagering on statistical performances. I think that kind of normalized things and brought sports betting to where we are today into the mainstream. Is there a sense of the convenience of it as well? Costa do you remember when you have you ever placed a bet on a sport an event. I've definitely placed a bet, but you know, we would my brothers. We would go to Las Vegas four March madness, right. We would then sit in the sports book and my brother would lose five hundred betting first half UNC on the under, and then he would bet a thousand unc second. You know, but that was like, I guess that's old school betting, right, David to actually go to the casino and sit in the sports book. I mean, now, it's just right here. I don't I don't do this. I'm afraid I think I'm a little weary of how convenient they're making it and how hard they're pushing it. Yeah, it's definitely changed from going up to the counter and handing overcast. Over ninety percent of the bets, ninety percent of the money is wagered on your phone these days, in the states that have legalized it, and of course even in the states that aren't legal. Let's not pretend that the year is not an underground bookmaking industry that's still thriving. You can go down to Coach Rika and they're all kinds of sports books operating down there. And it's not hard to find a bookmaker at any kind of country club or bowling alley as we mentioned. Okay, now, when you say growing, David's, let's put some numbers to this. How many people are we expecting to bet on the Super Bowl this year? And I know the Super Bowl already has all of these weird side bets like who will be the first how will the first point to be scored? But how many people are we talking and how much money is changing hands on average for a Super Bowl gambling as a gambling day. So last year they estimated at about thirty one million American adults bet on the super Bowl that combined to bet about seven point six billion dollars. Some of those estimates they came from the American Gaming Association, and they include some informal polls like your Super Bowl Squares and things like that. But you know those numbers are going to go up this year because we got new, heavilated, populated, heavily populated states like Ohio, Massachusetts. They launched betting markets in recent months. So you know, ten percent of the adult population will almost certainly have a bet on the Super Bowl. But do you think, David, it's the same people that we're betting illegally are now just doing it legally on their phone or and I know what they want is that new people betting for the first time. I love that question and something that we have not been able to define yet. Certainly the pool of betters is growing, but the majority of them were probably betting, you know, offshore. The estimates of how much was wagered on the Super Bowl before legalization, we're almost in the billions of dollars as well. So while we do think we have a new pool of betters coming up, there still is the majority of them. I would believe this is not their first bet that they've ever placed. They were betting long before. Yeah. Now this is a complicated topic in a sense because you know the Daily show we have, we have this burden to a degree, David. At least I think we can discuss problems that you already knew about, or we can try to inform you about stuff that you didn't even know might eventually be a problem, Like here's the storm versus, Hey, here's what's happening just off the horizon. I feel like this is one of those stories that was a horizon story. So we have to figure out ways to make it make sense for the viewers. And like spoofing, there is always a simple way to do it. And so I know, cost you all spoofed the movie Uncut Gems, which, if I'm not mistaken, it was Adam Sandler with a very weird accent. How did that segment come together? Well, if you haven't seen Uncut Gems, it's wonderful, it's terrifying, it's anxiety, it's a man constantly chasing his losses through gambling, and it's funny and it's there's some great lines. So we of course made the leap, as you do in comedy, elevated it to what's next if we're legalizing so much gambling or you get so deep in that now you're betting on kids hopscotch games, you're betting on the person at the playground shooting free throws. I made a crazy risk a game, but it's about to pay off. I want to put forty gs on a six way parlay on today's game where mister, how would you bet on that? This is me? This is how I went. Of course it's a joke, but it's funny. As time has gone on, that was all done before COVID, it is becoming more normalized. Where does this end? You know? In England, David, can't you bet when your son is born that he can he'll score a goal in the World Cup. It sounds ridiculous, but they take these bets they do. You can bet on the weather over there, you can bet on whatever you want, and that's you know costume. You know, there's like there's there's some bets on who the next host of the daily shows. Oh snap, I would would there's like it's it's unnecessary the type of stuff. Where does it stop? David? What else can you bet on? Well, you name it. For the super Bowl, You're going to be able to bet from the pregame to the post game. You know, from everything from how long the national anthem will go to who the super Bowl MVP will will think first in his postgame speech? So you know what the biggest one, though, is, out of all the thousands of prop bets that they have on the Super Bowl annually every year, the one that attracts the most money simply heads or tails on the cointails. You're right, you know. I guess my big question is, so what Like it's only a problem if you lose your house and family and loved ones because of it. So maybe if we Americans, the humans like a little wagers, is it problem? Is it problematic? I guess for me, the concern of it. And this is coming from a man who gambled I remember one time. Because I can say the name, the casino's gone now, so the lawyers don't have to get all scared. Casino magic and Biloxi r ip Katrina swallowed her until the Gulf as it deserved to be right. But when I did com there at those casinos, they would pay the comedians in a check so that you wouldn't gamble your cash at the table. And I wonder how much as we try to tell people gambling is fun, we're not simultaneously talking to them about impulse control and how this is a slippery slope. I think it the best in those gambling commercials, correct me from wrong, David. But there's like really fine print at the bottom of the screen, like, hey, have you got a problem? Sure you call it. Frank had run a hundred gamble up, but anyway than duel. It's like, uh, yeah, you're you're right. And you know, the National Council on Problem gamb will put some numbers on this. They estimate that around three to five percent of people who gamble will develop some sort of gambling disorder. Case studies and other Jersey sictions of the expanded legal gambling, they do receive a spike, and just like we have just expanded legal sports betting, we're almost destined to see a spike and increase problem gambling again. We're increasing the pool right of the number of betters, so that percentage, while it may stays the same, we're going to have more problem gamble. So we're probably in that initial stage right now where we're probably going to start hearing about more cases of a gambling addiction, and some of them are really bad, can spiral out of control, people can lose their life savings. There's a high rate of suicide related to gambling addiction too. So the good thing is the same studies have shown that society usually adapts. We enter these new vices into the society, they adjust to them. They're impact at time, They put the proper protections in and provide help for those who struggle to gamble responsibility. So things kind of level off. That's the hope at least, but it's going to be a battle if we're talking about impost control and making sure that things don't spiral out of control. Why did professional sports leagues flip on their opinion of sports, of legalized sports to betting, Because you know, when you look at Pete Rose who was a manager but never bet on games that he was managing, and then you look at I think the NBA ref what was his name, Costa was a Donaghee, Tim Donny Yeah, okay, so he's throwing games and blowing calls on purpose because he's got money on the game. So, you know, professional sports leagues long opposed sports betting for that, and they didn't want to corrupt the players. We don't need a franchise in Vegas because it's gonna make our players crazy and they're gonna gamble all the money. But then the Supreme Court reversed course, and then all of the sports league was on board. Come on down to the fan duel dot com backslash fantasy football arena. Why did these leagues flip and how do you think the league's embracing sports betting changes the landscape of the game and the fan experience. Well, the pivot. These are billion dollar businesses, MFL, NBA. They like money, right, And when the Supreme Court opened a path for all these states to kind of let launch fighting markets that was twenty eighteen, the leagues really they knew they didn't have much option other than to embrace it and get on board to this money train. They had to get on board. Make sure, they had to say, make sure they had a seat at the table. Now, it was definitely quite the whiplash pivot moment. I mean back, Oh, it's about ten years ago, fifteen years ago. Bud Sea League, the former MA commissioner, he was quoted as saying sports betting was evil, It's going to destroy a sport. Well, you talked about the landscape. You flash forward today, you got retail sports books at multi professional league stadiums, including at State Farmer Stadium in Glendale, Arizona, which is the site of this year's Super Bowl. Is there any positive coming or destined for some of the revenue, you know, like, do they have to put some of the revenue into youth sports programs? Do they have to put it into gambling education? Please? Please tell me yes, yes, absolutely, They are trying to dedicate you mentioned youth sports programs are getting that a lot of it is going to gambling addiction. I say a lot some of it is going to gambling addition services. Certainly not enough, but they are trying to dedicate this tax revenue, and lets it is significant tax revenue, so they are trying to put it towards worthy causes. Will it be enough to kind of balance out the negatives that come from it? That's still you know, kind of left the break determent. I was doing some googling because I know I'm from the state of Michigan and a lot of the lottery proceeds go to education, And I said, oh, do all the others? How many other states do that? First of all, like forty states do that. Of course, that's how you get funding for education in the United States. You have to buy a lottery ticket. But I was hoping with the gambling revenue that's going to be new that we would at least at least have some positive impact and not just more money for the NFL. David, I'm sorry that my league has hope and optimism about people doing the right thing with money. That's that's cute. That's not the general way of the world. But after the break cost, I want to talk to you a little bit about being a college athlete, and I want to talk about the implications David of sports betting. Zibet lates to the college game and the name and likeness stuff that's going on as well, Like you have to Chicago Black Sox scandal in nineteen nineteen, where the White Sox through an entire World series. Could you do that with a college football playoff? How corruptible are the kids. Let's talk about this after the break. This is beyond the scenes. Let me check my Super Bowl Fandel real quick. I'll be right back beyond the scenes. We are back. We are talking about professional leagues and sports gambling. But what about college athletics? And you know people bet on college game? Coster, you just said a second ago you and your brother went to Vegas to bet on the college game? Does sports betting? How does this affect student athletes in their mental health? And how potentially corruptible is the college game based on all of the money that's moving around like college. Like, like Coster, you played tennis in college? Anybody how somebody just coming to you, Hey, make sure in this NIXT set you go thirty right and then come back double duce. I got money on this set to go duce I get job using tennis terms thanks thanks to thanks, thanks to college tennis being a non revenue producing sport. I was, I was. I was shielded from a lot of that. But this is always and David can definitely speak to this, but this has always been a very corruptible group. Millions are being made off of them. I don't know the numbers for what CBS paid for the TV broadcast rights for March Madness. But it's a b it's a billions, it's billions. So you're making millions and billions off of these athletes who are not getting paid. So this is this is an enormous opportunity for corruption. David, what do you think? Is am? I right? It is? You nailed it all, and these guys are vulnerable. Even though the athletes are getting name, image and likeness deals now, it's not for a lot of them. And some of them are not making a lot of money. And if a kid can't scrounge up a hundred bucks to take someone out on a date, and they may think that missing a couple of free throws or turning the ball over isn't that big a deal if somebody's going to give them five hundred dollars or whatever. But I guess the key thing that I would want to make that these issues existed before legalization. Right, We had points paving scandals almost one every five years starting in the nineteen nineties, and since we started expanding legal betting, we haven't had one in college sports, at least that not one that's been exposed. Yet it does kind of feel inevitable that we will have another. But I don't think we should necessarily blame that on legalization. In fact, I think with the many more eyes that are watching it, and people are really kind of looking for anything that's nefarious going on, watching the pointbreads as or money coming on a weird game that we didn't think should be there, You're more likely to get caught if you were trying to pull something of big scale now that everybody has more visibility into the betting market. I can also say, as a former collegiate athlete that you spent fifteen years now sixteen years for this moment. Your parents refinance their house to send you to basketball tennis camp, whatever, your coach rides you all day about your jump shot. You're naturally already have a lot of pressure on you. If your anonymous Twitter handle is lost four hundred bucks because of you know, you kind of don't give a shit. In my opinion, there's enough pressure already on the shoulders that come from within and come from family and others. So I would think they would be you know, and I'm just talking this, I would think they maybe wouldn't be as influenced as much as we believe by a stranger's bet. I think what I think, also, Kosta, is that we also have to account for it to some degree. Is how social media and how like if you've been to a sports book, you know the range of emotions that happen on that last play and the highs and the lows, and the screens and the cheering, and people take that straight to social media. And if it Super Bowl is a perfect example the Bengals. Some would argue the Bengals are not in the Super Bowl because Joseph Aside I think it's the brother's name, made a dumb play at the end of the game against Patrick Mahomes and then Chiefs got it's a shorter field goal to go to the Super Bowl. He sat on the bench the entirety of the confetti celebration with the weight of the world on his shoulders. And that's a grown man. So imagine being an eighteen year old that fumbles at the goal line and the Big Trophy game, and now you open up your social media two thousands of rabbit gamblers who were blaming you specifically for that loss on some mental health shit. David, Like, where does this. How does the school then work to try to protect the players from that type of verbal abuse and attacks. It's bad enough when you're dealing with a rabbit fan base, but a rabbit fan base who also lost money. I don't know if that should be part of the regular weight that a college athlete should have to carry. Took cost this point of all the other weight that you're carrying now you're carrying verbal abuse from strangers. It's disgusting, it really is. It's one of the things that really drives me crazy. We're actually doing some reporting on that right now. And there is a company called sport Radar. It's a big tech company that analyzes a lot of data and they have actually dedicated a whole department to identifying abusive behavior on social media toward athletes. So that's one way they are trying to combat it. But it's very, very difficult. And I'll tell you a quick little story. There was a kid that they called parlay Pats, and he was known for making these big parlay bats, right, and he was winning every once in a while, and he was really kind of getting some media publicity. Never well, sooner or later FBI got ahold of them. And it turns out he was sending just awful, the worst, profane direct messages to athletes. I mean, we're talking about like we're gonna slit your wife's throat with a dull blade and your children and all these terrible things. And his idea was, I'm going to send these to these athletes and get them worried about me, and then I'm gonna bet against them, and so it can get really really ugly. He was eventually convicted and put on probation for a long time. But there are some really really dangerous to these and it does scare me. And yet it's fun to bet on two teams that I don't know care on a Tuesday night, I'm on the road, Roy, I just bombed at a casino and Lacrosse, Wisconsin. Let me go bet a couple of bucks on the double A baseball team, and now I have something to do tonight. It does give everything steaks. It gives everything steaks. Yeah. Yeah. There's just there's something with regards to the dopamine of it as well that I think where it becomes kind of an addiction thing. Like I used to play online poker back when that before the Feds shut that down. I was up like four hundred bucks, when to this day I haven't got my four hundred dollars back from poker stars. But like, that was fun and exciting to do. But on the money side of it, day that if it's so lucrative and you know, the lotteries already getting education, coffers, stuff, pretty good for a lot of states, why isn't every state on board with legalized sports betting? Like, like you look at California, right, California had a measure on the ballot and they were like, nah, we're fine, we don't need to legalize that. Even Florida said no, which I was very you know, I was very intrigued by that, Like what do states have to gain or lose from legalizing sports betting? The fact that Florida said no to anything on a ballot, it's just shocking. Yeah, politics are in play in all these big states, but it does feel almost inevitable. Eventually those free states, those big states, Texas, Florida, California, they're gonna get it done. Texas remains one of the few states without casino gambling. So there's some resistance to all gambling from the conservative nature of that state, that resistance is slowly eroding, and the sports leagues and their sports owners over there, Mark Cuban, Jerry Jones are kind of pushed in that envelope. Florida and California each have these complex compacts with Native American tribes. They control the gambling in those states, so it gets a little real tricky to get it done. Florida is closer to getting it done than California at this point, but my belief eventually probably were next five to seven years, all those will get done, if not sumer And what they gain is that revenue. What they lose is any of the backlash and any of the issues that we've covered. So we got to make sure that revenue is worth taking on the backlash and the issues that come about with it. Roy, do you ever bet on high lie in Miami? No, but I've gone to it. I don't bet on shit. I don't understand. I mean, shit is rigged for sure. But my dad used to take us and we would throw down two bucks on some guy and watch him play catch with a basket tied to his hand, and we go, what the ship is going on? But it was far no clue what it is and if I don't understand the mechanics of it, you know, but the stuff I do understand, I get way too granular on, which is just That's part of why I just like, I'll buy when the powerball gets up to a billion, then I'll do that. And if I'm out with buddies in Vegas, I'll do a little bit of black jack. But you know, outside of that, most of the gambling that I've done on a regular basis is long term stuff. I got one hundred buck buying fantasy football pot that I buy into every year with some buddies from college, and then I might do like the I don't know what it's called, David, but at the beginning of the baseball season, I will bet on which team will lose one hundred games, and I'll put fifty bucks. Yeah, futures, I'll put a hundred bucks on the Cincinnati Reds to suck, and then all of a sudden go on a surge in June and you just know they're not going to lose one hundred, They're gonna lose ninety three. Okay, well, I'm done watching baseball all yet. How partisan is this issue, David? You know, in the sense of from the lobbying standpoint, from the casinos, from the sports books angle. You know, is this an issue that is dividing Democrats and Republicans or are they just both in the same place of going, Hey, the money's got to be right. Yeah, the money's got to be right money. It is not really ever partisan, and everybody knows they can get it. They just got to figure out the best ways they can. And you get the conservative pushback every once in a while. There are against the moralists that think gambling is against their morals and it shouldn't be brought upon in an illegal setting. The argument against that, of course, is if we bring it into a legal setting, we're allowed to put in these protections and hopefully kind of try to identify any of the issues that we may have, whether that be an addiction or a game fixing scandal. Whereas your local bookie down at the barroom, he's certainly not going to say, hey, I think you may be betting too much, and he's gonna say, hey, you want to bet on this next game. So there are positive pros and cons for both. For his partisan of it, it's not much people they see the money, they want to get in their part. For someone dealing with gambling addiction, it's it's hard to escape because there are constant commercials and ads and promos, and it's ricks free. The first bet is free. We'll match your first two hundred dollars when you put your money in the account. Is enough being done to regulate and enforce responsible gaming? And you know, David, how do we compare to other countries, Like what are some of the changes that they've made in Europe with regards to gambling to try to tail addiction. Yeah, it's gonna be tough for anybody to avoid seeing these commercials. The advertisements ever, they used to be up on the man buses they were traveling through the Northeast. You would see big ads for fans and so forth. So it's going to be very difficult until we do get some sort of pullback on the advertising, and I do believe that is coming. In the UK, they've already started that kind of read looking at how should we keep advertising away from sports? And they are going to do what they call a whistle to whistle band where you will not allow it to be allowed to air sports betting commercials throughout a match. Soon as the match starts through the end of it, you will not be able to air any kind of sports betting commercials. Now, some of the soccer players still have ads for sports books on their jerseys and you see them around the runners board. So there's a lot of things that are going to have to change. Is going to make it very difficult for anybody that is struggling with sports betting or with gambling addiction overall to avoid them. Wait till linel MESSI gets like a FanDuel dot Com tattoo on it's coming the way they putting ads on all the jerseys. But then you have companies like DraftKings though, where like they'll advise you on how much money, like you can set how much you're gonna put into your account every week, or how much you can wage. And you know they've also donated to the International Center for Responsible Gaming, Like they collaborate with all of these different associations and groups and things like that. But is that placation Like if you look at the NFL, right, the NFL through six million at the National Council on Problem Gambling, that's like one I don't want to call it alcoholics anonymous, but they're like a group that is focused on helping people get past those addictions. Can you, in earnest be a part of the problem and the solution or is the problem not your fault Because there's always going to be people that overindulge. I think that the ladder there, there's always going to be again that three to five percent of people that gamble will develop some sort of gambling disorder or gamble type problems. We could only try to help them as much as we can. M and I, you know, I applied the NFL for giving the National Council on Problem coming all that money that that that doubled their national budget. You know that that this is these are not well funded companies, these ones that try to help with gambling addictions. So any kind of money we can get them. And again I think that's Michael mentioned that, you know, I think that's a good thing from legalization comes out because we are trying to help them. We are trying to throw some of the money. While as the corner bookmaker who was offering credit to the local college kid, and all of a sudden he burns through his five hundred dollars of credit and he doesn't have that money well, that local bookmaker isn't saying, oh hey, you know, let me help you out that they are trying to continue to take that money. So I think there are pros and cons from it, and I do think that if we look at it, look at all over, there's a little bit more positivity to legalization of sports betting than it were to keep it in an underground. David, you said it's three to five, will develop a problem, But I'm willing bet two hundred bucks with you that it's more like twenty percent. You will take that twenty percent? Yeah, I'll take I'll take the under on that. That's a deal. What country was you talking about in the first break when you say you can gamble on middle school, which kids left shoe was gonna come untied? Yeah? Yeah in England? England and the weather you can bet on the weather over there. And I don't think we'll ever reach a point where we can say that we've got a problem gambling under control. There's always going to be people that struggle with it. I think the key is trying to identify it quickly, because, like we talked about, things spiral out of control quickly. You think you know you're going to only be down one thousand bucks. You'll be able to pay that off. All of a sudden, you're down two thousand and you don't got the money and you got to pay, and now you get nervous and then you to make bad decisions to try to get that money. So it's going to be an internal challenge for all the stakeholders. That's why I stopped fooling around with fan Duel and like, I took all that shit off my phone, bro like all of them betting stuff. Draft Kings, the Draft King commercials first off, feel like a red bull ad. I feel like an ad, feel like a motorcyclistic Draft Kings come on down and got on your favorite football player. How much more does that type of stuff make people vulnerable to? That's I've thought a lot about this, and I believe I'm in the camp of people were doing this anyways. I'm happy we're legalizing and maybe getting some revenue. But what I hate is when my three year old daughter eyes are drawn to Jamie Fox pushing a gambling ad like that. It's almost like the cigarette companies with the cartoons on the boxes. At this point, Yeah, they're pushing them too hard. Like we're adults. Adults should be able to partake in their vices in my opinion, and gambling is one of those vices. But it seems too aggressive now and I'm I want them to slow it down, please. There's definitely something to that, you know, because like even with some of the apps that my son uses, some of the incentives and this is this is an educational app to teach you learning, but some of the incentives, Oh, if you answer this question, you get this many coins and then you can double the coins if you answer one more question. It's like some prices, right deal or no deal? Shit, all in the effort to get a better hat for your avatar so he can continue on the journey through the learning environment or whatever. But this idea that the apps, like, David, how does that affect you know, mental health? Like do these apps help to introduce more young people into gambling? Because we're talking about fourteen fifteen year olds where what's the checking balances? Are you eighteen? Do you promise you're eighteen? All right? Click here right or hand your mom hands with the phone whatever. But gamble, you know, the gamblification they call it of video games at any time of those things are worrisome. It's a big issue overseas right now, those loot boxes that they call them, where you're playing a CSGO or whatever video game you're playing, and if you get this lootbox, it can kind of parlay you your skin of your gun. You get a stronger gun, and you know, people start selling these things on the black market, and there's been lots of discussion on that. So it's something we're gonna have to pay attention closely to the number of commercials. NFL decide they were only going to do six sports book, sportsbook or sports betting commercials per per game. Is even seemed like a lot because we went from zero to six. So I do eventually think we're goun and get some pushback and some regulators are going to say, Okay, we've gone a little too far. And to that point, David, after the break, I want to talk a little bit more about what the future of sports betting looks like. Will they put microchips in our heads? Well, I just think to myself, Jalen hurts over three hundred yards less than two interceptions, and then bing, it's just automatically taken from my checking account of something well, we'll see what the if you're just sports betting, looks like this is beyond the scenes. We'll be right back beyond the scenes. We are round in third and headed for home. Wonderful conversation here about sports gambling and things of that nature. Real quick, let me check my fan duel real quick. See what's going and check that fand okay, it's looking good. I think I got my line up set. There we go, David. How far away are we from middle school soccer gambling? Respect a? Long ways? We're not gonna get there. They are betting on high school sports, but most of those are done in those illegal sports books in the offshore world. But we're not going to get to middle school. And you want to see high school betting up in the legal market. But but I could see roy every you know, everything's going subscription model. I could see where you could bet a season's worth of bets, you know, I could see where they go. Okay, Costa, you keep betting the Lions. Let's just automatically set your bet every Sunday and you can go in and log in and remember your password and cancel it if you want. But we're just going to place that for you automatically, I can see that coming. They might already exist. I guess I'm half kidding about middle school soccer. I really do think eventually coming at But when we talk about the future of sports betting and what it looks like in the United States, is this something that will eventually extend beyond sports? You know we have the This is Awards season for all the shows? How much more hardcore are we going to get into that? Like, because I know people bet on the winners, but at what point do we just start gambling on the nominees. Well, you do have betting on the oscars. It's a pretty big market. There'll be more over millions of dollars bet on the Academy Awards. You're going to eventually probably see betting on elections. They do that in the UK, where the US presidential election is one of their biggest political markets there is. If it was over here, a lot of bookmakers think of betting on the presidency would be the largest betting market we offer over here. So there will be some tion of this and continue to grow. Hopefully we'll be smart about it and not get into middle school soccer. What challenges lie here for the sports betting providers. Other than getting all of these politicians on board by bribing them under the table, I think you're eventually going to see some pushback from regulators on advertising. What you said, it seems like we'll also be inevitable that we're going to have another gambling scandal like you know we repeatedly had throughout the history of sports, even before legalization. There's a lot of money. Whenever there's something with a lot of money involved, nefarious actors come to play. And I really do think there's going to be some awful stories of people who lose everything to gambling addiction. So the future, it's a little sounds a little scary, But I think that as a society we are adults and we should be allowed to use our vices responsibly. We just have to make sure and try to do that right. We cannot let things get spiral out of control, whether for individuals or as a society a whole, when it comes to gambling. This is what I would do if I was a college kid and I needed to make some money and I was open to being scandalized, I wouldn't take the bet to lose the game, right, that's too big people might notice that, but you you take the money to not have as many assists, or in the first half you don't play gray and it's a first half bet. I feel like the scandal might be as not they lost the game or he missed the free throw with no time left. It's always these little like first quarter bets or like you know, that's that's where you could really make some money. I'm not not advising them to do that, no, but I am. Let's go down this road. I like this cost. How would I be corruptible if I was still playing the game, Like if you know your quarterback's gonna get sucked twice, and I'm an old lineman that I'm gonna bet that he's gonna get sacked three times because on one or else plays, I'm gonna let the d lineman go pass. And now that's three sacks and it's only one play out of the greater what seventy or eighty offensive snaps you'll gain? So did I throw the game? Or did I just pay for a couple of extra textbooks? How much money are you trying to make off that I'm trying to retire data, You're trying to retire you're not going to be able to retire on betting on sacks. The way the books combat that is they put limits on it, so you may be able to get it, you know, a few thousand dollars down at one book, maybe five hundred or another book, but you're not going to make retiring money on there. The big markets are there, the two win the game, oh, I didn't know the game, the points bread right, those are the ones that have the biggest limits. So if you're going to try to retire off some sort of match fixing this scheme, and you know it is a federal crime and you would serve time if you were caught, you're going to have to play to you know, win the game or cover the spread, and you're gonna have to be able to disguise your money, right, you can't put all this money, millions of dollars on some random, low level college basketball game, and then where do you deposit that without having to report it? Now, you gotta have the money in the backyard like Denzel Washington and American gangster, and then the rats start eating your money, like the drug dealer and bad boys too. Because you got so much cash, you can't wash it. I mean, we're back to uncut gems. So last question then, for both of you all, what are your predictions for the Super Bowl? Who you betting on? Do you bet? David? We never even asked you that I am the worst? Better there ever is. My Twitter profile says I write about gambling, but I am not good at gambling, and it's true. So with that said, I'm gonna take heads on the coin toss. Okay, I'm not an enormous football fan, but I'm an America fan and I love how we make it a spectacle. I love nobody entertains like Americans, so I usually get in on those like commercial bets, who's the first beer ad? I like the bets about the commercials or how many Derito ads are there going to be? And as far as the game goes, I'm stand off. I'm standing away from that. Well, I'm telling you're right now, friends, I've got some hot tips. That's the other thing we didn't even get to talk about was this gambling. The experts. Guys, just hey, guys, hot tip Eagles over Mahomes. Just found out Patti Mahomes didn't have his traditional smoothie that he has pregame. You gotta take the over on these guys. Man, they're just looking good traditionally in games under fifty degrees in a Western time zone. I just think you can't stop Jalen Hurts and it way like they get so granular on the stats. I'm like you were on cocaine and I did not trust you in the least. I wish we had more time to talk about this, but this is extremely, extremely fascinating. David Michael, thank you for going beyond the scenes with me. Much love my fan do im okay? Listen to The Daily Show Beyond the Scenes on Apple podcast, the iHeartRadio app, or wherever you get your podcasts. 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You're listening to Comedy Central. Wow. What's up, Yes Edition listeners, Ryan Chan corresponding for The Daily Show. You're about to hear an episode of one of our original Daily Show podcasts, Beyond the Scenes, hosted by Roy Wood Jr. It's the podcast where we dive deep into the segments and topics from the Daily Show with the show's writers, producers and experts. We're in the midst of NCAA's match Madness and this episode features Michael Costa and ESPN's David Purdham talking about the explosion of legal life sports gambling, the risk of gambling addiction, and how to enforce responsible gambling. If you like the show, check out the Beyond the Scenes podcast wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to Beyond the Scenes the podcast. It goes a little deeper into segments and topics that originally aired on The Daily Show. This is what you gotta think of this podcast, Like, this podcast is like when you go to a Super Bowl party and you're there to root for your team, but you're also there for the commercials, to have time show the chicken wings and endless pitchers of beer, and to bet how soon your friend Garrite's going to pass out from autumn tequila shots. Wake up, Gary stopped being a bitch. It was just fourteen shots. That's what this podcast is. I'm Roy Wood Jr. And today we're talking about this weekend Super Bowl and the legalization of sports betting Roll mcclip. Since the Supreme Court cleared the way for sports betting in the States, other than in Nevada, a growing number of states have legalized sports gambling. Sports betting revenue expected to go from two point five billion dollars this year to nearly nineteen billion in twenty twenty three. The NCAA and professional sports leads had long opposed sports betting, saying it could hurt the integrity of the game, but as soon as the Supreme Court freed states to legalize sports betting last May, the pro leagues immediately reversed course. Within months of the ruling, the NBA, Major League Baseball, and the National Hockey League all made deals with MGM in the NFL partnered up with Caesar's Palace. Today, I'm joined by Daily Show correspondent Michael Costa. Costa is always good to have you on. How you doing brother, Thanks for having me appreciate it. Good to see you, and we are also joined by gambling industry reporter for ESPN, David Purdam. David, how are you doing. I'm great man, Thanks for having me on. Now, David, let's talk about the Super Bowl. You know, super Bowl vv X, l XIED whatever. The held Roman numerals are so stupid that Romans don't even use them anymore anyway, the Super Bowl remains one of the biggest sports betting days of the year, and sports betting is now legal and over thirty states. How did this evolve from an underground world of giving numbers to your bookie and then your bookie line and seeing your team didn't cover, to the mainstream industry at field world that we know today. It was a slow process us for sure, especially compared to other jurisdictions around the world. You know, sports betting was legal in the UK for a long time. Bookmakers are respected profession over there, while over here, as you said, you know, most of sports betting for the longest of times was done in your bar rooms, your bowling alleys or with your country club bookmaker. Now we got over thirty states that have legalized it, and we're catching up quickly. In the next day decade, we're going to get big states like California, Texas, Florida. They're going to get in a game, and once they do, this is going to be home to one of the largest betting look markets in the world. Hundreds of billions of dollars are going to be bet annually. What was the biggest catalysts that god? Ess there it kind of drove the acceptance. I believe it was fantasy sports and the sports league's embrace of people wagering on statistical performances. I think that kind of normalized things and brought sports betting to where we are today into the mainstream. Is there a sense of the convenience of it as well? Costa do you remember when you have you ever placed a bet on a sport an event. I've definitely placed a bet, but you know, we would my brothers. We would go to Las Vegas four March madness, right. We would then sit in the sports book and my brother would lose five hundred betting first half UNC on the under, and then he would bet a thousand unc second. You know, but that was like, I guess that's old school betting, right, David to actually go to the casino and sit in the sports book. I mean, now, it's just right here. I don't I don't do this. I'm afraid I think I'm a little weary of how convenient they're making it and how hard they're pushing it. Yeah, it's definitely changed from going up to the counter and handing overcast. Over ninety percent of the bets, ninety percent of the money is wagered on your phone these days, in the states that have legalized it, and of course even in the states that aren't legal. Let's not pretend that the year is not an underground bookmaking industry that's still thriving. You can go down to Coach Rika and they're all kinds of sports books operating down there. And it's not hard to find a bookmaker at any kind of country club or bowling alley as we mentioned. Okay, now, when you say growing, David's, let's put some numbers to this. How many people are we expecting to bet on the Super Bowl this year? And I know the Super Bowl already has all of these weird side bets like who will be the first how will the first point to be scored? But how many people are we talking and how much money is changing hands on average for a Super Bowl gambling as a gambling day. So last year they estimated at about thirty one million American adults bet on the super Bowl that combined to bet about seven point six billion dollars. Some of those estimates they came from the American Gaming Association, and they include some informal polls like your Super Bowl Squares and things like that. But you know those numbers are going to go up this year because we got new, heavilated, populated, heavily populated states like Ohio, Massachusetts. They launched betting markets in recent months. So you know, ten percent of the adult population will almost certainly have a bet on the Super Bowl. But do you think, David, it's the same people that we're betting illegally are now just doing it legally on their phone or and I know what they want is that new people betting for the first time. I love that question and something that we have not been able to define yet. Certainly the pool of betters is growing, but the majority of them were probably betting, you know, offshore. The estimates of how much was wagered on the Super Bowl before legalization, we're almost in the billions of dollars as well. So while we do think we have a new pool of betters coming up, there still is the majority of them. I would believe this is not their first bet that they've ever placed. They were betting long before. Yeah. Now this is a complicated topic in a sense because you know the Daily show we have, we have this burden to a degree, David. At least I think we can discuss problems that you already knew about, or we can try to inform you about stuff that you didn't even know might eventually be a problem, Like here's the storm versus, Hey, here's what's happening just off the horizon. I feel like this is one of those stories that was a horizon story. So we have to figure out ways to make it make sense for the viewers. And like spoofing, there is always a simple way to do it. And so I know, cost you all spoofed the movie Uncut Gems, which, if I'm not mistaken, it was Adam Sandler with a very weird accent. How did that segment come together? Well, if you haven't seen Uncut Gems, it's wonderful, it's terrifying, it's anxiety, it's a man constantly chasing his losses through gambling, and it's funny and it's there's some great lines. So we of course made the leap, as you do in comedy, elevated it to what's next if we're legalizing so much gambling or you get so deep in that now you're betting on kids hopscotch games, you're betting on the person at the playground shooting free throws. I made a crazy risk a game, but it's about to pay off. I want to put forty gs on a six way parlay on today's game where mister, how would you bet on that? This is me? This is how I went. Of course it's a joke, but it's funny. As time has gone on, that was all done before COVID, it is becoming more normalized. Where does this end? You know? In England, David, can't you bet when your son is born that he can he'll score a goal in the World Cup. It sounds ridiculous, but they take these bets they do. You can bet on the weather over there, you can bet on whatever you want, and that's you know costume. You know, there's like there's there's some bets on who the next host of the daily shows. Oh snap, I would would there's like it's it's unnecessary the type of stuff. Where does it stop? David? What else can you bet on? Well, you name it. For the super Bowl, You're going to be able to bet from the pregame to the post game. You know, from everything from how long the national anthem will go to who the super Bowl MVP will will think first in his postgame speech? So you know what the biggest one, though, is, out of all the thousands of prop bets that they have on the Super Bowl annually every year, the one that attracts the most money simply heads or tails on the cointails. You're right, you know. I guess my big question is, so what Like it's only a problem if you lose your house and family and loved ones because of it. So maybe if we Americans, the humans like a little wagers, is it problem? Is it problematic? I guess for me, the concern of it. And this is coming from a man who gambled I remember one time. Because I can say the name, the casino's gone now, so the lawyers don't have to get all scared. Casino magic and Biloxi r ip Katrina swallowed her until the Gulf as it deserved to be right. But when I did com there at those casinos, they would pay the comedians in a check so that you wouldn't gamble your cash at the table. And I wonder how much as we try to tell people gambling is fun, we're not simultaneously talking to them about impulse control and how this is a slippery slope. I think it the best in those gambling commercials, correct me from wrong, David. But there's like really fine print at the bottom of the screen, like, hey, have you got a problem? Sure you call it. Frank had run a hundred gamble up, but anyway than duel. It's like, uh, yeah, you're you're right. And you know, the National Council on Problem gamb will put some numbers on this. They estimate that around three to five percent of people who gamble will develop some sort of gambling disorder. Case studies and other Jersey sictions of the expanded legal gambling, they do receive a spike, and just like we have just expanded legal sports betting, we're almost destined to see a spike and increase problem gambling again. We're increasing the pool right of the number of betters, so that percentage, while it may stays the same, we're going to have more problem gamble. So we're probably in that initial stage right now where we're probably going to start hearing about more cases of a gambling addiction, and some of them are really bad, can spiral out of control, people can lose their life savings. There's a high rate of suicide related to gambling addiction too. So the good thing is the same studies have shown that society usually adapts. We enter these new vices into the society, they adjust to them. They're impact at time, They put the proper protections in and provide help for those who struggle to gamble responsibility. So things kind of level off. That's the hope at least, but it's going to be a battle if we're talking about impost control and making sure that things don't spiral out of control. Why did professional sports leagues flip on their opinion of sports, of legalized sports to betting, Because you know, when you look at Pete Rose who was a manager but never bet on games that he was managing, and then you look at I think the NBA ref what was his name, Costa was a Donaghee, Tim Donny Yeah, okay, so he's throwing games and blowing calls on purpose because he's got money on the game. So, you know, professional sports leagues long opposed sports betting for that, and they didn't want to corrupt the players. We don't need a franchise in Vegas because it's gonna make our players crazy and they're gonna gamble all the money. But then the Supreme Court reversed course, and then all of the sports league was on board. Come on down to the fan duel dot com backslash fantasy football arena. Why did these leagues flip and how do you think the league's embracing sports betting changes the landscape of the game and the fan experience. Well, the pivot. These are billion dollar businesses, MFL, NBA. They like money, right, And when the Supreme Court opened a path for all these states to kind of let launch fighting markets that was twenty eighteen, the leagues really they knew they didn't have much option other than to embrace it and get on board to this money train. They had to get on board. Make sure, they had to say, make sure they had a seat at the table. Now, it was definitely quite the whiplash pivot moment. I mean back, Oh, it's about ten years ago, fifteen years ago. Bud Sea League, the former MA commissioner, he was quoted as saying sports betting was evil, It's going to destroy a sport. Well, you talked about the landscape. You flash forward today, you got retail sports books at multi professional league stadiums, including at State Farmer Stadium in Glendale, Arizona, which is the site of this year's Super Bowl. Is there any positive coming or destined for some of the revenue, you know, like, do they have to put some of the revenue into youth sports programs? Do they have to put it into gambling education? Please? Please tell me yes, yes, absolutely, They are trying to dedicate you mentioned youth sports programs are getting that a lot of it is going to gambling addiction. I say a lot some of it is going to gambling addition services. Certainly not enough, but they are trying to dedicate this tax revenue, and lets it is significant tax revenue, so they are trying to put it towards worthy causes. Will it be enough to kind of balance out the negatives that come from it? That's still you know, kind of left the break determent. I was doing some googling because I know I'm from the state of Michigan and a lot of the lottery proceeds go to education, And I said, oh, do all the others? How many other states do that? First of all, like forty states do that. Of course, that's how you get funding for education in the United States. You have to buy a lottery ticket. But I was hoping with the gambling revenue that's going to be new that we would at least at least have some positive impact and not just more money for the NFL. David, I'm sorry that my league has hope and optimism about people doing the right thing with money. That's that's cute. That's not the general way of the world. But after the break cost, I want to talk to you a little bit about being a college athlete, and I want to talk about the implications David of sports betting. Zibet lates to the college game and the name and likeness stuff that's going on as well, Like you have to Chicago Black Sox scandal in nineteen nineteen, where the White Sox through an entire World series. Could you do that with a college football playoff? How corruptible are the kids. Let's talk about this after the break. This is beyond the scenes. Let me check my Super Bowl Fandel real quick. I'll be right back beyond the scenes. We are back. We are talking about professional leagues and sports gambling. But what about college athletics? And you know people bet on college game? Coster, you just said a second ago you and your brother went to Vegas to bet on the college game? Does sports betting? How does this affect student athletes in their mental health? And how potentially corruptible is the college game based on all of the money that's moving around like college. Like, like Coster, you played tennis in college? Anybody how somebody just coming to you, Hey, make sure in this NIXT set you go thirty right and then come back double duce. I got money on this set to go duce I get job using tennis terms thanks thanks to thanks, thanks to college tennis being a non revenue producing sport. I was, I was. I was shielded from a lot of that. But this is always and David can definitely speak to this, but this has always been a very corruptible group. Millions are being made off of them. I don't know the numbers for what CBS paid for the TV broadcast rights for March Madness. But it's a b it's a billions, it's billions. So you're making millions and billions off of these athletes who are not getting paid. So this is this is an enormous opportunity for corruption. David, what do you think? Is am? I right? It is? You nailed it all, and these guys are vulnerable. Even though the athletes are getting name, image and likeness deals now, it's not for a lot of them. And some of them are not making a lot of money. And if a kid can't scrounge up a hundred bucks to take someone out on a date, and they may think that missing a couple of free throws or turning the ball over isn't that big a deal if somebody's going to give them five hundred dollars or whatever. But I guess the key thing that I would want to make that these issues existed before legalization. Right, We had points paving scandals almost one every five years starting in the nineteen nineties, and since we started expanding legal betting, we haven't had one in college sports, at least that not one that's been exposed. Yet it does kind of feel inevitable that we will have another. But I don't think we should necessarily blame that on legalization. In fact, I think with the many more eyes that are watching it, and people are really kind of looking for anything that's nefarious going on, watching the pointbreads as or money coming on a weird game that we didn't think should be there, You're more likely to get caught if you were trying to pull something of big scale now that everybody has more visibility into the betting market. I can also say, as a former collegiate athlete that you spent fifteen years now sixteen years for this moment. Your parents refinance their house to send you to basketball tennis camp, whatever, your coach rides you all day about your jump shot. You're naturally already have a lot of pressure on you. If your anonymous Twitter handle is lost four hundred bucks because of you know, you kind of don't give a shit. In my opinion, there's enough pressure already on the shoulders that come from within and come from family and others. So I would think they would be you know, and I'm just talking this, I would think they maybe wouldn't be as influenced as much as we believe by a stranger's bet. I think what I think, also, Kosta, is that we also have to account for it to some degree. Is how social media and how like if you've been to a sports book, you know the range of emotions that happen on that last play and the highs and the lows, and the screens and the cheering, and people take that straight to social media. And if it Super Bowl is a perfect example the Bengals. Some would argue the Bengals are not in the Super Bowl because Joseph Aside I think it's the brother's name, made a dumb play at the end of the game against Patrick Mahomes and then Chiefs got it's a shorter field goal to go to the Super Bowl. He sat on the bench the entirety of the confetti celebration with the weight of the world on his shoulders. And that's a grown man. So imagine being an eighteen year old that fumbles at the goal line and the Big Trophy game, and now you open up your social media two thousands of rabbit gamblers who were blaming you specifically for that loss on some mental health shit. David, Like, where does this. How does the school then work to try to protect the players from that type of verbal abuse and attacks. It's bad enough when you're dealing with a rabbit fan base, but a rabbit fan base who also lost money. I don't know if that should be part of the regular weight that a college athlete should have to carry. Took cost this point of all the other weight that you're carrying now you're carrying verbal abuse from strangers. It's disgusting, it really is. It's one of the things that really drives me crazy. We're actually doing some reporting on that right now. And there is a company called sport Radar. It's a big tech company that analyzes a lot of data and they have actually dedicated a whole department to identifying abusive behavior on social media toward athletes. So that's one way they are trying to combat it. But it's very, very difficult. And I'll tell you a quick little story. There was a kid that they called parlay Pats, and he was known for making these big parlay bats, right, and he was winning every once in a while, and he was really kind of getting some media publicity. Never well, sooner or later FBI got ahold of them. And it turns out he was sending just awful, the worst, profane direct messages to athletes. I mean, we're talking about like we're gonna slit your wife's throat with a dull blade and your children and all these terrible things. And his idea was, I'm going to send these to these athletes and get them worried about me, and then I'm gonna bet against them, and so it can get really really ugly. He was eventually convicted and put on probation for a long time. But there are some really really dangerous to these and it does scare me. And yet it's fun to bet on two teams that I don't know care on a Tuesday night, I'm on the road, Roy, I just bombed at a casino and Lacrosse, Wisconsin. Let me go bet a couple of bucks on the double A baseball team, and now I have something to do tonight. It does give everything steaks. It gives everything steaks. Yeah. Yeah. There's just there's something with regards to the dopamine of it as well that I think where it becomes kind of an addiction thing. Like I used to play online poker back when that before the Feds shut that down. I was up like four hundred bucks, when to this day I haven't got my four hundred dollars back from poker stars. But like, that was fun and exciting to do. But on the money side of it, day that if it's so lucrative and you know, the lotteries already getting education, coffers, stuff, pretty good for a lot of states, why isn't every state on board with legalized sports betting? Like, like you look at California, right, California had a measure on the ballot and they were like, nah, we're fine, we don't need to legalize that. Even Florida said no, which I was very you know, I was very intrigued by that, Like what do states have to gain or lose from legalizing sports betting? The fact that Florida said no to anything on a ballot, it's just shocking. Yeah, politics are in play in all these big states, but it does feel almost inevitable. Eventually those free states, those big states, Texas, Florida, California, they're gonna get it done. Texas remains one of the few states without casino gambling. So there's some resistance to all gambling from the conservative nature of that state, that resistance is slowly eroding, and the sports leagues and their sports owners over there, Mark Cuban, Jerry Jones are kind of pushed in that envelope. Florida and California each have these complex compacts with Native American tribes. They control the gambling in those states, so it gets a little real tricky to get it done. Florida is closer to getting it done than California at this point, but my belief eventually probably were next five to seven years, all those will get done, if not sumer And what they gain is that revenue. What they lose is any of the backlash and any of the issues that we've covered. So we got to make sure that revenue is worth taking on the backlash and the issues that come about with it. Roy, do you ever bet on high lie in Miami? No, but I've gone to it. I don't bet on shit. I don't understand. I mean, shit is rigged for sure. But my dad used to take us and we would throw down two bucks on some guy and watch him play catch with a basket tied to his hand, and we go, what the ship is going on? But it was far no clue what it is and if I don't understand the mechanics of it, you know, but the stuff I do understand, I get way too granular on, which is just That's part of why I just like, I'll buy when the powerball gets up to a billion, then I'll do that. And if I'm out with buddies in Vegas, I'll do a little bit of black jack. But you know, outside of that, most of the gambling that I've done on a regular basis is long term stuff. I got one hundred buck buying fantasy football pot that I buy into every year with some buddies from college, and then I might do like the I don't know what it's called, David, but at the beginning of the baseball season, I will bet on which team will lose one hundred games, and I'll put fifty bucks. Yeah, futures, I'll put a hundred bucks on the Cincinnati Reds to suck, and then all of a sudden go on a surge in June and you just know they're not going to lose one hundred, They're gonna lose ninety three. Okay, well, I'm done watching baseball all yet. How partisan is this issue, David? You know, in the sense of from the lobbying standpoint, from the casinos, from the sports books angle. You know, is this an issue that is dividing Democrats and Republicans or are they just both in the same place of going, Hey, the money's got to be right. Yeah, the money's got to be right money. It is not really ever partisan, and everybody knows they can get it. They just got to figure out the best ways they can. And you get the conservative pushback every once in a while. There are against the moralists that think gambling is against their morals and it shouldn't be brought upon in an illegal setting. The argument against that, of course, is if we bring it into a legal setting, we're allowed to put in these protections and hopefully kind of try to identify any of the issues that we may have, whether that be an addiction or a game fixing scandal. Whereas your local bookie down at the barroom, he's certainly not going to say, hey, I think you may be betting too much, and he's gonna say, hey, you want to bet on this next game. So there are positive pros and cons for both. For his partisan of it, it's not much people they see the money, they want to get in their part. For someone dealing with gambling addiction, it's it's hard to escape because there are constant commercials and ads and promos, and it's ricks free. The first bet is free. We'll match your first two hundred dollars when you put your money in the account. Is enough being done to regulate and enforce responsible gaming? And you know, David, how do we compare to other countries, Like what are some of the changes that they've made in Europe with regards to gambling to try to tail addiction. Yeah, it's gonna be tough for anybody to avoid seeing these commercials. The advertisements ever, they used to be up on the man buses they were traveling through the Northeast. You would see big ads for fans and so forth. So it's going to be very difficult until we do get some sort of pullback on the advertising, and I do believe that is coming. In the UK, they've already started that kind of read looking at how should we keep advertising away from sports? And they are going to do what they call a whistle to whistle band where you will not allow it to be allowed to air sports betting commercials throughout a match. Soon as the match starts through the end of it, you will not be able to air any kind of sports betting commercials. Now, some of the soccer players still have ads for sports books on their jerseys and you see them around the runners board. So there's a lot of things that are going to have to change. Is going to make it very difficult for anybody that is struggling with sports betting or with gambling addiction overall to avoid them. Wait till linel MESSI gets like a FanDuel dot Com tattoo on it's coming the way they putting ads on all the jerseys. But then you have companies like DraftKings though, where like they'll advise you on how much money, like you can set how much you're gonna put into your account every week, or how much you can wage. And you know they've also donated to the International Center for Responsible Gaming, Like they collaborate with all of these different associations and groups and things like that. But is that placation Like if you look at the NFL, right, the NFL through six million at the National Council on Problem Gambling, that's like one I don't want to call it alcoholics anonymous, but they're like a group that is focused on helping people get past those addictions. Can you, in earnest be a part of the problem and the solution or is the problem not your fault Because there's always going to be people that overindulge. I think that the ladder there, there's always going to be again that three to five percent of people that gamble will develop some sort of gambling disorder or gamble type problems. We could only try to help them as much as we can. M and I, you know, I applied the NFL for giving the National Council on Problem coming all that money that that that doubled their national budget. You know that that this is these are not well funded companies, these ones that try to help with gambling addictions. So any kind of money we can get them. And again I think that's Michael mentioned that, you know, I think that's a good thing from legalization comes out because we are trying to help them. We are trying to throw some of the money. While as the corner bookmaker who was offering credit to the local college kid, and all of a sudden he burns through his five hundred dollars of credit and he doesn't have that money well, that local bookmaker isn't saying, oh hey, you know, let me help you out that they are trying to continue to take that money. So I think there are pros and cons from it, and I do think that if we look at it, look at all over, there's a little bit more positivity to legalization of sports betting than it were to keep it in an underground. David, you said it's three to five, will develop a problem, But I'm willing bet two hundred bucks with you that it's more like twenty percent. You will take that twenty percent? Yeah, I'll take I'll take the under on that. That's a deal. What country was you talking about in the first break when you say you can gamble on middle school, which kids left shoe was gonna come untied? Yeah? Yeah in England? England and the weather you can bet on the weather over there. And I don't think we'll ever reach a point where we can say that we've got a problem gambling under control. There's always going to be people that struggle with it. I think the key is trying to identify it quickly, because, like we talked about, things spiral out of control quickly. You think you know you're going to only be down one thousand bucks. You'll be able to pay that off. All of a sudden, you're down two thousand and you don't got the money and you got to pay, and now you get nervous and then you to make bad decisions to try to get that money. So it's going to be an internal challenge for all the stakeholders. That's why I stopped fooling around with fan Duel and like, I took all that shit off my phone, bro like all of them betting stuff. Draft Kings, the Draft King commercials first off, feel like a red bull ad. I feel like an ad, feel like a motorcyclistic Draft Kings come on down and got on your favorite football player. How much more does that type of stuff make people vulnerable to? That's I've thought a lot about this, and I believe I'm in the camp of people were doing this anyways. I'm happy we're legalizing and maybe getting some revenue. But what I hate is when my three year old daughter eyes are drawn to Jamie Fox pushing a gambling ad like that. It's almost like the cigarette companies with the cartoons on the boxes. At this point, Yeah, they're pushing them too hard. Like we're adults. Adults should be able to partake in their vices in my opinion, and gambling is one of those vices. But it seems too aggressive now and I'm I want them to slow it down, please. There's definitely something to that, you know, because like even with some of the apps that my son uses, some of the incentives and this is this is an educational app to teach you learning, but some of the incentives, Oh, if you answer this question, you get this many coins and then you can double the coins if you answer one more question. It's like some prices, right deal or no deal? Shit, all in the effort to get a better hat for your avatar so he can continue on the journey through the learning environment or whatever. But this idea that the apps, like, David, how does that affect you know, mental health? Like do these apps help to introduce more young people into gambling? Because we're talking about fourteen fifteen year olds where what's the checking balances? Are you eighteen? Do you promise you're eighteen? All right? Click here right or hand your mom hands with the phone whatever. But gamble, you know, the gamblification they call it of video games at any time of those things are worrisome. It's a big issue overseas right now, those loot boxes that they call them, where you're playing a CSGO or whatever video game you're playing, and if you get this lootbox, it can kind of parlay you your skin of your gun. You get a stronger gun, and you know, people start selling these things on the black market, and there's been lots of discussion on that. So it's something we're gonna have to pay attention closely to the number of commercials. NFL decide they were only going to do six sports book, sportsbook or sports betting commercials per per game. Is even seemed like a lot because we went from zero to six. So I do eventually think we're goun and get some pushback and some regulators are going to say, Okay, we've gone a little too far. And to that point, David, after the break, I want to talk a little bit more about what the future of sports betting looks like. Will they put microchips in our heads? Well, I just think to myself, Jalen hurts over three hundred yards less than two interceptions, and then bing, it's just automatically taken from my checking account of something well, we'll see what the if you're just sports betting, looks like this is beyond the scenes. We'll be right back beyond the scenes. We are round in third and headed for home. Wonderful conversation here about sports gambling and things of that nature. Real quick, let me check my fan duel real quick. See what's going and check that fand okay, it's looking good. I think I got my line up set. There we go, David. How far away are we from middle school soccer gambling? Respect a? Long ways? We're not gonna get there. They are betting on high school sports, but most of those are done in those illegal sports books in the offshore world. But we're not going to get to middle school. And you want to see high school betting up in the legal market. But but I could see roy every you know, everything's going subscription model. I could see where you could bet a season's worth of bets, you know, I could see where they go. Okay, Costa, you keep betting the Lions. Let's just automatically set your bet every Sunday and you can go in and log in and remember your password and cancel it if you want. But we're just going to place that for you automatically, I can see that coming. They might already exist. I guess I'm half kidding about middle school soccer. I really do think eventually coming at But when we talk about the future of sports betting and what it looks like in the United States, is this something that will eventually extend beyond sports? You know we have the This is Awards season for all the shows? How much more hardcore are we going to get into that? Like, because I know people bet on the winners, but at what point do we just start gambling on the nominees. Well, you do have betting on the oscars. It's a pretty big market. There'll be more over millions of dollars bet on the Academy Awards. You're going to eventually probably see betting on elections. They do that in the UK, where the US presidential election is one of their biggest political markets there is. If it was over here, a lot of bookmakers think of betting on the presidency would be the largest betting market we offer over here. So there will be some tion of this and continue to grow. Hopefully we'll be smart about it and not get into middle school soccer. What challenges lie here for the sports betting providers. Other than getting all of these politicians on board by bribing them under the table, I think you're eventually going to see some pushback from regulators on advertising. What you said, it seems like we'll also be inevitable that we're going to have another gambling scandal like you know we repeatedly had throughout the history of sports, even before legalization. There's a lot of money. Whenever there's something with a lot of money involved, nefarious actors come to play. And I really do think there's going to be some awful stories of people who lose everything to gambling addiction. So the future, it's a little sounds a little scary, But I think that as a society we are adults and we should be allowed to use our vices responsibly. We just have to make sure and try to do that right. We cannot let things get spiral out of control, whether for individuals or as a society a whole, when it comes to gambling. This is what I would do if I was a college kid and I needed to make some money and I was open to being scandalized, I wouldn't take the bet to lose the game, right, that's too big people might notice that, but you you take the money to not have as many assists, or in the first half you don't play gray and it's a first half bet. I feel like the scandal might be as not they lost the game or he missed the free throw with no time left. It's always these little like first quarter bets or like you know, that's that's where you could really make some money. I'm not not advising them to do that, no, but I am. Let's go down this road. I like this cost. How would I be corruptible if I was still playing the game, Like if you know your quarterback's gonna get sucked twice, and I'm an old lineman that I'm gonna bet that he's gonna get sacked three times because on one or else plays, I'm gonna let the d lineman go pass. And now that's three sacks and it's only one play out of the greater what seventy or eighty offensive snaps you'll gain? So did I throw the game? Or did I just pay for a couple of extra textbooks? How much money are you trying to make off that I'm trying to retire data, You're trying to retire you're not going to be able to retire on betting on sacks. The way the books combat that is they put limits on it, so you may be able to get it, you know, a few thousand dollars down at one book, maybe five hundred or another book, but you're not going to make retiring money on there. The big markets are there, the two win the game, oh, I didn't know the game, the points bread right, those are the ones that have the biggest limits. So if you're going to try to retire off some sort of match fixing this scheme, and you know it is a federal crime and you would serve time if you were caught, you're going to have to play to you know, win the game or cover the spread, and you're gonna have to be able to disguise your money, right, you can't put all this money, millions of dollars on some random, low level college basketball game, and then where do you deposit that without having to report it? Now, you gotta have the money in the backyard like Denzel Washington and American gangster, and then the rats start eating your money, like the drug dealer and bad boys too. Because you got so much cash, you can't wash it. I mean, we're back to uncut gems. So last question then, for both of you all, what are your predictions for the Super Bowl? Who you betting on? Do you bet? David? We never even asked you that I am the worst? Better there ever is. My Twitter profile says I write about gambling, but I am not good at gambling, and it's true. So with that said, I'm gonna take heads on the coin toss. Okay, I'm not an enormous football fan, but I'm an America fan and I love how we make it a spectacle. I love nobody entertains like Americans, so I usually get in on those like commercial bets, who's the first beer ad? I like the bets about the commercials or how many Derito ads are there going to be? And as far as the game goes, I'm stand off. I'm standing away from that. Well, I'm telling you're right now, friends, I've got some hot tips. That's the other thing we didn't even get to talk about was this gambling. The experts. Guys, just hey, guys, hot tip Eagles over Mahomes. Just found out Patti Mahomes didn't have his traditional smoothie that he has pregame. You gotta take the over on these guys. Man, they're just looking good traditionally in games under fifty degrees in a Western time zone. I just think you can't stop Jalen Hurts and it way like they get so granular on the stats. I'm like you were on cocaine and I did not trust you in the least. I wish we had more time to talk about this, but this is extremely, extremely fascinating. David Michael, thank you for going beyond the scenes with me. Much love my fan do im okay? Listen to The Daily Show Beyond the Scenes on Apple podcast, the iHeartRadio app, or wherever you get your podcasts. 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