[rock music] Well, welcome back to Tasteland. I am your host, Francis Zear.
And I'm your co-host, Daisy Alioto. The co-host. You know, I didn't... I kinda thought about it. Should I say host, co-host? That's fine. Yeah. Well, next time I'll say co-host. We'll work it out on the remix. Mm-hmm.
[laughs] It's, you know, I think, I think it's the time to say that it's too late. Brat autumn is over. Okay. Um, yeah, I feel like we don't have a new meme for winter yet. A new for the winter.
Like, the Wicked marketing team, like, really tried, but- Dropped the ball. Well, it was... I think we were tired of, of green already. If it had been [laughs] like- Green and pink...
a, a blue witch, [laughs] then we could have- Yep... moved on. Orange witch, you know? Yeah. Mm-hmm. Although apparently what's actually ripping at the box office is Moana 2. Okay.
So if we really wanted to be part of the culture, we would've watched that and come prepared to discuss it. No. You know what I did watch, um, on the airplane at, th- on a red-eye the other day? It was Civil War.
Oh, yeah. I never saw that. Which... Did that come... I g- I, I think that came out this year. It might've been two years ago. I really don't know. Um, it was fine. It was like a good airplane movie. Uh, did you see it?
I'm not huge on the passage of time right now. Yeah. I did not see it. Mm-hmm. It was like... I just remember all the discourse about it, and it's like, oh, red state, blue state, whatever.
W- I think to me, my one, like, takeaway was like, okay, this is a movie that's just saying, like, well, what if war was here? Mm. That's all, that's all I took. What if? Mm-hmm. Um, Kirsten Dunst, I like her.
Jesse Plemons. Oh, she's in that. Those- And they're married, right? They're married. Yeah. There's the... So the Jesse Plemons meme about, like, what kind of American are you? Oh, yeah. Yeah, there was that. Um...
Were you, like, pointing, like- I was in- Yeah... on the plane. [laughs] You know, I was poi- [laughs] My arm was fully outstretched. Uh, I was in first class. Uh, no, um- No. You saw...
Uh, did you see the tweet that was, like, somebody... Like, the person in front of them had their arm over the back of- Yeah, yeah. I did. I did... their headrest. Mm. And, um... Sorry, Tom.
I just leaned so far from the mic. Um, and just had their hand, like, splayed over the screen of the person behind them. That was me. How- No. Well, that... But I did watch... I watched back to back.
I watched No Country for Old Men and then Civil War. And I did kind of feel... I was like, "These are pretty violent movies." Yeah. Like, are there children around me? Um, anyways. Yeah. I did...
So one thing- If you take your kid on a red-eye and they see, like, a little violence- They get a little bit of an eye... that's par for the course. Yeah. Um, okay. So who are we talking to today?
We're talking to my friend, David Hill. He is a longtime magazine writer, and, uh, we actually- And gambler. Right. What he... Yes.
He's, he's, he writes the style of new journalism, which actually requires you to gamble your own money. I don't know if you guys knew that.
You know, shout-out to our episode where we talked about Norman Mailer and The Village Voice. But, um- Mm-hmm. Real heads will know. That was, like, episode two. [laughs] Yeah.
Uh, David and I actually met through the National Writers Union, um, so he's also a union organizer. And, um, yeah, he's written a lot about sports. He had a podcast about gambling for The Ringer. I think I've- Mm-hmm...
listened to every episode. So, you know, his knowledge isn't just sports betting. It's also, like- Mm... poker- Well, he grew up in this town-... horse racing... Hot Springs, Arkansas, which he- Mm-hmm...
he wrote a book about this. Uh, I- Yes... was unaware of this until reading, uh, the piece that we're talking to him about last night. Uh, it was, it was the ga- the Vegas before Vegas. This is true.
And he has a family connection to the casinos there. And I also read the book, which is very good. Um, I believe- Mm... it's called The Vapors. The Vapors. I wanna read it. It sounds really good.
I think you would like it a lot. Mm-hmm. Have you spent any time in Arkansas? I've never even driven through Arkansas. Um, though, I was gonna say, I... So I've done a little bit of sports betting. Um- Oh, you... Okay.
I'll, I'll reveal just a little bit. When, when, when, when David comes on, I will reveal how much I'm up or down- Mm... uh, lifetime. You guys can do a little over, under. In what? DraftKings? Um, no. No.
I, I do FanDuel. How about Draft Queens? [laughs] When's that rolling out? Is that our episode title? Draft Queens. That's really good. That is the episode title. Um- Yes.
No, but I was just in California for Thanksgiving, and I did want to bet on a... I, I did wanna bet, like... I always bet, like, $1 to $5. Um, and I- Okay... wanted to bet on a soccer game, but I couldn't- Big roller...
'cause of Gavin gruesome. Uh-huh. Gruesome Gavin. Mm-hmm. Our next president. Yeah. Well, I'm sorry that happened to you. If you wanna lose $5, though, you could just give it to me. Give it to Dir- Um, no thank you.
Anyways, David's here, let's let him in. Let him in. What's up, David? There he is. Hey. Welcome to the pod. Great to see you. It's good to see you as well. Okay.
So for the listeners who may be unaware, we are talking to you shortly after you published this huge, like, 11,000-word piece in the Rolling Stone, in Rolling Stone. I think... Oh, hold it up. Mm, Timothée- Oh, yeah...
uh, you wrote about Timothée Chalamet. Yeah, you wrote 11,000 words about Timothée Chalamet- Shh... becoming Bob Dylan, uh, the gamble of a century. Uh, no. It...
Actually, the title of the piece, I think, on SEO Land, on the website, was called, like, Is the Sports Betting Bubble About to Burst? Which is not really the intention of the piece. That's not really what it's about.
That is something I would Google, though, so. That is something you're about to Google. The, your more accurate piece is kind of just sports betting, Sportsbook Nation, right?
Yeah, that's what it's called in the magazine. If you see, it's called Sportsbook Nation. Mm-hmm.
Um, that was the pitch to me, or the assignment, was Rolling Stone said, "We think we needUm, a fast food nation for- Mm... the sports betting industry.
You know, uh, Fast Food Nation, the book Fast Food Nation started as a serialized... It was a series in Rolling Stone magazine, um. Oh, I didn't realize.
So they felt like they needed to do something similar, some sort of deep dive into the sports betting industry, so that was kind of the assignment. Yeah. So reading it- And that's what they ended up calling it.
I read it last night. It's basically to like, I don't know, distill it.
It's like you're kind of telling a bit of a history of like sports books, but more so like the current moment and how we get to like, you know, DraftKings, FanDuel, all these advertisements everywhere, um, and then a little bit of, like, where it might go, but it's more like current state and, like, what is working, what's wrong, how this is different from, like, the, you know, hundreds of years of illegal sports betting.
Yeah, I mean, what I tried to do, um, to tell this story was to fi- tell it from all these different perspectives, and so I tried to tell it from the perspective of gamblers,
bookies, s- you know, executives, politicians, whatever, athletes. Like, I tried to define all these different, uh, perspectives on this, you know, kind of gigantic [chuckles] multi-billion dollar industry.
Um, and to do that, I kinda traveled around the country and found all these characters and, um, and, um, you know, kinda stitched it all together.
I think one person on Twitter called it, um, the Canterbury Tales for sports betting, which I thought was pretty funny. Yeah. I like that.
Um, I think you wrote there that in twenty twenty-three, revenue for all the sports betting companies was nearly eleven billion dollars, which was up forty-four point five percent from the year before.
Um, reading that, and for some re- I, I almost thought that was, like, low. So I'm curious if you could contextualize that compared to, like, other types of gambling.
I don't know if you have the, you know, the exact numbers for how much money the casinos in Vegas make on poker or whatever, but, like, that eleven billion, how does that stand up to other types of gambling? Yeah.
I don't have the numbers for all these, but, but you're right to, to think it sounds low because it is. Um, sports betting is, um, much, much smaller than, um, casino gambling. Mm.
Uh, casino gambling is, you know, [chuckles] like, an order of magnitude larger than sports betting.
And one of the things I talk about in the piece is that historically, casinos never really wanted to get into the businesses of, of booking sports bets. Um, there was this sort...
In fact, they used to not offer it at all.
Um, if, in the old days, if you went to Nevada, if you went to Vegas, and you wanted to make a bet on sports, you had to go to, like, a strip mall and find, like, a, um, this kinda, like, hole-in-the-wall sports book operated out of a strip mall to, to make a bet on sports.
It wasn't until the, um, late seventies, early eighties that casinos started to, um, bring sports books into the casino and offer them really as an amenity to their guests, you know, for a, a, a loss leader, right?
They didn't expect to make much money on it, but they thought, "Well, we'll do this, and it'll bring people in here for a game or something, and maybe they'll, you know, spend some money on the slot machines or the dice pits."
So sports betting has never been a, a huge, profitable, [chuckles] massively profitable, uh, business for gaming corporations, and that's because it's more dynamic. I mean- Mm-hmm...
when you bet on a slot machine, or you bet on a roll of the dice in craps or roulette, those odds are very fixed, and, you know, you're just... Y-the, the math proves itself out over time, right?
Like, a casino could lose on any given spin of the roulette wheel, but it will not, and cannot lose over the long run in, um, in that game, or in slot machines, they're programmed to return ninety-seven percent of all the money put into them, and three percent will stay with the house, and that cannot change.
There's just... It's a guaranteed three percent rake that they're gonna make. In sports betting- The house always wins. Yeah. The house will literally always win.
Um, the one exception to this is blackjack, where in, um, uh, the nineteen sixties a man named Edward Thorpe, a math teacher, figured out how to, um, count cards and get an edge over the house and beat them at blackjack, and that's why f-for decades casinos have tried [chuckles] as hard as they can to identify people who know how to count cards and keep them from playing blackjack.
But, uh, sports betting is different because the house can lose. Um, the odds that are set are... It's, it works the same way that prices in a financial market might work, right? Like, it's gonna...
A market has to sort of, uh, there's some price discovery involved. You know? Like, there's a, there's a lot of, uh, liquidity matters a-as to whether or not the price will be right.
And so it's very dynamic, and sports books can be wrong, and often are, and, um, they can lose money at this over, over time. So this has never been [chuckles]
something that casino, big gaming com-companies have been excited about doing. But this is different because the companies who are getting involved here and are getting really big, this is all they do. Mm-hmm.
And they're trying to build this into... You know, they're trying to sort of hang out their own shingle in this one little niche of the gambling world. So- Well- Go ahead... sorry.
I mean, I was gonna say, the other thing that makes it so dynamic is you're not just betting on a win-lose outcome, but for platforms that specialize in, in sports gambling, and, you know, maybe this is more in the online sphere and not bookies, but you could bet on everything now to, like, the color of the Gatorade that they're gonna dump on the coach.
[chuckles] Yeah. I think, I think you said in one of the, either in a podcast I listened to or in the piece, that it's, like, fifty thousand bets per day basically are on offer in these apps. Yeah.
That's FanDuel that said that they offer fifty thousand bets a day, and so it's just sort of an insanely large menu, and that's also very new.
That's a product of these sort of new companies that have come up, come into bloom since, uh, the PASPA decision in two thousand eighteen that, that, that paved the way for these states to l- to legalize this.
Prior to that, when the only legal sports betting that happened in America was in Nevada, there was near-not nearly this many bets that are on o- were on offer.
If you went to the Caesars Palace sports book, you could bet, you know, an-A total or a spread in a football game or whatever, there might be some futures offered on who will win the championship, whatever, but nothing to the degree that these new companies are offering.
And, you know, this is a sort of a technological innovation.
I mean, a lot of those bets that they're offering, they have sort of just written a computer program that will price all this stuff, and they're often pretty bad.
You know, there's, there's, th-there's a lot of weaknesses. They, they can't possibly be right on all these bets, so they try to limit how much money they'll take on any given one.
And for really like goofy bets, like the Gatorade bet that Daisy was talking about, [lip smacks]
uh, they'll, they'll, they won't let anybody, you know, nobody can bet more than whatever, like fifty bucks or something on or a hundred bucks on something like that because often...
And every single year, somebody figures out what the color Gatorade's gonna be.
I've even know-- I know people who go in to the rehearsal for the national anthem and record it so that they can know how long it'll be, so they can bet the over-under on the national anthem of the Super Bowl every year.
So these are very, um, exploitable types of bets, and so a lot of sports books will limit how much people can bet on them. I was gonna say, like, what is the sports betting equivalent of card counting?
Well, there's a-- I think the, the sports betting equivalent of card counting is that there's a lot of people who are professional sports bettors who, um, uh, there's two different types of professionals.
There's one that call themselves originators, and these are handicappers. These are people that have their own predictive models, uh, for various sports. Mm.
Usually, there are some people who are kind of jack of all trades, but usually they'll be like, um, someone spec-specializes in one sport, and they've developed a, a, a model- Mm-hmm...
that they can, um, model and predict outcomes in that sport far better than the sportsbook can, and those people are called originators.
They basically bet whatever number their model shows when it differs from what the sportsbook shows.
And then there's people who are called, uh, who, uh, are called steam chasers or, uh, top-down bettors, and these are people who just sort of watch an odd screen, a lot like a Bloomberg terminal- Mm...
where they sort of see all the odds across all the sportsbooks around the world on any given sport, and they kind of watch these li- these things light up and move, and they learn to predict movements in the market.
So they know like, okay, there's a, you know, there's like a well-known originator in a particular sport who always bets this one sportsbook first on this day at this time, and then once that bet pops in, everybody's gonna follow it, and they get ahead of those moves and try to, uh, chase the steam, so to speak.
A lot of people make money doing that. And then the third type is, uh, kind of like, um, I guess what you'd call like an advantage player.
They're people who do arbitrage, where they'll find two different prices in a market where they can bet both sides and lock up a small profit, and there's a growing number of people that do that, um, and are able to piece together a pretty decent living just taking no risk arbitraging different sportsbooks against each other.
And, you know, what's, what I write about in my piece is that all these different methods of making money in sports betting, you know, they, they, um,
they are all, all the sportsbooks are trying to figure out how to stop people from winning money, period, right? Mm-hmm. They don't want anybody to win money.
And even people who are-- You would think that somebody who's a handicapper, who's just like, "I know a lot about football or baseball or whatever, and I know that this is who's gonna win the game," you'd think that that person should be allowed to win, but they're not.
Like, the sportsbook says, "Well, if you're better than us at figuring this out, we don't wanna take your bets because you're gonna beat us." Mm. So they'll just kick those people out.
Um, and that's sort of become a real problem across this whole industry in the last maybe two years because they used to just sort of do that to people who are betting ten thousand dollars a game.
Now they're doing it to everybody. Like, anybody that sort of wins a little bit of money, they're, like, limiting them down to very small amounts of money. Well, so wait.
So, um, I wanna talk about a couple of things you said in the piece and then when you were on the Unabated podcast a couple of weeks ago.
So in the piece, you write, "Just because we made it legal for people to earn a living accepting sports bets, does that also mean we should make it possible for people to earn a living placing them?"
And then on the podcast, you make this point that, like, you know, basically, people who gamble seriously, who make a living gambling, will take an issue with bet limiting, but the vast majority of people who are doing it as kind of entertainment, as the sportsbook apps say they want people to use it, um, aren't really sympathetic to professionals because the American public has kind of accepted and internalized that you're, that you don't win, that the house always wins.
Which, you know, I definitely, I haven't been a big gambler in my life. I've done a little bit of sports gambling. I've, you know, played the slots in Vegas, whatever.
I accept that I'm, the money I'm putting up is to be lost, right? Yeah. So that's how I'm doing it. Um, so I don't know.
Like, I think that anybody who can get an edge in on a sportsbook, whatever, does deserve to win 'cause, you know, if the casinos, whatever, the sportsbooks are scamming you, as it, as it were, then you should be able to, to win them over, like this little arm wrestle, right?
Um, so with rate limiting, is it kind of like... So rate limiting, again, too, for any listeners who don't know, is like when they put a limit on how much you can bet on any given thing.
Is it kind of just like at a restaurant where they've got that sign, "We reserve the right to refuse service to anyone," and it's like, "Sorry, tough luck"? Yeah.
It is, although the sportsbooks are being regulated state by state. Mm-hmm. Um, it's not a national thing, right? So there's some states that have it, some states that don't.
Every state has their own rules and their own regulations and their own way that they're regulating these sportsbooks.
Some states are now kind of taking a look at this and wondering whether or not they should have a regulation about bet limiting and, um, whether or not they should be, you know, sportsbooks should have kind of like across-the-board limits.
I mean, I think what a lot of sports bettors have said, have come to say about this, this practice is it's fine if you wanna set a limit, but it should be the same for everyone. Yeah. Right?
So if the, if your limit's gonna be twenty-five bucks, make it all, then we all should be betting twenty-five dollars.And I think that's the right argument for them to make because the problem is the reason the sportsbook will not do that is because their most profitable customers are people that bet and lose a lot of money.
And a lot of these people are probab- you know, these are what they call VIPs. Mm-hmm.
But they have no way of knowing if these VIPs are incredibly wealthy and, and, you know, just have a different s-sense of scale in what they- Mm...
wanna bet and lose recreationally, or whether these people have real problems and have issues with responsible gambling.
And so that's a problem, I think, and I think that's one where state governments really do have an important interest in trying to protect that, those vulnerable people
by saying, "Look, it's-- there's really no logical reason why you wouldn't just set one limit for everybody and just say everybody bets this limit unless you wanted to be able to, you know, essentially, you know, hose u- the biggest losers that you have, and, you know, really squ- uh, uh, put a, put a real, um,
uh, throttle on the... I mean, you know, you really wanna throttle the people that are winning any money at all." So this has kinda become the model for how these books are trying to
squeak out their profits is, is, um, you know, the-- in-- they had the same problem in London and/or in, um, the UK with, uh, sportsbooks, and over there they called this practice banned or bankrupt, right? Mm.
But there were really two things that were gonna happen.
You're either gonna get banned because you're winning or you're-- they were gonna take all your money until you were bankrupt, and that's sort of what we see happening now in the United States, and I think it is a real problem.
So where did the UK come down on regulation then? Well, th- I think that the way things have played out in the UK are not good for anybody. Mm. Um, the consumers there are not very happy, but the bettors, right? Mm.
Are not very happy with the product that they have because, um, you know, a lot of the big sportsbooks in the UK do limit people pretty quickly for winning. They also offer pretty terrible odds and prices, right? So- Mm.
The way that, you know, the odds, you know, the way that a sportsbook kind of sets the odds and prices, they c- they create something called a vig.
You know, there's like a, there's like a tax built into the prices, right? So for example, if I'm gonna bet on a football game, I might bet $110 to win 100.
Like, in theory, like if everybody, if the number of bets on both sides of that game are evenly split between both sides, then the sportsbook's gonna guarantee themselves a 10% profit. That never happens, right?
There's never a game where there's like even a-action. A sportsbook always kinda has an interest in one side of a game, and they also have to kinda constantly change those prices as they go to...
But the idea is that they wanna squeeze out as much of that vig as they can for people.
In the books in the UK, the vig is quite hefty, and the sports bettors have to overcome quite a lot more than they do in the United States. So this is not a model that I think American bettors wanna follow.
But I don't know that American sportsbooks do either because, you know, it's, it's, it's, i- there's, there's one-- it's one thing to sort of always be booking to people who are gonna be betting small amounts of money, then you're just gonna be-- your, your hold in those bets is gonna be even smaller.
I think what American sportsbooks would like to do is be able to book the big whales, but they only wanna book the whales who lose.
And honestly, what I really think American sportsbooks wanna do is kinda get out of the sports betting i- business completely, and that they're really just using this as a stalking horse to get into mobile casinos. Yeah.
Yeah.
I mean, it-- from my perspective, to go back to earlier in the conversation, it seems like if people are gonna gamble anyway, consumers should want to do sports betting rather than casino betting, even though casino betting is much more popular because sports betting is tilted towards the consumer.
But I guess the question is, whether this is more consumer-friendly than the casino industry or not, is it opening up new avenues to gambling addiction for people who otherwise wouldn't gamble, similar to like
Zyn and Juul for people that were never gonna be- Right... cigarette smokers? That's a really great point, and I think the, the answer is yes to both of those, right? I think that, like, on one hand,
if given the option between a lot of different gambling [laughs] um, if you had a lot of different options on what to gamble on, sports is probably the best one- Mm...
because there is an opportunity to win, there is an opportunity to find an edge over the sportsbook.
You are sort of engaged in this like dynamic, you know, um, activity between not only different people betting, but also the sportsbook.
And so it's-- And when you make your bet, you still ha- you have to wait for the game to finish before you win or lose and make your next bet, right? Versus like a slot machine where the money just continually churns.
Like, so- Click, click, click. Yeah. Yeah, so even if you, even if you were like, um, somebody who was compulsive, you know what I mean?
Like [laughs] it's a, it's a bit of a, um, there's a lot of obstacles between you and your ability to like bet all that money. But that's not to say that this isn't a pro...
The, your second point is also very apt, which is that there are a lot of people, particularly young men, who are, um, betting on sports now who have never gambled before and maybe never bet on sports before, who are very, um, susceptible to, um,
to gambling addiction and to problem gambling. And so-- And that, that-- those numbers have done nothing but go up since this has happened. Mm.
So there definitely is a, a cost being paid by, um, by the expansion of, um, sports gambling. I was, uh, at a wedding recently talking to a friend I hadn't seen in a while, and we were talking about sports betting.
Um, and I asked him what the most he's ever won on a single bet is, and he said it was $3,000.
And I asked him what the most he's ever lost on a single bet is, and he said it was $3,000, of course, 'cause then he just bet it again and lost.
And he said he was betting on like the second serves in tennis games, like betting live, which I think is something you get into in the piece of like this is something that, um, the kind of moderators within the sportsbooks are looking for.
It's like if you're doing a certain kind of bet, then they know that you're more of a savvy operator, and they're gonna shut you down, but they're offering those bets- Right... anyways. Yeah.
And so you might ask, well, why do they offer these bets if they're so hard for the... Like, what I talk about in the piece is what are called courtsiders, which are people who are- Yes. Love that term...
going to games and betting live at the games and trying to get their bets in, is-- what, what in the gambling world are called past posters, where they're trying to get their bet in after something has kind of already happened but before the sportsbook can [laughs] adjust its live prices.
And so what one could ask is-Well, why does the sportsbook take any live bets at all? In the old days, they didn't take live bets. Yeah.
You know, when the, the ball tips off at the beginning of the game, the window closes, and now everybody sits and watches the game and waits to get paid.
The reason that they wanna offer these bets is because they need volume in order to maximize their revenue and their profit, and they also know that people who are betting on sports today don't bet-- They don't go to a sportsbook and watch a game.
They don't bet with a bookie and watch a game.
They're betting on their phone on the couch while the game is going, and if the sportsbook can offer a bet on literally every play of the game, then they're gonna be able to continually get these people's money, and if you lose the first bet, you chase it with the next one.
Mm-hmm. And you just, just do this the entire time you're watching the game. And so that's kind of fucked up too.
Like, this is also a problem, I think, because where I said before that, like, one of the obs- one of the things about sports betting is that you have to watch the game, well, now you don't anymore.
Now you can treat betting on sports the way you would treat a slot machine, and you could watch a game and just literally just bet on every fucking possession. Yeah.
And that, I think, is a quicker way for people to just, um, burn through their money than ever really existed in this world of sports betting before. Mm-hmm. I didn't-- The way I've been betting, I like...
So I didn't know what a parlay was until I watched Uncut Gems, uh, five years ago now. We all learned what a parlay was. What a parlay was. [laughs] Not David, but...
But, um, but so the way, the way I, I bet, um, is I'll-- I just, I, I started watching soccer, Premier League football, you know, uh, a couple years ago. And, uh, [laughs] actually, my girlfriend encouraged me.
She was like, "Francis, you're watching all these games. You should start betting on them." Um, so I did. [laughs] It's a keeper. Yeah. That's a keeper. Which actually, um, I want you to guess whether I'm up or...
Okay, so I've-- my lifetime, I, I'm just using FanDuel. Um, my lifetime bets, $495.74. Um, how-- about how much do you think I'm up or down? I wanna hear both of you guess. I think you're $200 up.
I, I mean, I think that you're probably down, but I think you're probably down something like, you know, 10, 15%. I'm down. It's more like [laughs] it's more like 50%. It's a little more than 50%.
I am, [laughs] I'm down- Wow...$269 and 16 cents. But okay, so where I'm going with this- That's really pathetic...where I'm going with this is- But over how many bets is the real question. How many bets is that?
Well, so, so what I bet is, like, is parlays. So, like, let's say it's Champions League on a Wednesday, right? Maybe I'm like, I'll look at those games, those nine games.
I'm like, "I think I know, what, six out of nine of these games. I think I know how they're gonna go." So I'll put $1 to $5 down, and I will bet, and then I'll, you know, go back to work.
And then in a couple hours, I'll check, and I'm like, "Damn, I got five out of six of them. Not bad." You know?
So I think the way I'm betting is this kind of like very kind of low impact, relatively responsible entertainment betting. I'm never betting more than $5, you know?
But, like, so- Well, in this scenario though, do all of them have to play out- Yes...for you to get the money? Yeah. Yeah. So you're making it harder for yourself, but it's more entertaining. Yeah.
The way I bet is to, like, increase the entertainment or to, like- Okay...just, like, test, like, oh, do I know enough about the...
I also play, you know, Fantasy Premier League, which is the same thing- Mm-hmm...but with no money involved, where I'm, like, picking individual players, whatever.
Um, but I guess, I don't know, where I'm going with this is, like, do the sportsbooks want people like me, who are just kind of, like, playing, like, low stakes parlays that I know I'm gonna lose?
Like, is it, is that a customer that's useful, or is it kind of just like, well, that's a volume play, but we need, like, too many millions of you to make any money?
No, they absolutely want you because parlays are kind of sucker bets- Yeah...and they, they love that people wanna bet on parlays.
And the, um, the-- What's so fascinating about the sort of rise of the parlay in the, in the sort of modern world of sports betting is that I think that in the old days, they were always kinda considered sucker bets.
But now- Mm-hmm...there's this whole new generation of sports bettors who are, who are completely through the looking glass about this.
So, like, the, the, the, the allure here is that you bet a little money and you-- to win a lot. Yeah. Like a lottery ticket. You're betting five to win, I don't know, so on a 16 parlay, what do you, what is that?
It's like you're gonna bet $5 to win, you know- Like 300 or something is how many...300, right. It's like, I'm like, "Wow, that's so cool." So you lost five bucks.
You went five for six, and you lost five bu- If you'd bet $100 on all six of those games, you would've won $400. Mm-hmm.
But, you know, you don't think of it that way, and you're never gonna wi- you don't wanna bet $600 because you're afraid to lose $600. Yeah.
But that actually would've been the better way to play your six picks, and you were, you would've been rewarded for getting five of six right.
You would've been handsomely rewarded because that's pretty great to go five of six on any given week or on any given, you know, slate of games. Instead, you d- you got nothing.
You just gave $5- Mm-hmm...to the sportsbook. They love that. They want people to bet parlays.
They want you to bet a win a lo- bet a little to win a lot because if you continue to make those bets, like in your account, you'll probably be down 50%, even though when you look at all the picks that you made, you probably picked more winners than losers.
Mm-hmm. And if you'd bet those games straight up, you'd be a winner over the sportsbook, but they don't want that, right? So they'd rather have whatever, your couple hundred bucks.
In your mind, you're telling yourself, "I'm only betting $5. I'm only losing $5," but you lost 200-something bucks, so, like, that's not what really is happening, right? I think- Yeah. [laughs] That's true.
But, but it's a good question you ask because I mentioned before that the vast majority of their profits come from this sort of small number of big players.
I would venture that a lot of those big players are also betting very big parlays too. Yeah.
But one of the things I did in the piece is I went to Costa Rica, and I met with some of the, um, offshore and, um, kind of black market bookies that are, that have decamped for Costa Rica.
And, and one of the things they tell me is that, like, they lost a lot of these players, you know, these, what they would call square players- Yeah...to the FanDuels of the world becau- and, and that they needed them.
They, they have a lot of big players, but they wanted all those, like, whatever, frat guys and- Mm...you know, bar stool guys who just, like, blow through, you know, a few hundred bucks a week.
They needed all those guys because those guys really help pad the numbers every year, and they've lost them all to FanDuel, where these guys can make these wild, you know, same game parlays and have all these different offerings that they can make.
And because that allure of bet a little to win a lot is even greater in these sort of newfangled sportsbooks than they are in the old school ones. Mm. So they do miss those guys, and I do think those guys are important.
Well, it's like when I log into FanDuel, there's like, here, it's like, "Oh, here's a parlay that, like, seven people just bet on," or that, like, 700 people just bet on, and it's like, I don't even-- I only bet on soccer 'cause that's the only one I watch, but it's like a basketball game where it's like, you know, a five, five, five-way parlay, and I'm like, "Should I, should I bet on that?"
I was like, "Of course not." Like, I'm gonna lose it. That's just like, "Hey, here's $5." Like, there's not even any fun in that- Right...'cause I'm not picking the things. Right.
There's absolutely no reason why FanDuel would show you the bet you should betTo win, right?
Um, and I just-- I-- one example of this is I saw just, just I think yesterday, there was a bet, I don't remember which sportsbook was offering it, where it was a, it was a prop, uh, to bet that both teams would get five yards rushing or something in each quarter of, um, the game.
And, uh, people were betting this.
They were like, "Wow," you know, it was a very popular bet, and people on Twitter were kinda talking about how folks don't look at that and realize that what you're betting is an eight-way, um, uncorrelated parlay, right?
So the two events that y- in each quarter that you're parlaying together are uncorrelated. Like, they're, um, or they're not uncorrelated, they're like, uh, sort of oppositely correlated, right? Mm-hmm.
They're anti-correlated. So like, you know, as one team is making more yards, the other team has fewer opportunities to make those yards, and then you're parlaying that eight times through the course of a game.
So you know, it's a bad bet, but people look at it and they think, "Oh, that's so easy. Of course that would happen." So there's something... And, and the sportsbook knows that.
They're designing these bets that kind of psychologically look in-interesting and enticing, and they give a big price where it's like, oh, you're getting plus money.
You're getting like, you know, you're getting, um, uh, you're gonna make more than you bet. It's bet a little and a lot. And so people are int-intrigued by that, and that's what they wanna bet on.
And this, like I said, this has just really turned this whole industry and this whole practice on its head.
The bookmakers who really over the course of, you know, over 100 years in America kind of perfected the art of this game are really scratching their heads at how quickly it all just kinda changed, and it's all this completely different game now.
David, as you're traveling the country reporting this story, obviously different markets will have different behaviors based on what's legal in that state.
But are there cultural differences around the approach to sports betting in different parts of the country? The cultural question's an interesting one. You know, I would say that
the cultural approach to sports betting is different depending on maybe the sport- Mm. -and also, like, who are the group of people that are doing the betting, right? Like I,
I've spent a lot of time with professionals and, you know, professionals kinda come in all shapes and sizes.
I went to-- I, I went to this conference that they hold every year in Vegas now called BetBash, which is a conference just for gamblers. It's not an industry conference.
There's no sportsbooks there like, you know, advertising or... It's all just a bunch of professional bettors that get together, trade secrets, like, you know, network or whatever. Um, it's almost all men,
mostly young men, but they all kinda have their own angle and their own thing that they're bringing to this sort of broader world of sports betting, whatever their kind of niche is or the, the angle they figure out.
I met people that bet on darts, you know, that- Mm. -they're making a lot of money just exploiting darts, you know? So like,
um, but I think that the culture within that world is fairly s- you know, fairly straightforward. I mean, it's a lot of like the same people you might find at the MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference every year.
In fact, there's a lot of crossover- Mm. -between these two groups of people, um, the Sloan people and the people that are betting on sports for a living.
But then, like, I g- went home for Thanksgiving, and like all my relatives are betting on sports too, but their cul- the culture there is completely different.
It's much more of these kinda people we're talking about betting big parlays. Mm-hmm. Um, you know, people who really think that their knowledge of sports is what's giving them an edge.
And I think that's what's sort of funny and maybe also at the same time very sad about this whole situation, is that a lot of why sports betting has really taken hold with young men is that, uh, there's this idea that I think a lot of people have that if you know a lot about sports- Mm.
-and you watch a lot of sports and you're really, you know, you know a ton about the sport- Yeah...that you're gonna have some sort of edge in this market and you're gonna be able to win money because you know, you know, you can predict- You have agency.
-the outcome of games. And it's actually not true, right? Like I think that like what you're up against is something that's a lot bigger.
The people who are make-- I know people who are making millions of dollars betting on sports who don't even know the names of these players. You know what I mean?
So like it's, it's, the, there's something very ironic when you go to like BetBash and you meet all these professional sports bettors and you don't see a lot of jerseys. You know what I mean?
You don't see a lot of people, you don't see a lot of people talking about sports. Well, it's 'cause you're too emotionally invested. You don't wanna be emotionally invested. It's a, it's a numbers game. That's right.
That's not to say that there aren't a lot of sports fans among professional sports bettors. There are, and I think that's the entry point for a lot of people.
But when people decide they wanna get serious about it and they do wanna stop losing all their money and- [chuckles] -and figure out how to win, what they figure out pretty quickly is that all the things that led them in the beginning to make a lot of bad bets, they need to throw out the window and they need to kinda start with a spreadsheet and start with a bunch of, with a dataset and like learn how to do that.
Like that's, that's, that's kinda the big difference. Yeah. I wanna talk about the advertising side of it for a second.
So obviously there's been such a deluge of ads, um, in the past few years since it was kinda legalized, and now there's all these sportsbooks in our pockets.
Um, I'm also thinking of like in the UK, again watching the Premier League, like I think right now it's like 15 out of 20 of the teams in the league are betting sponsors, but uh, that was banned I think as of the season after next.
They're gonna have to no more betting sponsors. Which is interesting, 'cause for a while alcohol sponsors have already been legalized, um, could go down that road for a little while.
But, um, when you were talking to JR in Costa Rica, you write about this in the piece, he says, "The legals don't care about profits.
They only care about market share," referring the legals being the legal American sportsbooks. So when I read that, I instantly thought of like, [clears throat] like Uber, Uber and Lyft.
Many startups, but for example Uber, which, you know, was founded in 2009, 2023 was the first profitable year. For years, right, they're undercutting taxis, et cetera, et cetera, don't need to care about profit.
So I guess the question is like for DraftKings and FanDuel, which are the two biggest players in the US, right, like is it-- do they need to care about profit at some point?
Is it now just a race to suffocate all the smaller competitors and ultimately each other? Like what is the advertising end game there?
Yeah, they're not profitable, and they, um, are publicly traded, so their share price is what they care about, right? And that's kind of the s- so it's the same game. I mean, it's the same blueprint. We see...
One of the things that was funny that I kept hearing from like Caesars, who I think are fourth on that list, it's like FanDuel and DraftKings are like one and two with a bullet.And then MGM kind of far behind them in third, and Caesars in fourth.
And, you know, Caesars and MGM, these are, uh, these are like legacy, you know, gaming brands with huge, you know, [laughs] like huge portfolios, big footprint. And Caesars was saying like, "Look,
we may not have the market share, but we're profitable," right? "So we're small, but we're, we're eking out a profit." Uh, you know, throwing some shade at FanDuel and DraftKings, who I think are not...
So DraftKings just had their Q3 earnings report right after I had my deadline for my piece. Yeah.
And it was-- I wish it had come before because there were some really great, um, quotes in there, in there, where they t- basically had to say to their shareholders like, "Yeah, look, we missed it this quarter because we had a lot of customer-friendly sporting outcomes," or whatever they called it, which is like such a euphemism for the favorites all covered in the NFL, right?
And like what-- It's sort of funny to think of being like a sharehold- like an institutional shareholder of this company and being told like, "Oh, we missed our mark this quarter because the dogs didn't cover."
Like, what is this world, right? Like, I just can't imagine that this can persist over time.
But I don't think there's a lot of pressure on them to feel like they need to turn a profit because they need to keep their share price high, which is what I'm sure was the same situation with Uber, whatever. Mm-hmm.
I think that the play for the DraftKings and Fanduels of the world is evident in, in what they're saying to state legislators right now, which is they're begging for new legislation that gives them, uh, the right to put casinos onto their apps, right?
So they already have this in a few states. I think five or six states have this already, where if you go onto DraftKings in, say, New Jersey, it's both a sports book and a casino, so you just- Wow...
click on another button, and now you're spinning slot machines, now you're playing blackjack. Mm. And this is what they really want. This is where the real profits are.
So I think that, like, they don't care about necessarily turning a big profit now in sports if they can accomplish this. You know, there's a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow for them. Right.
Like, if they can get somebody who comes in to bet on Alabama, you know, 'cause they went there, whatever, Roll Tide, um, and that person gets distracted by like a roulette widget- Mm...
and starts doing virtual roulette, like that's a win. Are there rate limits on that though? 'Cause that to me is like- No...
where you really need to have a rate limit on like how much you can bet on roulette per day or per whatever. Never. You can spin a slot machine online for five hundred bucks a spin.
I mean, there's no limits, and they'll take all your money that you wanna bet, um, on casino gaming. Are those exploitable from a, like, digital perspective? Yeah, they are actually.
[laughs] And this is like a whole 'nother story for another day, but like- No- There are people who- We're tonight. We got time. [laughs] There are people who make their living playing slots, uh, for a living.
Um, slot machines both in brick and mortar casinos but also online. Um, I actually participated in one of these, um, where I, where a group of people took on,
uh, a slot machine that was an online mobile slot machine, where they found an exploit. They found that it was, um- Mm...
that there was something exploitable in the, uh, in the game's rules, and they, and we won a lot of money. Like, there's, this is something that happened. You know, these, these situations happen.
They're very, they're sort of whispered about. They're, um, they're very closely held secrets.
But there are groups of people in America who every time a new slot machine game comes out, they immediately clone it, analyze it,
study it, run simulations on it, and find whatever weakness they can find so that they can play it, and there's people that make a lot of money doing this. Um... Mm. Is that illegal?
No, it's not, because the rules-- So in, in any jurisdiction that kinda has a gaming division and has kinda clear set rules around, uh, gaming,
uh, if the house sets the rules and you follow those rules and you win, they're supposed to pay you. Mm.
Um, and so, um, y-you know, if you cheat, you know, like if you hack it where you're like changing the code or something like that or you're hacking in to win, yeah, that's illegal. You can't do that.
And there are people that have done that over the years where they figured out how to cheat slot machines. Mm.
But if you're just playing the game the way the game was designed but you're playing it advantageously, that's, there's nothing illegal about that.
Now, casinos will figure out who's doing this stuff and they'll try to shoo them out. I mean, next time you're in Vegas or you're in a casino- Not gonna happen. Okay. Well [laughs]... I'll be there.
It's one, it's one of America's great cities. I don't know why you would be so dismissive of, um- Mm. Of, of- I'm sorry... Las Vegas. I guess I'm just a snob.
You-- Well, people from all over the world come here just to visit Las Vegas, so it's, it's...
Next time you're in a casino anywhere in America and, but probably in Las Vegas, if you, you know, you'll, you walk by like a slot machine that has like a progressive slot on it or whatever and you'll just see people camped out.
Mm. Like, it just seems like every seat is taken, and people are just slamming the buttons with aband- wild abandon.
Those are usually teams of people who h-have pooled their money together as a, uh, pooled their bankroll together and they are trying to win this progressive because they have figured out that now is the moment that this thing's about to pop and every spin is plus, plus EV.
So they're, you know, they've, they've, they've put together whatever, fifty thousand dollars to try to take down this big, big slot, uh, progressive.
The casinos hate this because even though this is well within the rules and they already know that they're gonna have to pay that jackpot out to somebody anyway, they don't care that they lose the jackpot.
They would much rather lose the jackpot to, like, Martha and Tom from Boise City- Mm... who are just in here for a convention or whatever than to lose it to, like, the team of, like- To an operator...
you know, uh, professional gamblers who have taken every sl... So the casino makes the same amount of money, but they lose the marketing opportunity, I think, from somebody winning millions of dollars from, like- Mm...
you know. So they don't like this. They lose the bootstrap story. Yeah, so they don't like people that are pros, but they much more r- they tolerate it because, like I said, the slot machine
pros are far less of a threat to a casino's bottom line than, say, a blackjack pro or a sports betting pro because they're gonna make the same amount from slot machines no matter whether the pro wins or- Yeah...
you know, Joe and Sally from Kansas win. Do you know, uh, over the course of reporting this piece, how much... Or were you, were you up or were you down? 'Cause you, you, you bet a lot during the piece.
You write about it.Yeah, I made a lot of money this year betting on sports. Don't tell the IRS. I'm not really sure how I'm supposed to do this on my taxes yet, but I did make a lot of money betting on sports this year.
[laughs] Congratulations. And yeah, I mean, a lot of it is because of people I met reporting this story who taught me a lot. That's freelance income. Yeah. [laughs] Well, look, the taxes are kind of- That's research...
fucked. I don't- Mm. And this is something that's interesting, so, that I learned is that the taxes on sports gambling winnings are really fucked because you can't, uh, report your net. Mm.
So if you don't itemize your taxes and you just take the standard deduction, then you have to pay the tax on every winning bet that you made, but you don't get to write off all the losing bets, right? Mm-hmm.
So when Francis just read off his like FanDuel statement, you know, he just told the government that he needs to pay taxes on all the winning bets, but the losing bets don't matter, and it doesn't...
his net doesn't matter. Wow. So the IRS doesn't see that you lost. The IRS doesn't care that you overall lost 200 bucks.
They only care about those winning bets and that they get their 25% of each of those wins, and that's the way that we're all supposed, all of us, not just pr- all of us are supposed to pay taxes on our gambling winnings, which is kind of fucked up.
I mean- Doesn't capital gains- It's crazy... take that into account? Well, I don't think these are considered capital gains, but I think- Well, that's what I'm asking, yeah. Oh, well, yes- Mm... they do.
And so the only way around this is to itemize, right? So if you itemize your, your taxes, you can put your losing bets, you know, you can itemize them as losses. Um, and so- Mm...
I just need to look and see whether or not that's what I need to do this year or not, but I did win a lot of money this year. And it was because I met people, professionals, while I was reporting the story who
taught me a lot of things and- Yeah... showed me some stuff. And I, uh, found some things- So you're a steamer... that made money, and I just kept doing it. You're in their steam. Yeah. [laughs] It's chasing the steam.
Is that another gambling term? I've never heard that. He literally just told us that term at the beginning of this podcast. Oh, well, that's for Amanda then. Are you listening at all? Am I using that incorrectly?
But- I mean, you're copying their bets to a certain extent, right? No, I think you used it appropriately- Or their strategies... in a way, yeah, that it's, that I'm chasing the steam in a way.
I mean, this is the way that I think most people...
Like, there are people who kind of create their own edges in sports betting, and then there are people who will figure those out and copy them, and that's another form of steam chasing, I guess.
I made some money this year betting on sports. I also tried in the piece... I mean, one of the things I wanted to do for the piece was make every section, I wanted to place a bet, right? Mm-hmm.
So everywhere I went, everybody I met, I was placing bets. Some of those made it into the story and some of them didn't. Yeah.
But my original idea for how I would s-structure the story was almost like it'd be like every sort of ch-chapter or section, there'd be a bet, and the reader could follow along whether I was up or down, you know?
But that didn't really hold up. It was lovely. I loved the structure. It was amazing. Thank you. I, I did leave some of the bets in. Well, when you turn it into a book- Yeah...
I think you should use that organizing principle. [laughs] No, I- You know, when you have, like, David Foster Wallace s-style, like, shapes in there that are, like, the actual progression of the bet- Were there-...
as you're reading the text. Were there people... Were there, like, um, interesting characters or bets or whatever, little chapters? 'Cause it's, like, a very long story.
Were there any that didn't make it in that you wish had that will be in the book if there's a book? There's gonna be a book. Definitely. There's gonna be a book. Definitely. I, I...
My first draft of this story was, like, 16,000 words- Uh-huh... and I'm embarrassed to say that, and if any editors are listening to this, just know that I don't typically [laughs] I try not, I, I- I don't know.
I think that's pretty respectable. Yeah. 16,000 words. It was assigned at 6,000 words, Daisy, so. Oh, well, I mean- I would read it. I came in 10,000 words over my assignment. That's not cool.
I don't care if people come over. I care if they don't try. Okay, well- But I'm also not operating on- I-... a stone scale. Mm-hmm. I've written for Daisy before.
She's a great editor, and sh- it's true that I've, I've also filed long for her- Mm... so I wouldn't be surprised if she wanted to out me as a complete liar here.
But I, I, I did feel a lot of, like, stress about this because by the end of the year I realized I had really over-reported the sto- Mm... the story as, at the assigned length. Like, I'd spent...
I had way too many interviews. I had way too many hours of tape. I had way too many good stories, and I just could not figure out how to kill my darlings, so I really... You know, Kate Story was the editor on this piece.
She was fantastic. Uh, I really loved working with her, and I just told her ahead of time, I was like, "Look, it's long. I'm having a hard time with it.
Would you rather me continue to wrestle this bear down, or do you wanna take a look at the long version and maybe give me your idea of what we can cut?" Mm-hmm. And she was like, "Send it to me and I'll see."
And, you know, it's easier when an editor cuts than to cut it myself, you know?
But also, I, there's that, there's always that lingering hope that a writer has that the editor's gonna read it and just be like, "This is great. I'm not gonna cut anything."
And in this case, it, it kind of worked that way. Like, she came back and said like, "I think we should keep a lot of this."
So that really was a cool moment where I felt like, okay, somebody else realizes that th- this is, there's something that justifies the length of this story here. Mm-hmm.
It's not just me being obnoxious about not being able to cut anything out. But it- we did cut a lot out. There was a lot of stuff that didn't make it in.
Um, there were a lot of characters that didn't make it in, and, um,
and a lot of pieces of these characters that you do meet, their backstory that I thought were fascinating, particularly JR, who I spent a lot of time with and got a, you know, has a, has an incredible story.
His life story is pretty incredible that I would love to tell at some point. But yeah, I think that, uh, if there was any interest in doing the, expanding this into a book, I think there's plenty of material there.
Mm-hmm. Are the producers knocking? [laughs] No, not yet. I mean, you mean producers for the film version of this? Mm.
No, but- I was actually wondering if, like, reading this, I was like, well, you know, I can think of like, like, card counting movies and so many various gambling movies, but are there any like, you know, landmark sports betting movies from any point in cinema history?
I don't know about landmark. Um- Moneyball. A writer na- Just kidding. [laughs] Kind of. A writer named Beth Raymer wrote a really great memoir about sports betting called Lay the Favorite. Mm-hmm.
Um, and it was turned into a movie that starred Bruce Willis, and- Mm...
uh, Br-Bruce Willis plays Alan Dinkinson, who is a really well-known, um, sports bettor in Las Vegas who I had written about in the past and became friends with. Mm-hmm. He passed away a couple of years ago.
He was a pretty incredible guy, and, um, he was, uh, always re- you know, it always sort of annoyed him that for the rest of his life he was always introduced and remembered and known as the guy that Bruce Willis [laughs] played in a movie.
Um, there's also, uh, there was a movie that I think, um, Brian Koppelman of, um, Rounders fame made, a movie called Runner Runner- Mm...
um, after he made Rounders that dealt with offshore sports betting that I don't think a lot of sports bettors liked because it certainly made things look a lot more, um, kind of, um, violent and- Mm...
you know, um, uh, uh, I don't know, lascivious than, than, than they would've liked.
But-The truth is, is that there is, you know, when you get into sort of the offshore world, there are a lot of wild stories, and it is a bit of a wo- [laughs] it is a bit of a, um, of a, of a, of a lawless such a place.
I mean, I wrote recently about a, um, a guy who, um,
ran an offshore sportsbook called Five Dimes, who was an American from West Virginia who went down there and, uh, ran the sportsbook, became very wealthy and was kidnapped and, uh, held for ransom.
And then after the ransom was paid, he was murdered and, um, this story was pretty wild. And for a while people didn't know what had happened.
They thought maybe he faked his death, the gov- 'cause the American government was after him, et cetera.
So, you know, there are plenty of reasons to think that like this, you know, that this sort of world of offshore sports betting, it's like there's billions of dollars.
Some of these companies are huge and very respectable companies, but there's also a whole another layer of it that I think- Mm-hmm... is, um, where there's still a lot of, um, uh, players who color outside the lines. You
have written a book already, much more personal family history, but it does deal with gambling, called The Vapors, about your family history in Little Rock, correct? Arkansas? Hot Springs, Arkansas. Hot Springs, sorry.
Mm-hmm. Hot Springs. I knew it was gonna come out wrong. Only knows one town in Arkansas. [laughs] Well, most people- That's not true. I read the book.
Okay, Hot Springs, Hot Springs, Arkansas, which used to be obviously a gambling center, not so much anymore. You know why I said Little Rock, and this isn't an excuse, and we can talk off mic, but, um, my...
No, somebody just got in touch who's-- they're working on-- they work on entries for the Encyclopedia of Arkansas, and they are working on an entry for Eugene Stern, who was an architect in Little Rock, um, relative of mine, my great-great-grandfather's brother, and he wanted to know what family history we have that can contribute to this entry, because he already has this sort of- Mm-hmm...
co-architect. So did not pull it out of the air. [laughs] Um, so anyway, um, where was I going with this? Oh. Hot Springs. Yeah, Hot Springs. So obviously super interesting book.
Would love to know how much of the research for that has, like, informed your approach to covering sports betting, but also like, you know, these, these metropoles of gambling come and go.
Vegas has obviously dominated for a long time, but, like, is the Internet the new Vegas? Like, is, like i- is the new place that you go to gamble, like, not really a place? I think that's a great question.
Uh, you know, the, um,
The Vapors is about Hot Springs, Arkansas, which was, um, really was America's gambling capital for a long time, well into, like, the 1960s when Las Vegas was really kind of getting started and hadn't yet developed into what we know it as today.
Hot Springs was the, you know, the sort of s- the center of gambling in America and, um, that's what the book is about, is sort of about that history and also how it disappeared and how it got, it got washed away and, and it's also about my family, um, and some of my family's connection to that history.
I do mention in the piece that Hot Springs gets mentioned in the piece because I talk about how while most Americans experience this, like, explosion of sports betting with some shock and awe and, like, some, like, you know, um, even some, like, a, a surprise and trepidation, that to me it didn't feel that way because I was raised in this weird place where gambling was normal and where, you know, they tried to have church service over before the first post at the racetrack- Mm-hmm...
and where everybody I knew bet on sports, and friends of mine's parents were bookies, and we had a bookie on the Chamber of Commerce. You know, so, like, this was my life. Yeah.
This is my experience, was that gambling was a normal thing people did for fun. Um, and I talk about that a little bit in the piece. I do think that-- So I do think that Hot Springs,
m-you know, being where I'm from, doesn't, does sort of make me, does in-i-inform, you know, i-i-i-it, um, has a lot to do with my perspective on, on these things.
But I do- It's foundationally, like, why you've reported so extensively on gambling.
Yeah, and why I've always sort of generally had this knee-jerk reaction to people who, who just think of gambling as being this, like, um, illicit, like, degenerate activity, and don't see it the same way they may see drinking as something- Mm-hmm...
that people are fully capable of doing recreationally and for fun and can enjoy, while at the same time accepting that some people can't. You know what I mean? Mm-hmm. Like, I've always had this...
But, you know, writing this and reporting the story also really took me out of that bubble and showed me that, like,
there are real causes for concern, and that what we're dealing with right now is not anything like what, you know, I throughout my entire life have experienced with, um, sports betting. But to your- Yeah...
to your other question about betting online and whether or not there's a place anymore, I think it's a great question, and I don't think that that's yet the case.
Um, and the reason I don't think that is because Las Vegas is doing better than it probably ever has before. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
There was a moment, you know, there was a poker boom too that sort of predate- predates the sports betting boom that happened around 2005, where poker on television led to this huge explosion of poker where everybody and their brother was playing poker all of a sudden.
Like, and I had a very similar experience of that boom as well, where I'd, like, always grown up playing poker, playing poker in card rooms my whole life,
really having to hunt far and wide to find a poker game, you know what I mean? And casinos mostly didn't offer poker because, like sports betting, it wasn't something that made them a lot of money.
But then there was this huge poker boom, and now everybody's playing poker, and all the casinos now are offering it, and it was just something that was everywhere, right?
And during that period of time, people like Sheldon Adelson, who is the, um, you know, real, uh, uh, whatever, like monstrous man that owns the, um, Venetian Casino in Las Vegas, and, um, he's dead now, but his wife continues on, and, like, they're, they were-- He, he fought any, uh, efforts to, like, legalize online poker, right?
Mm-hmm. Like, they... If people remember, people were playing online poker for a long time out in the open, but it was kind of in this gray area.
People weren't sure whether it was legal or not, but these big companies formed and were making money hand over fist without there being any real understanding of whether or not what they were doing was legal.The
US government passed a law, they tucked it into the PORTS Act, the s- or the Patriot Act or whatever, that banned it. And then overnight, all these people's money was frozen, all these companies, people were prosecuted.
It just, like, shut down online poker, and it kinda killed poker around the country.
And those same casino owners who really did all they could to, like, stop online poker because they felt like it was hurting them from...
You know, they, they wanted people to come in the casino and play poker, not play online, found that people stopped coming into the casino to play poker at all.
So I think the lesson there was that online gambling created a bigger pool of people who were interested in gambling, and what those people wanted was then to go to Vegas and show up at the big show.
And the same thing's happening now with sports betting. There's a casino I talk about in the piece called Circa, and Circa's downtown, but it's like this massive...
It's the first massive, like, high-rise resort built in downtown Las Vegas in over forty years. Mm-hmm. And the Th- Circa's, uh, sort of centerpiece is the sportsbook and sports betting.
It's a, sort of a, a casino resort built around sports betting. Their pool is on the roof. It's called Circa Swim.
It ha- it's like this massive pool complex that has a bunch of screens, and you can bet on sports while you swim in the pool. The sportsbook itself is like a basketball arena with, like, stadium seating and stuff.
It's a, it's, i- it's like nothing you've ever seen before.
And people are going out to Circa because they want to watch and bet on sports in Vegas at this cool sportsbook bec- but they learned how to bet on sports on their phones.
So I still think that there is a, a place for brick and mortar, physical kinda gambling halls, and I think that those places are only enhanced by the fact that people bet online and learn to enjoy this and think it's fun, and then they wanna do it face-to-face, in person, in the physical flesh and blood world.
Yeah. You were talking about, like, Hot Springs earlier, and the sort of like evangelical culture as well.
I feel like Americans have this really puritanical view of people either, like, having the addiction gene or not, almost as like a- Right... original sin, like predestined damnation.
But, like, I feel like all of the discourse around iPhones and the impact of iPhones in the past few years is just, like, really trying to reorient people to understand, like, our brains are plastic.
And like, if I wasn't going on Twitter, I would not be spending an equal amount of time, like, reading books. Mm.
Like, the introduction of these new technologies, especially when they do have the intermittent reinforcement that keeps people coming back, um, does change your brain, whether you are like,
you know, your, your family has a history of alcoholism or other forms of addiction or not. Like, we are all, to a certain extent, addicts, and it's a question of, um, extremes, basically. Mm-hmm. Totally.
I did an interview with somebody recently about the piece, and he made this, a similar point, where he said that, like, he's far more concerned about,
um, addi- you know, screen addiction than he is about sports betting addiction, even though in some cases they're kinda one and the same with- Mm...
a lot of these folks who are, you know, kinda glued to their ph- young people glued to their phones, and now they're betting on them as well.
But I do think that you're, you're, you're right that, um, in some ways they're, the wave crashes back, right?
And so being online creates a desire in people after a certain [laughs] you know, at a certain point it creates a desire in people where not being online br- has some... It feels better, you know? Yeah. It feel...
Because you're not taking it for granted anymore.
Like, this whole idea that kids have about touch grass is, like, an important one because touching grass is something that prior to being, you know, our brains rotting online, we took for granted.
Now it's something that people are doing intentionally. Mm-hmm.
And I think that the same is true here where, you know, my example about sports betting is one that's maybe far lower stakes, but, like, the idea that, like, we do something online and it feels lonely.
I mean, I, in my piece I, I interview a lot of- Touch your toes. Yeah, yeah. [laughs] I interview a lot of professional gamblers.
One of the challenges I had writing this piece is that a lot of professional gamblers' lives are fairly staid and boring. They are sitting in front of a computer all day long, watching screens, watching numbers.
That's not a lot of excitement for me as a writer to sort of sh- share with the reader. That's why I tried to take all these people to ball games and things like that- Mm...
so we could be doing something, but also so there could be some sports.
But it, you know, when I saw these people at this convention in Vegas, it was a refrain I heard over and over again about how it's so good to just come together and be around all these people who maybe you only interact with on Twitter or whatever, or on Telegram, but now we can be together and be in person and have fun.
And you know, like, this is something that's missing from their lives because it's so isolating and alienating just being in front of a screen all day. Yeah. Perfect. Well, I think we should probably wrap it up.
We've got a good hour here. Um, is there anything else, uh, that you're working on right now or that you wanna point people to, or should people just go to, go to rollingstone.com?
Go to newsstands, pick it up- [laughs]... read Sportsbook Nation. Where there still is newsstands, go pick it up. Uh, pick it up at a newsstand. It's on- I tried. I was too early.
I went to Casa Magazines, uh, the day it came out. But I think- Mm... you know, that's the day the magazine is dated or it appears online, it's not necessarily out yet. Yeah.
Daisy and I were joking about how, like, the o- only people that really patronize newsstands are the writers buying the magazines that- Yeah... they wrote. Get a copy.
So I, I went to Park Slope Newsstand and bought every issue that they had. [laughs] So- That's awesome... that's what's keeping the print business in business is, uh, freelance writers, I suppose. Um- Right...
but no, I, I, my website's davidhillonline.com, and, um, people can go there and see things that I'm writing or check out my book, The Vapors, which Daisy already mentioned. And, um,
you know, and if anybody's listening to this and they are a, um, a, a producer or a publisher or whatever and they want to pay me to expand this story, then just get in touch and l- and, uh, there's still tens of thousands of words that didn't make it into [laughs] this story if people wanna, uh, publish them, so.
Well, I think those words are definitely gonna come out, and I look forward to, uh, watching the inevitable blockbuster movie. From your lips to, uh- The wallets of producers... Bob Iger's ears. [laughs] Yeah.
[laughs] Yeah. All right. This has been Taste Land. Thanks for coming on. See you next week. See you next week. It tastes just like it costs. Money!
It tastes just like it costs.