Why American Sports are Going to Fail

Dear Friends of CrimeWaves,

A change for this week's episode - an interview I did with the Protectors Podcast on the threat that gambling poses to US Sports.  The headline is that US Sports Leagues are dancing with the devil.  All the money they got from bookmakers seemed very seductive but there are more and more scandals linked to betting.  Now, it is perfectly reasonable for a good-faith sports fan to doubt the integrity of the leagues and it will only get worse - much, much worse. 

Note - this interview was done in October - BEFORE - all the new scandals in Major League Baseball (MLB) and the NCAA were revealed. 

If you like the episode please check out my chums at the Protectors Podcast they are at:  https://www.protectorspodcast.com/episode/when-the-game-is-rigged-declan-hill-exposes-sports-bettings-dark-side

Please subscribe, rate, review or like this episode of CrimeWaves at YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts.  
For more information on CrimeWaves please see - 
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www.declanhill.com
Twitter: declan_hill

Transcript

Michael Carroll 0:42

Today joins us to break down the wave of recent standards. From college athletes running books with the Mob to NBA coaches and players allegedly providing insider information and even major league pitchers accused of manipulating outcomes pitch by pitch. Without further ado, we'd like to welcome to the Protectors Podcast Dr. Declan Hill.

Mark Solomon 1:08

Hey guy, how are you?

Michael Carroll 1:13

And boy, you were right on the market back in August, and there's been a ton of stuff going on in the news, and we'd love to hear your insight. And like I said, you predicted this a long time ago.

Declan Hill 1:25

Yeah, first please let me make sure that all our listeners know I you know I wasn't trying to be blasphemous, I wasn't trying to be disrespectful. It just you know, for for years I'd be saying, guys, I've seen this before with the conditions that exist in America and American sports, we're gonna have major match fixing problems, we're gonna have major illegal gambling issues, we're gonna have major, major societal issues. So that's what I referred to. I don't want anyone to think I was being disrespectful. The other headline is look, I said this was gonna happen, but I'm now saying it's gonna get worse, way worse than what we're seeing now. I my prediction is we're gonna see one of the major sports leagues in America collapse in the next few years because they really have not come to terms with all the issues around sports gambling in their sports leagues. And I'd also say that we haven't really addressed the issues of you know much of unregulated sports gambling in our own society. And as financial crimes investigators, it is a massive, massive you know, gasoline on a , you know, on the fire of financial crimes.

Michael Carroll 2:38

Yeah.

Declan Hill 2:38

sports gambling addiction is just it it's rife in the country, it's rife around the world now. I'm happy to break down why that is, but it it's a driver for bankruptcies, it's a driver for financial um, you know, foreclosing on cars, on personal property. And this is from robust academic studies. You know, it's it's already been seen. The effects, those socials, you know, across the society affect home foreclosures and and car repossessions go up by at least 50% in states that have legalized gambling. And it's also a motivation for financial crimes when people get into trouble when they're facing bankruptcy due to gambling debts. So we've got a wide-scale societal issue, and then inside our sports leagues, we've got the same kind of issues that are leading to major match fixing, major scandals and controversies, and National Basketball Association, NCAA, um, you know, Major League Baseball. Just before we came on, the Luchese crime family in New Jersey was indicted for more illegal sports gambling. So again and again and again, and we're it's going to get worse.

Michael Carroll 3:51

Hey Declan, I want to discuss that a little further about the youth getting involved in sports gambling, but I just wanted to go back to what you said right at the beginning. That you've been warning us about this for for a decade, that organized crime and globalized gambling markets were going to collide with American sports. So I'm just asking, how does it feel, you know, that you predicted this?

Declan Hill 4:11

look, I wish I were wrong, frankly. Like I it's one of these things. I love sports. sports have given me some of the greatest moments of my life. I think they're a fantastic vehicle for morals, ideals, for teaching our young people. So I don't like to be right. I wish that I hadn't been right, and also wish that sports leagues had not been so greedy and had not started to dance with the devil, which is what they've done when they sign deals with these bookmakers. There has to be clear blue water between a bookmaker and a sports league. It's just it's a walking-talking conflict of interest. And we have in America um the same phenomena, the same conditions that I've seen around the world. I remember coming out of Asia back 15 years ago when I got my doctorate and you know, I was writing these books about how it exposed the existence of Asian matchfixing gangs that travel around the world. And the Europeans are like, oh, that is cannot possibly happen here. What happened in Asia, but not here in Europe. I'm like, no, guys, the same condition exists in Europe. We're gonna see the same thing. By the way, I hope you like my my general generic. That was good. I liked that. I liked that. It was great.

Mark Solomon 5:25

I gotta interrupt you. You called you called this like six years ago when we were in Vegas. Remember, you did a presentation there, and you talked about betting over in Asia, how it's some of these matches were fixed, and it's gonna come to the States. You were right.

Declan Hill 5:37

Yeah, and and here's the thing, and I and I know there are a lot of skeptical listeners, so let me just get straight into why these things are happening. One of the conditions is gambling addiction. Athletes, coaches, officials, administrators in the sports community are more likely to become addicted to gambling than other demographics in the population. However, they're less likely to be able to seek resources. Like if you're a Joe Blog plumber or a professor or whatever, and we get a gambling addiction, you know, we're able to much more easily and professionally and personally go to a gambling counselor or show up at gambling anonymous. If you're an athlete and you show up at gambling anonymous and saying, hey guys, I got a problem, you're almost guaranteed in this day and age that somebody is gonna break gambling anonymous. , you know, they really do strict confidentiality, but somebody is gonna take your photo. Somebody's gonna, hey guys, guess what? Hey, you know, the the the cornerback has just come down, he's sitting next to me, he's an awesome guy. Like it's just gonna get out, and you're gonna destroy your reputation, you're gonna destroy your career. So gambling addiction is rife in the sports community. There's much less resources and saturated with gambling advertisements. I mean, I don't know, again, how many listeners have seen a sports event recently, but it's it's almost impossible to watch a sports event in North America without being inundated with gambling ads from celebrities, from all kinds of stuff. And so the athletes and the coaches and the officials are living in that world. Their league administrators are saying, hey, everything's fine, it's totally cool. We're getting all this money. Oh, by the way, don't gamble. Don't gamble. And also, another thing that is really driving this among professional and actually, quite frankly, NCAA athletes and even high school athletes, is there have been a couple of fundamental changes. One is in the very nature of gambling, it's just become more addictive. You know, back in the day, , you had to go somewhere to gamble, you had to go to a racetrack or a casino or whatever. You don't have to do that anymore. We're walking around with effectively casinos in our back pocket with our mobile phones.

Mark Solomon 7:57

Yeah.

Declan Hill 7:57

And the bookmakers have developed this really addictive product called frictionless gambling, where you're just tapping away in your phone and you're, you know, it's so much more easy to become addicted to that.

Mark Solomon 8:09

So, Declan, you bring up a great point about just instant access for gambling. You know, I think if you know if I went to horse racing, you know, I'd have to go up to the counter and place my bet. And, you know, if I went to a casino, I have to throw my money on the table, pull money out of my ETM machine or whatever. But this is just instant, like it said, you know, a person that's addicted to this, there's not enough time. It's instantaneous. So I don't, you know, it's almost like that addiction takes over that person and they don't even realize the amount of money that they're putting up on bets.

Declan Hill 8:44

Yeah, it it because they can they kind of escape from it, Mark. You know, it's literally right there. And and everything that you mentioned, , you know, they're small, they're they're discreet checks. Like you have to go to a racetrack, you have to take cash out of your pocket and walk over to a bookmaker at a racetrack. There is a race that lasts anywhere from you know two minutes to whatever, 10 minutes. Right. But now you're watching an NFL game and you're constantly being bombarded, A, with advertisements and B with proddings from bookmakers saying, hey, why don't you take a bet on who's gonna win the next field goal? Or , you know, are they gonna drink Gatorade or water at halftime? Or like a bunch of these boutique exotic things. Because what the bookmakers are trying to do is get the gamblers' dopamine cycles going into a kind of risk reward scenario every two to three minutes. And that's deeply addictive. If you're going to a racetrack and you're just betting on which horse is going to win, there's always time in between where your dopamine comes down, you become less in that addicted state. But now you're constantly and you're you've got access to that betting market. So there was a study by Swedish academic researchers that put current-day gambling, sports gambling on the same par as heroin in terms of what it does to our brains, the dopamine effect on our brain. And this is almost utterly unregulated. I mean, there's no discussion of public health issue. It's very much, in my opinion, like when the Sackler family released OxyContin to America. And it's deeply addictive, but they were like, oh, it's just irregular medicine. No, no problem. They've just now settled a you know a multi-billion dollar settlement, legal settlement to , you know, pay off some of the social cost and harm that they've done. But I think sports gambling, frictionless sports gambling, is in the same boat, and we're not discussing it, we're not talking about it. We haven't really addressed this issue. I'm a supporter of legalized gambling and an end to hypocrisy, but I really want a conversation about what we've actually got ourselves into as a society. The second thing is that the sports athletes are deeply addicted. And and part of the issue is that sports have got much more physically demanding in the last 20 years. So I challenge any of our older listeners, go to YouTube or wherever and go watch a baseball game, go watch a hockey game or whatever from 20, 30 years ago. And the guy's playing it, you know, they're not in bad shape, but they wouldn't survive at that level of physical fitness in today's sports. Like they've just taken a massive leap up. So it's no longer possible for an athlete to be an alcoholic, to be a coke head, to be doing recreational drugs on a routine basis. Yeah, you know, they may blow off some steam from time to time. But that kind of regular physical demands that those kind of addictions place on an athlete's body are simply impossible now to sustain in today's sports. But athletes still have, you know, immense stress, immense demands, , you know, people screaming at them, all kinds of issues. And they need to take that stress and put it somewhere. And so many of them, many of them have turned to gambling as a way of releasing that stress because they've never been told how addictive it is. And the mob has known this, and the mob has reached out and done a very, very good recruitment of many, many people inside the sports world. And so this is the recipe for disaster which is going on in American sports leagues that virtually nobody, present company accepted, is talking about.

Michael Carroll 12:43

Yeah, Declan, regarding the federal investigation, you know, I read like that New Jersey authorities say members of the Luchesse crime family were using college athletes to operate sports books. Declan, what do you see in the future with organized crime getting college athletes involved in sports gambling?

Declan Hill 13:02

Look, um, you know, I'm close contact with Michael Franzese, who was a former Capo in the Colombo Crime Family. He he talks openly about like, hey, you know, back 30 years ago when I was running books for the Colombo Crime Family, you know, we had NCAA guys constantly, we had NFL guys constantly coming to us and betting. And we would we would be recruiting these guys. The other um takeaway that has come out of these scandals is something that I've heard many, many times, both in the Luchazi crime family, but also in undercover investigators, and that is the use of poker games as recruitment tools. Yes. So what you do is you get an NBA player like Jon Tay Porter, you bring him into a poker game, you discover he is a degenerate gambler, and and I'm using the words that a mobster would use. I'm I'm not using the polite clinical terms. I'm just like, you know, that's how they talk. They're like, hey, the guy's a degenerate gambler. Awesome. We can make money off this guy, and he's also a high-level athlete. This is like manna from heaven for us, and that's what they're looking for, and that's what they do. Shohei Otani's translator also recruited in a poker game. A poker game, frankly, that was taking place in a hotel where two major league baseball teams were staying. And I don't know what major league baseball security is doing, but you know, they were running a massive high-stake poker game with half a dozen major league baseball players. And so hey Otani's translator is just this complete nut, you know, complete degenerate gambler. And again, I'm sorry, I'm just using the words that mobsters would use, shows up there and they're like, hey guys, this is somebody we can use. And and that's what they're doing. That's where they're doing. They're using these poker games to recruit players and athletes and coaches and officials and people inside the game. And again, I return to one of the themes. The sports leagues are not training their people. They're running these quote education programs, and many of the quote, education are tied to bookmakers. The leagues are like, oh, well, we'll get in some bookmakers, and the bookmakers can educate the players. No, no, you're you're you're a multi-billion dollar league. Come on, guys, do better than that.

Michael Carroll 15:15

Yeah. And Declan, , you know, I was reading about that the 14 that were charged in New Jersey, and one interesting note I noticed on the press release was one of the individuals that was charged was a newly certified agent for the MBA Players Association. And that is very interesting because think of the authority that that person would have, or may be able to recruit other individuals, , you know, people that are basketball players in the MBA. You know, here you have an agent that may be, hey, you know, I want to get you involved in SDC money, you know, come play poker, or you know, all of a sudden, you know, they get them into a situation about um maybe maybe it stood out tomorrow night's game with you know a store back or something like that. So I hate to give the criminals credit, but the the mob here, the Lucchese family is you know, they're thinking next level. You know, they're thinking about infiltrating all aspects of the MBA, MLB, all the major sports, but also on the college level as well, where it probably doesn't get as as much attention.

Declan Hill 16:22

Look, I think you can accuse the mob and organized crime of many things, but stupidity is not one of them. These guys are bright, they're articulate, they understand how to do it. There's there's um a quote industry, a sports integrity industry. And when I talk to my sources in organized crime, they're like, yeah, of course we have people working inside those companies. Like, what are you? Not of course we're you know, these are our enemies, so we're gonna put people inside them. Like, of course we do that. And they also recruiting um athletes at a high school level. You know, gambling addiction is rife, and it doesn't stop with the players. It goes up to the coaches, it goes into the leagues. , there was an NFL team official that lost over $22 million in gambling, , National Football League. Major guy. You know, he lost millions and millions of dollars. I don't know whether he was, you know, lost it with DraftKings, the official betting sponsor of the NFL or fan duel or whatever. But this is rife. This is a real problem. And it doesn't end with the Jon Tay Porters and the pitchers doing , you know, the strikes and balls. This is gonna go bigger.

Mark Solomon 17:30

Yeah. to go back to what you're saying, major league baseball pitchers have been accused of manipulating individual pitches. Yep. You know, is this the new frontier of match manipulation? But to that, I mean, it hurts the integrity of the game of baseball. I mean, you know, hey, I'm pitching Friday, the fourth inning, I'm gonna throw four balls on a first batter. I mean, it sounds pretty easy. I mean, is there a way to control this?

Declan Hill 17:55

Look, first of all, yes, there's a way to control it, but B, I'd like to unpack just what you were saying. , because I don't want to come across to our listeners who haven't maybe haven't heard from me before as like, you know, A, I want to show that I'm credible, and B, that I'm not I'm not just spouting this off. I'm not just being arrogant. You spoke about this phenomenon in baseball as, quote, a new issue. It ain't new. We've seen that type of fixing of micro betting in the sport of cricket. And you know, cricket is very similar in terms of structure. I'm not saying that they're comparable in in other ways, but in terms of like having you know hundreds of micro events during a during a game of cricket. You know, they've got how many times the bowler, which is their equivalent of a pitcher, , bowls. Do are they bowling at the wicket? are you are they doing a wide, which is like a ball in their things? And this this is rife. Like it's just rife. That's the way the Indian mafia has been fixing games. there was a major scandal in 2011 where the Pakistani national team, there were bowlers , you know, national level, like really big stars, doing this in games against the English national team in England, like the really big games, and they were doing this. Same thing has gone across tennis, because tennis, again, like baseball, like cricket, has all these micro events in it. So when you see a sport like baseball, you know, to a guy like me that's that's been doing this for decades, it's like you're gonna have a problem. You're you're gonna have a problem because you've got so many micro events, and you can you can legitimately go to a pitcher or whoever, catcher, whatever the guy is, and say, hey, you're not gonna throw the game. You're not actually affecting the result of the game. Come on, just make some cash on the side, buddy. You're in debt to us, you owe us some money, just just do this and we'll pay it all off. That's the issue. Right. So, having said, look, we're not seeing anything, America, that we haven't seen around the world before with this stuff. Here's how you stop it. Like, and it's actually really, really easy. And I think again, the listeners and yourself and Mark can hear my frustration is that a lot of this stuff is super, super easy. So let me break down the mechanics of what's going on. You got a game, and that game is producing data. And what I mean by data in in this case is it's like, you know, is the next pitch going to be a strike or a ball? Is it is the guy gonna hit? , if he hits, is it gonna be left-handed or right-handed? , did the pitcher throw a knuckle ball or a fastball? All of that is data. And the gambling market needs that data, and it needs it in real time, and that's gold dust. And that is what the sports leagues have been selling to data companies. And then those data companies sell it to the bookmakers around the world. That's how this operation works. So now Major League Baseball is saying, Oh, it's so difficult.

Mark Solomon 20:49

Oh, I don't know how to stop this. Bookmakers, can you stop offering these bets on pitches?

Declan Hill 20:57

Because that'd be so much better. They're they're they're acting, yeah. I 'm not even gonna search for the image and stuff, but they're acting all innocent here. Well, guys, stop selling the data. Just stop it. Stop selling the data about the pitches and all these micro bets. You know, , you want to have a few esoteric bets on baseball, you know, Gatorade or water, whatever. Make the data that you provide and get money for billions of dollars, make it on events in your game that are much more difficult to fix, like the number of actual runs in an inning, you know, things that that take more than one person in a brief second to do. It's the same thing with tennis. Back in 2018, the independent investigators looked at the state of tennis. There was so much match fixing going on, and that was one of their number one regulations is they're saying, guys, if you want to stop the tsunami of match fixing going on in tennis, stop the data providers. Just say, hey, instead of getting a hundred million dollars, we'll But we're only going to allow you to provide the following data to the bookmakers. Problem solved.

Michael Carroll 22:07

Yeah, Glenn. Problem solved right there. Oh, the poor sports agencies are asking them to cap this. I just read an article the other day. It says Major League Baseball announces agreement with sportsbooks to cap wagers at certain bets at $200 in wake of the Klot Ortiz arrest in November. So, you know, I mean you're right. It stops selling the data to these criminal organizations. You know, um you can lower it to $200, they're just gonna have $100 people betting $200. You know, it's not gonna be a good thing.

Declan Hill 22:47

No, no, you're not, but like because they've provided the data, and you know, this is getting really technical here. But if you provide the data on those type of bets and you're only allowed to bet $200 on the legal market, well, whoop-de-ding-dong, you go to the illegal market. You go off and you fix there. And then we can't track what's happening anyway. So the for the leagues to play this kind of disingenuous game, just stop it. Just stop providing the data. Right. And any bookmaker that runs those kind of bets that are easily fixable that easily corrupted, you just like cut them off. You stop it. You say, hey, guys, no, we're not gonna take this. We want you guys to bet on our games, we want people's interest, but there are certain types of bets that we're simply not gonna provide the data for. And yes, we're gonna take a hit, a financial hit as a sports league, but we're gonna do that. Instead, as you're saying so correctly, they're like, oh, we're only doing $200 bets. Oh, like, please give me a break. Give me a break. And this is the reason why at the beginning of our conversation, I said there is gonna be a league that is gonna die in the next few years in America. And if they keep doing this, if they keep dancing with the devil, if they keep saying to the public, the sporting public, oh, it's okay, guys, just bet, but you know, only bet $200. Really good faith sport fans are gonna look at one of the sports and just go, you know what, it's not worth it. I don't believe you anymore. I think I'm watching some theater. I think I'm watching this pre-arranged little gambling advertisement, and I'm just no longer in love with the uncertainty of your sport. I just don't believe it. And that's gonna kill off one of the sports leagues.

Mark Solomon 24:28

Declan, what about artificial intelligence? You know, we're talking data, data, data, right? Where is the avenue for artificial intelligence to be used to identify these bad actors, these dirty refs or players? You know, is there a way for that to be utilized more?

Declan Hill 24:48

Oh, look, like everything in in our society, AI is being promoted and pushed heavily. Like many things in our society, AI is just a bunch of malarkey. And I was speaking to some really high-level guys in in gambling, , actually only yesterday, and they were saying we have yet to see something with AI really useful, like actual AI stuff coming in and really using that. Now, there's lots of algorithms, and there's lots of technical things that are going on in behind the scenes in bookmakers. I'm not talking about that. We could literally do an entire program on the algorithm which bans winning gamblers, gradually forces them out of the bookmakers and closes down their accounts. But if you're a losing veteran, the bookmakers give you more and more credit because they want to take as much of your cash as possible. That's the algorithm that professional gamblers like Billy Walters are protesting vigorously against, just saying, hey, there's a ban or bankrupt model among American bookmakers. That's where AI, if you want to call it that, or algorithms are are working. The other thing that that is just so obvious is that fixing, like really serious fixing, is very, very, very obvious in American sports. It's called tanking. And everyone knows what's going on. And if you are really like a serious match fixer, you just go to the team that's gonna tank and say, Hey buddy, your your team owners are telling you to lose. So why don't you take extra capital?

Mark Solomon 26:23

We want the number one, or yeah, we want the number one or number two draft next year. So , you know, you're you're two and eleven, so , you know, don't try too hard, I guess.

Michael Carroll 26:33

Yeah, Declan there was a couple of podcasts where Mark was tinking, so I think there's nothing.

Declan Hill 26:38

Oh geez. I don't believe it. I do not believe it. But I do believe, and and and here's the final thing, and I'm really sorry to be so technical.

Michael Carroll 26:48

No, not at all.

Declan Hill 26:49

But look, here's the secret about the monitoring of gambling odds, and nobody talks about this stuff. So again, I really want to make sure that our financial climate investigator audience knows these true secrets of this industry. You can't tell if there's a fix going on in a major, major game or a major sports event. I'll take the analogy to the stock market. You can tell when there's corruption or alleged corruption going on in penny stocks because the liquidity in those companies is just so low. Like that the shares and the liquidity just isn't there. But if you were to arrange insider trading in a company like General Motors or I don't know, Microsoft or one of those big industry giants, it it just wouldn't show up. You you can't tell what's going on. There's so much money in those shares. And it's the same thing with many of the NBA games. It's the same thing, certainly, with any of the World Series or the playoffs in Major League Baseball. The liquidity in the market is too big for them to tell what's going on. Furthermore, fixers, again, they're not stupid. Criminals are not stupid, no matter what the sports leagues tell you. They're not dumb. They're not often gonna try to fix the Chicago White Sox in the 1919 series. Like they're not gonna get the favorites to lose. Instead, they're gonna get the team that's probably gonna tank or isn't doing very well. And then they've got an easy job. They just go to those guys and say, Hey, you're gonna lose anyway. Why don't you just lose with a little bit more cash in your pocket?

Mark Solomon 28:25

Right.

Declan Hill 28:26

Here, just do it. Like, and you're not gonna be able to see it because the market thinks that team's gonna lose anyway. So it doesn't matter how sophisticated your algorithm is, your AI or whatever, you're not gonna pick up those fixes. So fixing and corruption is underreported if you're just looking at the looking at the odds movements in in betting.

Michael Carroll 28:47

Hey Declan, you mentioned about what you know major leagues professional sports should do, you know, to prevent this. But my I'm a little more worried about like universities or athletes or student athletes that get caught up in this. I mean, I gotta say, probably right, 99% are not gonna do it, but just that one athlete that gets caught up in this. What what are like some red flags you know for fans or parents of student athletes that they should look for?

Declan Hill 29:13

Look, I think it's a brilliant question, and I think it's higher than 99%. I again I would invite our listeners, , you know, and anyone who's doubting me, just anecdotally go to an NCAA male team guy and just say, hey, um, how many of your buddies, how many of your teammates are are are really heavy gamblers? They'll just start laughing. Like, you know, they'll just say, like, oh, you know, it's not all of us, but it's like, you know, five or six of the guys, or two or three of the guys, they're in casinos, constantly, like we'll just laugh. Like, there's just so much gambling addiction among our young athletes. I mean, Notre Dame, they had to ban their entire male swim team because the guys were gambling. Same thing with the Crimson Tide. They had a coach who was a gambling addict who was you know gambling against his own team. Again and again and again, we're seeing this kind of stuff going on. Iowa, Iowa State. They had dozens of athletes that were gambling and betting. some of them well into the tens of thousands, both of bets and of also money on it. So I think we've got to start a conversation in high school and in NCAA of just saying, look, guys, gambling is addictive. And just that basic step has not been done. So many of the young people that I speak to have absolutely no idea that they're engaged in an addictive pursuit. Now, they they would know if they smoked a cigarette, they would know if they were drinking alcohol, they would know heck, if they were, you know, doing marijuana or whatever. Hey, you know, this is my choice and it's addictive, but I know it. But they're picking up a deeply addictive, you know, pastime, this the sports gambling, this frictionless sports gambling that has been compared by Swedish academics to heroin, and they have no idea. So can you imagine if if I were walking around and handing out kids, here, here, take some heroin. It's just good fun, it's good entertainment. That's what we're doing right now to our young people. So we've got to begin this conversation. We've got to begin saying, hey, if you want to do it, fine, but know that it's addictive. And here's the signals, here's the warning sign, here's the red flags. When you're starting to borrow money, when when a buddy is like constantly saying, Oh, hey, my mom didn't send me the cash. Can you lend me some cash? That's a red flag. That's when you guys need to start getting in a gambling addiction counselor. That's when you need to start speaking about it. But at this moment, we have zero excuse me, almost zero conversation about that. I was in Washington, D.C. speaking about this on the on Capitol Hill last week. I talk about the silent plague. There's a silent plague of gambling addiction among our sports athletes, coaches, officials, and virtually nobody talks about how desperately deep and widespread and pervasive addiction is among our sports community.

Michael Carroll 32:09

Hey Declan, you you mentioned this a while back. If you go on somebody's online gambling sites, hey, refer a friend, get $100. You know, if you're a college student, you start referring all your friends on the campus, it it could, you know, lead to more problems.

Declan Hill 32:24

Yeah, and it's not, by the way, most of those quote offers by gambling companies aren't a hundred bucks. They're a hundred bucks credit. Credit, right, that you're gonna lose. Like like gamblers don't win. And if they do win, the algorithm on most American bookmakers shuts them down. So if you are one of the very few people that can maintain a 53% you know winning record in your sports bets, you're gonna be shut down. You're gonna be shut down very, very quickly. But if you keep losing, they're gonna keep increasing your credit rating. They really want as much of your cash as possible, and they're gonna close you down if you show any sign of success at sports gambling.

Michael Carroll 33:07

And Declan, on a on a lighter note, I know we're obviously talking about you know a very addictive problem for millions of people around the world, but um I have to say that you've basically have ruined my last 11 Sundays to start a football season. Start a football season, man. I don't want to give up my name and I don't want to accuse them of of being involved in sports rigging, but if my team isn't doing very well and I can't get through a game without thinking about Declan, and I'm like there is no way that guy missed a tackle. I mean, you know, I'm like there's no way that guy should have fumbled a ball. I can't I can't even enjoy it anymore, Declan. Oh my god. I might have to go for counseling for that because it's I'm so sorry.

Declan Hill 33:55

I'll send you a teddy bear in the post and I'm really sorry. There you go. All banter aside, I don't want to be right, by the way. Like I wish I weren't. I wish that sports were really taking this seriously. And by the way, you know, you guys want me on as an organized crime expert. And I am, you know, not to toot my own horn, I am an expert in this. But I want you guys to note, and also the listeners to note, that I've virtually not talked about organized crime in this. I've talked about big corporations acting like mobsters. That's what we've got to. I mean, Disney that owns ESPN is now, you know, which is quote sports journalist channel, is now getting into bed with DraftKings and they're offering, you know, DraftKings is their official bookmaker. This is a phenomenon. This is a dangerous phenomenon.

Mark Solomon 34:46

Yeah.

Declan Hill 34:47

When Disney Channel and these big corporations are getting into bed with bookmakers. I don't want to overstate it, but you're like, man, couldn't we just have the Lucchese crime family back? Like at least they're not doing these kinds of stuff. At least they're not doing these algorithms which ban successful gamblers and bankrupt the others. This is there's something really fundamentally off in our society, you know, with these big corporations acting in this way. So I'm just going to flag that. , but but it it really is disturbing when when we as independent citizens have to be so on guard with this kind of stuff.

Michael Carroll 35:26

Right. Declan with the online sports gambling, what do you think they need to do better to get a control over those that might get involved in gambling too much where they might become addictive? Is there more that they should do?

Declan Hill 35:40

Well, they could they could start by stopping hunting for them. I mean, like literally, brother, their algorithm, like the thing that drives most American bookmakers, is identifying heavy losers and giving them more credit so they can lose more money. Their entire business model is predicated on finding the biggest losers and getting them to lose more. And it's not Declan Hill, you know, investigative professor who's saying that. It's Billy Walters, America's most successful professional gambler, who's saying you got to ban a bankrupt model. You're bankrupting betters, and you're banning guys like me, who, you know, I'm not ripping you off. I'm I'm ready to take you on, Mr. Bookmaker. I'm ready to bet you know my money against you, but you're banning me. You're banning the successful guys, the intelligent gamblers, but you're pursuing these guys. So I think it needs federal regulation. I really think it needs federal regulation across the board because some states are doing well, but other states, like my province up here in Canada, Ontario, it's like an unregulated jungle. It is just like full-on, unregulated. You can get away with almost anything up here. We really need to regulate this properly.

Mark Solomon 37:00

So, Declan, I was thinking about a question with Mike asked, and it's sort of it's sad to say, but it's almost like are the drug dealers doing enough to prevent people from becoming addicted to drugs? And that, you know, it's it's an oxymoron because they want you to bet. They want you to do more. They don't want you to stop, you know, they don't want you to get help. I mean, they put their ads out on their on their commercials and or on the back page of an ad, you know, saying that if you have an addiction problem, gambling, you know, call this number. But you know, they're betting on the people they're not gonna call, you know, and they're gonna try and win their money back that they've lost and it's just it spirals down. But I want to before we go here, Declan, and we appreciate your time. I know it's precious and you are a very busy man traveling the world, but I know there's some parents listening right now, and they speculate that their son or their daughter has an addiction. What recommendation can you give those parents to confront their child that might be?

Declan Hill 38:01

That's an excellent question. This is a this is an opioid epidemic or the equivalent of an opioid epidemic that is particularly prevalent with young men between the ages of 14 and 35. And there is a organization in Britain that you never want to join. You really never want to join, is called Gambling with Lies. Gambling with Lies. And it is made up of parents who have lost their children due to suicide. Because this is the deadly side of sports gambling addiction or gambling addiction. Is one in five addicts has serious thoughts or attempts suicide. This is not a pattern that you see in you know alcohol or drug addiction. There, I'm not I'm not trying to downplay them, you know, there are other issues with those addictions, but but gambling addiction has a much higher prevalence of suicide. And quite often, the very nearest and dearest to the um you know, gambling addict have no idea what's going on. So I would suggest you begin this conversation really quickly, because , like any form of addiction, there's lots of self-denial, there's lots of you know refusal to admit, but you begin that conversation, you start like you know, understanding this and also understanding that that they have been, if you excuse the word, groomed to become addicts. , I don't know if you guys follow esports, but there's what's called loot boxes. Loot boxes are effectively a form of gambling where children are encouraged to gamble on what's inside these loot boxes inside many of the esports games. And that can lead to all kinds of gambling problems. There'd be 12-year-olds who'd get, you know, hold of their mom and dad's credit card and rack up tens of thousands of dollars in in debts and stuff. But you can see very much like the tobacco companies in the 1980s and 90s, and they used to have these logos, Joe Camel, and all these kind of stuff, which would you know appeal to a younger demographic. There is a wing. I don't want to say all bookmakers, but some bookmakers are really getting into this. And as a parent, you know, begin the conversation. Begin the conversation. You know, just let them know that some of this stuff is as addictive as heroin. Right. If they still want to do it, at least they know that it's addictive. I don't want to give any parental advice, it's a difficult subject. But there's very few young males who, when they pick up a beer, are, you know, you don't know, you know, it's obviously gonna be addictive. Will that one beer kill them? No. But they know there's a sense of like, hey, I've now got I've now got autonomy, I can make my choice. But what we're giving to young people is a disease in some cases, and then we're blaming them. So we brought out this product, this frictionless gambling, and we simply have not told them how addictive it is. So if I'm a parent listening to this program, I would you know switch off , you know, as soon as it's over, and I would just say, hey guys, I've just been listening to this podcast and begin the conversation. I think that's incredibly important. Incredibly important.

Michael Carroll 41:23

Declan, what you're saying from my last question is that the sports online gambling companies that you that you mentioned, they're probably not gonna hire you as a consultant because you would be helping them to stop people from gambling. Yeah, it's true. That's true.

Declan Hill 41:37

No, and and let me let me be very clear, let me be very, very clear because as usual, you made an incredibly good point. much of this discussion and debate has been thrown off because bookmakers, in some cases in good faith, I have to be fair, have offered money to academics, to journalists. I mean, look, ESTN, that used to be a sports journalism network, has now an official bookmaker. I mean, that's where we've got to as a society. And I've made it very, very clear I will not take money from private bookmakers. It's just it's just not something I can do. Nor do, frankly, do I make bets. Even though I'm a quote expert in sports gambling, I never, ever make a bet. Because again, I want our listeners to know that I take their respect and their credibility really, really seriously. And I want them to know that, you know, maybe I've made a mistake, maybe I'm overstating or understating or whatever, but I'm not getting a personal profit out of this. This is not what I'm doing. So if I made a mistake, it's a genuine mistake. Unfortunately, in this particular issue about match fixing and sports gambling and all this stuff, I haven't been wrong because I've seen it in Asia, and then I've seen it across Europe, and now I'm seeing the same phenomenon in North America.

Mark Solomon 42:52

So, Declan, I appreciate you giving your time again to come on the podcast. And we never bet on this podcast. We know you're always going to be awesome. So I think this is your fourth or fifth time on the show. And for our listeners, you know, we just talked to Declan back in August while we were at our international conference. And boy, it's just amazing to see the prophetic comments and and things that he saw coming in the future actually come to fruition over the last you know five or six months here or so. We really appreciate it, Declan. Be safe out there. Thank you for exposing the evilness that is in the darkness and you're shining a light on that, you're bringing it to the forefront where hopefully, like you said, the federal government will begin to start controlling this out-of-control nightmare that's going on. And there's so many people that are have addiction problems, , that are suffering greatly. The work that you're doing and exposing this will lead to incredible changes here in the U.S. and worldwide.

Declan Hill 43:55

thank you very much. It really, guys, it's an honor. , the one thing I would ask our listeners to Do if you like this, can you please follow me on Substack? I'm at Crime Waves, allwhen words or Declan Hill on Substack. I'm trying to build up. I most of the time I'm teaching, but this year I'm really dedicating myself to try to build up my social media. So I'd I'd be really appreciative if people would follow me there.

Mark Solomon 44:19

Protectors Army, get get over there, sign up, subscribe with our incredible guest, Dr. Declan Hill.

Michael Carroll 44:26

And Mark, we'll put him in our show notes too. Put his information in there. Maybe even somebody has a gambling problem where they can go.

Mark Solomon 44:32

Yeah, we'll put some links up there for anyone that might be suffering.

Michael Carroll 44:36

Yeah. Hey Declan, I gotta I gotta let you know too. So my grandson, for our first grandson, he was born and he could speak five languages, so we named him Declan. Whoa.

Mark Solomon 44:46

you're just kissing you're kissing, but he's he's not I want to see the birth certificate. He's just trying to butter up to you, Declan.

Declan Hill 44:54

Guys, thank you so much. It's I really love talking to you guys. So any any time.

Mark Solomon 44:58

See you soon. The Protectors Podcast is produced by Modified Media and available for free wherever you listen to podcasts. The Protectors Podcast is presented by the IAFCI, communication, cooperation, prevention. Training the world's financial crimes investigators since nineteen sixty eight.