Episode 90: Danny Funt and Eric VanEpps

Author Danny Funt and Vanderbilt professor Eric VanEpps join the show to discuss the high societal costs of sports betting. Funt is the author of the highly acclaimed new book, “Everybody Loses: The Tumultuous Rise of American Sports Gambling.” The book looks at addiction, predatory marketing tactics, massive lobbying efforts, and the 180-degree shift by sports leagues in their embrace of sports betting. Along with colleague Jackie Silverman, VanEpps is studying how gambling on events makes people more willing to root for antisocial outcomes and the resulting degradation of empathy in society.

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:00

Welcome back to On the Ball, the podcast series from the Vanderbilt Sports and Society Initiative. I'm Andrew Marinist and I am so excited to have uh reporter and author uh Danny Funt with us today, as well as uh colleague here, Ed Vanderbilt, uh professor of marketing to Eric Van Epps, who I had a pleasure of meeting a couple months ago uh prior to a Vanderbilt uh women's basketball game. Um Danny and Eric, thank you so much for joining the show today.

SPEAKER_00 0:29

Glad to be with you.

SPEAKER_02 0:31

And uh Danny is the author of Everybody Loses: The Tumultuous Rise of American Sports Gambling, uh, which is a topic that he has heavily reported uh for the Washington Post and other outlets over the years. Eric is working on um uh research on how participation in in sports gambling leads to uh sort of acceptance of antisocial behaviors uh among people. And I'm really interested in learning more about that. Um, Danny, start with you. Um there's so many questions I have or so many different ways to take this, but I think one thing that everybody can relate to, whether they've really um, you know, read your book or studied this issue, is you you can't avoid the fact that things have shifted so much just over the last, and maybe you can define the the years, but it seems like leagues used to be preaching against gambling. Now they're uh you know in partnership with gambling companies. Um I didn't have to worry about driving my kids to school and being bombarded with sports book billboards uh when they were little. Now, like I don't know how many will pass on the way to school every single day. Um you used to have maybe Jimmy the Greek on one show on the on the weekends. Now every sports uh network is not only running odds, but having their their personalities on commercials, like promoting gambling. Like what were the the confluence of um factors that that changed everything in this country? And and where do you pinpoint when it when it actually when it happened?

SPEAKER_00 2:10

I'll just say it's changed so dramatically, and it's it really undermines one of the main arguments for legalization, which was you wouldn't actually grow the number of people betting. You would simply transition them from the black market to a text and regulated legal market. And it doesn't take immense research or sophisticated insight to know that if you spend billions of dollars on ads and you've got the leagues and their broadcasters pushing gambling at every opportunity, obviously way more people will be betting on sports than ever before. So we're still uh seeing the industry and its allies make that argument. And I think it gets less and less credible with every day. As for what changed, one of the big turning points was Adam Silver, the commissioner of the NBA, writing an op-ed in 2014 that came out in favor of regulation. It was shocking at the time because he had just replaced David Stern, who was about as anti-gambling as they come, and also because the NBA had joined the other professional leagues and the NCAA in fighting New Jersey's effort to overturn the federal ban on bookmaking that had been the law since 1992. So a lot of those leagues, I'm told, felt very blindsided that Adam Silver goes in the New York Times and undermines uh everything that they had been arguing in court. And from there, that really set in motion the gambling industry's campaign to convince the leagues that this would be in their best interest, to get them ready so that if the Supreme Court eventually struck down that law, they would be poised to convince all the other states that this is worth cashing in on. And uh, that's kind of why we are where we are today, is because Adam Silver stuck his neck out and said, um, this would be good for sports and good for America if this were legalized. And with eight years of evidence of how legalization has played out, we can look back on that op-ed and roll our eyes at some of the things he was saying, but it was a real turning point.

SPEAKER_02 4:16

And is it just a matter of of of greed? I mean, like, why is everybody buying in from celebrities who are on the commercials to media members who are promoting to leagues that are uh you know um in such close cahoots with with these companies? You do write that you know, TV ratings are are driven by by gamblers, right? Historically have been. So there may be some side effects that aren't directly related to the money that's generated by the by the by the advertising or by the gambling. I mean, is there any uh redeeming reason why why things have changed?

SPEAKER_00 4:56

Greed, but also uh a clear bandwagon effect in all these different categories, like with the leagues uh where Adam Silver, you know, comes out in support, and then the others get on board very quickly, with media, where there was one monumental partnership with a media uh broadcaster and a sports book, and then the all the other broadcasters followed suit, on and on. I think a lot of people are saying if people are gonna make money off this, I feel like a sucker if I don't. Uh, and that's pretty depressing from a moral leadership standpoint, but I think it's very observable. The other thing is, and I don't want to get this is not by any means my area of expertise, but I do think we're less comfortable talking about morality than we used to be. And so you look at arguments that used to be made in Congress or by the commissioners or by any influential voices in sports, and they used to talk about what was good and bad for sports in a language that doesn't really exist in public discourse with sports or anything else now. And that maybe opened the door for this, uh, these opportunists to cash in. The other thing is they were convinced that there were arguments to be had that that legalization would uh be beneficial, mainly for the integrity of sports. And as the argument went, you've got tens of billions of dollars and maybe more than that being wagered illegally in the U.S. every year. We can't track that. We can't see if someone's betting who shouldn't be, or if there's a shift in the odds in one of these offshore markets that might be an indication that the fix is in. If we brought this above board into the sunlight, we could uh detect suspicious odds movement or catch someone betting who's not supposed to be, and that will enhance the integrity of sports. I think there's reasons to be skeptical that they ever really believed that, but it was a very compelling argument to bring to the states and say, we care first and foremost about integrity. This is good for integrity. And so it gave them some cover when really I think they were looking about lining their pockets.

SPEAKER_02 7:12

Right. Um, I mean, the the title of the book is Everybody Loses. Um, are there any winners? I mean, there it seems like there's a lot of people making money. In what way are they losing also?

SPEAKER_00 7:25

One re one uh aha moment that made me uh drew me to that title was realizing just how many sports books aren't making money, how something like 60 operators flooded the marketplace after that first wave of states to legalize around 2019-2020. Obviously, the pandemic coinciding supercharged this because a lot of states were looking for a quick way to correct their budget issues or make up for budget issues. Uh, but you've got those 60 operators, and now it really seems like we're destined for a duopoly of FanDuel and DraftKings dominating the market and a few others kind of fighting to stay afloat, and the rest going out of business or being acquired. It's not the sort of slam dunk house always wins business that people suspect. Um, and just the idea that you've got all these companies and their investors losing was like, wow, if if even the house is losing, that's quite a story. But the the inspiration for the title really was the idea that there's a lot more than money at stake. And even people who are making money might be losing credibility or losing uh trust, you know, especially with sports, when you see cynicism spreading about match fixing and other corruption, I think the lost trust is really damaging and pervasive. From a health standpoint, uh, what we're losing is as a potential addiction crisis takes shape is profound and hard to wrap your head around. There's a lot more than money, is my point. So even if a handful of companies are making money, they might be losing something deeper than that.

SPEAKER_02 9:09

And as a society, we we all lose, and which leads to Eric, I'll come back with many more questions for you, Danny. But um Eric, I I don't believe that uh sports gambling has been a focus of your lifelong scholarly work. But how did you come to your interest in studying this issue, particularly how gambling leads to this antisocial uh behavior?

SPEAKER_01 9:34

Yeah, so I'm trained in behavioral economics, and a lot of that research thinks about risk preferences, but I would say uses quite stylized experiments and uh literature to think about how we think about gambles, gains and losses and all of that. And it felt really different from the really active pushing promotional marketing that we're even seeing around sports gambling, to think about a stylized bet in kind of a casino atmosphere where you go in, you pick a particular game to bet on, or you bet on a poker game or a roulette, uh a spin of the roulette wheel feels very different from multi-leg parlays and being pushed during games to consider updating your bets and all of that. So seeing, in my lived experience as a sports fan, as somebody who engages in the culture, seeing sports gambling pushed me so actively and trying to reconcile that with the behavioral economics literature on gambling felt like there may need to be some updates or there may be some different things going on. So I've been thinking over the last now two or three years that I've had enough kind of expertise and a network and all of that to think about sports gambling. And now it's a question of well, what are the the research questions that we can tackle? And one came about in a very uh benign way, uh, I think is that I was playing in a fantasy basketball league, right? I had some friends and we we all had our fantasy teams and we had a$20 buy-in to be able to play in this fantasy basketball league. And I was finding myself spending hours and hours and hours through the course of this basketball season thinking about my team, updating, going on the waiver wire, picking up players, and the amount of time I was putting into it. This is to think about the everybody loses. I might have came out second or third place in the league. I might have won back my my buy-in, right? We we I I didn't lose money on all of this, but the time that I spent on it was its own loss. And then on top of that, I felt this weird emotional disconnect and change in how I was consuming the sport. Basketball has been one of my favorite sports to watch. I've always been a San Antonio Spurs fan, dating back to Tim Duncan's rookie season. Like they they're this team that I love. And yet, because I didn't have Victor Wembanyama on my fantasy team, I had this push and pull where I should have been delighted at his success and his growth as a player, and yet I resented that he was doing well for somebody else's fantasy team. And so this year I said I'm out of the league. I stayed in the group chat because I wanted to stay with my friends. I even offered to do my buy-in so I could still talk about basketball with my friends. Um, but I said I don't want to have a team this year because I want to watch the Spurs play this year, and I don't want to have like this conflict of interests at play when I'm watching my favorite team have a really successful season simply because they weren't on my fantasy team. So that's a long-winded way of thinking about this problem. But I was feeling this real emotional pull that was counter to my typical interests, and I feel like that has to be going on over and over and over again among sports fans. And then as you're seeing the rise of these other prediction markets in Calcian, polymarket, and all the rest, uh, when people engage in anything in the world where there's these financial incentives on the line, potentially that are contrary to your actual typical day-to-day preferences, and that we might see a real loss in our empathy for people, that we might actually want bad things to happen to real human beings because they're on the opposite side of our bet, and that we need to study that and think about that critically. Um, so so that's the the motivation for all of this. Um, we're doing data collection right now. Uh uh, you know, we definitely don't have papers that are are ready to publish or anything, but we're seeing consistent evidence that when people have money on the line, they are more accepting of uh hypothetical bad things happening to the opposite side of the bet. So, one example of this, we asked people um who had a bet on the line during the Super Bowl, right? We knew that that was like an event that we could ask lots of people about, and we said, okay, if you're betting in favor of the Patriots, how happy would you be if this negative thing happened to a member of the Seahawks? And vice versa. If you had a bet on the Seahawks, how happy would you be if a negative thing happened to the Patriots? And on perhaps unsurprisingly, but I think important to document, uh, their willingness to accept those negative things happening, their hypothetical happiness if those bad things happened increased when money was on the line relative to when when it wasn't, right? So you could be a Patriots fan, but now if you're a Patriots fan who has bet money on the Patriots, now you're especially incentivized, not just for the Patriots to win, but maybe for something bad to happen to the Seahawks to make sure that the Patriots win or something like that. Um so that's where the research is going. Uh I got new data in just this morning that I analyzed. We're like finding the effect relatively consistently. We're trying to figure out the boundary conditions and all of that. So um exciting work in that I think it's really important, depressing work in a very uh in in another way in terms of this acceptance of antisocial uh events happening. Um I will say this research is in collaboration with Jackie Silverman, who's also here at Vanderbilt, and then Ike Silver, who's at uh University of Southern California. So we're excited about this, but plenty more to do to really map out the shape of this effect.

SPEAKER_02 15:12

Yeah, and I remember when I first met you, one of the um the aspects of this that you were interested in was when not only are people like rooting for maybe bad things to happen to someone, they then also begin to potentially harass the athletes themselves who they feel like cost them uh money, right? And that uh I know that anecdotally we we have seen that with athletes here at Vanderbilt who will get DMs or or messages. What have you noticed in in that regard?

SPEAKER_01 15:42

So it's only anecdotal at this point. I think we need to go out and do actual interviews and and all of that to get a sense of of what's going on. I'd be delighted to talk to Vanderbilt athletes and and other athletes about this. But exactly right. And Danny talks about this some in his book as well. Like uh the amount of harassment that is occurring because of gambles, I would say both after the fact, like harassing people who lost them money, but also during the events has just skyrocketed. I saw that during the masters somebody was kicked out for heckling Rory McElroy. And and my wife asked me, she's like, why on earth would you go to all the effort, all the like going through security and everything to get into the masters? This like once-in-a-lifetime experience as a fan to get to go to the masters just to heckle somebody. I'm like, oh, I'm sure he had a bet. I'm sure he was gambling against Rory McElroy. But I don't I don't know that. I don't have actual evidence, but I I think these anecdotes are pretty compelling, and I want to, like I say, pair them with um really objective, clean research to to try to to think through all of this. But Danny can can especially speak to some of the stories you've documented about this harassment as well.

SPEAKER_02 16:52

Yeah, Danny, I think the great thing about your book is that it it takes this this big issue, but you know, tells it through the stories of of real people, you know. And so I am curious about could you share some of the anecdotes that that you uh discovered that illustrate some of the points that Eric's making about how this changes people, you know, changes maybe the even the wiring of their brain.

SPEAKER_00 17:14

Yeah, I begin the book with stories of athletes being abused by gamblers because I find it so disturbing, especially where that could be headed, but also because it's an undeniable example of a byproduct of legalization. As the NCAA official who's in charge of gambling policy put it, that sort of harassment was like a flickering flame before legalization took off, and now it's like a wildfire burning out of control. That's pretty stark. Um, and something that I wish the commissioners and the other powers that be behind the betting boom would answer for, as in, are you really comfortable with this trade-off for whatever we're getting out of gambling? Is it is it okay that we know as a consequence, athletes of all levels and all, you know, visibilities will be hounded by gamblers on an almost game-by-game basis, which is not an exaggeration. That's something the NCAA has documented in surveys. There was an anonymous poll of NBA players that had some pretty brutal responses about what they're dealing with. I remember in particular, Jalen Brunson of the New York Knicks said, whatever you're picturing of the, and I know I said it's anonymous, but they had some named quotes. Uh, he said, whatever you're picturing of the kind of messages we're getting from gamblers, just know it's way, way worse than that. And I've seen some of those, and it's just gruesome and demented. So it that's bad enough. Um, but when it could actually lead to violence, uh, that's even more alarming. And there have been arrests for people making credible death threats. And I heard from the former chief security officer of the NFL who said, in his words, it's only a matter of time before some enraged gambler tries to kill someone who cost them money. Uh, when Eric was talking about some of the social consequences of all this, that was really in the back of my mind throughout. Like, does this enrich fandom or cheapen and degrade it? And I in the book, I'm I'm focusing a lot on what could be called predatory business tactics from the sports books and negligent uh regulatory actions from the states. And I think that's a little bit more clear-cut and easy to analyze, but I hope we're thinking about uh those more those social issues in the backdrop. And there was one interview I did that I I really found eye-opening on that front. It was with someone who had worked at FanDuel in marketing insights. So she basically did a lot of customer surveys. And she said, Yeah, we talk about it as this social activity, and you have your group chats and you you go to bars with people to watch games you've bet on. But what we find in our surveys is a lot of men, especially, because it's overwhelmingly a male activity, a lot of men are doing this at home alone and they don't like to talk about it, and they don't like to talk about how much they're losing because there's a bit of embarrassment with that. But just the idea that this is a remedy for this male loneliness epidemic that we hear so much about, or that it's feeding into a financial desperation and even nihilism that we hear so much about, that to me raises the stakes uh well beyond, you know, is it uh annoying when we're trying to watch a game or something? It's it's it's uh seems to be a lot deeper than that.

SPEAKER_02 20:42

Speaking of the predatory nature of it, one thing that bothers me on commercials is like if you have a gambling problem, you know, like as if it's uh entirely the individual's fault that they have a problem and really not acknowledging the fact that how much effort, time, uh sneaky marketing practice are put into preying on the people who are the most vulnerable, uh, even when you'll maybe see that 800 number for uh responsible gaming or you know, support. Like, how would you describe uh or do you have a story you can tell that really illustrates the way that these companies are uh actively uh sort of pursuing the the most vulnerable and like what an average person is up against not to get hooked on this?

SPEAKER_00 21:32

Yeah, I'd love to share some, but let me just say first, as far as this semantic question. I used to kind of roll my eyes at that stuff and be like, what difference does it really make? And the more I learn about this and speak with people, especially people in recovery for gambling addictions, the more I take that stuff very seriously. And I think it does have a serious impact on perceptions. And that phrase you referenced, bet responsibly, is a great example of that. Because it really, in some respects, lets the operators off the hook, as if this is a matter of personal responsibility and discipline. And if only you were more responsible, you wouldn't have your gambling problems. And when you realize this is not just an addiction, but a especially brutal one and a really, really challenging one to overcome if you do suffer from that mental health disorder, to frame it as a character defect strikes a lot of people in both in recovery, but also just health advocates and psychologists as especially cruel and harmful. And also when we're talking about how confident are we in the operators that they're looking out for the best interests of customers, that saying bet responsible again overshadows the fact that really the way the products are designed and the visibility and ease of access to the products is driving a lot of uh addiction rates and just uh examples of problem gambling beyond uh some stuff that a lot of people say is is just PR. It's just window dressing, this whole responsible gaming uh culture. As far as demonstrating how uh over the top it can be, I have a whole chapter about so-called VIP customers. These are people who are losing thousands of bucks a week, sometimes much more than that. And just the the industry insists that these are very wealthy people who don't even know that money's missing. And if you understand the literature around gambling addiction, just because you can afford to lose a lot of money doesn't necessarily mean that it's healthy to be betting every hour of the day practically, and you know, obsessing about gambling whenever you're thinking about sports. But but and yet but yet I think we're a little bit more comfortable with the idea of people betting a huge amount of money if they can afford it. The problem is that just about everyone I've met who's in recovery for a gambling addiction was treated to those VIP perks. We're talking about total, you know, white glove customer service of someone texting you day and night about your bets and about everything else, taking you out to dinner, going to games with you, playing golf with you, giving you all these gifts and other freebies like uh throwing out the first pitch at a baseball game, or you know, here's a new set of golf clubs. You mentioned you like golf, on and on and on. That is just so overboard when it comes to securing these prized customers. About 1% of them, about 1% of betters make up about 50% of revenue. And so you could understand why the DraftKings and Fandle of the world have hundreds of employees dedicated to looking out for their every need. And yet I heard the companies again us insist don't worry, at that level, we are checking that you either have the income or just the liquidity to be able to bet that much. And so I was speaking with a guy in Connecticut who was telling me about, you know, he became addicted to the betting, but also that VIP treatment. And it made him a lot a lot harder to quit because he loved being taken care of in that way. He loved taking his wife out to uh practically a thousand dollar dinner and FanDuel would just, you know, pay the bill. And he said it made it a lot harder for him to get help, knowing he was going to lose the betting and the VIP status. And in the back of my head, I'm remembering all these conversations with these companies telling me, yeah, this sounds like we're egging people on to bet and bet and bet, but we make sure they can afford to do it and they're doing it safely. So I asked this guy, you mentioned you lost 100 grand in a year at FanDuel. What were you doing for a living at that time? And he said, I was a server at a cheesecake factory making 65 grand a year. And obviously FanDuel either never checked that or didn't do anything about that. And it's not that surprising, but it goes, it it really underscores why that maybe is the most ethically fraught side of the business because they're pressuring people in such extraordinary ways to bet at a terrifying frequency. And obviously, they're catching problem gamblers in that net along with just ultra-rich people.

SPEAKER_02 26:36

And you you mentioned hundreds of people maybe providing that white club service, and you found it one of these companies, what, one person working on the quote unquote responsible uh games?

SPEAKER_00 26:46

Oh my gosh. Yeah, that had to be the most like jaw on my floor phone call. Because I'd been hearing this was at a company called Points Bet that's since been acquired by Fanatics, but Points Bet was in more than it does in states, had a few hundred thousand customers, did real business and made a big splash uh several years ago. And all of these people, whether it was in marketing or at the VIP side or the so-called traders who are approving and rejecting each bet, all of them said whenever there was an issue that seemed like uh a responsible gaming concern, they would run it by RG, the acronym for responsible gaming. So hearing that over and over, I assume it must be the sprawling department inside points bet. And when I finally interviewed the person who oversaw that department, I said, I don't expect you to know the exact number of people working under you, but just ballpark it. Like how many people were working with you in RG? And she laughed and she said, uh, yeah, no need to ballpark it. It was just me. One person responsible for this sprawling business. It's it's a joke, and it shows how unserious they are about actually investing in that side of the business. And the skeptic would say, because the business can't exist without people going overboard. Um, there is no model for a profitable sports book that doesn't involve people losing way more than they can afford. So uh you should bear that in mind when you think about states arguing, you know, we have this under control. This cut these companies can be trusted to self-police.

SPEAKER_02 28:28

Man, Eric, back to you. Um when you study the uh social implications of all this, and you mentioned the um prediction markets now. So it may not just be the case of someone you know wishing an athlete to pull a hamstring, but for what time is a uh a first bomb gonna drop, you know, uh in a in a in a war? What what do you see as the social implications of a society that uh is betting on literally everything?

SPEAKER_01 29:00

Yeah, I mean uh you can make an argument that any kind of futures market, uh take it take it back, like a financial investment, any kind of futures market is of course moved by big geopolitical events like wars and elections and all of that. And so, you know, you could always trade on the price of oil or different different commodities. What's different here, I would say, are two things. One is we're getting much more specific about the event. So, in terms of kind of the way you frame it psychologically in your mind, you are now thinking not about, all right, the price of oil might go up or go down based on the war that's happening and and and just trying to think like, well, but then maybe this, you know, maybe we'll open these strategic oil reserves. And you'd have to really think critically and understand the the dynamics at play a lot more. If I instead make the bet be about something specific in the war itself, well, now that feels like something you can wrap your head around and you think you actually understand it reasonably well. So now you might be more likely to enter these markets than you ever would have previously. Calculating the price of oil feels quite complicated. Deciding whether or not I think I know better than other people on the other side of this bet for a very specific event, people might feel like they have more relative competence in. So that might increase the number of people playing these bets to begin with. And then above and beyond that, as we've kind of already highlighted, uh once you have like an opposite side of the bet, you're actively incentivized for that opposite side of the bet to do poorly. And that might mean simply kind of psychological wishing for that to happen, but it may lead to actions as well that that encourage for that thing to happen, whether that's posting misinformation on social media. I think there's more, there's also more ways for us now than ever before to influence others and influence these events. You're even seeing some of these events on uh prediction markets that are specific to individual people. Uh, John Oliver, on a recent episode of Last Week Tonight, highlighted these prediction markets. And one of them was like, what words will be said on an earnings call for one of these AI companies? And so the CEO or one of the people on the earnings call just kind of jokingly looks at the market, sees what those words are, and just rattles them off. Whether or not they had a bet on the line, there's this like active manipulation as well that only exacerbates this feeling that we have that like everything is rigged, nothing feels like there's real fundamentals in the world that we're we're investing in or that we're thinking about. And I worry it's gonna really degrade our empathy for other people and our belief in some of our traditional ways of investing for retirement, such that it all kind of feels equivalent. Like that's my big, big concern is that the more we see sports gambling, the more we see prediction markets, that we won't differentiate between those and investing in a 401k or investing in real estate, that it all feels like a game, that it all feels like something that could be rigged, and that then people are gonna say, so I might as well gamble on sports, because at least I like sports and I know more about sports, than trying to invest in uh in the stock market or something like that. So that's a that's a big picture concern that I have. Um and and I may be kind of a little bit out in front of my skis uh to argue that that's that that's what this is all necessarily going to lead to. I I can't say for sure that that's where this is all going, but that's what I'm studying and and worried about for sure.

SPEAKER_02 32:40

Um Danny, it seems like there's so many parallels between uh this industry and like the tobacco industry. And uh, you know, in the course of my lifetime, things change where you can't you don't see like a Marlboro ad on TV anymore, or the cigarettes are behind the counter. Like what are the uh parallels you see there? And is there anything like what could fix all of this? Is there gonna be some moment where we realize like the World Series was was fixed, or that there are so many cases of addiction that something has to happen, or uh like what could possibly change the direction of what we're seeing? And short of that, are there uh you know remedies that could be put in place to limit the harm?

SPEAKER_00 33:31

Yeah, you know, as far as the tobacco comparison goes, I used to be very wary of it just because it's so inflammatory and people think of tobacco as so deadly, and gambling addiction is certainly potentially deadly as well, but I treaded carefully, and I think hearing from people compare the way tobacco used to be marketed to the nature of a lot of gambling ads, that analogy becomes pretty undeniable, especially the use of celebrities to make it seem like this harmless, cool thing to do. I think when we see the rates of youth gambling surging from college down to even pre-teenagers, it's hard not to think that seeing superstar athletes and movie stars and all these commercials who make it look like gambling is just the way to be a sports fan now has a real effect. Um, also, I'm actually writing an article now, so I don't want to say too much about it, but the way that the tobacco business co-opted health experts and other trusted voices uh is evident in how some of the health advocates and gambling are uh being influenced. I'll just leave it at that. Um, as far as what could be done to reverse things, there are already some states that are trying to backpedal. Ohio has a bill uh in the legislature that would ban online betting. Um, Colorado has proposed a number of restrictions, including on ads and on uh certain types of promotions that are very effective at seducing people and keeping them engaged. The industry is fighting that incredibly aggressively, as you'd expect. So, as far as what it would actually take to really um swing things, uh there was someone in my book who I quote at the end who laid out three possibilities, and I think they're pretty compelling and horrifying. Uh, one was a rash of suicides among gambling, which you saw in the UK that led to a lot of reforms. And the suicidal rate among gambling exceeds it's the exact number is debated, but it way exceeds um alcoholics and other substance abuse addictions. So that's not far-fetched. Um the other one was, as I mentioned earlier, an athlete killing an or a gambler killing an athlete, and then the blowback that that would cause. And the third was a major match fixing scandal involving some superstar or a very high-profile game. And the person who told me this, I agree with him, is rooting for the fixing scandal because at least that one doesn't involve someone dying. But they would all be pretty catastrophic. Um, and yet there is just so much money to be made, and it's so hard to convince a state to turn off the flow of tax revenue once they're accustomed to it. Uh, it unfortunately it does seem like it would take a real crisis to get people to wake up to how out of control this is becoming.

SPEAKER_02 36:35

Yeah, wow. Well, um, wrap this up with one last question. I mean, I approach this as a sports fan. I hate the fact that it seems like in order to be a sports fan, you have to be involved in this. Um, maybe I'm a hypocrite to some extent because, like Eric, like I do play fantasy sports um for um$20, minor amounts of money that are going to friends rather than to uh uh you know a book. Um but especially I want to think about my kids and that that what they're exposed to might lead them to believe that this is just part of of being a sports fan. Um Danny, what what would you say uh you discovered that um parents should understand about the potential impact on their kids, even mine are 12, you know, and 15 years old.

SPEAKER_00 37:27

Yeah, I uh I started playing fantasy football when I was nine. Uh it was a free league on Yahoo. I still play on Yahoo. Um I barely risk any money. It definitely does not activate the gambling juices uh the way that other stuff does. And now I heard, and and I quote a guy in the book who's a very successful football professional football better and odds maker who sat his nine-year-old down to explain how the house has such a significant edge in sports betting and how it's really not a way to win money. So just the idea that you might need to give the sort of gambling version of the talk to a third grader is so surreal and yet I think appropriate because of how inescapable these ads are. Um, it sounds like some states are considering curriculum, just like they try to educate kids about the dangers of drinking and smoking and whatever else, that gambling ought to be included in that. Um, but I still think there's a big learning curve. And sometimes it's a matter of just parents not recognizing that they really shouldn't be encouraging their kids to gamble. It sounds like some view it as a bonding experience or like, gosh, there's a lot worse that they could be outdoing than risking a little money on sports. I'll even facilitate that and say, here's my account, have edit. Um, that sounds like a terrible idea. And it might take a while, though, for that to fully sink in. So I do think the idea that way more kids than ever are betting. And it often starts with sports, and then, like so many people, they look for other ways to bet, and that can be where it gets really overboard. But when you hear a study recently that found that uh a third of teenage boys have bet on sports, or you see a survey that found that a one in five college students dip into money they've set aside for tuition to fund their sports betting, that's that's pretty widespread. That's not some fringe issue. And uh I think that'll get a lot of people's attention.

SPEAKER_02 39:33

Yeah. Eric, as uh someone that's around young people at a university, uh anecdotally, like what's your experience with college students and and gambling? Um, and you know, even beyond that, what you're after with this study and seeing how uh participation can lead to just a lack of empathy. Um when you think about that among this cohort of young people, it seems like an especially vulnerable or dangerous time for them to be developing those uh ways of looking at the world.

SPEAKER_01 40:04

Yeah, I mean, I I try to talk about different research projects of mine in class, and inevitably when I mention sports gambling, that's when I find my students perk up the most or seem like they have the most stories to share, right? They they're familiar with it, they know all about it, they're engaged or their friends are engaged. Sometimes even though they're under the age of 21, they're they're mentioning this this awareness. Um, I've like wondered for the longest time why there wouldn't be kind of geolocation uh regulations on gambling on college campuses or high school campuses or some of those things. I I I the technology seems to exist, and so you would think we could do a little bit more regulation in in that regard as well. Um just to just to if you're saying there's an age restriction, like make the age restriction real and and have teeth rather than something that relies on people self-identifying and and telling you the truth. Um I don't need to gamble while I'm on campus either. That's okay, right? If I as a 38-year-old can't sports, can't place a sports bet while I'm in my office on campus. I think that would be permissible and reasonable. So there's some common sense regulations that I think still elude us as a as a nation and organization by organization that I would I would love to see a little bit more of. Uh returning to your question just about being around young people and and these questions of of empathy and the rest, uh I mean, I think my students I don't know, I'm lucky enough to be around students who I think are like trying to do better, right? They're like they're they're they're really idealistic or optimistic. I I I have really good students and I don't find that they're like telling me I'm wrong for studying this. They're telling me like I'm worried about it too. Um, and so to some extent I think like we want to hear from them and and their they do have the empathy right now, and we don't want to just write them off or say that this is like a lost cause and that we can only deal with kind of treatment on the back end, but rather figure out what we can do up front to kind of help them uh and and be there for them. Um I will say the final one one thing is like I've had good interactions with individual people at the sports betting operators and the the regulators that are trying to like there's a lot of people trying to do best, but I return to these questions that were raised by both of you, Andrew and Danny, or we put a lot of the input the the focus on like individual self-control, where it's like it's up to you to seek help. If you have a gambling problem, call this number. And we're doing a lot that says like it's up to individuals to to resolve it at every and I just think there's a lot more as policymakers, as advocates, as organizations, as businesses, kind of across the field, I think there's a lot more that we can do to put structures in place rather than just tools in place. Um, and so that's what I'm continuing to study as well is what are those structures that can that can really help people out.

SPEAKER_02 43:13

All right. Uh well, Danny's book, uh, highly recommend it. Uh everybody loses. Danny, for those who are interested in learning more about you or the book or following your continued uh reporting on this subject, how how can they do that?

SPEAKER_00 43:26

Uh my website's dannyfunt.com. Uh my name is my social handle, and hopefully you can find the book on Amazon or Barnes Noble or your local bookstore.

SPEAKER_02 43:35

That's great. And Eric, if people are interested in uh your your research on this, um is it possible for them to find it somewhere? And when might that be?

SPEAKER_01 43:46

Yeah, I mean, stay tuned in terms of actual academic papers coming out and all of that. But um, I'm Eric Van Epps um at Vanderbilt in the Owen Graduate School of Management. Um, certainly available for emails and and conversations. About the research. But yeah, we're hoping to have papers out later this year, next year. It's an ongoing process for sure.

SPEAKER_02 44:07

Fantastic. Well, uh, Eric and Danny, thank you both for taking the time to uh join the show. Um, look forward to uh following both in the future. It's a topic that's not going away. I know there's going to be a course taught through the Vanderbilt Sports and Society Minor on campus uh on this topic of sports gambling. So maybe you'll both uh have a chance to speak to that class at some point in the near future. Have a great day. Thanks again.