Sports betting has become a giant epidemic in recent years, with billions of dollars being wagered on every sport across the U.S. It s everywhere, on every TV show, and on every podcast. And it s spread beyond sports to all kinds of other things like political prediction markets, wars, and video games. In this episode, we talk about how sports betting has changed the way we look at gambling, and the impact it s having on society.
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00:01:08.760It used to be where you watched television or movies.
00:01:12.100And, yeah, someone went to a casino every once in a while.
00:01:14.640Maybe they had a small poker game in the background.
00:01:18.640But the sports betting, the constant betting on the horses, calling the bookie in for points on your basketball game, this was degenerate behavior.
00:01:27.440This was routinely shown to be behavior that was for people who were backsliding, who were in the grips of addiction.
00:01:51.180They're showing the different bets you could make.
00:01:53.500They're doing the advertising for all of this stuff, and it's all done from your pocket.
00:01:57.960This has radically changed the way that we look at gambling, especially as it spreads beyond sports to all kinds of other stuff like political prediction markets and wars and video games.
00:02:09.580Joining me today to talk about that is one of our favorite returning guests, Mr. Jay Burton.
00:02:18.280So this might be in some ways generational, and it's interesting because I know a lot of people watch this show, and maybe they're not the biggest fan of sports, right?
00:02:30.120I'm somebody who I enjoy watching my one team.
00:02:34.400I watch the Buccaneers on Sunday most of the time for National Football League in the United States, and that's pretty much all I watch when it comes to sports.
00:02:45.360But a lot of people will sneer at this and say, well, this is just a sports bro problem, right?
00:02:50.220Like the sports ball American who watches all the football and is obsessed with all the sports league and is doing fantasy football and all these things.
00:03:00.200But what I think is important as we're going to get into here is while this starts in sports, and it may mainly impact that crowd right now, it's spreading into every aspect of our lives.
00:03:12.500Again, from wars to politics to video games.
00:03:16.640You can gamble on literally everything all the time, and all of these different apps and opportunities are presented to people constantly.
00:03:23.740So people over probably like 40 or 50, they're still doing this to a decent degree because they're sports fans.
00:03:30.520But the people under 50, they're doing it a lot, not just through sports, but through these other avenues.
00:03:36.500So is this something that you have seen impact people in your real life?
00:04:33.460And there will always be people who are addicted to gambling.
00:04:36.680But, as you said, there's a world of difference between, you know, some guy who's got a bookie, right, who's really in deep.
00:04:42.960And dozens of different apps promoted by famous celebrities, promoted by the leagues themselves, which are quite literally two button presses.
00:04:52.540You know, many of these apps, as I'm sure your listeners will be aware, incentivize you to get started.
00:04:57.960It's like the old 80s drug PSA, like, hey, kid, you want to try a hit?
00:05:02.280They'll give you $100, $200 just to start.
00:05:05.800And, obviously, the reason they do that is they know there's a certain number of people who are going to become, effectively, chemically addicted to gambling.
00:05:14.200It's also, it bears mentioning, the type of sports betting has also changed to become much more granular.
00:05:20.620Whereas, before, you might bet on a spread or you might bet on who's going to win the big game.
00:05:25.560And, obviously, people have always, you know, unfortunately, lost their lives to gambling.
00:05:30.040You may be familiar with a famous Russian guy, Dostoevsky, who wrote a book about this, The Gambler.
00:05:34.360But, this new technology has enabled these very minute micro bets.
00:05:39.840So, not necessarily betting on the outcome of the game, but in a fight, you'd say, you know, decision in round one, under this amount of time, or this many significant strikes, or, you know, XYZ, very granular things, which has made throwing games, throwing a match, much, much easier.
00:05:56.640Because now, you don't have to convince an entire sports team or convince someone to throw away their entire career.
00:06:03.360All you have to do is mess with it a little bit.
00:06:06.700You know, maybe you don't go for that shot because, you know, there's a lot of money on you scoring XYZ number of points.
00:06:12.640And, as we'll get into later, this has already happened.
00:07:06.520And, luckily, my friends who tend to be, you know, more gambling-inclined, they still tend to be more casino-oriented.
00:07:13.940So, they haven't gotten into the, you know, the sports betting yet, probably because I'm old.
00:07:19.060But, also, you know, one of the biggest parts about this is, much like any other vice, you know, it used to be something that you had to travel to do in a shameful kind of manner in a restricted place, right?
00:07:32.080Like, you could do sports betting, but you had to go to Nevada, right?
00:07:35.160If you wanted to go to the casino, you basically had to go to Vegas, right?
00:07:40.020Like, these things were much harder to read.
00:07:41.700Or call someone with a criminal record, right?
00:07:46.220If you wanted to make these bets, you know, from the comfortable environment of your home, you had to involve yourself with somebody who was going to break your knees should you not deliver that payment, right?
00:08:00.060It was, again, a lot like pornography in the sense that, yes, it was available, but you had to, like, travel to some seedy, weird store in the middle of town and everybody knew what it was for.
00:08:10.420And it just is gross and most people didn't want to involve themselves with it.
00:08:13.780So, there's, like, this natural barrier between people and the consumption of that bikes.
00:08:19.220Same thing existed with, you know, with gambling.
00:08:22.880It was either more or less harmless stuff happening at a kitchen table or it was, like, very serious.
00:08:28.740I need to dedicate myself to making this mistake to step into it.
00:08:33.320Now, it's something that's right in front of you.
00:08:35.320And I'm sure you are familiar with this, but for people who don't know, gambling plays on what's called the Skinner Box response in mammals, right?
00:08:42.680If you want to train a dog, the way to train them is not to have them do a behavior and give them a consistent reward.
00:08:49.360That's actually a mistake to understanding the proper way to obsess them with a behavior.
00:08:53.500The thing you want to do is that sometimes they get a reward and then sometimes they get a random large amount of rewards and sometimes they get nothing.
00:09:00.680And that constant need to, like, figure out if I hit the button, what kind of food comes out of the dispensing machine, this is called a Skinner Box, right?
00:09:09.140And this is what a lot of our social media is now based on.
00:09:13.240You know, I open up my social media app.
00:09:19.960Is there going to be an explosion of attention?
00:09:22.120Like, this plays through all kinds of dynamics now in our social media landscape.
00:09:26.820A lot of people involved in engineering software are looking directly at this kind of behavioral psychology to figure out how to addict people to these different products.
00:09:38.920Like, that's why it takes a hold of people so deeply when it has it.
00:09:42.380You always have that opportunity to just have this amazing payout and then nothing and then enough drip to keep you going.
00:09:48.820And as you say, there's now a common attempt by these different platforms, the Fan Duels and that kind of thing, to offer you some free money up front.
00:09:58.840Again, anyone who's ever been to a casino recognizes this behavior.
00:10:02.440The first time you sit down to Blackjack, the first $100 you lose in slots or Blackjack, you can get back.
00:10:07.620Now, you can't really get it back because it's with the company either way.
00:10:11.360But in theory, if you lose it all, you could get it back and gamble it again.
00:10:16.200And this just feeds you into the behavior.
00:10:17.920And once you've gotten into that cycle, then it's very easy to continually keep you addicted, especially, as you say, when the barrier is so low that I can just open up my phone in the same way I would post on Facebook.
00:10:28.640And suddenly I could drop $5, $100, $1,000, $10,000 and not even blink.
00:10:34.780And this is something that I think a lot of conservatives feel conflicted about, that many people understand the moral hazard of gambling.
00:10:45.300For instance, in my state several years ago, they legalized skill games, which is basically slot machines at pretty much gas stations in rough areas.
00:11:14.460But for conservatives who have a lot of kind of inbuilt libertarian sensibilities on the economy, there's this feeling of, oh, well, that's freedom.
00:12:40.380But this incredible proliferation and ease of access and also a conflict of interest with many industries like sports has created this huge problem.
00:12:52.200Funny enough, I got into a knockdown drag out with a with the head of a Republican state party over this fact.
00:13:02.960Me and R.R. Reno, funny enough, we're speaking at an event and we, you know, he had mentioned something about limitations on government, that kind of thing.
00:13:12.880And we both pointed out that things like legalizing drugs or having sports betting was ultimately deleterious to the, you know, kind of his state.
00:13:22.200And he got very hot and said, well, this is just freedom.
00:13:30.300Big government getting involved in all of this stuff.
00:13:32.680And of course, Reno, you know, being kind of an arch Catholic and myself being an arch Protestant Catholic, basically said, no, like, obviously you have to involve the government.
00:13:44.180This the civil magistrate has a duty to protect the people from vice like you.
00:13:49.200Yes, as you point out here, in most cultures, they understand that there is going to be some level of this, right?
00:14:02.160No one who isn't living in some kind of utopian fantasy believes these things simply don't exist.
00:14:07.820However, there is a lot of wisdom in heavily restricting the places they can exist.
00:14:12.820Now, some of these things can be entirely eliminated.
00:14:15.300Some of them can't, and for the ones that can't, circumscribing them in a particular situation really saves a lot of people's lives, right?
00:14:23.660Like it really does change something in the mind, especially of the addict, of having something in their pocket ready to pick up the minute they can, as opposed to having to go to an undesirable place and engage in obviously socially, you know, disliked behavior.
00:14:40.740And there's a barrier there, the fact that there just happens to not be that addiction right sitting at your hand does quite a bit.
00:14:49.180But as you say, there's a conflict with this kind of libertarian form of economics saying, well, as long as it's a market transaction, it's fine.
00:14:57.900And you'll notice that that is a lot of the language going on.
00:15:01.400So as we pointed out, this is not restricted, of course, to sports now.
00:15:06.100The fact that this has become widespread after the Supreme Court ruling you were referencing in 2018, the fact that that has become widespread across all kinds of what are now being called prediction markets is quite significant.
00:15:18.280Because this means that, you know, places like Kalshi will run, you know, different, different advertisements saying, hey, do you think the government shutdown is going to last three weeks or four weeks?
00:15:28.520Well, you could make, you know, $50,000 if you're right, you know, and so there's just every decision.
00:15:34.460In fact, the owner of Kalshi just did an interview where he said the goal is to monetize every single point of human disagreement.
00:15:43.440Like you just like that, that laid it out, like every single disagreement, every difference of opinion can become a monetizable function inside the system.
00:15:54.300And I guess somewhere there's like a libertarian just salivating at that idea.
00:15:58.960But for those of us who recognize that actually there are quite a number of things in the world that are sacred and should not be subject to the market forces, there are actually things that should not exist inside the marketplace.
00:16:10.540This is horrific. And just turning everything and saying, oh, well, ultimately, it's just about the market.
00:16:16.220This is a terrible cop out. And especially for people, you know, libertarians might be able to get away with this.
00:16:21.040But for conservatives who are supposed to pretend like they do care something about the moral fabric of the country, allowing this at scale.
00:16:28.260I mean, obviously, the money is just too good for a lot of these people.
00:16:31.400But ultimately, the fact that they can't find the wherewithal to take a moral stand seems to be a huge issue.
00:16:36.520Well, additionally, I think it's important to address one of the common arguments you see in any sort of discussion around vice, which is the idea that by legalizing it, you can reduce harm.
00:16:51.220You can reduce criminality. You can reduce the additional exposure to, for instance, people who are going to break your knees.
00:17:00.240And that premise was convincing to many people for a long time, particularly around legalization of weed.
00:17:07.820The idea was, well, we'll take this off of the black market.
00:17:10.660We'll regulate it. We'll make it safer. We'll reduce the amount of criminality involved.
00:17:17.880Well, if you look into this, you'll find out that there are Chinese triads running giant weed farms in the middle of rural Maine.
00:17:25.580You'll find out, as we'll mention a couple of times, that there are large mafia connected sports betting rings that are using ostensibly legal services, but still using that to fund criminality.
00:17:39.660The idea that this is, you know, this is the way to solve these kind of social ills is by de-stigmatizing and regulating them, or sorry, bringing them into kind of, you know, normal culture is clearly not the case.
00:17:53.480I mean, look, I was in Portland not too long ago, and this is the second time I've been.
00:18:01.080It's because previously, they had completely decriminalized open-air drug use, so you could just smoke crack in front of a preschool.
00:18:09.400And so, you had a bunch of people everywhere smoking crack.
00:18:13.880And then, contrary to what you'd expect, when they said, you're no longer allowed to do that, there's a lot less of it.
00:18:22.940You create incentives, and people react accordingly.
00:18:25.500So, this premise that you hear over and over and over again, that the way to solve social ills is simply by de-stigmatizing negative behavior, that society's reaction is the real problem, is clearly not borne out in the data, clearly not borne out in experience.
00:18:41.220And this is an idea that we're comfortable calling out in, you know, the liberals talking about homelessness or talking about drug use.
00:18:48.120But many people who are, you know, erstwhile conservatives get very uncomfortable when it comes to something like gambling, which has become a major part of the economy.
00:18:56.920I mean, even look at certain factions of the Trump coalition, right?
00:19:01.140Look at someone like Dave Portnoy over at Barstool.
00:19:04.620He is a wealthy man because of sports betting.
00:19:08.220That is already creating, one, a huge conflict of interest.
00:19:11.600But two, what does that sort of conservative actually look like?
00:19:15.360Like, look, I'm not trying to character assassinate Portnoy here, but he's someone who, you know, is-
00:19:26.460But takes that same attitude of libertinism that he takes towards gambling, and he says, oh, Roe versus Wade went away, so I'm not going to vote for Trump.
00:19:37.440So remember, you've got to understand, fellow conservatives, when you're making friends with social libertines, you've got to understand they don't just apply that sort of social acid to things that you don't care about.
00:19:52.180They will use that exact same tactic when it comes to abortion, when it comes to immigration, when it comes to things that deeply, deeply matter.
00:19:59.680So to me, this is one of those issues where I understand why people feel reticent to condemn the free market, to condemn liberty in this way.
00:20:09.400But if you dig just one or two layers down, you'll understand that this is completely legitimate for conservatives to have an issue with.
00:20:16.200Yeah, there's, of course, this complete lie that's been pushed by libertarians and even conservatives that prohibitions don't work, right?
00:20:30.360And that's just observably not true, right?
00:20:32.680And even on things where I am incredibly sympathetic to basically no regulation like firearms, it's very clear that the regulation of firearms did significantly reduce the type of firearms one could own.
00:20:44.180Like, you know, pre-assault weapons ban, these kind of things, very, very restrictive.
00:20:50.180I remember several situations where there were, like, large shootings and lots of threats of new gun legislation being passed, and people panicked and bought ammo and AR-15s and AK-47s and all these things because they would just never be able to buy them again.
00:21:06.420And so you might disagree, ultimately, with prohibition, but pretending, like, it doesn't work is kind of ridiculous.
00:21:13.760Now, there are, of course, all kinds of secondary effects, the points that, you know, people make that, you know, perhaps alcohol prohibition in the United States, while it had some upsides, alcohol was simply too ubiquitous and too culturally ingrained in order to be effectively pushed out and therefore created criminal consequences.
00:21:31.100These are fair points, but this is a great reason why you don't want something like sports betting to break through and become ubiquitous in your society, because once it's in the society, it's far harder to get it out.
00:21:42.900It's better to keep that hedge up, keep that fence up, then let it in, and then try to drive it back out again once you realize it's ultimately a mistake.
00:21:51.420And this is really the huge part of what has happened, again, with sports betting, because it has made all the other forms of wagering so much more acceptable to other people.
00:22:03.260And we've already seen, as you point out, that it's infiltrated into the sports themselves.
00:22:07.980So, uh, we've seen, uh, big, uh, scandals with the NBA and you just recently told me there's one with the UFC I wasn't aware of, uh, but we're seeing the scenario as, as you pointed out earlier, where these, uh, parlay bets are so complicated, right?
00:22:22.940There's, there's several different aspects.
00:22:24.580It's not just, did you win or did you lose or just the point spread?
00:22:28.040It's, you know, micro things like if there's going to be this specific type of kickoff or this specific type of submission, or, you know, there'll be all these different micro things that you can bet on.
00:22:40.140And many of them don't even actually impact the winning of the game.
00:22:44.060And so many athletes can effectively trigger these bets, knowing that they're very high percentage.
00:22:50.960And if they leverage them properly, they can make huge amounts of money without necessarily having to get all of their teammates together and like black socks throw, you know, huge games and have these massive cheating scandals.
00:23:05.100It's certainly happening across the board in every, uh, conceivable market.
00:23:09.400And so you have the situation where not only do these, uh, do these apps exist, not only are they wildly altering the games that they are, uh, they are being used to bet on, but in many cases, it's extremely difficult to detect when and how these markets are being manipulated by the players involved.
00:23:30.140The players know that one thrown shot, one missed thing, uh, one particular way in which you manipulate the score, the outcome could allow you to continue to win the game, but just making sure that you didn't do it by this many points are in this particular way could ensure a massive win for you in the manipulation of the market of a bunch of suckers.
00:23:47.940Who did not know that ultimately you were putting your thumb on the scale at capital one, we're more than just a credit card company.
00:23:55.140We're people just like you who believe in the power of yes, yes, to new opportunities, yes, to second chances, yes, to a fresh start.
00:24:05.480That's why we've helped over 4 million Canadians get access to a credit card because at capital one, we say yes.
00:24:11.780So you don't have to hear another, no, what will you do with your, yes, get the, yes, you've been waiting for a capital one.ca slash yes terms and conditions apply.
00:24:23.980One of the biggest kind of ongoing stories of the last several years has been more and more people realizing that elected members of our government are able to make themselves massively wealthy with insider information.
00:24:36.660Obviously you see the same thing with sports betting, for instance, one of the first big UFC betting scandals, and I promise I'll, uh, I'll make this easy to understand is that in 2022, uh, this minor fighter was suspended for like two years for concealing an injury.
00:24:57.480It seems kind of weird lying about an injury.
00:26:00.400But there's a difference, again, between that being a mob activity, that being something that, you know, is thrown underground, very difficult to access.
00:26:09.620And again, a bunch of, let's be honest, dumb money, people who just have an app on their phone.
00:26:16.740And so they will, especially if they're not getting the same information that even just a stats nerd could get, let alone someone with information from the inside.
00:26:25.680You were basically covering the bad end of a deal.
00:26:44.860He liked, you know, he would make money from it, but it was never something he wanted to do.
00:26:48.360And once the money dried up, he stopped playing.
00:26:51.160But the way he talks about it, he's like, yeah, the real degenerates, the guys who were really hooked to it, they always go to sports.
00:26:56.960And that's apparently, at least according to him, and he seems to know what he's talking about, that is both the riskiest, because it's not a game of, you know, poker is a game of luck, but there is a skill to it, pattern recognition.
00:27:09.260You were simply betting on what you hope to be unbiased decisions of someone else.
00:27:16.080Well, once you have normalized it, you were creating a massive interest to rigging every single micro system in that game.
00:27:28.360And this brings me to, I think, what is a critical point that is obviously usually avoided very, you know, seriously by conservatives for what will become a very obvious reason.
00:27:39.220But the fact is that behind this whole discussion is the U.S. stock market, right?
00:27:45.960Like the fact that it's a waste of time because of the way we have manipulated interest rates to basically invest your money in savings or any of these things.
00:27:55.820You're just lighting your money on fire.
00:27:57.420If you're not in the stock market, then you can't even survive the inflation bath that you're taking every single year from our degenerate government and its money printing.
00:28:07.620So that means that everyone who is not like a sucker is in the stock market, right?
00:28:40.880I am absolutely not just like a heroin addict.
00:28:43.320Like it's so clear, you know, that this is in, you know, they lie to themselves about, I understand I've got a system and the whole thing.
00:28:51.360And it's, it's just like, you really can't go 10 minutes between a gambling addict and a like day stock trader and hear literally any difference between these people.
00:29:01.900There are skills in stock trade, right?
00:29:04.640Like that does exist in the same way there are skills in betting, right?
00:29:08.840But ultimately these are fundamentally very similar behaviors with very similar feedback loops and impulses.
00:29:15.720And the fact that our own stock system and our, as you pointed out, our entire, you know, legislature is basically warped around the fact that we have this open air gambling system, our entire economy is based on.
00:29:28.220And these people pull key levers inside the political system to decide whether your company gets a giant contract from a defense firm or something like that.
00:29:37.460The fact that that is basically at the core of our political system makes it very difficult to then look at our sports system and say there's a whole lot different.
00:29:47.780In fact, the, the trading app Robin hood, the bitch became very famous for like kind of the meme stocks and the meme coins and everything else that was being traded on it.
00:29:58.220Is now just going to sports betting, right?
00:30:03.400Like you can go and you can buy a meme coin and you can buy, you know, game, uh, GameStop stocks.
00:30:08.320And then you can, you know, bet on, uh, whether or not some guy is going to scored the third goal in any given hockey game, like all simultaneously on the same platform.
00:30:17.820And that really just gives up the game that ultimately across all aspects of our society, we have this highly leveraged, uh, you know, like casino mentality.
00:40:09.840It is not good for long-term health of a society.
00:40:13.480And so, look, someone might say, well, you're just biased because you're under 30.
00:40:17.520And fair enough, I might be biased because I'm under 30.
00:40:19.800But also, I have history on my side here.
00:40:22.780Generally speaking, large populations of unhappy young men with nothing to lose do not a stable, happy society make.
00:40:31.060Yeah, what's the African proverb, the young man who's not accepted by the village will burn it down to feel its warmth?
00:40:39.360It's really something that you want to think about.
00:40:41.960Whether you think those young men are justified or not really isn't a question because once your house is on fire, nobody cares, right?
00:40:48.440So it's one of those scenarios where maybe they did eat too much avocado toast.
00:40:51.780Maybe they didn't put enough work into whatever, you know, horrible corporate existence you want them to live.
00:40:58.760But ultimately, when they come to burn down the village, it won't matter if they were right or wrong.
00:41:04.140It won't matter that they're burning your village down.
00:41:06.680And I think this is important also because we're training younger and younger people to involve themselves in this is a big part of this as well.
00:41:15.120You know, this is not something I thought a lot about early on, but I'm a longtime card gamer.
00:41:20.220This might come a surprise to people, but I'm a bit of a nerd.
00:41:23.580Uh, and so, uh, I am someone who was involved in playing, uh, several collectible card games in which opening a card pack was a normal part of the process.
00:41:32.840And one of the big things about that is you can open up a pack and it can have a worthless card in it, or it can have a card that's worth thousands of dollars.
00:42:11.580And you've seen even a number of governments now ban loot boxes because they do have this predatory effect on the minds of young children who are playing these games, who will steal their, uh, you know, parents' credit cards and drop thousands of dollars on, uh, you know, different in-game collectibles that aren't real.
00:42:29.620It's just ones and zeros on a screen at some point.
00:42:35.140And the thing is that secondary markets have been created for buying and selling these things.
00:42:40.180And believe it or not, they're even become gambling markets, like massive multi-billion dollar gambling markets based on trading and gambling these items.
00:42:50.060And the thing that happens is that a lot of this ends up, uh, being pushed by, uh, personalities, which is something we haven't got into yet that I want to touch on for sure is the advertising aspect.
00:43:00.520But a lot of this gets streamed on places like kick or on Twitch.
00:43:04.860And, uh, you can see people just sit there in front of these different, uh, games and they can, uh, constantly gamble with these different video game, uh, uh, assets.
00:43:15.200And technically it's not gambling cause they, you buy one type of currency that's not real, but then you change it for something.
00:43:21.540There are all these legal loopholes that you can kind of move through cause you're not technically betting on a real thing.
00:43:29.800And like, there's all these loopholes you can create, but this means that a large number of young, uh, kids are currently spending their time playing video games and then going on a line with the different items they've accumulated from playing those video games and those loot boxes.
00:43:46.300And they are literally just streaming themselves gambling on a regular basis.
00:43:50.720And you can just watch people win the world or lose it all.
00:43:54.100And it has all of the dynamics and drama you'd expect that would come from that kind of thing.
00:43:58.720Uh, but it just really is this absolutely degenerate way to get like young, you know, teenagers and even middle schoolers and elementary school kids into gambling without any kind of legal barrier.
00:44:10.220And all of it is being promoted by many of their favorite online personalities.
00:44:29.500Well, and it's important to recognize that in much the same way that sports betting has reduced the quality of sports, it's reduced the quality of video games.
00:44:38.780Not much of a gamer anymore, but I remember the before and after loot box time and very distinctly, the goal of creating a video game changed from creating a video game that lots of people want to buy.
00:44:51.760Okay, it might not be high art, but you want to appeal to people to make it fun versus to get people in the door to plug them into a gambling economy and run it forever.
00:45:04.580I'm not a huge sports gamer, but you see this with games like FIFA, for example.
00:45:42.960But the money to be made from, effectively, abusing what they call whales, people with a lot of money to spend who are hyper addicted to this, is so great that effectively it doesn't matter.
00:45:54.780And to your point, again, we understand, much like giving a kid alcohol or drugs at a young age, these things are doubly habit forming on developing brains.
00:46:03.960And the idea that this is just something we have to accept as part of being free market, sort of limited government Republicans is absurd.
00:46:32.600And again, I can't remember who, some German, might have been, Bismarck, said governing by the margin makes for poor laws, right?
00:46:40.240The idea of you can never fix every edge case, but it is entirely possible to solve this problem for most people.
00:46:49.460It just requires you to say some things are worth more than a marginal increase to GDP.
00:46:57.160And that's a very uncomfortable thing for some people to say.
00:47:00.140Yeah, I mean, as somebody who I have myself turned down sports betting sponsors, like I simply am not going to engage in that.
00:47:09.420But we can see how, again, ubiquitous this is across all kinds of domains.
00:47:14.000Again, you know, in the video game spaces and the streaming spaces, I mean, we don't, you know, some, we know people who know this, but some older audience members may be shocked to discover that many of these streamers have millions and millions and millions of followers who are involved with themselves on a regular basis.
00:47:30.680They're often much larger than any given cable TV news audience or program.
00:47:35.840And these are all people who are involved in engaging with this content.
00:47:40.940In many cases, we see the advertisements.
00:47:43.440Of course, you can't listen to Joe Rogan podcasts or, you know, any of these very popular podcasts without hearing FanDuel and what's the other one?
00:47:52.320Like, DraftKings, like, they're just everywhere all the time, right?
00:47:55.920There's just massive marketing campaigns, celebrities, every sports podcast.
00:48:00.180Like I said, it's literally integrated into the sports broadcast.
00:48:03.700Now, if you're watching NFL football here, they're giving you the betting lines.
00:48:13.420Because, okay, just as a side, guys, if you're dumb enough, I have to remember where we can use the R word, what platforms we can get away with it on now.
00:48:24.580Only when referring to Tim Walsh, I think.
00:48:28.720But if you are dumb enough to actually, like, invest in a bet that you're seeing on the screen because they told you it was smart at NFL,
00:48:42.100like, all the other millions of people who are watching this simultaneously didn't just get the exact same orders is insane.
00:48:48.940And as you pointed out, if any member of Congress was just going out there or if any, you know, CEO was saying,
00:48:55.540definitely bet on this, definitely buy this stock, definitely involve yourself because here is the inside information as to why you should do this.
00:49:03.260Like, a thousand, you know, red flags, alarm bells everywhere.
00:49:08.860Like, even people who have explicitly said that, like, addictive behavior, sports gambling, these things are ultimately bad examples for the community,
00:49:17.800like Joe Rogan, are still taking just massive amounts of money from these sponsors.
00:49:23.140And so it's just, it seems inescapable.
00:49:25.560It's woven into every aspect of society, even the people who are playing the game, people who are commentating on the game,
00:49:32.180the people who are producing the game are all involved, are all pushing it, are in some cases actively fixing the results to make profits.
00:49:42.080It just seems like there's, it's almost like we hit the Wild West.
00:49:45.900There's too much money sloshing around.
00:49:47.600And there's no way that we can get a hold of it in time and everyone's just making too much money in order to push back.
00:49:53.700And so this whole thing is just kind of, you know, we're getting the accelerationism.
00:49:57.180The decisions are just kind of making themselves because even people who know that ultimately this is wrong or stupid or a long time losing game,
00:50:04.160they can't turn it away now because it's just too profitable.
00:50:08.220Well, I'm glad you brought up the media angle because as you've said, if this were stocks, it would be market manipulation.
00:50:14.480The guy on the TV says, buy this, buy this, put your money on this while he is sponsored by the guy on the other end of that.
00:50:23.820Yeah, only Jim Kramer's allowed to get away with that.
00:50:34.120For instance, right, like, do you think if you go to the owner of the casino, if you go to the guy who's running the roulette table and ask him where to put your money,
00:50:46.220you think he's going to give you an honest answer?
00:50:48.940His whole success depends on you not making the right decision.
00:50:52.440And so the idea that this isn't corrupting, you know, sports broadcasting or also the kind of social media influencers,
00:51:00.360for instance, you know, many athletes who are currently competing in these sports leagues or, you know,
00:51:07.260nonetheless, like popular commentators or figures or whatever, giving you what they think you should bet on.
00:52:22.660No, no one's talking about like rating your local, you know, poker game or making sure that no one can roll dice somewhere in a, in an alley somewhere.
00:52:31.860It's, you know, they're talking about large scale, immediately available, you know, obviously like heroin level of addiction worked into everything,
00:52:40.040specifically in many cases, targeting children.
00:52:42.440And, you know, in some places they'll try to restrict this.
00:52:45.720They'll try to put it on like one provider.
00:52:48.760So, for instance, in Florida, Hard Rock is the only one that has sports betting available.
00:52:54.200But let me tell you a little story about how this works.
00:52:57.320So, when I was a local reporter early on, I was showing up to all these political events.
00:53:03.000And there's this table at every event.
00:53:04.940And every one of these events is this table saying we need to save the greyhounds.
00:53:08.620Because greyhound racing was all over Florida at the time.
00:53:12.600And I'm, we're an animal rights organization here to save the greyhounds.
00:53:15.960And I kept noticing these people at literally every single political event, right, left, conservative, liberal, it didn't matter.
00:53:48.600But it was definitely a scenario where, okay, usually the people doing this are like kind of your frizzled out wine aunt who like shows up to this kind of thing, right?
00:53:56.440It's not professional political actors.
00:53:58.800It's not, it's not well turned out, bright, you know, young activists.
00:54:04.520These who, you know, they don't, they're not dressed like Antifa.
00:54:09.100Like these are, you know, these are, these are obviously people who could be a professional in other areas.
00:54:13.480And so I started, you know, I actually did a bit of reporting, uh, shockingly enough.
00:54:17.520And I started digging into it, come to discover that the entire thing was being funded by the Seminole hard rock casino empire in Florida,
00:54:26.060because obviously their only competition where the pari-mutual facilities where you could race greyhounds is the only other place where you could play table games in Florida.
00:54:34.240That wasn't owned by the Seminole hard rock casino franchise, which has the only exclusive rights outside of the pari-mutual facilities to do gambling.
00:54:42.600And so the whole reason that they were funding this animal rights campaign is they didn't give a crap about animal rights.
00:54:48.800And the whole reason they were doing it is if you could get people to shut down the, these, these basically casinos, uh, on the fact that they were dog tracks.
00:54:58.040And that's what allowed them this exception.
00:54:59.720Then that means that the hard rock casino would be the only one.
00:55:03.500It would be the monopoly inside the entire state.
00:55:06.440They actually passed a, a state amendment to the constitution to ban that evil greyhound racing because we won and we got, and we saved the poor animals.
00:55:16.820Every one of them was euthanized by the way.
00:55:18.540Uh, and, uh, after that got done, uh, you basically made it impossible for anyone, but the, uh, casino, uh, to, to run.
00:55:26.800Uh, so that's, that's just, these things are everywhere.
00:55:32.960Uh, they are often using, manipulating you behind the scenes to drive that kind of stuff.
00:55:37.920Uh, and so just be aware that even in these scenarios where they're like, oh, well, at least we're going to make it like this one source so it can be well regulated.
00:55:45.600It's like, no, this is, this is a state manufactured monopoly specifically driven by horrible interests, uh, making sure that they're the only ones they have the exclusive right to fleece you.
00:55:55.300Uh, and of course, it's always great that it's the, the Indian tribe.
00:55:58.340So take that white man, you know, you get that at the end of the day, we, we, we, we may have lost most of the country, but we're going to be getting your, uh, your life savings.
00:56:11.280So we did, we did ban dog racing in the constitution and his major objection is like one, you guys have Florida now.
00:56:18.120And you let the Indians do what, you know, like it's just, it's such, it again, like politics is always kind of a, you know, a slimy game, but in situations like that, it's just so naked.
00:56:32.960Well, like I said, this is something that I think is a huge issue and I think needs to be taken more seriously.
00:56:38.520I think conservatives need to be talking about it.
00:56:40.960I think the right needs to be talking about it.
00:56:43.000I don't think that we should just allow this to become ubiquitous.
00:56:45.980I think there is actually quite a good stand on this.
00:56:49.540And the thing is like, unlike probably drugs and porn, uh, the thing about gambling is even the people who are addicted to it know it's bad for them in a pretty deep way, right?
00:57:01.560Like there's people who can lie to themselves about those other vices, but when it comes to gambling, I think pretty much every like degenerate sports gambler knows at some level they're having a problem.
00:57:11.240Like even the people who are selling gambling are usually have to be like, yeah, you probably shouldn't do too much of this.
00:57:17.140And that's something that I think is, uh, you can, I think this is a issue you can win on is what I'm saying.
00:57:23.020I think while those other vices are things that people will fight for.
00:57:26.580And I think actually have a wider percentage of acceptability in society because I think they're no, they're more normal human behaviors taken to bad extremes.
00:57:34.240The gambling one in particular hasn't grabbed a hold of everyone yet.
00:57:37.860And there's still time for people to say, no, man, actually, this is not a good look and this is not a good life for you.
00:57:43.880And this will impact your ability to like move forward in life.
00:57:47.160And you don't want your kids having access to this either.
00:57:49.560Uh, and so I think this is, is one of those issues where you can push the moral argument effectively, be a real conservative.
00:57:57.340Who isn't just worried about liberty in the sense of being able to like bet on whether or not some guy in the fourth quarter will hit a three pointer after someone else rebounded.
00:58:07.580So, you know, like if, if you can sell that vision to people as a good moral choice, and I think still win on this issue, at least maybe I'm delusional, but that, that is my hope.
00:58:18.020And I think this is a stance that ultimately, uh, conservatives should take.
00:58:22.120Uh, so before we move on to the questions of the people there, uh, Mr. Burden, where can they find your fantastic content?
00:58:31.480So my primary output is the Jay Burden show.
00:58:34.420Uh, if I do say so myself, I'm sort of prolific.
00:58:37.420I put out five interviews a week from many people.
00:58:39.900You will know I had our own on not too long ago, maybe six, seven weeks ago, but other favorites, uh, actually pretty much everyone I've mentioned on this show, uh, Roberto Rios and the good old boys been on my show a number of times.
00:58:51.440So, uh, the Jay Burden show, wherever you listen to podcasts.
00:59:01.960So, uh, Machiavelli, uh, says, I think they are rigging the NFL in real time currently.
00:59:08.080Well, I mean, we literally know that's true, right?
00:59:09.860So that's, that, that, that's not even speculation.
00:59:12.700Uh, is, is it as a wide scale as perhaps you might be insinuating?
00:59:17.340We don't know, but we do know that the micro, uh, manipulation is absolutely happening and driving, uh, you know, in other sports.
00:59:24.680So the idea that there's just none of that happening in the NFL seems, uh, insane.
00:59:29.200So I think you're, you're probably right that that's going to be prevalent there as well.
00:59:32.400So I'll put it this way as someone who grew up in the era of like the Ray rice Ravens, the idea that our, you know, our sports professionals are just too moral to scoop to, to fixing a game.
00:59:46.260When the number of NFL players who get a serious felony or kill someone is fairly significant.
00:59:52.720Like, to me, it's like, what do you think is going to happen?
00:59:55.680Like, what do you think is going to happen?
00:59:57.000I can't believe that these felons who are fighting dogs, uh, would, would absolutely never, you know, bet on the game that they're playing.
01:00:04.340And, uh, yeah, and it, it is, it is a funny, I, you know, if there is going to be one sports betting market and I, I, I disavow, but if there's going to be one, let it be where I can bet on what crime different sports stars are going to actually like, okay.
01:00:18.320I know that quarterback, he's definitely going to get domestic violence before the end of the season.
01:00:22.960Like, like, like, you're just sitting there like Tom Cruise and minority report, like murder, drug possession, except I'm, except I'm Steve sailor.