I ve been a supporter of legalized online sports betting and even had gambling sponsors on this show, but not anymore, and I want to explain why. Also, a new video sheds more light on Alex Preddy, the leftist agitator who got himself shot by ice. Plus, Piers Morgan s wife published an entire oped in the newspaper to complain about the fact that her husband got injured and now she has to take care of him. This is why you should never marry a feminist.
00:01:03.580It doesn't happen very often, but sometimes I get something wrong.
00:01:06.860Well, we're going to talk about one of those rare cases today.
00:01:09.340I've been a supporter of legalized online sports betting and even had gambling sponsors on this show.
00:01:14.040But not anymore, and I want to explain why I changed my mind.
00:01:17.380Also, new video sheds more light on Alex Preddy, the leftist agitator who got himself shot by ice.
00:01:22.940Plus, Piers Morgan's wife published an entire op-ed in the newspaper to complain about the fact that her husband got injured and now she has to take care of him.
00:01:30.420This is why you should never marry a feminist.
00:01:32.740We'll talk about all that and more today on The Matt Walsh Show.
00:02:04.640I would occasionally read advertisements for various online gambling companies.
00:02:09.400Every time I did one of those ad reads, somebody in the comment section would object.
00:02:14.600They would accuse me of promoting immoral and unchristian behavior, of having no principles, corrupting the youth, and so on.
00:02:21.420And on top of that, I was accused of shilling for products that I didn't use.
00:02:24.660Now, the truth is that I read those advertisements because at the time, I supported legalized gambling, including sports betting.
00:02:31.760And I have placed bets myself, especially on NFL games.
00:02:35.820In moderation, my perspective was that sports betting is no different from any other entertainment-related expense.
00:02:42.760As long as you don't turn gambling into a lifestyle, which is something that I've never done or been tempted to do, then I didn't see much of a problem with it.
00:02:51.320And for people who take things too far, my attitude has been that it's not the government's job to save people from the consequences of their own bad decisions.
00:02:58.920If you voluntarily take on a financial risk that backfires, well, that's your issue.
00:03:34.340I think that there is now substantial evidence that gambling has some of the same corrosive effects on young people, on society at large, but young people in particular, as legalized marijuana use.
00:03:48.820And years ago, you've probably heard me mention this before, I also supported legalizing marijuana.
00:03:54.420And my opinion changed, though, after seeing the impact that it has had on society.
00:03:59.760My view on legalized gambling has evolved in the same way and for the same reason.
00:04:07.160Now, yes, if one person, you know, smokes a bowl on occasion, it's not going to destroy society.
00:04:15.280The problem is that a huge preponderance of people will not smoke weed in moderation.
00:04:23.140It dulls their interests in things that actually matter in life.
00:04:25.940At a certain point, for weed smokers, marijuana becomes a way of life.
00:04:31.200And meanwhile, for everybody else, the weed smokers are, you know, at best a nuisance and oftentimes much more than that.
00:04:41.200They actively degrade our quality of life.
00:04:44.080It's a clear net negative on society in general.
00:04:47.300Nobody wants to share the roads with somebody who's high or eat food prepared by someone who's high or attend a class full of students who are high.
00:04:54.620But increasingly, these are unavoidable scenarios.
00:04:58.240These are the externalities of marijuana use.
00:05:01.440There are real costs that are inflicted on innocent people.
00:05:05.920And now you can't walk through any city without smelling the stench of weed everywhere and seeing people walking around like zombies stoned out of their minds.
00:05:13.800That is the inevitable result of the mass legalization and acceptance of this drug.
00:06:16.380So, for example, the most popular parlay on FanDuel right now is that Kenneth Walker, Jackson Smith & Jigba, Ramondre Stevenson, and Stefan Diggs will all score a touchdown at some point during the Super Bowl.
00:06:32.620More than 8,000 people have placed bets on this particular parlay.
00:06:38.560If you bet $100 and all four players score touchdowns, you'll win $2,890.
00:06:45.700It's an extraordinarily high return for a relatively small investment, which is why the parlay has attracted so many people.
00:06:51.700But what are the odds that it actually hits?
00:06:54.680Let's assume for the sake of argument that each of these players individually has roughly a 40% chance of scoring a touchdown during the game.
00:07:06.360Well, based on this information, what are the odds that you'll turn your $100 into $2,800?
00:07:12.500If you had to give a ballpark estimate of your win probability on this parlay, what would it be?
00:07:17.820In other words, what are the odds that these four players will all score touchdowns if each player has a 40% chance of scoring a touchdown?
00:07:24.280The vast majority of adults and people who gamble can't give an accurate response to that question.
00:07:30.160Certainly, the vast majority of young people who are on these sites have no idea whatsoever.
00:07:35.120It's a math problem that isn't easy to solve unless you've been taught how to do it.
00:07:40.080Well, the answer is less than 3% because you multiply the percents together.
00:07:45.22040% times 40% times 40% times 40% times 40% and you get to less than 3%.
00:07:50.760But actually, when it comes to parlays, the math is even worse than that, and here's why.
00:07:54.860On a normal bet where you're only making one wager, the sportsbook will almost always add a house edge to the odds, otherwise known as juice.
00:08:03.880So, for example, imagine a 50-50 bet on an NFL game.
00:08:08.260If you bet $100 and lose, you'll lose $100.
00:08:11.340But if you bet $100 and win, you only make around $91 instead of $100.
00:08:17.200That $9 loss is the house edge or the juice in gambling lingo.
00:08:22.800Now, in general, sportsbooks bank around 5% of the total amount wagered on any bet, which is known as the hold percentage.
00:08:30.720On parlays, though, sportsbooks bank far, far more than 5%.
00:08:35.280The more legs you add to your parlay, the more juice they get.
00:08:39.420As the Washington Post put it late last year, quote,
00:08:41.880As each leg is added to a parlay, the house edge is compounded.
00:08:44.980And by the time a fifth leg is added, the sportsbook's expected hold percentage has more than quadrupled from 4.5% on one leg to 20.8% on five.
00:08:56.820Even though the potential payout rises as legs are added, the chances of winning are falling even faster.
00:09:04.240So, here's an illustration of what that might look like in practice.
00:09:07.960Imagine a hypothetical five-leg parlay without any juice where you can bet $100 and earn $3,100 in profit.
00:09:17.540But when you add in the juice, you're only getting around $2,400 in profit.
00:09:21.560That's a loss of more than 20% of your profits to the juice, which is far more than your lost profits on a single bet, as we just discussed.
00:09:29.940Now, for many people who bet on parlays, none of this math is really obvious, because it's not obvious.
00:09:39.020And certainly, the betting sites don't make it obvious.
00:09:41.480They're not going out of their way to advertise all this stuff.
00:09:44.680It's very hard to compute the odds on parlays, particularly when the different legs involve the same game.
00:09:49.700What lures gamblers is the possibility of a very large payout for a relatively small bet, which is why parlays are, by far, the most common form of sports betting.
00:10:00.420Now, in New Jersey, according to the most recent data, parlays accounted for more than 80% of all wagers placed by bettors under the age of 24.
00:10:12.640Now, most states don't track that kind of information.
00:10:16.340It's very interesting information to have.
00:18:15.620But here's another interesting finding.
00:18:16.760The rate of domestic violence goes down by a much greater amount when the home team wins a game that they were favored to win.
00:18:24.440In other words, according to this research, the net effect of sports gambling is that there's actually less domestic violence overall.
00:18:31.620Men who might otherwise do this beat their wives, who bet on the home team when they're favored,
00:18:39.320refrain from committing domestic violence when they get a payout.
00:18:42.220And that happens more often than the alternative scenario by, you know, some margin.
00:18:48.620Now, of course, you have to take any kind of data like this with a grain of salt, certainly.
00:18:52.440Maybe with a significantly large grain of salt.
00:18:56.380But in general, these findings are obviously unsettling.
00:18:59.120And the important takeaway is not really whether sports betting increases or decreases the risk of domestic violence.
00:19:05.700I'm sure you could start poking holes in this.
00:19:07.480The takeaway is just really the insane degree of emotional investment that sports betting encourages its users to have
00:19:17.940in the outcome of a football game or any other game.
00:19:22.660Even aside from domestic violence, certainly the vast majority of sports bettors are not abusing their spouses, obviously.
00:19:28.260But it just raises a question about whether it's a good thing for society to have so many people so deeply invested emotionally and financially in watching sports
00:19:41.580and so focused on it and distracted by it.
00:19:46.480I mean, I'm a sports fan, but is that making anyone's life better?
00:19:49.780On this show, we've discussed a lot of academic findings, most of which are nonsense or meaningless.
00:19:57.180But what we're seeing here is not nonsensical.
00:20:00.060It's a picture that is quite grim when you start really looking into it.
00:20:06.840And again, this is reminiscent of the problems affecting heavy marijuana users and the users of other drugs.