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It's. Only a kick. A

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jump. A block.

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It's only a serve. It's

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only attack or a run.

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It's only for the fade.

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After all, it's only

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Details. J

1:03

are you are show hey are tiny

1:05

fan. I

1:08

think so. J.

1:11

Caspian Kang is a writer for The

1:13

New Yorker and a sports fan. I

1:15

called him up to talk. Baseball.

1:19

And you don't sound very committed to a.

1:22

They don't normally under normal conditions

1:24

that I wouldn't be. Just.

1:26

Because. He

1:28

plays for the Dodgers. He played for

1:30

the Angels. There's. An eye teams that

1:32

I generally referred, but nobody since Babe

1:34

Ruth is really done. When he's done,

1:37

it's been like a hundred. Years I

1:39

get bespoke. Show.

1:42

He, oh tiny has been mvp

1:45

twice now. his nickname is Showtime

1:47

and the comparison with Babe Ruth

1:50

comes up a lot. You.

1:52

Know he doesn't speak too much to

1:55

the media. is not an English and

1:57

so it's almost like this alien landed.

2:00

In the Major leagues and started doing

2:02

things that nobody thought was possible. Ever.

2:04

and and so com as it's it's

2:06

hard not to be drawn in by

2:09

it. Looks

2:14

an Aussie days and this is why

2:16

really called up J. A

2:18

Tiny has been better known as

2:20

part of a massive betting scandal.

2:23

Shell. Hey our tiny ah the

2:25

Golden Boy as Major League Baseball

2:27

the next Babe Ruth, the highest

2:30

paid athlete in American sports I

2:32

believe of all time is in

2:34

some hot water right now for

2:36

and some What we know is

2:39

that four and a half million

2:41

dollars seems to have vaporize. From

2:43

Oh tidings personal bank accounts

2:46

sent to an illegal bookmaker

2:48

who's been under federal investigation.

2:51

At. First, the story was that oh Tiny

2:53

lent money to his interpreter who'd gotten

2:55

himself in over his head. Then

2:58

oh Tiny said his interpreter

3:00

had stolen money. But that

3:02

was the question: How does your interpreter

3:04

have access to your bank account, so

3:06

a lot more questions to to be

3:08

answers? Ah, something.

3:11

Stinks here. Alex. Were.

3:14

Deserves the unless we know I. Am.

3:16

My first thoughts were that I was

3:18

very surprised by the size of the

3:20

star that had gotten caught up in

3:22

this disease. Baseball's biggest star is the

3:24

biggest faceless in the world that we've

3:27

had for many, many years. But

3:29

Jace had a second thought about what

3:31

happened here. A more complicated

3:33

thought. And it was something along

3:35

the lines as. Of. Course.

3:38

But it's last year's Jay has

3:40

watched as the world's of gambling

3:42

and major league sports had become

3:44

completely and mashed is not. Are

3:46

you kansas watch a game without

3:49

seeing cousin advertisement for it? You

3:51

can even was like a sports

3:53

opinion show without constant mention of

3:55

it. And that. people who

3:57

have no experience bedding and all

3:59

right are now being asked to

4:01

give their opinion on betting lines and things

4:03

like that, and they're not qualified

4:06

to give gambling advice. I mean, almost nobody

4:08

is qualified to give gambling advice. The best

4:10

gambling advice is just don't gamble. There's

4:14

such an oversaturation of gambling content that

4:17

I do think it's a little bit

4:19

odd to ask players to just never respond to

4:22

it, you know, to be the only people who

4:24

are completely impervious to what is clearly an attempt

4:26

to hook every other person in

4:28

America. Do you think the Otani

4:30

scandal could be some kind of turning

4:32

point for sports betting in major league

4:35

sports? I think it depends

4:37

on how it shakes out. Given

4:39

the ubiquity of sports betting right now, there's

4:42

going to be a huge scandal even if

4:44

it's not Otani, right? It's

4:46

coming, and it'll probably arrive sometime in

4:48

the next three years. If it doesn't,

4:50

I will be shocked by that. Today

4:54

on the show, how gambling took

4:56

over the world of sports. And

4:59

why the major leagues might be about to face

5:01

the consequences. I'm Mary Harris.

5:03

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situations. Okay

7:51

before we get much further, I

7:54

want to just lay out the fact that you

7:57

love gambling. Is that fair Jay? Probably,

8:00

I mean, I do it a lot.

8:03

I have done it a lot in my life, yeah. How'd

8:05

you get into it? Very strangely, in

8:07

my very large public high school in

8:10

North Carolina, we had a Taco

8:12

Bell stand. And

8:14

I think the first time I got into

8:17

gambling was because we would all gamble for

8:19

Taco Bell money.

8:22

It's like this sort of variation of gin rummy. And,

8:25

you know, I realized that I was kind

8:27

of good at it, or at least I

8:29

was very lucky. And so, you know, you

8:32

win a lot at that tender age and

8:34

something gets burned in your head, I think.

8:37

And, you know, you're never the same. So

8:40

how did we get here? Where it's like when you were growing

8:42

up, you'd be like gambling a

8:44

little bit with your friends for Taco money, versus

8:48

now kids just see gambling

8:51

everywhere. You know, in

8:53

2018, there's a Supreme Court decision

8:55

that overturned federal ban on sports

8:58

betting, which opened the way for

9:00

individual states to allow

9:02

sports betting within their borders.

9:05

Since you're a gambler, how's legalization

9:07

changed the experience of sports betting

9:09

for someone like you? Like

9:12

I know in the past you've gone to Vegas to bet. Do

9:15

you have to do that now? Like when you go, what's that

9:17

like? I live

9:19

in California where it's still illegal, so I do

9:21

still have to go to Las Vegas. It's

9:25

become much more like the apps there

9:27

though, where instead of sort of walking

9:29

up to a teller and

9:31

the guy talks to you and you have a

9:34

conversation, there's just these little

9:36

kiosks, right? It's almost like when you

9:38

go to the train station and you

9:40

punch in a Metro card or whatever.

9:43

Sounds like going to the ATM only it's kind of

9:45

the opposite of the ATM. Yeah, or- Giving

9:48

the machine the money. Right, right, right. And

9:51

in that way, it's a little

9:53

less glamorous. Is it fun? No,

9:55

it's definitely less fun. And

9:58

I go with a lot of my- friends from

10:00

growing up. And we

10:02

have talked quite

10:05

a bit about whether it's even worth going

10:07

anymore because it's so similar to just sitting

10:09

on our couch, right? Like whether some of

10:11

the fun and, I guess,

10:14

seedy glamour of gambling has been

10:16

sucked out by this apification

10:18

of gambling. You

10:21

talk about the apification of the

10:23

gambling experience. Is that how most

10:25

people are gambling? Yeah, I think that

10:27

in the same way everything in our

10:29

lives has been funneled now through our

10:31

phones that most gambling probably is through

10:33

the phone. There

10:36

are now slot machines that

10:38

you can play on your phone. You

10:40

can kind of use your

10:42

phone and you can turn on a

10:44

live stream. And the live

10:46

stream is of a person at

10:48

a blackjack table, a real person. And

10:51

the person is dealing real cards and you can

10:53

place bets. And then they

10:55

deal out your hands. And so it's

10:57

kind of like having a weird in-person

11:00

experience, but it's entirely through your app

11:02

and entirely through the internet. Explain

11:04

how the apps are changing

11:07

the kinds of bets people are placing,

11:09

especially when it comes to sports. Right,

11:12

I think this is a big change, which is that it

11:14

used to be that, let's say, that the Dallas

11:17

Cowboys are playing the Philadelphia Eagles and

11:19

the Dallas Cowboys have to win by

11:21

seven points for you to win your

11:23

bet, right? That used to be the

11:25

way that almost everybody bet on sports.

11:27

Yeah, pretty simple. Very simple. And honestly,

11:30

given that there are 22 people playing

11:32

on the field at any time, it's kind of

11:34

hard to fix, right? Because if

11:36

you're just one person who's trying to throw

11:38

the game, it's actually not that easy. Too

11:41

many people involved. Yeah, there's too many people

11:43

involved. If you wanted to fix it, too

11:45

many people would know. But

11:47

what's changed now is that most

11:50

bets that are taken are a larger,

11:52

larger percentage. Actually, the exploding percentage of

11:54

bets that are taken are these things

11:56

called single game parlays, right? And I

11:58

think that's a big difference. A prop

12:00

bet is basically, is an individual player going

12:02

to do X or Y? So

12:05

let's say that we have our fictional game

12:07

between the Cowboys and the Eagles.

12:09

Is the running back for the Cowboys

12:11

gonna gain over, let's say like 65

12:13

yards that game, and you can bet

12:16

he's gonna gain over or under. And

12:18

that what you can do with those bets

12:20

is that there are sometimes up to hundreds

12:23

of these prop bets offered per game. And

12:26

you can pick like seven, eight, up

12:28

to like 20 of these, put

12:31

them all together and say, either

12:33

all of these are going to be right, or

12:36

if one of them is wrong, then the whole bet falls

12:38

apart. But if I get all of them right, let's

12:40

say I go 20 for 20, then

12:43

I can bet like $2 and when like, let's say

12:45

like $25,000, right? So

12:47

it's like much higher yield, higher

12:51

reward, but infinitely higher risk type

12:53

of bet. These have become very

12:55

popular because you know, people, they

12:57

wanna believe that they can bet $2 and make like $200,000,

12:59

you know, whatever

13:01

the odds payouts on these are. And

13:04

so that's how sports betting has changed quite

13:06

a bit is that instead of a

13:08

simple, what team is gonna win by how

13:10

many points, you now have people doing all

13:13

sorts of variations of parlays.

13:15

And the sad part about it

13:17

is that these bets are just way, way worse

13:19

for the customer, right? They're much, much better for

13:21

the buck. But because they give

13:23

this fantasy that you can hit one and be,

13:26

you know, your life will change, like

13:28

that's the drive for them. What

13:30

is it about the apps that made these kinds of

13:32

more complicated bets more possible? Well, look,

13:34

it's basically that you can list them all.

13:36

If you went to Sportsbook, right? Like they

13:38

don't offer all these bets because it's too

13:41

complicated. They only have certain amount of space

13:43

that they can do. And they don't have

13:45

people who really wanna calculate what all these

13:47

lines should be. Now

13:49

that you have these big apps and they can just

13:51

roll out whatever bet they want, they can take down

13:53

any bet that they want. And they

13:55

have giant teams that are crunching all this sort of

13:57

stuff. You know, it's a lot easier for them to

13:59

offer. more and more and more bets.

14:01

I mean, the NCAA recently announced they want

14:04

states to ban prop bets so people aren't

14:06

betting on their individual players. Do you think

14:08

that's going to happen? You know,

14:10

that was actually quite a moment when I was

14:12

in Las Vegas this past or two weekends ago

14:14

for the first weekend of the NCAA tournament. I

14:16

realized that there's a game where Colgate

14:19

was playing, right? Colgate is a... I think it's

14:21

in upstate New York, right? Like a very small

14:23

school in upstate New York. And

14:25

I imagine that their players are not getting

14:27

much money, right? And they're not going to

14:29

have professional careers. They're going to go work

14:32

at McKinsey or something like that, right? And

14:34

you could bet on whether or not a

14:36

player on Colgate was going to get like

14:38

over 10 points or something. And I was

14:40

like, this is out of control. I

14:42

can bet on some dude at Colgate.

14:48

And then I thought of it as just like if

14:50

those types of bets are available for college kids who

14:52

are not making any type of money, what

14:54

is their incentive to not

14:57

occasionally indulge in that type of

14:59

thing, right? It's not like even

15:01

they even have to throw the game. They just have to

15:03

like miss a couple of shots. And that's

15:06

why I think these types of scandals are going

15:08

to become quite ubiquitous is because it's so easy

15:10

now for players who are not making millions and

15:12

millions and millions of dollars a year. The

15:15

incentives are just so clear. And

15:18

even for the players who are making millions and millions

15:20

of dollars a year, if they have a gambling problem,

15:22

the amount of money that is being wagered doesn't matter.

15:24

And so some of them are going to fall into

15:26

this. And that's

15:28

where I see the big problem, the

15:31

ease with which and just

15:33

the wide, wide, wide spread of bets

15:36

that exist. Any one

15:38

of them can be rigged in one way or the other. We'll

15:41

be right back. This

15:49

episode is brought to you by Discover. When

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17:20

It's. Hard to say how much the business

17:22

of sports gambling as grown in the last

17:25

year's. That's because a

17:27

lot of the gambling that happen

17:29

before sports betting was legalized went

17:31

uncounted. Jay says one

17:33

reason. We should be doubtful of

17:35

more dramatic statistics showing a huge

17:37

increase the number. Of. People betting is

17:39

that People who weren't interested in

17:41

gambling before. They. May not

17:44

be any more interested now. Adults.

17:47

Are. Either problem gamblers or they're not. They

17:49

can be exposed to gambling in a

17:51

way that will trigger a problem gambling

17:53

impulse in them. But I think that

17:55

people who don't gamble just don't gamble,

17:57

right? I mean, marat on as you are

18:00

in a state where gambling is legal, but you

18:02

know. Oh, 100% New York. Right,

18:04

but have you started gambling all the time

18:06

on sports because of this? No.

18:09

I was telling Paige, my British, I was like, I think

18:11

I'm just, it's like I was born without an appendix or

18:13

something. Like I just don't have the gambling, like

18:16

organ inside me. And so I'm just like,

18:18

okay. My life is the same way, you

18:20

know, has zero interest in it, despite being

18:22

around me, which is like being a class

18:24

of gambling. And

18:27

so, yeah, I think

18:29

that that is true of adults. The unresolved

18:31

question is whether that is true of teens.

18:33

And I guess I think about myself in

18:35

that way, which is that if they had

18:38

never opened that Taco Bell in my high

18:40

school, you know, if we hadn't

18:42

been incentivized to play, you know,

18:45

this weird variation of gin rummy all the

18:47

time for money and math class,

18:50

you know, would I have had these

18:52

problems? And I don't know the

18:54

answer to that question. My sense is that

18:56

I was always wired probably to have to

18:58

do this, you know, and my buddy was

19:01

probably always wired to do this. The

19:03

problem that I see is that kids who

19:05

are predisposed to have these problems do not

19:07

have the ability to manage their problems, and

19:09

they have full exposure to it in a

19:11

way that I did not, right? Playing

19:14

for 25 cents point is

19:17

not the same as being able to hook

19:19

up your parents' credit card to a gambling

19:22

app and bet thousands of dollars if you

19:24

want. That's a

19:26

lot different. And so that's my main

19:28

concern about it when it comes to

19:30

the kids is just, does it offer

19:32

a scale and a convenience so that

19:34

the kids who are problem gamblers

19:37

are gonna fall into some hole

19:39

that actually ruins their life? Yeah.

19:42

I mean, you've talked about there being

19:44

two legitimate worries when it comes to

19:46

legalized sports betting. The

19:48

first is that

19:51

app-based betting will create an explosion in

19:53

the number of gambling addicts. Well,

19:56

I don't believe that argument. The argument

19:58

is that like basic. Basically, you can

20:01

hook anyone on gambling. I

20:03

don't think that's true. I think that basically what

20:05

will happen is much like weed legalization, that there

20:07

will be a spike in the number of users

20:09

for a short period of time and then at

20:11

some point it will go

20:14

back down and be kind of normal. Many

20:16

people that I know when New

20:18

York legalized sports

20:20

betting downloaded the app, they bet for about two

20:23

weeks, right? And then they have never looked at

20:25

the app again. I think that that's a very

20:27

normal type of behavior for this type of thing.

20:30

I think there are two things I'd

20:32

say to maybe push back against what

20:34

you're saying now. One

20:37

is what we just talked about, which

20:39

is kids and the fact that

20:42

people are being exposed younger to gambling. It's sort

20:44

of all over the sports. So if you're just

20:46

sitting there watching a game with your

20:48

dad, you can't avoid it and you're going to

20:50

have natural interest. So reaching

20:52

people younger. And the other thing is

20:55

volume of people reached. There used

20:57

to be real barriers to

20:59

entry when it came to gambling. You had

21:01

to make a real effort to do it,

21:03

be in a specific place, all those sorts

21:06

of things. That's not

21:08

really the case anymore. So a lot

21:10

more people are engaging with gambling.

21:13

And when more people are engaging, I think

21:15

naturally the number of people who are going

21:17

to have a problem is also going to

21:19

go up. What do you say to that? I

21:23

think you're right in many ways, but

21:26

I think that the scale might be

21:28

different. So your argument,

21:30

I think, is correct

21:32

on the merits, which is that let's say that

21:34

10% of people are problem gamblers.

21:37

Just hypothetically, let's say that. And let's

21:39

say there's 1,000 people in

21:41

America, then that means you have 100 gamblers. But

21:45

if you increase the number of

21:47

people who are exposed to gambling to

21:50

10,000, then you have 10 times that number of gamblers,

21:52

even though the percentage is the same. I

21:56

think that's true, but I do think that most

21:58

people who have gamblers, they're going to problems

22:00

by the time their adults have been

22:04

exposed. There are ways that they

22:06

find their fix despite

22:09

barriers. And I

22:11

think that while there are people who have

22:13

not been exposed, that number

22:15

is not easy to quantify. And

22:17

I would imagine that the proportion of it is a

22:20

little bit lower than a lot of people would think.

22:22

Yeah. I mean, I think that's

22:24

fair. I do think you have this other

22:27

concern, which is that

22:30

legalized sports betting challenges

22:32

the integrity of sports,

22:35

both for the players and for the fans. Like

22:38

you talk about how at this

22:40

fundamental level, people

22:42

watching need to believe in sports. You

22:45

have to believe that what you're seeing is real

22:47

and rules are being followed and teams

22:51

are working together to make something

22:53

happen. How is

22:55

that sense being undermined

22:59

by legalized sports betting? The

23:02

most popular complaint of any sports fan is

23:04

that the game is rigged. That

23:06

the game is rigged by some shadowy

23:08

entity. Now this is always

23:10

like a fringe, almost like ironic concern

23:12

that people say, right? It sounds a

23:14

little conspiratorial and crazy. It

23:17

is going to sound a lot less

23:19

conspiratorial and crazy, and it already has.

23:21

The more deeper and deeper we go

23:23

into this. Why? Because we're

23:26

going to have way more scandals. We have had

23:28

way more betting scandals in American professional sports than

23:30

we had in years in the past three years.

23:33

I would say that that is quite bad.

23:35

I mean, last night we had one of

23:37

the great nights of women's basketball ever.

23:40

LSU versus Iowa. I

23:42

live in the East Bay. I was in a bar

23:44

in Oakland at four o'clock on a Monday. Every

23:47

single person in that bar was riveted to this

23:50

game. That

23:53

is why sports are good. I

23:55

don't think any of the people in that bar, maybe

23:57

a couple, but I don't think most of them had

23:59

bet. on that game, they're still captivated

24:02

by it, they're still captivated by Caitlin

24:04

Clark. You need that

24:06

veneer of dignity and you need that

24:08

veneer of, you know,

24:10

competition for those

24:12

things that matter to people emotionally. Yeah.

24:15

It's interesting to me to think about how all of

24:17

this kind of spirit

24:19

of the game stuff trickles down

24:22

to the players themselves. Late

24:24

last month, All-Star Indiana Pacers

24:26

point guard Tyreese Halliburton told

24:29

reporters, to half the

24:31

world, I'm just helping them

24:34

make money on DraftKings. I'm

24:36

a prop. It

24:39

really hit me to read that. The

24:42

players themselves are

24:44

like changing the way they

24:46

conceptualize what they're doing based

24:49

on sports betting. Yeah. Yeah.

24:53

A lot of other players have

24:55

spoken out about this, that they're, you

24:57

know, they open up Instagram and they

24:59

have like 500 DM messages of people

25:01

calling them all sorts. Every name in

25:03

the book, including racial slurs, death threats,

25:05

because they grabbed an extra rebound and

25:07

screwed up this person's parlay. On

25:10

the one hand, Tyreese Parralliburton next year will make $35

25:13

million a year. And so sometimes

25:15

I just think, I don't know, kind

25:17

of comes with a territory. On

25:19

the other hand, man, it really sucks.

25:22

It sucks to hear that. And it

25:24

sucks that basketball and the sort of

25:27

joy that he's giving Indiana Pacers fans

25:29

and NBA fans everywhere is

25:31

deemed by the fact that people are, you

25:33

know, acting so psychotically towards him over what amounts

25:36

to, I'm sure for 90% of these bets are

25:38

like $2 bets. Yeah.

25:41

It bums me out to hear that. And

25:43

it definitely isn't just Tyreese Halliburton. Basically

25:46

every player who has spoken on this says that

25:48

this is the main interaction that they have with

25:51

fans now. Oh, wow. Did you score enough points?

25:53

Or if you have the under-owned points, how dare

25:55

you score that extra point? You know, like you

25:57

ruined my parlay and the person just looked at

25:59

me. I'm just like, I

26:02

don't even know who you are. Why

26:04

would I ever care about that? I

26:07

think the way in which they've

26:09

structured these same game parlays are

26:12

more bound to addiction. I

26:14

think they're stupider. I think they're less,

26:16

you know, they're worst products for the

26:19

customer and they're pushing them intentionally. And

26:22

I think that it's ruined a lot of

26:24

sports for me, I will say. Yeah,

26:26

I was gonna ask, like, do you have fun playing them when you

26:28

can? I know you're in California, so it's not like you're out there

26:30

playing them all the time. But I imagine you've

26:32

changed locations occasionally. Yeah,

26:34

it's, I

26:37

will, it is less fun, I think. I

26:39

don't really bet on sports that much because

26:41

I'm in California. I do think that if

26:43

sports betting was legal in California, that I

26:46

would bet more on sports. I think that

26:48

is true. Do you think that would be a

26:50

good thing or a bad thing or a neutral thing? I

26:53

think what it would do is that it

26:55

would sort of take away from my ability

26:58

to enjoy sporting events,

27:00

like what happened last night in the

27:03

women's NCAA tournament. Because, you know,

27:05

you would have been more worried about

27:07

the $20 or whatever you bet on that game, which,

27:09

you know, and then it's just $20. But

27:12

like, it's hard to like

27:14

not care about that. And when you

27:16

don't have money on the game, you

27:18

can enjoy something like last night. You

27:21

know, I used to be a total, nothing

27:25

is wrong, everyone is screaming fire,

27:27

there's no fire, please

27:29

stop being so alarmist about this thing.

27:31

About gambling. About gambling. And now I'm

27:34

starting to get pushed more into the,

27:36

you know, there's probably a problem here, camp.

27:39

And my thinking has changed about it a lot in the

27:42

last two years. Jay,

27:47

I'm really grateful for your time and for

27:49

coming on the show. Thanks for doing it. Thank

27:52

you, Mary. Jay

27:54

Casteen Kang is a staff writer at The

27:56

New Yorker. And

27:59

that's her show. If you're a fan of What Next, the

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best way to support our work is to join Slate

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Plus, going over to slate.com/What

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Next is produced by Paige Osburn, Elena Schwartz,

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are led by Alicia Montgomery with a little boost from

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28:22

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Dahlia Lithwick, and I'm host of

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