Gambling Is Eating The World w/ Nick Devor

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I'm, of course, your host Ed Zitron. (upbeat music) (upbeat music) Now everyone, I know how much you love gambling and those of you who've been gambling on the Cockroach races, please use code Zitron, 50% off Big Boy Cockroaches. Those are the ones that will mostly lose you money, but you could win 100 to one. So anyway, we're sponsored by Cockroach races. Now putting all that aside, joined by Nick Deffer who's a reporter of barons covering gambling in the prediction markets. Nick, thank you for joining us. We legally now cannot talk more about the Cockroach races, however. - It's true, they're unregulated. And, you know, as fun as they may be, we do have to turn a little bit of a blind eye. But, you know, we do that tonight. - Yeah, I mean, of course, of course, and also most of my money is in there. But let's talk about the lesser forms of gambling, by which I mean, of course, prediction markets. What has been going on there recently? Because since you last joined, I've only seen things get more demented. - Indeed, yeah, since we last spoke, I think, I don't know, first quarter of the year, prediction markets have continued to just go absolutely crazy. We're seeing record trading volumes basically every Sunday. Now, why every Sunday, Ed, can you guess what happens on Sunday? - I can guess it's when the pig skin gets chucked around. - Exactly, yeah, so, you know, these platforms position themselves as financial instruments, places where you can hedge your risk. And lots and lots of Americans are hedging their risk to losing football games. - I don't know, you know, basically, prediction markets are going crazy because they have started offering and have continued to offer the equivalent of par lay bets. - What is a par lay bet? - Yeah, yeah, so when you place a bet on two individual outcomes, so that's like the Patriots win and I actually don't watch sports, so the amount of examples I'm going to be able to provide is very low, but that's fine. - Right, you know, the Patriots win and this player scores this many touchdowns. If I connect both of those bets, and if I'm right on both, then I get a massive payout because I'm basically tying together multiple discrete bets into one large wager. Now, these are super profitable for your traditional like online sportsbook because the odds are so long, you know, it's very, and you can make par lays with a lot of legs. They're called individual bets are called legs. So, you know, with each leg that you add, your odds of winning and go down and the odds of the sportsbook taking your money go up. So they're very profitable for the sportsbooks. And prediction markets have started to offer them as well. And they're less profitable for the prediction markets because they just take a cut of trading fees. But, yeah, people love to sports bet and they love to tie multiple bets into one. And that's, I have to watch the ocean of the volume. - How is this legal? Because even gambling on sports, which I truly don't do, but I've tried to see like how far you can push them with like VPNs just to sign up. And they're actually surprisingly widely stopping that. Now, how is this legal? Because I thought that there was very strong regulation on sports betting in general. Because I know DraftKings and the other one, I truly don't remember. - Fandal? - My brain. - Fandal. There we go. How is illegal for calcium them to do it? - Right. So, DraftKings and Fandal, you know, bet NGM places like this, they operate on the regular sportsbook model, which is regulated state by state. In 2018, there was a Supreme Court decision that basically opened up sports betting, which was illegal prior, except in a few jurisdictions, to any state that wanted to legalize it could. And, you know, each state is gonna have its own regulatory regime. Think about it like how marijuana legalization worked. - Right. - If a state wants to legalize it, it can under its own terms. So, prediction markets are not technically sports betting. It's a financial exchange. So, if you and I agree that there's a 50/50 chance of an event happening, I think it's 50%. Yes, you think it's 50%. No, we each put up 50 cents into a contract. And, once the event happens, whoever is right, gets the others 50 cents. So, the contract is worth a dollar, once the event is over. - And it's a contract between two people? - It's a contract between two people, yeah. They're called event contracts or binary options, because they only have two outcomes. And usually they're tied to yes or no questions. So, will this team win? Will this player score more than seven touchdowns or whatever, that kind of a thing? And so, because they're event contracts, because they're technically financial instruments, they're regulated at the federal level by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, to small regulatory body that handles options contracts, things like that nature. And, because they're financial products, they're legal nationwide. Once you turn 18, you can trade stocks. Once you turn 18, you can trade options. Once you turn 18, you can trade sports options, tied to the outcome of a sporting event. So, on an underlying basis, compared to a sports book, they are different. But, from a consumer point of view, their identical product experiences. And, just a hammer that idea home, when you download Draft Kings, and you open the app in New York, for example, and you open it up and you start betting the odds that you're seeing and the betting that you're doing, that's on a traditional sports book model, because New York has legal sports betting. But, if you then fly to California and open up the same app on your phone, the app looks identical. The odds are identical. The betting behavior is identical. The whole UI, UX, everything. But, the underlying product that you're using is a prediction market, because sports betting is illegal in California. So, even though there's an underlying difference, from a consumer point of view, it's the exact same product, it's the exact same experience. And, that's why prediction markets were initially seen as kind of a threat to the sports books. But, the sports books realized that they can use prediction markets to sort of, like, unlock a bunch of new customers in states like Texas, California, a lot of Florida, that don't have many legal sports betting options. But, just so we're clear, do the Draft Kings and the World now do prediction markets as well? Yeah, that's what I'm saying. Draft Kings and Fiddle and all of them, they also have prediction markets. So, Draft Kings, their tagline for all of their ads this year is like, we're finally available nationwide. You can Draft Kings anywhere you are in the country. And, the ad campaign is like Kevin Hart and one of the Jonas Brothers, I think, like, do it across country. Kevin Hart, I can't believe Kevin Hart would sell out. Sorry, that's a joke for like 13 people who listen to the show and be like, "Ah, yeah, got him." And, if you've never watched the Z-Way interview with Kevin Hart, I cannot recommend it enough. Z-Way, fantastic podcast to she is. Anyway, moving on from Kevin Hart, I, is there anything stopping this? Are there any efforts to try and stop this from existing or at least slow it down? Or is this just, is this the new normal, at least until we have different people in Congress or what have you? Definitely, there's a lot of efforts. Yeah, I mean, yeah, exactly. There's a lot of efforts to slow this down on a lawsuit basis, dozens of states, I think, have, at this point, sued, couched. or Polymarker to the other prediction markets, you know, alleging that they're offering illegal gambling in their state, and those cases are working their way to the Supreme Court. I don't wanna like get into too many specifics because honestly, like every four days, there's another legal development that kind of changes the landscape. But one thing is for sure, I think anyway, is that this is going to wind up at the Supreme Court. It will need to be decided there, whether or not swaps, as they're known, these binary options tied to sporting events are swaps or whether they're sports bets. That's the fundamental question. Whether, you know, in 2011, when Dodd-Frank, I think that was the year, when Dodd-Frank was passed and we brought swaps under the regulation of the CFTC, whether Congress intended at that point that, you know, there would be sports betting with these swaps and, you know, I've spoken to Gary Gensler, who was the chair of the CFTC at the time and famously chair of the Securities Exchange Commission under the former President Joe Biden. And he has told me, no, that was not the intention of Congress. - I mean, not. - Yeah. - It was barely the intention of Congress to stop anything. I have a lot of criticism about the regulation from that time, but yeah, it's just, it's yet more times in which regulation just created a new industry rather than suppressed one. - Yeah, absolutely. I think that, you know, there's a question of whether, like, congressional intent actually matters, but it seems pretty clear that the congressional intent was not for there to be nationwide sports betting through financial contracts. But, you know, whether or not the Supreme Court adheres to, you know, what was meant at that time or what, you know, I've had people in the prediction market world to be like, well, you know, the law is very clear that it allows this. And, you know, I just don't think that the Supreme Court really cares how clear the law is at any given time. They're going to kind of interpret it how they choose. - So, that's what's so strange about all this as well, because finance and contracts and, like, financial court, those things are fairly well regulated, but it seems that these companies have just kind of used the regulation to make themselves legal rather than, I don't know, I realized I'm kind of dithering on this point, but it almost feels like they just found a loophole by ignoring everything. It's just because you can't do options, you could do options trading in most states, but there are limitations to how much margin you can have. There are, like, very fixed things you can and can't do. But with this, you could just do anything as long as you're 18, 21. Is there, is there even a nage limit? - Yeah, it's 18. That's nationwide. - Oh, good, that's even better. The argument for, and the whole point with event contracts and the idea that they, what they're supposed to be doing, you know, when, if you look at, like, old interviews with Tarek Mansour, it's the co-founder and CEO of Kalshi, the example he always uses is Brexit. So, he was a trader or something at some firm before he founded Kalshi, and clients wanted a way to hedge their exposure to Brexit. So, it's kind of difficult to do that with, like, a package of stocks. What stocks do you buy or not buy to, you know, estimate an outcome of Brexit? It's kind of difficult to do that, but a much cleaner way would be, well, what if I can just trade an option on, like, yes, Brexit will happen. And if it does happen, then I get paid, because that's actually what I'm looking for. So, that's where binary contracts can actually be useful. That's, like, a, you know, an actual use case for prediction markets is this hedging opportunity. And that's where I, you know, I think that's totally valid. That's, like, the point of a financial market, right? But, you know, now, but the thing is, like, now, their primary business is sports. And so, like, when, you know, it's a kind of a, I know. I want to push back about what the primary function of a financial market on that one, though, because, yeah, coming, like, living in the beautiful, beautiful Las Vegas Nevada with our beautiful slot machines, one of the things that I've noticed about the casinos is, they very rarely let you bet on, for both the houses benefit and otherwise, bet on binary things. Like, maybe you'll do a yes or no, but even, like, red or black on a roulette table is 48.9% on average. - Yeah, yeah. - But the big thing is, they don't let you bet on just, like, how many fingers am I holding up? Or stuff like that. That's the comment. - Yeah. - It's like, and the idea of, like, oh, I can hedge whether an outcome happens directly, feels like it's not even in, it's not even a financial market anymore. It's not, you're not investing in it. You're not actually investing in anything. And this is because, this is why, by the way, Mormonism just made prediction markets against the religion. I don't know if you heard about this. - No. - What? - Mormonism, yes. So Mormonism, I go look at this up. Mormonism just made prediction markets, because the argument is, yeah, it's also illegal in Utah. - Yeah, there is that. - To be clear, we are not a pro Mormon podcast. Just getting that out there. Yes, it's fostering greed, particularly among youths, while producing nothing of value. Gambling is built on the desire to obtain something for nothing. And this is the one and only thing I agree with the Mormons on, because that's the thing. That's not a financial market. The financial market is a market for financial instruments. Unless you were saying that, I guess, that there are probably financial instruments that aren't about, well, I mean, even commodities, though you're still betting, you're still actually, I said betting, they're gonna get me for that one. You're still investing in it. You're still investing in a thing. With this, I'm investing in and whether a thing happens, I guess. I don't know, I'm sure that someone's gonna email me and say, well, there's an example here in finance. I don't think anything like that should exist in finance. I also think that we need to massively pair back almost every financial instrument. I think that we are too speculative, but it is interesting, as well, seeing the Mormons coming out as a moral side on this. But that's what it comes down to. That's the real problem with this. It's not really betting on anything. But I also think that you should make Draft King's illegal and Fangil illegal polymarket and all the illegal. It's in big boat, it's in the way. This is Lavaearrington from two pros and a cup of Joe. Running a small business means keeping track of a lot, but your finances shouldn't feel complicated. That's X-E-R-O. Zero brings accounting, payments, payroll, and analytics together, giving you one clear view of your business. With easy-to-read dashboards, you can see your cash flow and understand exactly what's coming in and what's going out. Zero's AI can save you time and provide insights to help you make smarter decisions while keeping everything simple and accessible. It's powerful enough for an accountant, but simple enough for you. Zero is the all-in-one to get business done. - The world is transforming faster than ever, and standing still isn't an option. At Oppenheimer, we're working at the forefront of the innovation economy to invest where progress begins, finding opportunities that build and protect wealth for individuals and institutions that want to see at the edge of tomorrow. - All right folks, I'm back talking to you about quints one of my favorite clothing brands, and I finally pulled the trigger and picked up one of their Cuban curved chains to go with one of their Pima cotton t-shirts. Going to be a good look for me, you'll find out. All of this will sit beneath one of Quince's responsible downhurted parkers, a ridiculously warm and comfortable coat I wear constantly in the fallen winter. It can actually really take a beating and the wind is wonderful and I can't recommend it enough. Now everything at Quince is priced 50 to 80% less than similar brands because they work directly with ethical factories and cut out the middlemen, so you can give luxury quality pieces without the luxury price tag. 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Is that being put on the table? - Well, if you open Robinhood right now, like you can liquidate your stock position and go put it all on football with predictions. - Yes, you can, like in the same app. - So is there a prediction market ETF though, which is just a fund of different options that you could buy into that usually it's like stock sopons? - There's no prediction market ETF, but I have seen that there is something, and I need to do more reading and reporting on this, so I don't want to get too into it and tell your listeners wrong. But everyone should go look up hockey ETF because I'm pretty sure that you can now trade. an ETF tied to the performance of hockey teams, and yeah, I'll make that comment on that. Volatility shares has followed to launch an exchange-traded fund for every NHL team, a set of products, unlike anything currently trading, and I'm just not going to read the rest of that article, because I'm going to put a gun in my hand, moving on. But this is the thing, like, again, talking of Vegas, though we obviously love our gambling and we love our tax, we don't have to pay state tax, but there is also a, there are big guard rails around gambling there, and I should be clear, this is not me being pro-gambling so much as I am pro-responsibility and restraint wherever it's found, but there are big, like, if you look too young in a casino, they can and they will come over and tell you to leave. If you look like you are too trash, they will actually put you from a table, they hesitate to provide credit, but I read a story the other day, I think it was one of the drawfkinks one, most pro-publica, I might be wrong on this one, where the story was they pretended to be a problem gambler and within a week they had a personal sales rep. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Well, the thing is, like, what is the difference between a problem gambler and a profitable customer at a sports book? I would argue that there is not one. I think there was a research in the business journal of gambling and sports, but I can't remember the exact journal, but some research published that something like 5% of sports betters are responsible for more than 80% of all of the profit and revenue that sports books generate. So a huge portion of profits come from a very small, potentially problematic source and that ratio like roughly holds across vice industries, it's the same thing, marijuana alcohol. This is called the Addiction surplus, so it's this argument that the addictive nature of the product inherently makes it easier to sell to people who are more prone to addiction and some researchers have argued that this leads vice industries to tamp down on consumer protections because on a gambling site their revenues are tied one to one to consumer losses. So everything they do to protect consumers literally cuts into the bottom line. Jesus, I mean, yes, I think we need the Nevada Game Commission to come down on these people. That's the actual thing that I don't get, because you spend your time in Vegas people like, oh yeah, they actually mess you up. But it's somehow not effective on this one because just yeah, I mean, there's only so much they can do to require them to do certain customer protection measures. We're also just in the US like way far behind other countries, you know, in the UK for example, there's a lot more stringent consumer protection and regulations on gambling than there is in the US just because for sports betting in particular, you know, it's less than a decade that that we've had this kind of nationwide fascination and thing with it. We're a much more, the US is a lot more like historically in the way that we think about gambling, we think about Vegas, we think about slots, whereas in the UK and some more European countries, sports betting is synonymous with gambling in a way that it really wasn't in the US until 2018. Yeah, I mean, it just feels, it feels like this isn't slowing down. It's very worrying to me. Yeah, I mean, we are seeing a bit of a taper in like, and a plateauing, I should say, in terms of total dollars wagered on online sportsbooks. Generally, yeah, generally gambling participation is going up. I would say more people are gambling than ever. That's an easy claim to make 50% of American men under the age of 49 have an account on a digital sportsbook. So that's half of men under under 50 in the US have an account on a digital sportsbook. So yeah, it's prevalent, you know, you watch NFL and it's kind of built into the way that the commentators talk about the game now. It's generally unavoidable, I would say, and I think that there's a growing betting fatigue among the broader population. And we're starting to see that show up in rising tax rates in some states that have legal sports betting and a general questioning of whether, you know, state governments should have done this. But the problem is, you know, legalizing gambling is a great way to raise state revenues and get more money into the coffers of a state without raising taxes. Oh, this, just Cal sheet, does Cal sheet and vent you a little them actually provide state tax revenue? Yeah, the sportsbooks do. The problem is for states is that the prediction markets don't because they're federally regulated. So they don't pay state taxes. But, you know, if a state is like, well, I kind, you know, Ohio, for example, Governor Mike DeWine, the, I think he's still the governor has, yeah, because the election's coming. Anyway, Governor Mike DeWine has called his decision to, you know, legalize sports betting in Ohio to sign that bill into law. One of the greatest mistakes of his, you know, 50 year political career he has said that he regrets it deeply. But the problem is all of that tax revenue that comes from sports betting is now funding things like state pension funds and infrastructure. And so once the state is seeing that money, it's very hard to then walk that back because they're putting it to use, you know, it's kind of like datacent as the datacent construction and I don't know. There's, there's all sorts of weird things that are happening with that as well. I don't want to get into because I'm already pissed off enough already. Yeah, yeah, yeah. By the way, that I was correct. It was a pro public history by Jake Pearson, which I'll link in the notes about how he blew 1,800 dollars in one night by chasing losses with bigger bets and then the next day he got invited to audition for its VIP program, truly evil. Just I, I see there's nothing other than actually evil. And I don't know. I know that Casino's did the same thing. I'm not defending them, but it's, I don't know, there are also big signs that say gambling problems. I find this whole thing just kind of repulsive and it's the American didn't need more gambling. This is Lovar Arington from two pros in a cup of Joe. That's XERO, zero is a financial management platform that loves giving small business owners the clarity to have the confidence in their numbers. It puts accounting payments, payroll and analytics all in one place. So you always have one clear picture of your business with visual dashboards, zero makes it easy to understand your cash flow. At Oppenheimer, we're proven because we're grounded in discipline. For 145 years, we've been building and protecting wealth through every market cycle. With precision, clarity and the courage to think boldly beyond the moment. While we are on the subject of problem gambling, you have a little story that you're working on. I mean, little in the small way. I mean, it's going to be very interesting that you're working on that will be out by the time this goes out just to be clear. Indeed, yes. I am working on a story publishing, hopefully today, as we're talking about the National Council on Problem Gambling. This is the largest nonprofit dedicated to mitigating problem gambling, gambling addiction harm, advocating at a federal level for more funding, for gambling addiction, such and such. They're the main voice advocating for gambling addiction in the United States. Over the past, since January 2025, their organization has been going through a lot of turmoil to put it gently. The way that your viewers are probably most familiar with the National Council on Problem Gambling is they used to operate 1-800 gambler. When you watch a gambling advertisement right now at the bottom, you'll see gambling problem question mark call 1-800 gambler or 1-800-my-reset. Last year, okay, I'll give you the whole -- there's a lot here, so I'll give you the space here. So 1-800 gambler, the phone number, is owned -- the rights to it are owned by an affiliate organization of the NCPG National Council on Problem Gambling in New Jersey. This is a New Jersey affiliate of the NCPG that owns 1-800 gambler. And from 2021 or so, they were licensing the rights to operate 1-800 gambler to the NCPG. And the NCPG got like a $6 million donation. from the NFL to basically modernize the problem gambling helpline system. The way that they were-- - Whether they modernize it. - Yeah, they basically, you know, that's a great question. They put more focus on data collection. So there was a question about, you know, you call the number and instead of getting help right away, you're being asked survey questions. That's something that I found in my reporting was happening. And basically, there were questions about whether or not individual call centers and individual states were up to snuff as it were for the NCPG. So the NCPG decided that in Nevada, the Nevada call center taking calls from, you know, area codes in Texas, Nevada. And oh, I'm sorry, forgive me, the New Mexico call center. Well, you know, whether or not it was providing high quality care to people dialing 1-800 gambler. And one of the things that was happening at the New Mexico call center run by, you know, just a handful of people. There's really not a lot of people that work in problem gambling. They had a Navajo speakers online at all times because the Navajo Nation is in New Mexico. You know, Native Americans have a higher rate of gambling problems than the rest of the population. And they would get a lot of calls from the Navajo Nation, you know, seeking to speak to Navajo speakers, work with them, et cetera, administer therapy help. And the NCPG made the decision to reroute calls away from the New Mexico call center, you know, basically with very little explanation. And, you know, this led to a number of calls being dropped. A number of Navajo speakers not getting help in a timely manner, calls getting trouble. Back to New Mexico in the middle of the night. Something similar happened in Florida, where the Florida call centers were not, you know, up to snuff in the view of the NCPG. And, you know, Florida was rerouted away. So New Jersey was getting wind of all of this. And was like, all right, guys, we need to exercise more control over 1,800 gambler. You guys are getting, you're being a little too overzealous with what you're doing. And the NCPG, you know, freaked out. There was a legal battle sparked between the NCPG and the New Jersey council. And what happened is eventually the NCPG lost control of 1,800 gambler. So after spending $6 million from the NFL and putting all this effort and money into upgrading the system, they lost it all. And one of the things that happened when they were modernizing the hotline is, they worked with a lot of gambling firms to get it included into all of the ads. So all of these gambling operators, your draft kings, your MGMs, et cetera, had 1,800 gambler in their advertisements. And then all of a sudden, the organization that was operating it, like lost control of it. So the operators are like, wait, what are we doing? Are we promoting the right resource? Basically, again, you know, cutting into the way that service was happening. And then in January, the NCPG hires Heather Moore, the new executive director of the NCPG. She has a reputation as an effective fundraiser, but she has no prior experience in problem gambling. And then in April, she tells board members that there is a potential new donor to the organization. One of the roles of a board of directors at a nonprofit is to vet, you know, corporate partnerships, talk about donations, the terms, et cetera. And so for that reason, it would be normal to have a board meeting. What wasn't normal is that before the meeting could begin, Heather Moore insisted that everybody sign an NDA. Just before the meeting, just before the meeting, and that had never been done before. Very normal. Everyone needs to sign an NDA disclosure agreement before I can tell you about this potential new partner. Great. Fine, everyone signs. And then Heather Moore reveals, okay, it's a $2 million donation, second largest in national council and problem gambling history, and the potential donor is calcium, the prediction market. So this raises a lot of red flags pretty much immediately. A number of donors to the NCPG are in lawsuits with calcium. A number of them have competing business interests. And calcium, as we were talking about earlier, being regulated by the feds, doesn't have the kind of consumer protections that are built into the regulations that govern sports books at the state levels. So there's a question of whether or not calcium is like in alignment with the NCPG's mission. So all of these questions are coming up at the board meeting. And Moore says, well, unfortunately, we can't do anything about that because I actually already signed the deal with calcium. It's too late. Okay. And then like two weeks later, news comes out and it basically drops like a bombshell in the gambling addiction advocacy community. I talked to this guy, Mark Lefkowitz. He's been involved with the NCPG since the late '80s. And he said, the NCPG taking calcium's money is like quote, a national counsel on teenage sex abuse taking money from Jeffrey Epstein, end quote. (laughing) Hell yeah. People are not happy. People are not happy about this donation. And then a bunch of other stuff at the NCPG starts going down, the woman who is the director of programs for the NCPG, her name is Jamie Costello. She resigned after four years. She was the longest running staff member. And she was overseeing all the help line operations. So she had a very important job at the NCPG and their staff was already spread pretty thin. So she put her three weeks in and it wasn't connected to the calcium donation. She told me quote, I hold myself to things like respect and compassion and open uncomfortable transparent communication. And that just wasn't what I was experiencing as a staff member, end quote. So she resigns and then gives three weeks notice on a Monday and Tuesday morning, she gets an email, it's her last day you're done and she gets cut out of her systems. So any assistance that she could have given to her staff members to help continue to run the national problem gambling help line, which is like the widest known addiction resource in the country is now lost. And so there's a lot of turmoil going on there. And then that, so that was on Tuesday by Saturday, Heather Moore turns in her resignation to the board as well after fewer than 10 months on the job. So, you know, amid all of this, a bunch of donors to the NCPG have been pulling out the gambling regulators in Ohio and Michigan, the problem gambling councils in Nevada and Washington all pulled out of the NCPG after decades long relationships. Basically, the upshot is that at a time when gambling addiction and gambling participation are on the rise, because remember they're tied together, the main organization that advocates at a federal level for there to be federal funding for gambling addiction and research, all of that stuff, they are in complete disarray. And so no one knows to pick up the slack really. Pretty much. Yeah, there's no one else that's necessarily seen as kind of the top person, the top voice. And so yeah, it's a very, I think, you know, I hope that your listeners go on and read the story because it's quite a step-by-step retelling of what's been going on. But yeah, I mean, it's pretty concerning for a lot of advocates and people that work in the problem gambling space because this organization, which for the past, you know, since the '70s has been the primary org, you know, coordinating response to rising levels of gambling addiction is now, you know, in the wind, as it were. All right, so I just want to repeat this, email me if you hear any gambling ads in the show, anything like that I want to hear. I want to move the show, fuck these people. I don't know, I find that I didn't think that things would have improved since we last talked, but the idea of the main gambling addiction site being fucked over, not cited, sorry. The idea of the main gambling helpline being basically destroyed when the organization behind it's extremely grim, is there any effort to make any of this illegal though? Is there any efforts to try and bring this down as we wrap up here? - Honestly, not really. I mean, it makes so much money, Ed. That's the thing. - How much money does it make in comparison to the other industries? How much money does the gambling industry make in comparison? - Yeah, I mean, specifically the prediction markets and such. - Well, prediction markets, they don't have as great of revenues as the sports books. I don't have those numbers right in front of me for the comparison, but-- - But I mean, even with the online sports books, the Draftkinks and the Vanguels and such. - Yeah, they're making a lot. I mean, suffice it to say that their margins are very good because they are selling a product that is very easy to sell. It's easy to sell and get people into gambling because it makes your brain feel great. People that were selling cigarettes did not exactly have a very difficult job because people were addicted to cigarettes. And the main way that people engage with gambling these days online sports betting is very frictionless. It used to be that you would go to the horse track and there were a dozen races in a single day. and all of your, you know, your gambling, the highs and the lows of it were spread out. throughout the course of a day. Now, within a single quarter of a football game, you can be placing dozens of bets every minute, and it's in your phone. Everyone has a casino in their pocket these days. And as I say, there is less and less ability for the people who want to do good and protect people who are being harmed by this product to actually step in and make things happen. - Is that anything that people can do? - I'm trying to find some way through other organizations that are worth donating to, like Jesus Christ. - Yeah, I don't know if I can make that kind of recommendation, but I would just say that everyone, here's my one thing. If you have a friend who ever says to you, oh, I lost X amount of money, so I have to keep betting to win it back, you need to have a conversation with them right up in there. That's called chasing losses. That's one of the strongest predictors of gambling related harm. And you know, gambling addiction, I know you keep searching for a silver lining here, Ed, but I'm gonna keep bombarding you with depressing statistics. So gambling disorder is one of the hardest addictions to necessarily spot. There's no urine test you can take that shows you've been spinning roulette all night, right? There's no track marks on your arm. People can hide their financials from their families, but the difference is that gambling addiction is one of the most dangerous. If you have a gambling disorder, there's a 20% chance that you'll attempt suicide in your lifetime. That's the highest of nearly any mental health disorder. It's got a ton of comorbidities. You're more likely to have a substance use disorder, depression, anxiety, it's associated with homelessness, crime, financial desperation, child neglect, domestic abuse, all of this stuff. And, you know, again, there's no federal funding. There's no federal funding for gambling addiction research. Not zero, compared that to. - So I think, I'm just gonna say, then I think the thing you have to do is, if you have a friend who has a gambling addiction, do not try and just morally attack them. That's the one thing I'll tell you. I've known a few people who've had the invagacy. It's like, be there and listen to them and try and work out what it is they're trying to feel and why they're trying to feel that. I think it's the best I can say. - Nobody starts drinking because they think they're going to become an alcoholic and nobody starts-- - Well, because they're having a great time. - Because they're having a great time. And I think that, you know, there is a, you know, kind of notion that gambling addiction is a moral failing. And if you were only responsible enough, you wouldn't have a gambling addiction. But, you know, this idea of responsible gambling, that's been pushed a lot by the industry because you'll know that puts the onus on the consumer to be responsible rather than on the corporation that's selling the addictive product to do so in a more responsible or better way. So, this idea that, you know, individual consumers have the power to stop themselves when they begin to experience addictive behaviors. It's just incorrect. And I think, hopefully, as it becomes more widespread, which is very unfortunate. Hopefully, one of the positives is that there's more understanding of the fact that this is just brain chemistry. People can't help themselves. And so, you know, we need to be there for them and understand, you know, what they're going through and not moralize it. - Hey, I like that as an ending point. Nick, where can people find you? - You can find me on barons.com, a B-A-R-R-R-O-N-S, or if you're in New York City, you can pick up a copy of our print issue out on NewSans every Saturday, every week. And so, yeah, and you can find me on barons.com and google.com/poison. That's what you find me now, slash poison. All right, you've been listening to Baroflime with "Back with the Monologue" this week. Cheers! (upbeat music) Thank you for listening to "Better Offline." The editor and composer of the "Better Offline" theme song is "Matter Salsky." You can check out more of his music and audio projects at mattersalsky.com, M-A-T-T-T-O-S-O-W-S-K-I dot com. You can email me at [email protected] or visit betteroffline.com to find more podcast links and, of course, my newsletter. 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