SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
Watch live sports these days, and a certain kind of ad has become almost as common as beer commercials.
(SOUNDBITE OF MONTAGE)
JAMIE FOXX: Oh, what's up? You watching the game? Put a little BetMGM action on it, and now any game becomes the game.
UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR #1: With FanDuel, it's easier than ever to place your bet before the next play.
UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR #2: Or build a live same-game parlay right in the middle of the action. Sign up now.
SIMON: Gambling has become a legal and, in fact, lucrative part of American sports. And sports gambling is the subject of a new podcast from a journalist known for his premiere reporting on sports, money and Wall Street. Michael Lewis, the author of "Moneyball," "The Big Short," now hosts the podcast Against the Rules. Michael Lewis joins us now. Michael, thanks so much for being with us.
MICHAEL LEWIS: Thanks for having me.
SIMON: Sports betting is now legal in 38 states and the District of Columbia. What fascinated you about it?
LEWIS: My first thought when it happened is it was this great social experiment, and it would be interesting to see just where it led. But the minute you get into it, it's as if Prohibition ended but the alcohol companies have really good data on everyone who might possibly want to drink too much and are able to sort of get bottles of whiskey under everybody's nose.
Sports betting in the country has gone from a few billion dollars to $100 billion - more than $100 billion and is increasing rapidly. The culture has flipped so much from a this is taboo, betting on sports shouldn't be done - all the sports leagues and the NCAA lined up against it - to flipping in completely other direction and trying to sell it as entertainment.
Charlie Baker, former Republican governor of Massachusetts, who is the new president of the NCAA...
SIMON: Yeah.
LEWIS: ...Was so shocked when he wandered college campuses when he took his new job, how much gambling was going on that he commissioned a study. And they reported that 60% of males between the ages of 18 and 22 are placing sports bets.
SIMON: Now, you have that demographic in your family, don't you?
LEWIS: Yeah, my son is 17.
SIMON: And?
LEWIS: (Laughter) Well, you know, I think...
SIMON: He's entitled to his privacy. But what have you...
LEWIS: No, no, no, no, he's not. He's lost his privacy because the final episode, we gave...
SIMON: Yeah. I know.
LEWIS: ...Him a pile of money and said, have at it. So we've engaged in this experiment - how a 17-year-old boy interacts with this market. And trust me, they are. I mean, it isn't just in colleges. You go to every high school, and boys are gambling on sports. And the problem is the young male brain thinks it knows lots of stuff it doesn't. It's very overconfident. It doesn't understand markets. So it doesn't understand that if there's a market price, like betting odds, there's a lot of information in that. And so there's the likelihood you know something is not great.
SIMON: I mean, you're a young male - and not just a young male - you go, oh, I got a feeling that the Bears are going to pull out of a spin, right?
LEWIS: And if you win, you think you're a genius. And the companies are targeting, actually, this demographic to engage. I actually had the thought...
SIMON: Yeah.
LEWIS: ...A bit like I have a thought with alcohol but worse - I think it's an even more dangerous product in some ways - that I need to actually educate him about this. I need to take him and have him experience all the mistakes he makes so he doesn't go off on his own and think he knows something. And so I thought, yeah, Walker - my son - I want him to, like, understand this. And to his credit - I don't want to give away the ending...
SIMON: Yeah.
LEWIS: ...But he got in the market with several thousand dollars and did a lot of crazy things. But he had, at his disposal, pro gamblers. He could just call them up for help and have conversations. And he realized, after a stretch, that I got lucky and I've won some money here, but this is dumb. Like, essentially, the industry is set up. And it's designed to coax the gamblers into making dumber and dumber bets.
SIMON: Is that what you call fracking the fan?
LEWIS: Yeah. I mean, so if you look at, like, just the casino industry...
SIMON: Those are house games.
LEWIS: ...The house games - you know, roulette, and even the slot machines, the brick-and-mortar casinos - historically - and this has held true for decades - the house take from the bets is about 5%. These sports gambling companies - they started there, but it's now kind of up to 15%. And what they are doing is leading the customers into essentially worse and worse bets and taking advantage, essentially, of cognitive weaknesses and especially cognitive weaknesses in young men.
SIMON: I went to a Cubs-Nats game. And this is purely an anecdotal impression, but it would have been easier to place a sports bet - which our family did not do - than it would be to buy a bag of peanuts.
LEWIS: Yeah, I believe that. And the leagues have identified sports gambling as the great new source of revenues. And what's to come but is just starting is this attempt to turn the games into essentially slot machines, where you're betting on every in-game event - each pitch - how fast will the fastball be? Will the guy hit a home run this at bat? And that kind of betting, like slot machines, has been shown to be a lot more addictive. It's getting into the brain in a different way. And it's changing the sport.
One side of our story is we talked to athletes - Larry Nance Jr., power forward on the Atlanta Hawks - not someone you would think anybody is really betting on much 'cause he doesn't score a lot of points or get a lot of rebounds. He doesn't have a lot of stats. He says his life has been changed. He says I get to Memphis, and I get a note saying, in the last game, you just cost me a thousand bucks. Don't show your face on the streets, or I'm going to slit your throat. And he says you get those things, and you kind of think, this is new. That didn't happen when we just lost a game. So sort of the interaction between the fan and the athlete - the tenor of that relationship is really changing because of the introduction to gambling.
SIMON: Michael, what about the argument that, dare I say, fans have been betting on everything for thousands of years - back to the Greeks and Romans, I'm told?
LEWIS: Yeah.
SIMON: We just got to figure out a way to live with it.
LEWIS: So a couple of things to say about that - it's an addictive product, and you increase the odds dramatically of addiction, the easier you make it. It's now an addictive product that's being delivered on an addictive device. Everybody essentially has a casino in their pockets now, 'cause they're doing it on their phone. I'm not making an argument for prohibition. I'm just making an argument for making it harder and an argument for not blasting ads in the way you might not blast ads about cigarettes - making it just a little more difficult to wreak the havoc it can wreak.
Although there are people who are called sports gambling regulators in every state, there's very little constraints on the industry. They can kind of do what they want to do. So it's like a public health problem, and we're going to have to deal with it. And the question is, like, how long it takes. The opioid crisis took 25 years.
SIMON: Yeah.
LEWIS: Tobacco took 30 years or maybe more. It's like, at what point we wake up and say, like, there really is a need for regulation here - like, probably serious federal regulation.
SIMON: Michael Lewis - the new season of his podcast, Against the Rules, is streaming now. Michael, thanks so much for being with us.
LEWIS: Good talking to you, Scott. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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