What $150 billion in sports bets is doing to America

DANNY FUNT: There is such a surge of harassment and threats targeting athletes from enraged gamblers, way more than ever existed in the pre-legalization era. As a former chief security officer at the NFL put it, based on the death threats and the stalking, it’s only a matter of time before some gambler tries to kill an athlete who costs them a bet.

And yet, a lot of people are going to have fun betting on the Super Bowl, and these companies are going to acquire yet more customers. So I’ll be watching that as well as who wins on the field.

BOB SAFIAN: That’s Danny Funt, a journalist who covers sports betting for The Washington Post, The New Yorker, and others. He’s out with a new book, Everybody Loses, that breaks down how legalized online sports betting is reshaping leagues, fandom, and the business of sports. As we bet our way through Super Bowl season, I wanted to ask Danny about the dominance of FanDuel and DraftKings, the betting scandals emerging from the NBA to colleges, and the big-picture implications of Americans wagering $150,000,000,000 a year on every touchdown, three-point attempt, and swing of the bat. So let’s get to it. I’m Bob Safian, and this is Rapid Response.

[THEME MUSIC]

I’m Bob Safian. I’m here with Danny Funt, journalist and author of the new book, Everybody Loses: The Tumultuous Rise of American Sports Gambling. Danny, thanks for being here.

FUNT: Thanks for having me.

Copy LinkIs the Super Bowl still the biggest day for sports betting?

SAFIAN: The Super Bowl is approaching. New England Patriots, Seattle Seahawks set to face off. The Super Bowl’s long been the biggest moment for sports betting in the calendar. Is that still true?

FUNT: Well, it’s sort of become a truism that every Super Bowl will be the most wagered-on sporting event in American history because the growth of this industry is so phenomenal. I would say that it’s not quite as special as it used to be. There’s definitely more money wagered on the big game than any other game, but it doesn’t blow them out of the water. It’s like 1% of business for these sportsbooks.

And the reason is a lot of people bet on just about every game now the way they do the Super Bowl, whether it’s betting on thousands of props within every game or betting a little bit more than you might think is sensible.

Yeah, the Super Bowl doesn’t quite stand out to bookmakers the way it used to.

SAFIAN: I know you write in the book that like a restaurant critic, you have to test out all the sportsbooks. Have you picked your Super Bowl winner and your platform for making the bet?

FUNT: My son was born a few hours after the last Super Bowl, and we had the game on in the delivery room, I’ll admit.

At halftime, I just could not believe that Patrick Mahomes was going to get routed in the Super Bowl. So I put a little down on the Chiefs and obviously lost that.

And I haven’t been betting much since, not just because I have family stuff to worry about, but the more I’ve talked to people about how impossible it can be to actually win money. Eventually, even as delusional as gamblers, myself included, can be, eventually that kind of hit home, and I said, “I’m tired of lighting my money on fire.”

So I don’t know if I’ll bet on this Super Bowl. We’ll see.

Copy LinkHow prop bets transformed the sports viewing experience

SAFIAN: You mentioned prop bets. For those who don’t bet on sports, can you explain what prop bets are? These are what prompt fans to lash out at athletes on social media and from the stands, right?

FUNT: Yeah, that’s a big piece of it because they’re basically ways to bet on statistical propositions, or props, within the game. “Why don’t I take a side bet on whether a certain player will score a touchdown?” And that proved irresistible just by tapping your phone anywhere you are, any time of day. Literally every outcome you could imagine, of not just the game and the players playing the game, but every possession, every play, is a betting opportunity.

SAFIAN: But it makes it seem like every play matters because people have bet on it, which I guess could make people more engaged in watching, but also sort of distorts the game for the players, whether they make a particular shot or something works out the way they want it at that moment.

FUNT: This was the fear. And so much of what commissioners spent decades warning us about, the consequences of legalization, I think are being borne out.

There was actually an example that I describe in the book. There was this guy who was a recent college grad who, while he was at college, became addicted to gambling, completely ruined his college experience. Thankfully he’s in recovery.

And he told me that he went to a New York Knicks game, this big playoff game against the Philadelphia 76ers, and he was talking to a group of guys who were sitting in front of him, and they had come from Long Island. And so it was this whole ordeal for them to get to Philadelphia. Obviously the seats for a playoff game aren’t cheap either. And all they were worried about during the game was whether Jalen Brunson of the Knicks would get a steal. That was the main event for them.

SAFIAN: Because that was going to pay for their whole day, their whole trip.

FUNT: You don’t have to be a moralist or some puritan to think that that’s bizarre, and that’s not unusual now.

Copy LinkThe integration of betting into leagues and media

SAFIAN: I’ve been struck by how much betting has taken over the game watching experience. Tons of ads from the sportsbook certainly, but commentary about the live odds and whatnot. The business relationship between the leagues and the teams and the sports betting organizations, it’s gotten pretty tight.

FUNT: Oh, yeah. Integrated in so many ways beyond just advertising. It’s what makes the league so determined to keep the gambling business growing, and I think also resistant to any proposals to rein in certain things that seem excessive.

The very idea that you could be placing all these sorts of obscure bets during a game is, in large part, what won the leagues over. It’s not some sort of inadvertent byproduct, like, “Wow, look at how out of control things have gotten.” That was the main selling point from the industry to the leagues.

SAFIAN: So building a generation of fans who watch sports through a betting lens, that was the goal even of the leagues.

FUNT: These pitch meetings that I’ve heard about, where representatives of the gambling industry and of Nielsen, the company that measures TV audiences and other media consumption, were explaining to the leagues, it’s common sense that gamblers watch more games than traditional fans. If you’re betting on something, anything can become interesting. You’re also watching to the end of games to see how a bet is resolved, even if it’s a blowout that other people would’ve moved on from.

But there were studies that the gambling industry commissioned from Nielsen that they were presenting at these meetings that blew people away, just because it sort of took that common sense and substantiated it in a really profound way, that gamblers were watching more than twice as many games. And specifically, the idea that if you’re betting on your phone, you can bang away bets at a much more frenetic pace than you ever could if you had to call up a bookie or wait in line at an in-person sportsbook. That was hugely appealing to the leagues.

Copy LinkWhy leagues aren’t equipped to handle the betting crises

SAFIAN: We’ve seen a bunch of high-profile betting scandals recently, the NBA with Portland Trail Blazers coach Chauncey Billups, Major League Baseball, two pitchers for the Cleveland Guardians, and an NCAA point-shaving scheme involving, I don’t know, almost 40 players across 17 teams. You wrote a great piece in The New Yorker saying that the leagues aren’t equipped to handle crises like this. The vulnerabilities are worse than folks want to admit?

FUNT: These so-called integrity monitors, they’re hired by the leagues and the sportsbooks to police betting activity and investigate something that looks suspicious. People high up at those companies have told me they have major blind spots, that the modern ways of betting make it borderline impossible to catch all sorts of illicit behavior, and maybe worse, that the leagues are so entangled, not just with the betting business, but with that integrity-monitoring business. There would be a major conflict of interest if someone had to blow the whistle.

This played out as I was reporting that piece for The New Yorker. An agent in the NBA named Daniel Hazan had spoken with me in 2024. One of his top clients was a player named Malik Beasley, who was about to sign with the Detroit Pistons and go on to have a breakout season, Hazan told me, A, he knew of a lot of people who were betting who shouldn’t be, but B, it struck him that all these prop-betting opportunities would be so tempting to players that the temptation is more severe than ever.

And also, as we were saying, that the leagues would have a major disincentive to blow the whistle on someone within their own ranks, especially a star, because that could kill the league, as he put it.

So I spoke with him in 2024. I reported the piece for The New Yorker. They’re doing their fact-checking and whatnot to get ready to publish. And the news breaks that Malik Beasley is under a federal investigation for fixing games in collusion with gamblers. He hasn’t been charged. He maintains his innocence, but just that coincidence was remarkable to me.

And yet Beasley, despite being on the verge of getting a big contract and one of the top three-point shooters in the league, is not the superstar that Daniel Hazan, his agent, had alluded to. And that, I think, really worries people is that if there were a modern Pete Rose or a modern Black Sox, would we know about it, or would the leagues and their partners try to sweep it under the rug?

Copy LinkWhy do athletes take the risk of betting on the side?

SAFIAN: Players, especially NBA players, make so much money. What do they need to do the betting on the side for? They have so much at risk themselves.

FUNT: Oh, yeah. That makes total sense on its face, and yet we’re seeing so many reasons why that doesn’t prove true.

Another player who was arrested last year, Terry Rozier of the Miami Heat, had made about $150,000,000 over the course of his NBA career, and yet he’s accused of colluding with friends and saying, “Hey, I’m going to remove myself from games. Why don’t you take the unders on my prop bets, because if I’m not playing, they’re definitely not going to go over.”

You could definitely be vulnerable to extortion. That’s what’s alleged to have happened with Jontay Porter, a player on the Toronto Raptors who was convicted and banned for life from the NBA after he did something similar to Rozier’s accused of doing, removing himself from games so his props would go under.

He allegedly had racked up really substantial gambling debts, and people who knew that leveraged it and said, “Hey, rather than us bust you for gambling, why don’t you partner with us so we can make millions of dollars on your player props?”

And just lastly, athletes are maybe more prone than anyone to overdoing it in compulsive gambling. Phil Mickelson has made $1,000,000,000 over the course of his golf career from prizes and endorsements. He’s admitted that he had a massive gambling problem and is reported to have lost hundreds of millions of dollars betting on sports.

I even heard a story from an agent of guys who would play the card game War, like the most mindless card game you could think of, for $1,000,000 a game.

So that just gives you a sense of guys who love the adrenalin of competition, hate to accept the idea of losing. So many reasons why being wealthy and making a big salary does not immunize you from doing something really stupid with sports betting.

SAFIAN: All this stuff could be going on before the legalization and popularization of gaming that has gone on since the Supreme Court decision in 2018 because there’s black market gambling and all that, but it’s just expanded the circumference of it?

FUNT: In the Jontay Porter case, that Raptors player who was banned for life, he’s a good example of how a lot of these issues are a distinct byproduct of the online era. This is one of the most obscure basketball players we could think of, and people were betting more than $1,000,000 on his props to go under for a single game.

I spoke with a longtime Nevada bookmaker. I even spoke with some people who’ve worked in the offshore betting business for a long time. They told me they would never dream of taking a million-dollar bet on someone like Jontay Porter because they know it would be so easy to fix a bet like that and so hard to catch someone doing that.

So they didn’t want to expose themselves to that risk. But because prop betting and combinations of props and other bets, parlays, are the biggest moneymaker for online operators, they’re desperate to make it so easy to come up with all the sorts of props and parlays that you could think of, and sort of taking a gamble and exposing themselves and sports to just a whole new breadth of corruption.

SAFIAN: I got to say, I love sports. I’m not much of a sports bettor except for the occasional big game or tournament, but as Danny explains it, I can see the appeal for some fans and for leagues. I also see the risk. Where is this business moving from here, and how does sports betting connect to the larger trend of prediction markets like Polymarket and Kalshi? We’ll talk about that and more after the break. Stay with us.

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Before the break, journalist Danny Funt explained why sports leagues have embraced betting despite the risk of scandals. Now he talks about whether betting companies are being responsible in wooing customers, who might be taken advantage of, and how sports wagering connects to prediction markets like Kalshi and Polymarket.

Note that there is mention of suicides, so for those who may find it triggering, please take care. Let’s jump back in. 

Copy LinkThe winners and losers of sports betting

Americans now legally wager around $150,000,000,000 a year. And there’s been this gold-rush phase of the sports betting business overall. Now we see FanDuel and DraftKings control more than three-quarters of the market. We saw ESPN Bet fail last year. Is the gold-rush phase over, or is there still another leg of growth that this industry is angling for?

FUNT: Yeah, the overall graph of American sports wagering is definitely going up, dramatically so. In a recent week, New Yorkers bet half a billion dollars on sports. But one of the reasons why I named the book Everybody Loses is not just all the money that customers are losing and other forms of losing when you think beyond money. It’s because a lot of sportsbooks are losing.

The idea that the house always wins, that has not been the case. There were something like 60 operators that flooded the market around 2019 as all these states started legalizing. Many of them have folded or been acquired or pulled back from certain states just because it’s too expensive to operate and they’re not turning a profit.

As you said, FanDuel and DraftKings dominate, and it seems like we’re headed toward a duopoly in that sense. Even they have said they’re facing pressure to jack up the hold percentage, their margins on each bet. Traditionally, the house held 5%, so about five bucks every $100 wagered. FanDuel and DraftKings would like to get that closer to 16%.

There’s also a push to get people betting on all sorts of stuff beyond sports. Notably, online casino gambling. FanDuel and DraftKings have online casinos where that’s legal, in about a half-dozen states. So you could imagine if you’re seduced into betting on sports and you go through the trouble of signing up and linking your Venmo and your bank and whatever, it’s very easy for the sportsbook to say, “Hey, why don’t you go play some roulette or some craps or any other casino game?”

SAFIAN: You say some of these sportsbooks are not necessarily making as much money, or under pressure to make even more money. Who’s winning in all this? I know you said everybody’s losing, but I guess for this to perpetuate, the league’s winning, the tax authorities are winning. Where is the value moving to if it’s moving away from all these other players?

FUNT: The leagues are making a ton of money. There’s no doubt about that. Sports media is seeing hundreds of millions of dollars invested from these companies in advertising and other partnerships.

I’m thinking of losing beyond strictly dollars, like the leagues losing trust in the integrity of their games. There’s such a demonstrable impact of that, where 65% of Americans, according to YouGov, think some athletes are influencing their play to shape the outcome of a bet.

Sports media losing independence and credibility when it seems like they can be pulling punches because of these highly lucrative partnerships they have with gambling companies.

The health consequences of this is a sort of incomprehensible loss, potentially.

Copy LinkCalls for regulation to gambling harms

SAFIAN: When you talk to the sportsbook makers, they say, “Oh, we’re cautioning; we’re looking for people who are at risk of being addicted, and we’re sort of cautioning people all the time.” You don’t buy that?

FUNT: It’s not just that I don’t buy that. People who work on that side tell me they’re actually not vetting customers. Just to give you one example, I interviewed a guy in Connecticut who lost $100,000 in a single year with FanDuel. Fortunately, he’s now in recovery and getting a lot of help.

But I asked, thinking about all these people at the companies who assured me that they are very careful that people can afford to lose at this pace, I said, “So what were you doing for a living when you lost 100K at FanDuel?”

And he said, “I was a server at the Cheesecake Factory, making $65 grand a year.”

I couldn’t even believe that. And I’m pretty skeptical of the industry, but that blew me away, and he’s not unique, unfortunately.

SAFIAN: Is there a healthier way a sports betting ecosystem could look?

FUNT: Absolutely. I’m totally convinced that this is not a question of whether to legalize or to revert to prohibition. I think it’s unfortunate to reduce it to that A or B, when in fact there’s a whole host of consumer protections that the industry and even industry-friendly lawmakers have resisted, that health advocates and even industry representatives from elsewhere in the world say are appropriate, ranging from restrictions on advertising, on new customer promotions that can be very seductive to get people to sign up for an account. All of this stuff seems like reasonable grounds for discussion and debate among policymakers.

And elsewhere in the world, there has been this wave of re-regulation where they said, “The industry has proven that it can’t self-police. And once we’ve actually gotten a firmer grasp of the prevalence of gambling problems and the harm it’s doing, we realized we were way too lax at the outset.” And I think there’s good reason to believe that’s what’s in store for the U.S.

And you’ve seen proposals to restrict live betting, those bets during games. Brian Schatz, the Democratic Senator from Hawaii, Paul Tonko, a Democrat from New York, and beyond that, a lot of state lawmakers have proposed all sorts of restrictions, including specifics that target young people, which seem to have people most freaked out, just the rates that we’re seeing kids as young as high school, middle school, even elementary school suddenly determined to find ways to bet on sports and a variety of other things.

Incremental progress is still progress, and you don’t have to force the toothpaste back in the tube to make the risks a little bit less dire.

Copy LinkEscalating risks for athletes and the specter of violence

SAFIAN: The challenges are, there is money being made and each time any of these regulatory things gets discussed, there’s somebody there with dollars, including state tax revenues, right?

FUNT: The tax revenue is kind of modest. It’s not solving budget deficits.

SAFIAN: Interesting.

FUNT: It’s often a drop in the bucket when you think about the overall budget challenges that so many states were facing when they said, “Hey, let’s activate this industry.”

Nevertheless, I totally agree with you that once you’ve got a revenue stream, it’s hard to shut it off. And that’s going to be challenging when we think about restricting prop bets, just as we were saying, if that’s all a lot of people bet on nowadays and it’s so much more profitable for the house and therefore so much more taxable, whether states will be eager to curb that.

This sort of measured analysis of the shape of the industry and some of the harms that it exposes people to, I don’t think will move the needle.

What could is much more frightening, and I do think on the table, and that’s, I hate to even bring this up, but a rash of suicides among people with gambling problems, which has happened overseas and inspired a lot of crackdowns from the government.

And also maybe the most terrifying one, there is such a surge of harassment and threats targeting athletes from enraged gamblers, way more than ever existed in the pre-legalization era. As a former chief security officer at the NFL put it, based on the death threats and the stalking and it’s the most horrifying situation unfolding you could imagine. As he put it, it’s only a matter of time before some gambler tries to kill an athlete who costs them a bet. And if that were to happen, I think a lot of people might say, “This is out of control. We must stop this.”

SAFIAN: That’s a terrible prospect to look to.

Copy LinkThe rise of prediction markets

I wanted to ask you about the rise of prediction markets outside of sports. Polymarket, Kalshi, which recently partnered with CNN. Kalshi’s odds for world events now pop up throughout the news. Trump’s apparently poised to launch Trump Predict.

What does all this mean? Does it intersect with legal sports betting? Is it different?

FUNT: The majority of the business for now on those prediction markets like Kalshi and Polymarket is sports. It’s, to a layperson, indistinguishable from the sports betting you can do on FanDuel and DraftKings, and yet because it’s classified as event contracts that’s regulated by the CFTC. That’s sort of a loophole that allows Kalshi and Polymarket to operate in all 50 states for now.

And I say “for now” because a lot of states are putting up a really aggressive fight in federal courts, saying, “You’re using a silly game of semantics to get around our betting regulations.”

But I think clearly there’s a growing desire to get Americans to bet on everything imaginable, whether it’s the news, the weather, war, things that you couldn’t even imagine people would want to bet on. That, I think, is the bigger trend is sports betting, in a way, is kind of introducing people to gambling. And then once they’re in, they’re saying, “What else can I bet on?”

Particularly a younger generation that demonstrates a kind of desperation of, “How can I change my standing financially with a single move, a single trade or bet?”

And although the CEO of Kalshi has said his vision is that every dispute becomes something that there’s a market for on Kalshi that you could bet on, literally every dispute imaginable, I don’t know that people are going to rush to bet on whether a bill will pass their state house. I think things like sports have a more fundamental appeal, that some of that stuff won’t interest the normal person.

Copy LinkThe future sustainability of sports betting

SAFIAN: So what do you feel like is at stake right now for sports, for the betting industry, for each of us as bettors or potential bettors, or those watching others bet?

FUNT: Even before we get into online casinos and prediction markets where you bet on everything under the sun, the rate that we’re betting on sports is unsustainable, and people in the industry are worried about that, in part because they fear for the well-being of customers.

And there’s research that in states with legal sports betting, bankruptcies are on the rise, credit scores are deteriorating, personal savings are shrinking. One in five college students use tuition funds to pay for their betting habits.

So all that is worrisome from sort of a good Samaritan point of view, but beyond that for the business, they just feel like you can’t beat people to a pulp to that degree and expect them to keep coming back year after year. Like, the old model of a 5% margin, maybe you could tolerate losing at that level and be a lifetime customer. If in some states you’re seeing people losing at a 30% margin, eventually, as delusional as gamblers are, you say, “I’m hitting the deposit button way too often. I can’t keep going at this rate.”

And people in the industry are facing so much pressure from their competitors, from investors, from just the quarter-by-quarter mindset of this business, that they’re pushing in that direction now. But whether they’re just going to burn out people is on a lot of people’s minds inside the business, for sure.

SAFIAN: Well, as the Super Bowl approaches, it feels like what you’re talking about is the real big game that’s going on, that’s going to run longer than just a few hours for us to figure out where it’s all going to end out.

FUNT: No question. And yet a lot of people are going to have fun betting on the Super Bowl, and these companies are going to acquire yet more customers. So I’ll be watching that, as well as who wins on the field.

SAFIAN: Well, Danny, this was great. Thanks so much for doing it.

FUNT: Thank you, Bob. My pleasure.

SAFIAN: As Danny talks about all the challenges around sports betting, those who are being taken advantage of, and even potential suicides, it’s interesting that he isn’t betting against legalization per se. It’s about balancing what is undoubtedly fun with the negative risks and recognizing that profit-driven business dynamics don’t always lead to the highest level of responsibility. Sports is a reflection of human society, competition, teamwork, ambition, community. There’s good reason that business leaders rely on sports analogies to describe both best practices and tough lessons. What’s more often overlooked is that sports are defined by rules, what’s permissible, what’s not, to keep an even playing field and protect all the players. In today’s era of hands-off regulation, it’s worth reflecting on that element. So let’s throw the challenge flag when we need to and hope that the officials get the important things right.

For those who do find themselves feeling over their heads with their sports wagering, do look for help, whether through a program like Gamblers Anonymous or by calling National Help Hotline, 1-800-662-HELP.

I’m Bob Safian. Thanks for listening.