Return to Transcripts main page
The Whole Story with Anderson Cooper
Sports Betting: America's Big Gamble. Aired 10-11p ET
Aired October 25, 2025 - 22:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[22:00:39]
ANDERSON COOPER, CNN HOST: Welcome to The Whole Story. I'm Anderson Cooper. In 2018, the Supreme Court struck down a federal ban on sports gambling.
Since then, 39 states and Washington, D.C. have legalized it. And in many of these states, you don't have to go to a casino or a sports book to place your bets. You can do it on your phone.
Sports betting apps have made it easier and more accessible than ever. And you can bet on events all over the world, from football to table tennis, 24 hours a day, seven days a week. The industry is booming.
Last year, Americans spent around $150 billion on bets. For some, it's a harmless way to have fun or make money. For others, it can fuel an addiction.
Over the next hour, CNN's Nick Watt takes us inside the sports betting world with those who make a living out of it and those who've lost everything. He'll also show you how these apps are designed to draw people in and why it can be so hard to quit.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Let's go.
NICK WATT, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): There is deep anxiety. Also, ecstasy.
DEREK STEVENS, FOUNDER, CIRCA SPORTS: These guys know this. These guys know this.
WATT (voice-over): These guys are a bunch of mates from Montreal. Disbelief, bare chests and bro hugs. The NFL regular season is drawing to a close.
WATT: Congratulations, man.
WATT (voice-over): And so is Circa's survivor pool.
STEVENS: The way it works is you pick a team on week one. And if you win, you get to pick a team in week two. You can only pick a team once per season. So this progressively gets more difficult. STEVEN GONCALVEZ, WINNER, CIRCA'S SURVIVOR POOL: I'm going to have a heart attack.
WATT: So, so you've been having a heart attack. You've won how much?
GONCALVEZ: I don't know the numbers. I think it's close to 2 million.
WATT (voice-over): Some are now winning big. Some are now losing big. Not on the tables, but online on sports.
WATT: I'm overwhelmed by your suit. I'm overwhelmed by the screens. Is that the idea here?
STEVENS: We're in the world's largest sports book here at Circa Las Vegas.
WATT (voice-over): And it's no longer just who's going to win or lose. There are point spreads, of course. Also, so-called prop bets, like how many rebounds will Nikola Jokic get in the second quarter? And micro bets, like how fast will this pitch be? I found a typical sports bettor, a young male, to explain something else, the all-important parlay.
ISAAC ROSE-BERMAN, PRO GAMBLER: We're looking for entertaining. We're not going to bet on the Jets. That's number one.
WATT (voice-over): But we are going to bet on football, with Isaac Rose-Berman, a pro gambler.
ROSE-BERMAN: We're going to combine all of these bets. So what that does is it makes a parlay, and it only pays out if all of them win, the Broncos, the Chargers, the Seahawks and the Cardinals. We'll do it for 200 bucks.
WATT: How much money do you think you might take today?
STEVENS: We'll be in the tens of millions.
WATT: Tens of millions today will be wagered here?
STEVENS: Yes.
WATT: Will be wager here?
STEVENS: Yes.
WATT: OK.
STEVENS: Or around that, yes.
DR. TIMOTHY FONG, CO-DIRECTOR, UCLA GAMBLING STUDIES PROGRAM: Gambling embedded in our DNA. We love it from the moment we're born.
WATT (voice-over): Ancient Egyptians bet on chariot racing, ancient Greeks on the OG Olympics, and Americans have been betting on which horse can run fastest for over 350 years. But -- DR. HARRY LEVANT, DIRECTOR OF GAMBLING POLICY, PUBLIC HEALTH ADVOCACY INSTITUTE: Online gambling is a fundamentally different product. The human brain is not built to absorb an addictive product at light speed like that. But that's the new business model.
WATT: Explain to me why it's so addictive. I have, quote, an addictive personality. You know, I've been addicted to alcohol. But gambling has never interested me at all.
LEVANT: As you well know, I'm a gambling addict in recovery. I made my last bet on April 27th, 2014. But I'm not an alcoholic. We don't know why certain things trigger responses in people.
It's just like a drug and alcohol addiction.
[22:05:06]
WATT (voice-over): He's now a gambling addiction therapist.
LEVANT: Gambling addiction is an addiction just like heroin and opioids and tobacco and alcohol and cocaine.
WATT (voice-over): Bill Miller is the president of the American Gaming Association, the gambling industry's trade organization.
WATT: This is an addictive product.
BILL MILLER, PRESIDENT, AMERICAN GAMING ASSOCIATION: I don't know that it is.
WATT: You don't think it is?
B. MILLER: No, I don't think it is. No. I think that -- I think that, you know, phones are addictive. There are a very small number of people who have challenges with sports betting and or gambling.
MARK GOTTLIEB, EXEC. DIR., PUBLIC HEALTH ADVOCACY INSTITUTE: In states where sports gambling, online sports gambling, has been legalized, overall credit scores have gone down and bankruptcy filings have gone up.
B. MILLER: I've seen that stuff. That is academia wrapped up in advocacy.
WATT (voice-over): For many of us, hits and misses, highs and lows, are no longer enough.
ROSE-BERMAN: It's almost impossible for me to watch sports now without having a bet on them.
WATT: And tennis, you're -- you're into tennis.
ROSE-BERMAN: I love tennis, my favorite sport.
WATT: You've got a bit of an East Coast Country Club vibe, is that --
ROSE-BERMAN: I played tennis most of my life.
WATT: Of course you did.
ROSE-BERMAN: Yes. Although, never -- never that well, yes. Me being a tennis fan does not really relate to my tennis betting at all. It's just data analysis.
WATT: When you want to give up, what if you can't?
ROSE-BERMAN: That's a great question. You'll have to revisit in a few years.
DANNY FUNT, JOURNALIST AND AUTHOR. "EVERYBODY LOSES": I met him for coffee in New York this past summer and he said, you know, I'm kind of getting out the game. And here we are in a suite at a casino. I don't know how -- how well that's going, so I'm rooting for you, man.
WATT (voice-over): Danny Funt knows Isaac because Danny is writing a book about all this.
WATT: Why did you decide to dedicate so much of your time to this subject?
FUNT: This massive gamble that the country's making, you know, have we really processed the stakes?
WATT: You're just trying to lay it all out so that we can make up our own minds as a country?
FUNT: That's my hope. What level of addiction are we comfortable with? How many scandals per year are we comfortable with?
WATT (voice-over): Back in 2017, less than $5 billion was bet legally on sports. Last year in America, we bet around $150 billion on sports. It's about double the GDP of Panama, and almost all of it online.
JOHN KING, CNN ANCHOR: Let the gambling on games begin, says the Supreme Court, with a 6-3 vote. It just struck down a law that kept nearly all states from allowing sports betting.
WATT (voice-over): Now it's legal in 39 states plus D.C.
LEVANT: In just seven years, we are witnessing the wild, wild west of sports gambling.
WATT (voice-over): Every minute of every day, somewhere in the world, people are playing a game. Soccer in Turkey, tennis in Australia, and now people all over America are betting on all of it, live.
FONG: After sports betting in America went legal, one of the most popular bet on sports was Taiwanese table tennis. There's lots of matches. It's 24/7. It often happens during a time when American sports are shut down.
WATT (voice-over): Potentially addictive dopamine hits are available every few seconds, day or night. AMIT PATEL, GAMBLING ADDICT: When you have money on a game or you're betting, it's almost as if nothing else in the world matters.
ANDREW DOUGLAS, RECOVERING GAMBLING ADDICT: It was the rush and that risk feeling, action.
PATEL: You're super excited. You're having fun. You -- you feel kind of invincible for a while.
A. DOUGLAS: Just like with drugs and alcohol is, a little is great at first, but then you've got to have more to satisfy that craving. I was threatening to hurt others. At first I was threatening to hurt myself trying to get money.
LISA DOUGLAS, ANDREW'S MOTHER: This was in April. We had no clue what was going on. We just didn't have an answer.
GORDON DOUGLAS, ANDREW'S FATHER: And ultimately prayed that the Lord would bring it to a head. Something had to change. Something had to change. And he brought it to -- he brought it to a head.
WATT: Where are you speaking to me from right now? Exactly where are you?
AMIT PATEL: I am at FTC Montgomery. It's a minimum security federal prison camp.
WATT (voice-over): Amidst game of choice, daily fantasy football, which the industry calls the game of skill.
WATT: You bet like 20 million. How much did you have at the end of all this? Nothing?
PATEL: Nothing.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[22:12:05]
WATT (voice-over): When we first met Isaac Rose-Berman, he put 200 bucks on the Broncos, Chargers, Cardinals, and Seahawks, all to win.
ROSE-BERMAN: Three out of four win, we get nothing.
WATT: Right.
ROSE-BERMAN: We get nothing at all. We need all four of them to win.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Choose from hundreds of bets to build the best one- game parlay.
WATT (voice-over): It's parlay bet.
FUNT: More than half of sportsbook revenue is parlays. What I've learned is that the near misses create a very intense dopamine experience. Your parlay one leg misses, that can create a real urge to try again and again.
WATT: Let's say you've got five bets. You get four of them, you think, oh, I was so close. But actually, statistically, you're not that close.
GOTTLIEB: I mean, are you close when you play the lotto and you've hit, you know, three out of the five numbers? If I only hit those other two, I mean, you are not really that close.
WATT: But those words are the key, if only I had.
GOTTLIEB: Right, right, right.
WATT (voice-over): The Broncos, Chargers, Cardinals, and Seahawks all did win, and Isaac --
WATT: You're happy.
WATT (voice-over): -- banked $387.95. This 24-year-old recent college grad now makes a living writing a bid and betting a lot on sports.
ROSE-BERMAN: We could cash out.
WATT (voice-over): And Circa, he says, is one of the few sportsbooks that actually allows him action.
WATT: Many people will --
JEFF BENSON, DIR. OF OPERATIONS, CIRCA SPORTSBOOK: Correct.
WATT: -- the apps will cut you off, right?
BENSON: Most places on the apps or at the counter will cut you off if you win. That's not the case for us.
ROSE-BERMAN: I don't think I have a God-given right to play same-game parlays. These are private companies, they can do what they want. In a sportsbook, they're analyzing every single bet that you place to the point where if you're pretty good, they usually kick you out pretty quickly.
B. MILLER: Our members and our -- the companies, they want to have people engage in the product.
WATT: But if people engage and are too good at it, they -- they aren't allowed to enjoy it anymore?
B. MILLER: You know -- you know, again, I'm not, you know, I don't know the specifics of --
WATT: Right.
B. MILLER: -- of what you're talking about. I've heard it, and I do believe that, you know, it, you know, it should be a fair game.
ROSE-BERMAN: So people think the hard part about sports betting is figuring out what bets to place. That's not the hard part. What's hard is being able to win without them kicking you out.
WATT (voice-over): Or severely limit your wagers, as nearly every sportsbook has done to Isaac. The apps have also figured out Isaac has that country club vibe and a knowledge of tennis.
ROSE-BERMAN: The maximum wager is about $19,000.
WATT: On Sabalenka to win the Australian Open?
ROSE-BERMAN: On Sabalenka to win the Australian Open.
WATT: OK.
ROSE-BERMAN: That's what a normal person can bet, which is a very, very fair amount of money.
WATT: That's a lot of money.
ROSE-BERMAN: That's a lot of money, yes. So when I log in, that number drops from 19,000 to 190.
WATT (voice-over): But if you're a member of the sportsbook's VIP program, like Isaac's buddy --
ROSE-BERMAN: We can see that his maximum wager on Aryna Sabalenka, let's see, his maximum wager is $76,000.
[22:15:07]
WATT: Because he's garbage at betting on tennis and they know you're good.
ROSE-BERMAN: Yes. He -- he -- he wouldn't want us to say that, but yes. The problem, of course, is when you advertise saying anybody can join and win big, when in reality these companies, from the time you sign up, are trying to figure out whether you're good, you're good, and if you're good, they're going to kick you out or limit you to a small amount. And if you're bad, they're going to increase your limits and try to take you for as much as they can.
WATT: And so how do you get around that?
ROSE-BERMAN: I have to figure out people who are able to place bets and want to do it on my behalf.
WATT (voice-over): Which violates most sportsbooks' terms of use, but for some sharp bettors, it's a part of their process. Another part, figuring out the best bets to place.
ROSE-BERMAN: It's slightly plus EV relative to the baseline, and this is an outlier case.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Are these anti-correlated?
ROSE-BERMAN: Yes, these are definitely anti-correlated, so.
WATT (voice-over): Yes, I don't get it either.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You want to show the 6-4-6 --
ROSE-BERMAN: No, no, no, no. No way.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Too good to show?
ROSE-BERMAN: Too good to show. Way too good to show. Sorry.
WATT (voice-over): Isaac is back home in New York, prepping with his data and modeling guru, Kanzi Yi, before the Australian Open tennis starts.
ROSE-BERMAN: We've got 450 on Caesars, plus 625 on DraftKings.
BENSON: Set aside an amount you're comfortable losing. I would suggest, you know, having multiple apps or sportsbooks at your disposal.
WATT: Why?
BENSON: Because you want to ultimately get the best price.
WATT (voice-over): Compare the odds offered by different books and look for mistakes.
ROSE-BERMAN: We're saying the odds should be 5 to 1, and they're giving us 6 to 1. Fonseca, this is his first major tournament, he's been playing very well, so potentially even more likely that he's going to start off hot and then fizzle as the match goes on.
WATT (voice-over): Fast forward, the tournament has started.
ROSE-BERMAN: The Australian Open is pretty tough because it's in the middle of the night, so we're up all night every night.
WATT (voice-over): It's a weirdly tight game, with his buddy Jared, who works in finance by day.
ROSE-BERMAN: Markets are markets, right? Like, they all function in relatively similar ways, whether it's sports or stocks or real estate.
What do you have for Brood 3-2?
JARED: Plus 290.
ROSE-BERMAN: Plus 290? Really? On Caesars?
JARED: Yep. Fritz broke.
ROSE-BERMAN: -- me. Did he really?
JARED: So it's not going to be 7-6.
ROSE-BERMAN: Yes.
JARED: I'm actually taking the Fritz spread.
ROSE-BERMAN: There's no way you're taking the Fritz spread right now. It's horrible bet.
JARED: How about Shelton minus 2.5?
ROSE-BERMAN: The problem is Shelton doesn't really break serve that much. Oh, my God. Freaking Cam Norrie is about to freaking break first game, I told you.
WATT (voice-over): A few nights later, I joined Isaac to watch some games.
WATT: Do you have action on this one?
ROSE-BERMAN: Yes, so I have a big bet from the beginning of the tournament on Madison Keys to make the final at 35 to 1, and this is the quarterfinal. A buddy of mine, we watched the draw live, and she had a very advantageous draw, so right when the draw came out, we bet on a couple different players to advance far in the tournament before the odds had reflected their draw.
WATT (voice-over): Keys made it to the final, and Isaac says he won about 50 grand.
ROSE-BERMAN: A lot of people think that the easiest way to make money is to bet on the things that you know about, but the things that you know about are probably the things that everybody else knows about too.
WATT: If you are trying to make money, is NFL where you should go, or should you go to --
BENSON: I would say NFL is probably the last place you want to go to.
WATT: Why?
BENSON: You want to find probably the most niche and inefficient markets because it's harder for guys like myself and -- and sportsbooks to price those markets.
WATT: Such as?
BENSON: You know, pricing a Taiwanese ping-pong match.
JARED: Nick's lost.
ROSE-BERMAN: Thanks, Jared. I mean, we lost 500 bucks, but it is what it is. On to the next one.
WATT (voice-over): You -- you should not get emotional in any sense.
JARED: Where did you take Monfils at? You got plus 130?
ROSE-BERMAN: Yes, we got plus 130.
I've never made money on Gael Monfils because I always find myself betting on him when I shouldn't, because I love him.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: How much money do you plan on betting tonight?
ROSE-BERMAN: I think I'm probably going to bet $40,000 to $50,000. It depends if they cut us off before then.
We're expected to make a few percent on that.
WATT: Right.
ROSE-BERMAN: Exactly.
WATT: That's what I was going to say.
ROSE-BERMAN: -- every $100,000 we bet, we expect to make $3,000 or $4,000.
Can Matteo Berrettini win one point for $1,500? That is the question we have. There we go, $400 to pay $1,500. Hallelujah. It's a miracle. That was on him winning that next game. Basically, he was already up a double break and figured that the other guy, he doesn't really have any inclination to try there because the set's already over, so he's less likely to win his service game.
WATT (voice-over): Looks fun.
WATT: Should I get into sports betting?
ROSE-BERMAN: Probably not, no.
FUNT: I wouldn't, but --
WATT: If I was to take up sports betting, what would your advice be to me?
[22:20:07]
BENSON: Don't.
WATT (voice-over): Even Isaac doesn't plan to do this forever, says A.I. and sportsbooks will get smarter, feet away at his edge and he'll burn out.
ROSE-BERMAN: I won't be able to make as much money and I will be way too stressed out. But I love this stuff. I love it. I mean, get to make money betting on sports. You told me 10 years ago that that's how I'd be paying rent. I probably wouldn't have believed you, but it's the dream.
WATT (voice-over): Coming up, what keeps addicted gamblers coming back?
LEVANT: It's not the result of the bet, the win or the loss. It's the action of being engaged with gambling.
WATT: The excitement? LEVANT: It's the dopamine, not the dough.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[22:25:42]
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Only from FanDuel, America's number one sportsbook.
WATT (voice-over): Celebrity studded commercials now saturate the ad breaks.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It is live, baby.
WATT (voice-over): Big names shilling for the gambling apps.
B. MILLER: 2018, you had a couple states that legalize, 2019 a couple more, 2020 many, 2021 more. Two-thirds of adults can legally bet on sports in America.
WATT (voice-over): It's proving particularly popular among young men like, Andrew Douglas. Throw two for me.
A. DOUGLAS: I sold everything that I possibly could, clothes, T.V.s. I didn't look at anything in my house as anything other than a dollar sign.
WATT (voice-over): There's also Amit Patel, who lost everything. Betting mainly on daily fantasy sports and stealing to feed that habit. He's now whiling away the hours in prison.
PATEL: I will say that not everyone will get addicted, but anyone can get addicted.
FONG: My nephew, who a high school senior, I said, how many of your friends bet on sport? He said, 100%. This is an addictive behavior like tobacco, alcohol, sex, cannabis, heroin. When you're young, you're particularly vulnerable to this because you don't have the frontal lobe function to handle impulsivity and risk taking.
A. DOUGLAS: I was tearing my house up basically in frustration because I couldn't get any more money. I threw things through the wall. I would hit the wall.
WATT: I could never imagine that gambling could just sort of take control of somebody like that.
A. DOUGLAS: It just tore me apart from the inside out. I was like, everybody's going to better off without me being here.
WATT: That's a terrible thing to think about yourself.
A. DOUGLAS: being at peace with that decision is the scariest part.
WATT (voice-over): His dad realized Andrew was going to take his own life, so he called the cops.
WATT: Had you planned how you were going to do this?
A. DOUGLAS: It was going to be quick and I had everything that I needed to make it happen. But I hear a knock at my door and no one ever knocks on my door because I don't really have a bunch of friends at this time. I see four officers spread out everywhere in any direction that I could run.
GOTTLIEB: Sports gambling won't ever be risk free.
WATT (voice-over): These guys fought big tobacco for years. Now they're coming after the sports betting apps with a class action lawsuit and some strong opinions.
GOTTLIEB: Both products were carefully designed by scientists and engineers to be addictive, and that is the key part of the business model. They're both products that you keep in your pocket that are about this size, cigarette, a pack of cigarettes, or your phone for sports gambling.
LEVANT: It's not the result of the bet, the win or the loss. It's the action of being engaged with gambling.
WATT: The excitement?
LEVANT: It's the dopamine, not the dough.
PATEL: When I was deep into addiction, even if I won a large sum of money on a bet, I -- I really didn't seem that excited.
ROSE-BERMAN: There's a feeling when you place a bet before the bet settles where there's that level of uncertainty that -- that makes your heart flutter. Some people get that from drugs. And obviously, as I'm talking about this, it sounds kind of like you're talking about an addiction, but -- but it is.
A. DOUGLAS: I bought a waterproof case for my phone for the sole reason of being able to not miss anything, taking a shower and live gamble on things.
LEVANT: There's no off switch. There's no stop. The model isn't designed to stop. And through VIP programs, the gambling industry, through its marketing, its cultivating of people, is keeping them in constant action.
WATT (voice-over): Casinos have been doing the VIP thing for years, free lobster dinners, booze, sweets, tickets to shows. The concept isn't new.
[22:30:04]
A. DOUGLAS: I had a VIP host, let's say I would go two, three days without depositing on the app. I would get a text or e-mail, hey, how's everything going? What can we do to get you back?
WATT: So you had this VIP host. How often would you two be in contact?
PATEL: There's hundreds of text messages back and forth every single day, offering me things.
WATT: I have seen --
B. MILLER: Yes.
WATT: -- communications from VIP hosts to gamblers who have a problem.
B. MILLER: Yes.
WATT: And those VIP hosts are enticing them to gamble more, not less.
B. MILLER: Without seeing exactly what you just described, I will say that that happens. And what I will also say is that where these operators are licensed and regulated, there are consequences to that.
WATT: Are there?
B. MILLER: Yes.
WATT: What?
B. MILLER: Fines, loss of license.
WATT: Has anyone lost a license? Has anyone been fined?
B. MILLER: Not today, yes, fined, absolutely.
MATTHEW LITT, AMIT PATEL'S ATTORNEY: His VIP host had him go on a private cell phone so that no auditors could see it.
WATT: What was the biggest bet you ever placed?
PATEL: The biggest bet in one single daily fantasy sports contest was 530,000.
LITT: FanDuel would have known that he was an addicted gambler. He was depositing $25,000 as many as 10 times a day.
WATT (voice-over): FanDuel, one of the biggest sports betting sites, refused an interview and said they can't comment on ongoing litigation or specific allegations. They gave us a statement that reads in part, FanDuel operates in strict accordance with established state laws in support of problem gambling prevention. And in court, they've argued Amit is a convicted criminal and can't bring a lawsuit based on his own illegal acts. Critics say the VIP hosts across the industry are a big part of the problem.
RICHARD DAYNARD, PRESIDENT, PUBLIC HEALTH ADVOCACY INSTITUTE: Philip Morris never did this. They didn't say, oh, you know, Jane hasn't smoked a cigarette in two months. We're going to send a smoking ambassador to her and give her a real deal that she can't refuse, right? They go after the people who are trying to quit.
B. MILLER: People that are irresponsible and that are anti-gambling, they would like to lump it all into some dynamic that is similar to the tobacco companies. I find that absolutely abhorrent and offensive. An industry that nine out of 10 Americans believe is an appropriate entertainment form is being compared to something that kills people. That's not appropriate.
WATT: But gambling addiction does lead to the most suicide attempts of any addiction, if you're talking about killing people.
B. MILLER: Yes, I mean, don't know that that's true.
WATT (voice-over): High rate, if not actual numbers, say the experts.
FONG: Gambling disorder has one of the highest rates of suicidal thinking, suicide attempts than any other addictive behavior.
PATEL: You know, with the gambling addiction, you basically keep gambling until you use it all.
GOTTLIEB: You have a number of people who are addicted who are responsible for most of the revenue.
WATT (voice-over): Well, data is tracked everywhere. Numbers are hard to come by, but we do have some numbers from Connecticut. More than 70 percent of the gambling revenue in that state comes from the seven or so percent of people who are either at risk or addicted.
WATT: There's an incentive for your industry to keep those problem gamblers gambling.
B. MILLER: I don't agree with that. I think that the sportsbooks have continued to make money because we have increased our markets. That dynamic of the total pie and how much the heavier player is a component to how the industry makes money, but it's only a component.
WATT: Did your VIP host ever say, Andrew, I think you've had enough?
A. DOUGLAS: No, never, never.
WATT (voice-over): Up next --
CHARLIE BAKER, NCAA PRESIDENT: Go sit behind a team and just listen to the yelling and screaming from bettors. I know where your exit out of the building is. You cost me five grand, I'm going to kill you.
[22:34:41]
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[22:39:23]
WATT: When you were a player, if you'd put money on a game, how times have changed, right?
RICH GANNON, VEGAS SPORTS INFORMATION NETWORK HOST: As a player, I wasn't allowed in here.
WATT (voice-over): Rich Gannon played 17 seasons in the NFL. He's now a host on the Vegas Sports Information Network. Which is all about sports betting, broadcasts live from Circa.
GANNON: You know, people like prop bets, people like to have action on the game. I think the NFL has -- has embraced more and more of that in recent years.
WATT (voice-over): As have all the other major sports leagues in America, leagues that for decades, pretty much until the Supreme Court decision in 2018, decried all of this.
PAUL TAGLIABUE, FORMER NFL COMMISSIONER: Nothing has done more to despoil the games Americans play and watch than widespread gambling on them.
WATT (voice-over): Jeff Miller is a current NFL bigwig.
JEFF MILLER, EVP, NFL COMMUNICATIONS PUBLIC AFFAIRS & POLICY: Once it became legal and states started to act, it became a necessity for us to engage with it. This has always been our guiding principle. How do you protect the integrity of the game when the environment has changed?
B MILLER: It's almost always the sports book that flags the anomalous behavior and then refers it to the league.
WATT (voice-over): January 26th last year, Jontay Porter, a Toronto Raptors bit player, asked to be subbed out. According to court papers, he texted a gambler, hit unders for the big numbers, no blocks, no steals. Porter pled guilty, said he was selling info to gamblers, trying to clear his own gambling debts.
FUNT: So you think about the opportunity for corruption, if you can bet 80 grand to win more than a million bucks on a guy most people have never heard of, that's a lot of ground to cover for the leagues to be monitoring and policing.
WATT (voice-over): In every league, players are never allowed to bet on their own sport, at a minimum.
J. MILLER: Somebody goes and talks to all the players in every locker room. We have penalized, as you know, maybe a dozen or so players recently as 2023. Then last year in 2024, we had no players engaged --
WATT: Right.
J. MILLER: -- in addition, there are former law enforcement officials in every city to keep their ears to the ground.
WATT (voice-over): You have, what, sort of people out on the street?
J. MILLER: Me too, me too.
WATT (voice-over): There's another side to this. Charlie Baker is head honcho at the NCAA.
BAKER: Go sit behind a team, a college basketball team, a men's or women's team, at one of the conference tournaments. Listen to the yelling and screaming that gets directed at them from there by bettors. Stuff like, I know where your exit out of the building is. You cost me five grand. I'm going to kill you. We have, at some of our championships, put 24/7 police protection around some of our teams. Over threats -- threats that were --
WATT: Relating to betting?
BAKER: -- threats, yes, threats from betting that were deemed to be legit.
WATT: You would like to just see it that you can just bet on who's going to win, who's going to lose?
BAKER: Yes. Yes.
WATT: And that's enough?
BAKER: That's enough.
WATT: Quick bets are what critics would love to outlaw.
GOTTLIEB: The parlays, the micro bets, and this is where, really, the income is -- is coming from. And it's all dependent on the sportsbooks having access to the official statistics of the sports leagues. So it's -- they're all together on this.
LEVANT: If you wanted to bet fumble lost for this drive, $100 would pay you $4,500. So you'd be sitting here watching this, hoping that he fumbles the ball, you can bet on anything.
WATT (voice-over): If you do something every 11 seconds rather than once every 11 hours, you're more likely to become addicted to it?
LEVANT: You're more likely to become addicted to it. You're more likely to be getting your dopamine hit more quickly.
WATT (voice-over): There is one thing you could do, which is not give them the data.
J. MILLER: The conversations that we've had with state regulators and others go around the sorts of bets that are acceptable and those that aren't. Society needs to make decisions around this, and we engage with those decision makers.
WATT (voice-over): We've seen other leagues, NFL, you know, selling their data to these sportsbooks. What's your position on that with the data you guys hold?
BAKER: We haven't chosen to do that. And the only scenario I can see where we didn't consider it would be if -- if there was something in exchange like the elimination of prop bets.
WATT (voice-over): Since that interview, the NCAA agreed to sell data to the sportsbooks and use the money to educate and mitigate on the potential downsides. Plus there are conditions. One of them, you can't bet on an individual player doing badly. WATT: How much money do you make on selling your data to the sportsbooks?
J. MILLER: We have a licensing deal with Genius Sports that then sends it to the sports book.
WATT: Which, but how much money do you make?
J. MILLER: I don't think we necessarily disclose that, but -- but we don't make anything bet on any individual bet.
WATT (voice-over): Is there another gambling upside for the leagues?
FUNT: They want people our age to be watching their games. A lot of us are cord cutters. We're not making a random mid-season NBA game appointment television. Gambling is a way to ensure we're as locked in as, you know, an older generation.
B. MILLER: When you have some additional financial, you know, incentive on the game or a player's achievements in that game, you're going to watch it more. And you see it with the network contracts that the leagues are signing. They're signing contracts that are bigger. I have this, you know, reasonably dreadful football game on at 4 o'clock and most people are not watching it. Do you know the people who are watching it? Are the people who might have a bet on a player prop.
[22:45:16]
FUNT: My book is called "Everybody Loses" for a reason. Not -- not purely financially, but losing integrity, credibility, the enjoyment of sports that we were talking about. I think it's -- those are things that we really ought to grapple with belatedly. I think we should have grappled with them more seriously when we were passing these laws and establishing regulations, but it's really never too late.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
GOV. PHIL MURPHY (D-NJ): The first two legal sports bets in the history of this state.
The first of millions to go.
WATT (voice-over): New Jersey's governor took the fight to the Supreme Court to legalize sports gambling.
MURPHY: $20 for Germany to win the World Cup and $20 for the Devils to win the Stanley Cup.
WATT (voice-over): He lost 40 bucks, also perhaps a sign of things to come.
[22:50:08]
LEVANT: States have become addicted to the money they are getting from the losses, I'm not going to call it revenue, from the losses of the public. BAKER: I actually filed and signed legislation in Massachusetts when I was governor that legalized sports betting in Massachusetts, but it also did not legalize prop betting.
WATT: Why did you sign this into law? Was it partly because you were enticed by the tax you were going to get from it?
BAKER: No, not really, I mean --
WATT: I mean, but it must have been a factor, it is a lot of money.
BAKER: For me, the bigger issue was, I think at that point in time, three of the four states directly around us had all legalized it.
WATT: What does that do to gambling in this country when people can be in their bedroom at 3:00 a.m. betting on Tanzanian table tennis?
FUNT: Astonishingly, it seems like some states didn't fully process that when they were signing off on this and setting their regulations.
B. MILLER: They did like the look of that money, but they also said, my constituents have been betting on sports illegally forever. Why shouldn't I give my constituents the protections of a legal marketplace?
FONG: When we look at the opioid crisis, the concern would be, could there be a gambling crisis like that looming that's coming in the next 10 years? Could we see 20,000 people dead? Could we see bankruptcy rates go sky high?
WATT: You're asking a lot of questions. What are the answers?
FONG: We don't know.
WATT: You think we're creating more gamblers?
FUNT: What an insult it would be to the billions of dollars spent every year on advertising that it didn't convert a single new person into a better.
There's a whole new generation of people a little younger than Isaac who are taking up gambling at pretty astonishing rates.
WATT: Yes.
FUNT: And they're just going to keep at it.
FONG: We know that the younger you start betting on sports, that leads to a higher likelihood of developing gambling problems when they're older.
WATT (voice-over): Some federal lawmakers are now trying to rein it in a little.
SEN. RICHARD BLUMENTHAL (D-CT): People carry casinos around with them today. You can sports bet on your phone any hour of the day or night, and it is a means for the industry to profit from addiction.
WATT (voice-over): Senator Blumenthal this spring championing the Safe Bet Act.
BLUMENTHAL: We're here on the eve of March Madness not to prohibit sports betting, but to make it safer.
WATT (voice-over): By stopping all betting once a game has begun, limiting a gambler to five cash deposits a day, the bill is unlikely to pass.
B. MILLER: My view is the federal government has a really important role to play, and that is to protect a legal business.
FUNT: There are states like North Carolina where I live where they're implementing curriculum as young as seventh grade. Never would have thought a 14-year-old needed to be coached on the risks of the house edge in sports betting, but we're getting to that point.
FONG: When it comes to gambling on sports, the advertising portion isn't well regulated. It promotes it as spectacular success. It promotes it as a sustainable way of making money. And so it reduces the perception of harm.
J. MILLER: There are plenty of people, they don't mind seeing the advertisements for it. There's plenty of other people who aren't interested in it at all and don't want to see any of it. And we have to walk that line.
WATT: But you can't avoid it, right?
J. MILLER: No, but you can limit it. We voluntarily, with our broadcast partners, put together an organization to set some rules here.
WATT: So what are the rules?
J. MILLER: No more than one ad for quart -- per quarter of an NFL game. I don't know how many hundreds of times, if not thousands, that we've run on our games or our own public service announcements about where to go get help if you need it.
WATT (voice-over): The gambling industry claims very few are addicted.
B. MILLER: I think it's a very small percentage, about 1 percent.
GOTTLIEB: It's probably, you know, 10 times higher than what they're estimating.
WATT (voice-over): Truth is, we don't really know. But to all users, these apps trumpet a simple message, gamble responsibly.
FanDuel recently launched the MySpend dashboard and told us the company's investment in a suite of responsible gaming tools and technology is now used by more than 3.5 million people. It reflects our sustained approach to educating customers about their play patterns and empowering them to participate within a budget.
B. MILLER: Twenty-one to low 30s is the most highly risk-oriented group in all respects.
WATT: Right.
B. MILLER: Our job is to make sure that we're continuing to be in front of that group on what responsibility looks like.
WATT: Right.
B. MILLER: Ultimately, individual -- individual has responsibility.
LEVANT: The responsible gaming model that you hear over and over and over again --
WATT: Yes.
LEVANT: -- puts all the onus on the individual to stop. That's not how addiction works. So the impression is that everybody's doing it responsibly. So if you're struggling, there's something wrong with you. You're not responsible enough. Impression is that everybody's doing it responsibly. So if you're struggling, there's something wrong with you. You're not responsible enough.
[22:55:13]
J. MILLER: I have no question, no question in my mind that we're going to learn more as we go forward.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: If you bet, set limits.
WATT (voice-over): The NFL has donated more than 12 million bucks to the National Council on Problem Gambling.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: At responsibleplay.org.
J. MILLER: Gambling, it's not a new issue, it's just an enhanced issue. If there are more people gambling and it's more accessible to them because they can do it on their phones, there's going to be more problems for some set of people. You could draw analogies to other activities that we have in our communities. Unfortunately, there's some set of people who don't engage with alcohol very well, right? And there are others who enjoy it.
WATT (voice-over): Harry Levant was a casino gambler in the days before legal sports betting.
WATT: What did you lose through your addiction?
LEVANT: My mind, my heart, my soul, my conscience. I ran out of money, but I had access to other people's money. I was a lawyer. I pled guilty to misappropriating close to $2 million of client funds.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Maybe you want to say to your family members or friends. WATT (voice-over): Amit Patel also did not bet responsibly, mainly playing daily fantasy football. And he's now serving 78 months for stealing from his employer, the Jacksonville Jaguars.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Are you going to be appealing this?
WATT (voice-over): He's also facing state criminal charges, which could add years to his prison sentence.
PATEL: What I did was illegally borrow money by using the Jaguars' company credit card. A little voice in my head was like, hey, just use the credit card. We'll win some money, we'll put it back, and no one will ever know.
WATT: You took 22 million bucks over four years. Is that right?
PATEL: Yes, that's correct.
WATT (voice-over): He's now suing FanDuel, where he lost by far the most money, suing them for $250 million.
LITT: So there's no question that Amit did wrong here. But right now, he's sitting in prison paying for what he did while FanDuel walked away.
WATT (voice-over): In court, FanDuel's lawyers argue Amit is a convicted criminal, just trying to pass the buck. And while in prison, he's working on his recovery from various addictions.
PATEL: I plan to create a recovery program. I want to do whatever I can to make amends, pay back whatever I can, as much as I can.
WATT: You have kids, right?
A. DOUGLAS: I had two kids, yes, sir. They're four years and two months.
WATT: Twins?
A. DOUGLAS: Yes, sir. It took them right out of my life.
L. DOUGLAS: He's a dad with two boys that he doesn't have a relationship with. He's got sisters, he's got aunts and uncles and grandparents and, you know, people that gambling basically caused him to turn away from.
G. DOUGLAS: He still misunderstands me a lot, I think. I say that. I probably misunderstand him. But he misunderstands my motivation.
WATT: And what is your motivation?
G. DOUGLAS: I love Andrew like any father. It's for him to have a healthy and happy life.
A. DOUGLAS: One, ready?
WATT (voice-over): Andrew is back coaching boys' baseball.
A. DOUGLAS: Ready to go today? Yes, sir. That a boy, hun.
WATT (voice-over): Rest assured, he did not have a dime on the speed of that pitch.
A. DOUGLAS: Good stuff, atta-boy. Thank you, sir.
FONG: We learned through the years that prohibition of addictive behavior does not work. We now have technology that's so vast and so embedded that it would be nearly impossible to erase it. My 19-year- old is betting on an app legally.
WATT: And you're OK with that?
FONG: I'm OK with it, because we talk about what the signs of addiction are. We talk about what are you doing with this? Gamble for entertainment, gamble for fun.
WATT (voice-over): And Isaac, he joined a new think tank, the American Institute for Boys and Men. Going to work on policy and research to make gambling safer.
WATT: Do you have a gambling problem?
ROSE-BERMAN: Depends how you define it. I would say no. There's like a set of criteria and you have to fulfill five or six out of nine of them. The majority of gamblers get at least a couple of them. The way that gambling affects your brain, it's very, very difficult to engage with these products in a totally responsible way.
WATT (voice-over): Are you betting hundreds a day?
ROSE-BERMAN: I probably bet 40 to 50 bets a day, sometimes more. I understand how much money I'm betting, thousands of dollars, you know, to bet on whether or not a college freshman is going to make a free throw. That's kind of insane. I mean, I know it's insane. This is people's rent. This is people's livelihood.
[22:59:56]
WATT (voice-over): The game has changed. Now we as a society have to decide how much we're willing to gamble. And the stakes are as high as the thrills.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
