As you know from my recent posts, I’m a bit fixated right now on phone usage, the attention economy, and how big companies are not interested in your well-being, but instead that you use their apps as much as possible.

There is perhaps no better example to highlight the sinister nature of this than the two sports betting apps Fanduel and DraftKings. I’ve written about this before, but I recently listened to the podcast series Against the Rules with Michael Lewis which dives into exactly why these companies are so grotesque. It’s worth a listen but here are my main takeaways.

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What’s So Bad?

Limit “Good” Bettors

The apps have an easy way to tell if you’re a ‘good’ bettor, and it’s not based on how much money you make. Simply put, if you’re placing too many bets that move in your favor after the fact, i.e. Eagles -7 and it closes at -9; you’re flagged as someone with too much information. Make one-to-many of these, and your account will be severely limited to a ~$15 max bet or suspended entirely. To put it another way, if they haven’t limited your account, then over time, you will be another losing bettor. They rig an already rigged game so that they win.

Enable Bad “VIP” Bettors

Unsurprisingly, if they clip the wings of good bettors, they’ll want to give bad bettors a jetpack. A standard limit of $5,000 per bet may be raised to $50,000 if you’ve proven you’re bad enough. They also offer these “VIP” bettors a dedicated rep to make them feel special, give them tickets to events, escalate support issues, just to ensure that the bad bettor stays with them.

In one case, a VIP bettor messaged their rep about how much their gambling had ruined their life; the rep called the bettor and said “call me next time, don’t put that in writing or else they’ll close your account, and we wouldn’t want that”.

Push Low EV Bets, Specifically Parlays

Basic bets like the over / under or spread of a game are ‘normal’ bets. Estimates are that books make about 5% on those bets. Lower EV bets are things like parlays, long shots, etc. They estimate that for each leg of a parlay added, the book makes an extra 5%, i.e. on a 3 leg parlay, the books typically make 15%.

So what’s the very first thing you see when you login to these apps? The Same Game Parlay!!! Right now the main page of Fanduel is showing me about a dozen 4-leg-or-more parlays where “$10 wins $362.55!“. These are DUMB bets. Parlays are such low EV that when you add two individual bets to your slip, it automatically turns it into a parlay. They goad you into bad bets knowing that you will lose more and they will make more.

Buy the Media and Politicians

Perhaps the most humorous attempt at disguising their intentions is Prop 27 in California titled “Legalize Sports Betting and Revenue for Homeless Prevention Fund Initiative“. This bill said online gambling would be legalized in California and 85% of the revenue would go to the state to prevent homelessness. Honestly, it’s not a bad try, but it shows the lengths they’ll go to to expand. It failed miserably and sports betting remains illegal in California.

Additionally now that we have data, you’ll see studies come out about the harmful effects of online sports gambling. These companies won’t argue that gambling is good, but simply that the studies are flawed in some way. Pay a few dozen ‘scientists’ to come out and publicly say “these are inconclusive at best“, keep blaming the customers, and you kick the can down the road (see tobacco).

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The Elephant

Sports betting has such a grip on the sports industry that NO ONE within can talk about any of the negatives. It’d be crazy if Charles Barkley declined to give his Same Game Parlay pick before a game and said “Keep your money kids!“.

I’m not morally against gambling. But if I had a job at ESPN, the Ringer, etc. I’d wrestle mildly with how complicit I was as I did my hundredth Fanduel ad read. I probably wouldn’t say anything because it’s easier not to which is clearly the everyone is taking. How bad could it really be??

But a large percentage of viewers of these media outlets despise the betting ads and the details on how gross some of the behavior is is becoming more known. As I wrote in my other post, we will look back in a few decades at how out-of-hand it got and the people in charge will say “we didn’t know!“, but it’s obvious they do.

It’s funny because I actually like sports gambling and would willingly use these apps if I didn’t feel they were so seedy. They’ve turned me into a non-bettor entirely, and you know what, I think they’re doing just fine without me.

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The Corporations

Everyone knows this, but the large companies running the world do not care about the well-being of their users. When Mark Zuckerberg has been presented with data showing how bad Instagram is for young girls, he uses the tactic above of questioning the studies and insists on parents using the parental controls if they need to, but not that Meta should do anything about it. And I actually like Zuck!

With years and years of usage, it’s becoming clear that their singular goal is to keep you on the app; be it Snapchat, Instagram, Tiktok, etc. Fanduel and Draftkings are symptoms of a disease which incentivizes companies to do this at all costs, against the ‘greater good’. But as the negative consequences are becoming more realized, the pushback is becoming stronger.

Zuckerberg and others will say things like “we let the market decide“, and for hundreds of years that has worked, but we’re living in an age where the technology at our hands is causing us to knowingly make bad decisions for ourselves. There’s a reason opioids are not available over-the-counter.

Australia is an example with sports gambling that’s gotten out of hand. A majority of citizens want it banned because of how bad it’s become, yet it still has a ton of users. How does that make sense? It’s because the people KNOW it’s bad for them, but do it anyway. And the companies will always fall back on blaming the users; “if they don’t want it, why do they keep using it?“.

I don’t know the fix for these. Some may defer to the market knows best even if it’s bad for society. Some will say it’s not as bad as it seems. It feels like yelling into a void. But I think the incentives need to be realigned somehow. Maybe that will be my next post.