The Tumultuous Rise of American Sports Gambling

Summary

Bloomberg Businessweek – "The Tumultuous Rise of American Sports Gambling"

Date: April 8, 2026
Hosts: Carol Massar and Tim Stenovec
Guest: Danny Funt, Sports Journalist and Author ("Everybody Loses: The Tumultuous Rise of American Sports Gambling")

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Episode Overview

This episode dives deep into the rapid rise and cultural integration of legalized sports gambling in the United States, exploring how major sports leagues shifted from resisting to fully embracing betting, the resulting impacts on financial stability, concerns about addiction and regulation, and the personal stories of individuals affected by gambling’s newfound accessibility. Guest Danny Funt, journalist and author, shares research and insights from his recent book, supplementing data with personal narratives and industry insider perspectives.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. From Scorn to Evangelism: The Shift in Sports Leagues’ Attitude Toward Gambling

Timestamps: 01:43–05:29

• Major transformation: Pro sports leagues previously condemned gambling, but have become active promoters.
• Turning point: NBA Commissioner Adam Silver’s New York Times op-ed (2014) marked a dramatic pivot, pushing for legalization.
• Media and revenue ties:
  • Gambling boosts TV rights and viewership (gamblers watch and stay tuned significantly longer).
  • Leagues, especially the NFL, projected multi-billion-dollar annual gains as a result.
• Quote:
  • "The pro leagues went from calling gambling an evil and the deadliest possible thing that could happen to sports... to becoming the most aggressive evangelist for gambling."
    — Danny Funt (03:07)
  • "The NFL, for example, was told it would make more than $2 billion every year if gambling were legalized."
    — Danny Funt (05:03)

2. Household Impact: Financial Stability and Regulatory Vacuums

Timestamps: 01:43–06:29

• Federal Reserve data shows legalized sports betting is linked to rising financial delinquencies and declining credit scores.
• Problem scope:
  • Online, real-time betting on numerous outcomes within games represents a new, highly addictive and pervasive market.
  • Current U.S. regulation isn't prepared to address the risks.
• International context:
  • Countries like the UK, Australia, and across Europe have faced damage from self-regulated gambling and offer lessons in oversight.
• Quote:
  • "When you make it possible to bet on thousands of things within every game in real time, wherever you are 24/7, that is such a game changer."
    — Danny Funt (06:19)

3. The ‘Sticky’ Nature and Danger of Modern Sports Betting

Timestamps: 07:41–09:18

• Gambling product design:
  • Companies intentionally engineer betting platforms to maximize user retention, described internally as "sticky."
  • Micro-betting (betting on minute outcomes like single pitches) likened to slot machines due to its compulsive nature.
• Corporate awareness:
  • Executives know their business model can lead to addiction and financial harm.
• Quote:
  • "My job was essentially to slowly bleed customers dry... you can make good money, but you don’t feel good about it, that’s for sure."
    — Former sportsbook executive via Danny Funt (08:16)
  • "Sticky is how we think of it, that it’s especially sticky. But to a layperson, that sounds like getting people hooked on gambling real quick."
    — Danny Funt (08:57)

4. Loopholes and Legal Grey Areas: Prediction Markets

Timestamps: 06:29–07:41

• Prediction markets (Kalsheet, Polymarket):
  • Operate outside typical state gambling regulations by branding bets as "event contract trading."
  • Experience for users is nearly identical to sports betting; states are increasingly cracking down.
• Regulatory challenge: Distinction between gambling and event trading is largely semantic from a consumer standpoint.
• Quote:
  • "What is and isn't gambling? I think if we're being real, obviously this is sports gambling, even if it's described as trading event contracts..."
    — Danny Funt (07:09)

5. Personal Toll on Ordinary Americans

Timestamps: 09:18–10:47

• Broadened affected population:
  • Gambling problems now impact "ordinary" people—e.g., a fifth-grade teacher who lost $100,000, and a restaurant server who lost six figures attracted by VIP perks despite modest earnings.
• Leagues' and companies’ lack of vetting:
  • VIP treatment offered to heavy losers regardless of financial status, little to no affordability checks.
• Quote:
  • "I thought I could use my knowledge of sports to make money. Before long, he’d lost more than $100,000 on FanDuel." — Danny Funt relaying gambler’s story (09:45)
  • "These companies insist they’re vetting customers... and he said, 'I was a server at the Cheesecake Factory making $65 grand a year,' and obviously FanDuel... did not check to make sure he could afford to lose that much."
    — Danny Funt (10:32)

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Notable Quotes

• "Gambling was suddenly everywhere. I thought I could use my knowledge of sports to make money. Before long, he’d lost more than $100,000 on FanDuel."
  — Danny Funt (09:45, regarding a 5th-grade teacher’s experience)

• "Sticky is how we think of it, that it’s especially sticky."
  — Gambling executive, quoted by Danny Funt (08:57)

• "If you’re lucky enough to be an executive at one of these companies, you can make good money, but you don’t feel good about it, that’s for sure."
  — Former sportsbook executive, quoted by Danny Funt (08:16)

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Memorable Moments

• Adam Silver’s Op-Ed Pivot: The moment the NBA officially encouraged legalization was framed as a watershed event (04:07).
• Internal Industry Guilt: Danny Funt’s recounting of insiders feeling discomfort about their own roles (08:06).
• Personal Ruin Stories: From teachers and servers to ordinary fans, easy phone betting has drastically broadened the gambling problem (09:29–10:47).

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Suggested Further Listening

The episode concludes with host Carol Massar inviting Danny Funt for further discussion, signaling the depth and ongoing nature of this issue.

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• Why Sports Leagues Flipped: 02:49–05:29
• Media Rights & Gambling: 04:21–05:29
• International Regulatory Lessons: 05:59–06:29
• Prediction Markets Loophole: 06:29–07:41
• Addictiveness & Insider Guilt: 07:41–09:18
• Individual Stories of Loss: 09:18–10:47

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This episode is an incisive, often sobering look at the cultural, financial, and personal consequences of America’s grand experiment with unchecked sports gambling, blending data, business analysis, and compelling human stories.

Transcript

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[Host]

Bloomberg Audio Studios Podcasts Radio news.

[Bloomberg Announcer]

You're listening to Bloomberg Business Week with Carol Massar and Tim Stanovec on Bloomberg Radio.

[Co-host]

Story on the Bloomberg Terminal last week getting our attention. It's kind of where all this stuff comes together totally US States that have legalized sports betting have seen a rise in delinquency rates on consumer credit products and a decrease in credit scores. This is according to a new report from the Federal Reserve bank of New York. Here's what they said, Carol. Our findings suggest that sports betting can have dramatic implications for household financial stability.

[Host]

Yeah, this can't be good. Yeah, the author's putting that out right this week, we're sure. This comes as no surprise to our next guest to sports journalist Danny Funt. He is the author of a new book, it was out in January. It's entitled Everybody Loses the Tumultuous Rise of American Sports Gambling. We are delighted to have him here in our Bloomberg Interactive Broker Studio. Welcome, welcome. Congratulations.

[Danny Funt]

Thank you. Thanks for having me.

[Host]

You know, it's kind of disturbing and blown us away, the gamification of our society and sports gambling and especially college sports like you just think these Things were sacred, and things have changed. Tell us about why you wanted to write this book. And as you kind of started to dig into it, what more kind of came out?

[Danny Funt]

Well, I'd been covering it for several years for the Washington Post mainly, and I felt like I was scratching the surface, particularly this fundamental question of why it was that the pro leagues went from calling gambling an evil and the deadliest possible thing that could happen to sports. That's something the commissioner of baseball said barely a decade ago.

[Host]

Right.

[Danny Funt]

To becoming the most aggressive evangelist for gambling. Had my head spinning, and I didn't feel like we'd gotten to the bottom of that. The other reason was just These brands like FanDuel and DraftKings have become household names. They're so dominant across sports, and yet a lot of us have no idea what it's like to work there, how they talk about customers behind closed doors. So spending the time to cultivate sources at places like that was of great interest to me.

[Co-host]

You mentioned the commissioner of the. Of the MLB. You note in the introduction that you spoke to 300, more than 300 people for this book. But the commissioners of the NFL, NBA, WNBA, NHL, and MLB all declined to participate and didn't, as did the top current executives at FanDuel and DraftKings. With that as the backdrop, what was the turning point for these leagues to say, okay, we're going to oppose something like this? To Adam Silva writing that op ed in the New York Times, that was like, it's time to legalize this.

[Danny Funt]

That was the turning point because his predecessor, David Stern, I've learned, was about as anti gambling as they come. So within a year of taking over for his mentor, Adam Silver publishes this shocking op ed.

[Host]

Yeah.

[Danny Funt]

That sets in motion a campaign behind closed doors where the gambling industry was trying to persuade the other leagues to get on board. And the thing that really got their attention was what gambling could do for their TV rights.

[Co-host]

Knew it. It's always about the media rights.

[Danny Funt]

Yeah, yeah. They were worried, you know, audiences aging young people not wanting to sit through three or four hour games, people canceling cable subscriptions. And thinking about that in the long term. The gambling industry commission studies from Nielsen that showed gamblers watch more than twice as many games. They watch till the ends of blowouts to see how a bet plays out when normal people have changed the channel. And so looking at that and then projecting what it would mean both in a direct sense for partnerships with these gambling companies and indirectly by growing their TV audience. The NFL, for example, was told it would make more than $2 billion every year if gambling were legalized. So this was happening before the Supreme Court struck down a federal ban on bookmaking. When they did, the leagues had already been converted behind closed doors and they were ready to cash in.

[Host]

You know, so where's. It's always like follow the money. Right. It always comes back to you. Like it's about making money. I mean, is this a problem that you think better regulation could change the situation or.

[Danny Funt]

No, it could help on a sort of incremental scale. But fundamentally, online sports betting is a beast. It's a whole new ball game. And this might sound cows left the

[Host]

barn or the horses left the barn, whatever the expression is. I mean, is it just done like it's out there?

[Danny Funt]

Yeah. And again, there are other countries and I think the US could have benefited from looking at places like the UK and across Europe and Australia that have had sports betting a lot longer than we have and have seen the damage that it does when you trust these companies to self police. So there are things that they've done that we could learn from. But the bottom line is when you make it possible to bet on thousands of things within every game in real time, wherever you are 24, 7, that is such a game changer.

[Co-host]

There's this really weird thing happening right now amidst the rise of sports betting and that's prediction market. So Calcium polymarket and what you can do in an environment that, you know, FanDuel and DraftKings is not legal in

[Sonesta Hotels Advertiser]

every state and it's regulated by the states.

[Co-host]

They get taxed, the winnings are taxed by the states. They're revenue generators for the states. That's not the same with prediction markets. So you could be in a state where you can't actually make a bet on DraftKings or FanDuel but make a bet on Kalsheet on a sports outcome. How do you look at that?

[Danny Funt]

The whole debate and it's not a new one because there have been a lot of companies over the years that tried to circumvent gambling laws, including FanDuel and DraftKings when they were so called daily fantasy operators. The same debate played out a decade ago. What is and isn't gambling? I think if we're being real, obviously this is sports gambling, even if it's described as trading event contracts and thus it's regulated by the cftc. From a consumer standpoint, the experience is almost indistinguishable and I think the motivation is the same. I can leverage my knowledge of sports to try to make money. And a lot of states seem to think that, and they're cracking down.

[Host]

How much do the companies, whether it's DraftKings or FanDuel, know exactly what they are doing to individuals? And I bring that up because earlier this week we saw Google and Meta held liable for addiction to social media platforms. It's just the start of a lot of litigation against these guys about addiction. Does that decision, in your view, from what you found out, what you've learned about these companies have implications for sportsbooks?

[Danny Funt]

Absolutely. I think it was one of the most striking takeaways from all the reporting I did for the book, was hearing from people in the industry about how concerned they are of the state of their business and where it's headed. There was one former executive at a sportsbook who said, when you think about it, my job was essentially to slowly bleed customers dry. And he said, if you're lucky enough to be an executive at one of these companies, you can make good money, but you don't feel good about it, that's for sure. I don't think he's alone in feeling that way.

[Host]

So the internal documentation, like there is a great awareness of how to make it sticky and keep people there and make it, you know, dangerous, essentially.

[Danny Funt]

Yeah, sticky came up. I was speaking with an executive at a company that was soon after acquired by DraftKings and they provide these so called micro bets, you know, you can now bet on will the next pitch in a ball game be a ball or a strike, all that stuff. And I said, a lot of people feel like this replicates a slot machine and it's a road to compulsive behavior. And he said, no, no, sticky. Sticky is how we think of it, that it's especially sticky. But to a layperson, that sounds like getting people hooked on gambling real quick.

[Co-host]

Just some of the people you spoke to who've been affected by this, who maybe weren't even doing this stuff before, it was easily to do on their phone. What was the story they told you?

[Danny Funt]

A lot of them just sound so relatable. You might think of a person with a gambling problem as, wow, they must be really out of control and greedy and reckless. I remember Speaking with a 5th grade teacher in Connecticut who said gambling was suddenly everywhere. I thought I could use my knowledge of sports to make money. Before long, he'd lost more than $100,000 on FanDuel.

[Chase Business Advertiser]

Oh my God.

[Danny Funt]

Another person, also in Connecticut, coincidentally, was telling me that he got all this VIP treatment. I devoted a whole chapter of that to my book, because the things they'll do to keep their biggest losers happy is incredibly extraordinary and a little, a little risky, to put it mildly. And he was telling me he lost six figures betting on sports, and he was hooked on the betting, but also on that VIP treatment. It made it so much harder to walk away because you don't want to give up all these freebies and white clothes service. And I said, so what were you doing for a living when you lost all that money? Because these companies insist they're vetting customers losing at that level to make sure they can afford it. And he said, I was a server at the Cheesecake Factory making 65 grand a year and obviously FanDuel, who was giving him all those VIP perks, did not check to make sure he could afford to lose that much money. And they basically told me that, yeah,

[Host]

it sounds like questions about the vetting process there. Danny, we've only scratched the surface with you. I hope you can come back.

[Danny Funt]

I'd love to.

[Host]

We'd love to continue this conversation. It's certainly a big, big part of our world now. Danny Funt, he's the author of the new book Everybody Loses the Tumultuous Rise of American Sports Gambling. Yeah, we've been talking about it in the newsroom. In a big

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