It's a Numbers Game: The Disturbing Numbers Behind Online Sports Gambling

Summary

Summary of "It's a Numbers Game: The Disturbing Numbers Behind Online Sports Gambling"

Podcast Information:

• Title: The Clay Travis and Buck Sexton Show
• Host/Author: Premiere Networks
• Episode: It's a Numbers Game: The Disturbing Numbers Behind Online Sports Gambling
• Release Date: April 7, 2025

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Introduction

In the episode titled "It's a Numbers Game: The Disturbing Numbers Behind Online Sports Gambling," host Ryan Gradusky delves deep into the burgeoning industry of online sports gambling. The discussion is anchored by insights from Charles Fain Lehman, a fellow at the Manhattan Institute, who presents a critical view of the industry's impact on society.

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The Explosion of Online Sports Gambling

Legalization and Market Growth

The conversation begins with an overview of the online sports gambling industry's dramatic growth since the Supreme Court's 2018 decision declaring the Professional Amateur Sports Protection Act of 1992 (PASPA) unconstitutional. This ruling paved the way for the legalization of sports gambling in 39 states and the District of Columbia, a significant expansion from the original four states where it was permitted.

• Lehman notes: “In 2024, more than $150 billion in bets were wagered. That's just in one year. That's larger than the GDP of Mississippi.” [04:40]

Major Players and Market Dynamics

Companies like FanDuel, Caesars, and DraftKings have become dominant players, primarily targeting young men. The ease of access through mobile apps has further fueled this growth, making sports betting a ubiquitous activity.

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Demographics and Addiction Issues

Targeting Vulnerable Populations

Lehman emphasizes that the industry's primary consumers are young men, particularly those aged 18 to 34. A 2023 NCAA survey revealed that 58% of individuals aged 18 to 22 had placed at least one online sports bet, with even higher rates among college students.

• Lehman states: “Players are increasingly getting younger and younger when they start placing bets.” [05:25]

Rise in Gambling Addiction

The accessibility of online sports gambling has led to a surge in gambling addiction, debt, and financial instability among young bettors. Cases include minors engaging in significant betting activities, often using their parents' credit cards or other family members' funds.

• Lehman shares: “One gambling addiction counselor noted that her youngest client was a 15-year-old boy who spent nearly $900,000 on FanDuel using his parents' credit card and grandparents' Social Security checks while making bets at school.” [16:46]

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Economic Impact: Tax Revenue vs. Social Costs

Tax Revenue Generation

States have capitalized on the legalization by imposing taxes on sports gambling. In 2020, three states collectively collected nearly $1.8 billion in tax revenue from this sector, with New York leading at $800 million annually.

• Lehman comments: “Even in New York, you're not getting that much money. If you think about it as a fraction of total government outlays, it's consistently under 1% across states.” [18:07]

Social and Financial Costs

Despite the substantial tax revenue, the social costs—such as increased bankruptcies, debt, and decline in credit scores—outweigh the financial benefits. States like New Jersey have witnessed a tripling of calls to gambling help hotlines since legalization.

• Lehman asserts: “The number of people calling the state's gambling help hotline has tripled, with the largest demographic coming from men between the ages of 25 and 34.” [06:30]

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Industry Practices and AI's Role in Addiction

Exploiting Behavioral Data

Online sports gambling companies utilize advanced machine learning algorithms to analyze user behavior, identifying patterns that indicate when individuals are most likely to bet. This data-driven approach allows companies to send targeted prompts, encouraging more frequent and larger bets.

• Lehman explains: “Using AI to make gambling more addictive and luring in users at younger ages with greater frequency.” [19:03]

Monopolistic Practices

In certain states, companies have secured monopolistic control over the sports gambling market. For instance, Florida granted an exclusive license to the Seminole Indian Tribe, which later partnered with Hard Rock Digital, limiting competition and consolidating market power.

• Lehman notes: “In Florida, after a prolonged court battle, the tribe made an operating deal with Hard Rock Digital, preventing companies like FanDuel and Sports King from entering the market independently.” [06:50]

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Regulatory Challenges and Proposals

Ineffectiveness of Self-Regulation

Lehman argues that the sports gambling industry lacks the incentive to self-regulate effectively. While options like self-exclusion lists exist, they are insufficient for addressing active addiction, as addicts are less likely to opt out voluntarily.

• Lehman states: “Customers are not going to opt themselves out. The industry will sort of come out with self opt-out, but that's not very helpful for somebody who's in active addiction.” [22:30]

Proposed Regulatory Measures

Several regulatory proposals aim to mitigate the industry's harmful impacts, including deposit limits, third-party confirmations for large bets, and restricting payment methods to discourage excessive gambling. However, Lehman believes these measures will face strong opposition from the industry, which relies heavily on the most addicted bettors for profit.

• Lehman remarks: “Any efficacious regulation is going to be something that the industry fights tooth and nail because you're going to end up taking out that ability to target the 10 to 20% that makes up all of their profit.” [23:56]

Federal vs. State Regulation

There's an ongoing debate about whether a nationwide ban on sports gambling is feasible. While state-level restrictions can reduce prevalence, a comprehensive federal approach remains uncertain.

• Lehman suggests: “There is an open question of if you could have a nationwide across the board ban on sports gambling because there is some nexus to interstate commerce basically anytime you use the Internet.” [29:13]

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Conclusion

Ryan Gradusky and Charles Fain Lehman present a sobering analysis of the online sports gambling industry's rapid expansion and its detrimental effects on young men and the broader society. Despite significant tax revenues, the social costs—exacerbated by sophisticated AI-driven targeting—pose a challenge that current regulatory frameworks are ill-equipped to handle. Lehman advocates for stricter prohibitions over mere regulation, highlighting the industry’s inherent conflicts with societal well-being.

• Lehman concludes: “If you're one of these winners, people who do exceedingly well, online sports gambling companies are allowed to limit the amount of money you can gamble with. They limit their losses and your gains.” [24:19]

The episode serves as a critical examination of the intersection between technology, capitalism, and public health, urging listeners to reconsider the true cost of online sports gambling.

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Notable Quotes:

• “Players are increasingly getting younger and younger when they start placing bets.” — Charles Fain Lehman [05:25]

• “A 20% of your users are going to generate 80% of your revenue. It’s actually probably more than that.” — Charles Fain Lehman [20:02]

• “Addiction is a chronic disease. But it's not a chronic disease like Ms.” — Charles Fain Lehman [22:08]

• “Gambling is monetizing stupidity.” — Charles Fain Lehman [27:55]

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This comprehensive summary encapsulates the key discussions, insights, and conclusions from the episode, providing valuable information for listeners and those interested in the societal impacts of online sports gambling.

Transcript

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With Greenlight you can teach your kids financial literacy skills like earning, saving and investing and this investment costs less than that. After school treatment. Start prioritizing their financial education and future today with a risk free [e-mail] iheart greenlight.com iheart welcome back to A Numbers Game with Ryan Gradusky. I want to thank you all for joining me again. Please like and subscribe to this podcast. It really means a lot and if you give me a five star review that's extra special. In the 2019 movie Uncut Gems, Adam Sandler's character Howard Ratner exclaims, I made a risk. You gamble and it's about to pass pay off For a lot of Americans, that's what a lot of the last month has been. When March Madness happened, it was about gambling, specifically online sports gambling. And that's what I want to talk to you about during this episode. According to The CBS News, $3 billion in wages were placed in the last few weeks on the NCAA tournament. Online sports gambling has become a revolutionized industries in the last half decade since the Supreme Court declared that the Professional Amateur Sports Protection act of 1992 UN otherwise known as PASPA, was unconstitutional. Signed by former President George H.W. bush, PASPA effectively outlawed sports gambling by corporations in most parts of the country, with the exceptions of four states, Nevada, Delaware, Oregon and Massachusetts. Since the 2018 decision by the Supreme Court, 39 states have legalized sports gambling, with just Alabama, Alaska, California, Georgia, Hawaii, Idaho, Minnesota, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Texas and Utah being the last holdouts of the sports gambling industry. With the market open in a majority of the country, 35 different companies now operate sports gambling like FanDuel, Caesars, DraftKings. Those are the largest and their primary target are young men drawn to the industry. Well, how big is the industry? In 2024, more than $150 billion in bets were wager. That's just in one year. That's larger than the GDP of Mississippi. Players are not only able to wager on games, but individual plays, leagues, individual players. This easy access to sports gambling on one's phone has led to a rise in gambling addiction, debt and customers who are increasingly getting younger and younger when they start placing bets. A 2023 survey from the NCAA found that 58% of 18 to 22 year olds placed at least one online sports bet. In the last decade, that number increased to 70% for college kids living on campuses, those young gamblers lose on average 10 to $300 per day. If they did that every day, that means that sports gambling could be easily a larger part of their budget than their food, their rent, their social life. In three years since online sports gambling became legal in New Jersey, the number of people calling the state's gambling help hotline has tripled, with the largest demographic coming from men between the ages of 25 and 34. This is not, you know, your average gambler. This is not somebody who, an old man would bring you to the race streets at the racetrack. My grandpa used to remember the racetrack, bring, you know, bring some money from Social Security, check to the racetrack and bet on the ponies, or go to the casino and hit some slots. These are young men who are increasingly becoming addicted to the lore that you can become wealthy just by betting from your phone. One gambling addiction counselor noted that her youngest client was a 15 year old boy who spent nearly $900,000 on FanDuel using his parents credit card and grandparents Social Security checks while making bets at school. A lot of state governments are also making a lot of money, and they're hoping to make more using online sports gambling taxes. In 2020, three states collected nearly $1.8 billion in tax revenue from sports gambling. But it's not evenly divided. Across all 39 states, New York raked in the most with $800 million in a single year, while South Dakota only made $100,000. But all this money, is it really worth it? For the states, bankruptcies have exploded that legalize online sports gambling. One study had that the number increased for 25 to 30% in three to four years after the state legalized the industry. Young men in low income areas are increasingly at risk, with noted decline in their credit score of 0.5% and debt collections of 8%. The whole industry becomes even more sinister in nature when you realize that certain companies really just run monopolies in their respected states. Take the state of Florida. In 2021, Florida offered an exclusive sports gambling license to the Seminole Indian Tribe, and in return, the tribe had to agree to pay $2.5 billion over the first five years, with revenue sharing continued until the agreement expires in 2051. After a prolonged court battle opened up in November 2023, and the tribe made an operating deal with Hard Rock Digital. Other companies like FanDuel and Sports King have tried to make their way into the industry in the state, but to no avail. Their only avenue is to work in partnership with Hard Rock in just the first 45 days after hard Rock has a monopoly in the in the state went live, addiction hotline calls increased by 138%. With convenience of mobile apps, individuals can place anytime, anywhere, any place. And the companies know it because they monitor you. It is essentially a data company. They sit there and they know when you're most likely to bet, what advertisements make you want to bet more and methods to keep you hooked. Using AI to make gambling more addictive and luring in users at younger ages with greater frequency. Because essentially these data companies are in the business of creating addicts. A study from the Southern Methodist University monitored 700,000 online sports betters and found that less than 5% actually withdrew money from their betting apps. You know anything more than they deposited. That 5% won more than $100 million which was covered by the best place by 80% of bettors. The bottom 3% of bettors made up all the money for the profit they live off of the bottom three. The people who are the most addicted, the most degenerative gamblers, they, those industries prey on them to make money. That's how they sit there and they actually draw, you know, profits from these things. And these are people who will go into debt. These are people who will steal from friends and families if their addiction gets worse. They will sit there and mortgage their house and steal from their kids college fund. This has all been happening over the last seven years. If you're one of these winners, people who do exceedingly well, online sports gambling companies are allowed to limit the amount of money you can gamble with. They limit their losses and your gains. And while many states force online sports betting companies to dissuade addicts, most targeted advertisements and notifications directly encourage people to gamble frequently. I quoted the movie uncut gems at the top of the show and a film about a jeweler whose addiction to gambling and the rush it gives him ultimately puts himself in a situation that costs his life. Millions of Americans are putting themselves in a financially precarious situation at a very, very young age. And state governments are giving them the green light in the name of tax dollars. You're listening to It's a numbers Game with Ryan Gusky. We'll be right back. 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Absolutely. Happy to be here.

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So, Charles, in September 2024, you wrote an article for the Atlantic saying that online sports gambling not only was bad, but probably should be abolished. How did you come to that opinion? That's a very strong opinion.

[A]

I know. Well, there are a couple of different answers there. One answer is that I am more gung ho about prohibiting things than many other people are and I can explain why. But the more proximate relevant answer is I looked at the social science on what has happened with online sports gambling since it was legalized essentially nationwide in 2018, and I concluded it's been basically all downside and very little upside. It's important to note for the benefit of the audience that back in the dystopian Age of 2017, online sports gambling was essentially illegal nationwide. There were a couple of carve outs thanks to this law from the 1990s called the Professional Amateur Sports Protection act passed, which basically which prohibited sports gambling because at the time, members of Congress, all the major sports leagues, everybody sort of agreed sports gambling was going to corrupt the game. It was going to be a huge issue. Fast forward to 2018. NCAA and New Jersey are in a lawsuit, although they basically are colluding at this point.

[B]

It's a New Jersey story.

[A]

Yeah, yeah. Over whether or not this law is constitutional. The Supreme Court says, no, it's not. The door is open for sports gambling legalization. Over the ensuing six, seven years, sports gambling is legalized. I think the figure is now 40 out of 50 states have legality. Yeah, right. 39 plus D.C. i always get them. Yeah. In Missouri, there are ballot initiatives and legislative action all the time. I've been asked to comment on both Hawaii and Minnesota's efforts to legalize in recent weeks. So it's going to continue to move because of the way that sports gambling rolled out across different states at different times. You can empirically and I can get into how this works, but you can get a really good idea of what the effects of sports gambling are. You can pretty effectively overcome the correlation causation problem and say with a strong certainty what happens when you legalize sports gambling. And so there are a couple of research papers that basically look at really big groups of people, really groups of consumers in states that haven't have not legalized sports gambling before and after legalization. And all of the effects are pretty remarkably bad. You see large increases in debt, delinquency, large increases in risk of bankruptcy. So bankruptcy rises 20 to 30% against a small baseline. But still, one of my favorite figures is that for every dollar that people spend on sports gambling, they end up foregoing $2 in investment. So like $2 that don't go into your Schwab account or whatever. And all of those harms concentrate among the most precarious households. So households that have a history of bankruptcy, their bankruptcy risk goes up, have a history of overdrawing their account, the risk goes up, and people who are.

[B]

Not typically good with money to begin with become worse.

[A]

Yes, yes, precisely. And again, you see this in particular among young men in poor counties. That's really where the effects end up concentrating. And so you get this picture of like, do you know sports gamblers?

[B]

My brother gambles on sports, but like, I think like very little. But I don't follow any sports. So I don't know, I'm not. I am the worst person to talk about sports on, period. But like, I kind of know, but I would never, I don't have any interest. I don't know. To me, going to a craps table is the only fun game because it's a communal game. Everything else is like antisocial in a certain way and just not as fun.

[A]

If you ask around, you know, somebody who knows somebody who's thousands of dollars, tens of thousands of dollars in the hole on a sports gambling app right now. And that guy is probably young, almost certainly male, probably not particularly skilled, probably not particularly highly educated, really cannot be afforded to be that deep in debt. And we're pretty sure that those people's lives have gotten a lot worse by virtue of legalization sports.

[B]

Yeah, I saw this one interview with this one debt gambling counselor and she said her youngest gambling client, or a gambling added client, was 15 years old and had spent $900,000 basically taking his grandma's Social Security and his parents credit card. Their knowledge and just like over the course of several years, $900,000 at 15 years old. What is so the, the, the, the goal for states is they're constantly told more tax revenue, more tax revenue. What I've read is that there is a huge difference in what states are making a lot of money off of tax revenue and what states are making really like South Dakota is making a hundred thousand dollars a year for tax revenue. New York's like eight making $800 million. Is the, is it worth it to these states? Like is the financial cost from the deprivation of social capital from the increase in bankruptcies, is that worth $100,000 in South Dakota. You know what I mean?

[A]

No is my answer. I think the important thing there is that that's going to be a function of demand. Taxation is like, how big is the market? It's just a percentage of the transaction. And so the more transactions, the more tax revenue. So, yeah, I mean, like, if you add up all the sports gambling revenue in a given quarter, New York ends up being. I forget what the exact fraction is, but it's somewhere between a quarter and half of all of the revenue. But like, objectively speaking, even in New York, you're not getting that much money. If you think about it as a fraction of total government outlays, it's consistently under 1% across states. I think Indiana, it's like 1% of all of their revenue comes in sports gambling. You get less out of sports gambling than you get from alcohol taxes, tobacco taxes, from marijuana taxes, all those things.

[B]

Gambling is not like the equivalent of like Ozempic is to like the Netherlands or Denmark.

[A]

Yeah, to Denmark. No, it's. And this is like always true. Taxing sin is not a great way to generate revenue, is a good rule of thumb. Like, you just, you don't get a lot of money out of it. Partially because the goal of Syntaxis is mostly to deter the behavior, not to generate revenue. Like ultimately, unfortunately, you get the most revenue out of taxing productive activities like generating income or being a business or owning a home.

[B]

Yeah, yeah. So how much does. Because what, everything I've done research on AI seems to play a very important part of the online sports gambling industry because it is built to learn when you're most likely to make a bet, how to make you more addictive, what things appeal to you. Has. I mean, AI always has been around, obviously since 2018, but it's become much more advanced in the last seven years. How much has that played a part into the growing addiction?

[A]

I mean, tremendously. And I would talk more broadly about the category of machine learning because, you know, some machine. Many AI things are machine learning things. This doesn't really matter for purposes of the conversation. But yeah, you know, when you interact with an app, whether it's a sports gambling app or a social media app, that app is collecting information about you. It's collecting information about everybody else who's using the app too. And then you apply machine learning algorithms to all of that data and you can start to recognize patterns in the space of gambling. And this is true before legalization. This is true in casinos, for example. This is true of slot machines. Gambling follows an 8020 law. 20% of your users are going to generate 80% of your revenue. It's actually probably more than that, like more concern. That's probably like 3 to 5% of your users are doing 90% of your revenue. By some estimates, I think it's 5% of 50 and 10% is closer to 90. And so you can pick those guys out and then you can say, when does he gamble? Does he do it at night? Can I send him a prompt to reinforce him at night? What is the line that I can offer him to bet a little bit more? And you can do this all automatically. It's very straightforward from a machine learning perspective because all it is is pattern recognition. But this gets by the way to a deeper point about my argument for prohibition as opposed to regulation, which is that capitalism is great. I like capitalism. Capitalism is about the efficient alignment of the interests of buyers and sellers. And when the things that the buyer wants are good for him, that's great. When the thing that the buyer wants for him are bad for him and he compulsively consumes them because he's addicted to them, that's not great. And in that situation, you end up applying free market innovation to the problem of getting people to like, ruin their lives. I've called this the iron law of liberalization. It's like when you liberalize goods, when you liberalize vice goods, the market applies its innovative capacity to it and you end up with a much more potent, much more sellable product. Basically, whether it is marijuana, whether it is gambling, whether it is mushrooms, you see the same trend.

[B]

So how much? If banning is not possible because a lot of states don't want to ban it, they've just been legalizing it. How much can we trust the industry.

[A]

To regulate itself as a historical matter by analysis of other industries? Not at all. The industry will sort of come out. I mean, the industry's line is basically we want self opt out. And I'm like, that's great, but what.

[B]

Is actually self opt out?

[A]

It means I can put my hand up and say, don't let me gamble anymore. It's like, so I can put myself on a list and it's like, that's great, but actually not very helpful for somebody who's in active addiction because addiction is reinforcing. My friend Keith Humphries, who's a Stanford addiction specialist, likes to say addiction is a chronic disease. But it's not a chronic disease like Ms. Or whatever, because you in some sense enjoy having it. That's why you're addicted to it. So people are not going to opt themselves out. And the reality is, if you look at vice industries, they have every rational interest in encouraging people to do bad things. I think that's bad, but ultimately just sort of very predictable. This is true for big Tobacco, this is true for pornography, for the sellers of marijuana. The market interest encourages the bad behavior because that's how you end up making a profit. And so from a regulatory perspective, two things are true. One is, I don't really think the industry is going to regulate itself. Two is that any efficacious regulation is going to be something that the industry fights tooth and nail because you're going to end up taking out that ability to target the 10 to 20% that makes up all of their profit.

[B]

I read in sports gambling, it's like the bottom 3% of losers pay some substantially higher amount of the entire industry. Like they depend on the most degenerative gamblers who are so deeply addicted who like, you know, cash their house out to sit there and gamble. It is they, they can't function as an industry without the deeply addicted.

[A]

Right? You hold those, you call those whales. And this is, this is the again, this is the law across all addictive goods. Is that like, you know, the way to think about it is I don't know how often your brother bets, but let's say he bets on the game every Sunday. If you have a guy who's placing, I don't know, 10 bets a day, then he's doing 700 bets a week, which means that he is generating more revenue than your brother and 698 other people who bet only once a week. That's how you end up with that Pareto dynamic. But if you can bind the guy who bets 10 times a day, he is worth way more effort than identifying the 699 other people because he will give you exponentially more revenue. So like, yeah, it's, it's just, that's how the math ends up working out is that guy dominates his, he dominates as a term in the equation.

[B]

And there's nothing that they can, like, they don't have to sit there and say, here's what I make a year, So I make 10,000, $100,000 a year or whatever. I can't possibly give you $1 million. Like there's nothing that, so this, I.

[A]

Mean this, this gets to the regulatory problem, right? Because there are, there are regulatory proposals that suggest things like deposit limits or having some third party confirmation that this person is able to put money down or saying people can only put down a debit card, they can't put down a credit card. But the industry will fight this tooth and nail because that's where all their money comes from. And the industry, in many senses has a head start on all of this. You may remember the big sports books DraftKings FanDuel existed prior to 2018. They were doing this sort of like gray area, like fantasy sports. You could build a fantasy sports league. The entire reason for that was to establish an infrastructure so that once sports gambling became legal, they were in a position to dominate the marketplace.

[B]

And they have essential monopolies in certain states.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

I mean, because not every single. Not every. Not everyone has a license in every single state. Yeah. I started earlier in the podcast. Why is this so pervasive among young men?

[A]

That's a great question. And I think there are lots of different levels on which one could answer it. And you can think about it very abstractly as, you know, one, one answer that I like is, is just that, you know, there is this sense of hustle culture among young men that, like, the way to make it is to get rich quick. And gambling offers a way to get rich quick. But at a deeper level, it's just because young men are stupid. Like, and, you know, we've been young men.

[B]

I've been there.

[A]

Exactly right. Like, I've been there too. I know exactly what it's like. Young men are highly impulsive. They're prone to showing off. They like, they, they, they have a much higher risk tolerance than their opposite sex same age peers or their same sex higher age peers. Like, you did stupid stuff when you were a young man from 18 to.

[B]

22 or 70 to 22. I was probably clinically, they probably could have locked me up because I.

[A]

Absolutely, absolutely right. And can you imagine if somebody been like, here's a phone, you can bet thousands and thousands of dollars and hey, you could make it big. Like, terrible idea.

[B]

Yeah. I had like a $100 credit limit when I was like, saving 18 years old.

[A]

I think about this a lot. If you look at, if you look at trends in firework associated deaths every year, there's like big spikes on exactly the days that you would expect. It's like July 4th, 100 firework deaths. But like, if you look into the data, it's all young men. It's just like dudes doing stupid stuff with fireworks and let me launch one.

[B]

Off my ass or like, or whatever. Exactly.

[A]

And if you could monetize that stupidity, like, you'd Make a lot of money. And in some senses, gambling, sports gambling is monetizing that stupidity.

[B]

What, how would a ban work? Like how is it just pull the licensing from it or I mean, because it's, because it's not legal for a nationwide sports gambling. It's only legal in states. So would a state just pull the licensing? How would that work if they wanted to ban it?

[A]

Yeah, so, and I want to back it up a little bit to talk about the logic because I think again, just to be very clear, between the early 1990s and 2018, this was the status quo. You could not legally, specifically, you could not legally run a sports gambling concern. States and private companies could not operate a sports gambling business for profit or for state revenue. You and I could have made a bet. That would have been completely legal. That would have been fine.

[B]

It's like box on the Super Bowl.

[A]

Yes, exactly. Yeah. So the, the, the issue is that commercial interests or state interests cannot participate in that exchange. They can't try to profit off of that exchange. That's a really easy thing to prohibit because particularly large companies have a very strong incentive to follow the law because otherwise they get hosed. It's really bad for your profit if you don't follow the law. The federal government will come after you.

[B]

Write that down.

[A]

Strongly recommend following the law. No, but so like, so like all you have to do at a city level is to say this is not worth it. You have to win the political battle, which is really hard. But then all you do is you say we're going to march the number of licenses down to zero over the next five years and we're going to appeal the law and then it's done. Like you can have cross state, you know, some cross state issues, like people will go, I talked to somebody who would like stand in the corner of his apartment in New York so he could gamble. In New Jersey People use VPNs but you'll substantially reduce the level of usage. And we know this because that's what it was like in 2017 and also theoretically do things at the federal level. Part of the issue with the pass as it was overturned is that is the specific state carve outs. I think there's an open question of if you could have a nationwide across the board ban on sports gambling because there is, you know, there is some nexus to interstate commerce basically anytime you use the Internet. So like the feds probably have the capacity to ban it writ large. But there's an open question there.

[B]

Well, thank you so much for being on this podcast. You are so smart on this and many other topics. How can people read more of your stuff? Where could they go? How could they find you?

[A]

Absolutely. I'm over on X, formerly known as Twitter. I'm charlesfleeman. L E H M A N. You can also find me. I'm on substack. I'm at the Causal C a u S A L fallacy, which nobody can ever find. It's really self defeating. I can explain it. It's like a wonky reference. And then I'm also, I'm at City Journal, which is the flagship publication of the Manhattan Institute, where we publish lots of good things every week. City-journal.org so if you want to check.

[B]

That out, that's where I read most of your stuff. It's really, really good. City Journal. So thank you so much for being this podcast. I really appreciate it. Absolutely.

[A]

Thanks for having me on.

[B]

You're listening to It's a Numbers Game with Ryan Graduski. We'll be right back after this message. For some of us, personal finances aren't just personal. They include a lot more people than ourselves. Loved ones, neighbors, the communities we call home, and the causes we hold in our hearts. At Thrivent, we help plan your financial picture with the bigger picture in mind. Because even though our business is helping guide your finances, our ambition is to make it mean so much more. Thrivent, where money means more. Connect with [e-mail] at Ameca Insurance, we know it's more than a life policy. It's about the promise and the responsibility that comes with being a new parent, being there day and night and building a plan for tomorrow, today for the ones you'll always look out for. Trust Amica life insurance. Amica empathy is our best policy. Hey, everybody.

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Kids quickly, set up chores, automate allowance, and keep an eye on what your kids are spending with real time notifications. Join millions of parents and kids building healthy financial habits together on Greenlight. Get started risk [e-mail] iheart now is the time for the Ask Me Anything segment of the show where you get to ask me any question, quite literally about anything. If you want to be part of the topic, please email me ryan@NumbersGame Podcast.com that's ryan@NumbersGame Podcast.com It's a plural numbers and maybe I'll be talking about your question next week. This question came from a listener named Julie. She says, ryan, do you miss cnn? No, I miss when I watch clips online because I don't really watch it on tv. When I watch it online and I see someone making an asinine statement and comment and you want to scream the television. And I wish I was there to sit there and debate them. That's really the only part I miss. I miss the makeup and hair people. They were really nice, but I don't miss being on cable news. You know, I never worked for them. It wasn't like I lost a paycheck. You do it for free to sit there and kind of promote yourself and your ideas. And I thought I made pretty smart ones, but whatever. I mean, actually, so funny. I saw Ed Martin the other day and he said, and he's also banned from cnn and he said we need to start a club that we can all get together with and hang out about it. But I don't miss cable news. I don't miss cnn, particularly because I don't think that you get all that much enjoyment out of just screaming at another person during the course of an hour long show or even 15 minutes. It was great while it lasted and then, you know, that's that. Anyway, thank you so much for listening this week. I hope you listen back later on this week for the second episode where it will be wonderful. I think we're gonna have on guests Ann Coulter to talk about judges. So please like and subscribe to this podcast on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. See you later this week. For some of us, personal finances aren't just personal. They include a lot more people than ourselves, loved ones, neighbors, the communities we call home, and the causes we hold in our hearts. At Thrivent, we help plan your financial picture with the bigger picture in mind. Because even though our business is helping guide your finances, our ambition is to make it mean so much more. Thrivent, where money means more. Connect with [e-mail] Clorox Santiva smells like lavender, cleans like Clorox and feels like hmm, all right, that could go on for a while. Experience the long lasting freshness of Clorox Scentiva. Available in Clorox Scentiva Lavender Scented Bleach. Use as directed. So you want to start a business? You might think you need a team of people and fancy tech skills, but listen to me when I say you don't. You just need GoDaddy arrow. I'm Walton Goggins, an actor, and I like the sound of starting my own business. Walton Goggins Goggle Glasses. But I couldn't do this my own. GoDaddy Arrow uses AI to create everything you need to grow a business. It'll make you a unique logo, it'll create a custom website, it'll write social posts for you, and even set you up with a social media calendar. How cool is that? Well, listen to this. For a limited time, you can get Arrow all access for just a dollar a week for 12 weeks. We're talking all the AI power of GoDaddy arrow, plus a domain E commerce store, payments, professional email, a unified inbox. All for less money than I spend on deep tanning lotion while sunbathing off the Amalfi coast. You know what? That sounds like a plan. Get [e-mail] terms apply. Get this, adults with financial literacy skills have 82% more wealth than those who don't. From swimming lessons to piano classes, US parents invest in so many things to enrich our kids lives but are we investing in their future financial success? With Greenlight you can teach your kids financial literacy skills like earning, saving and investing and this investment costs less than that. After school treat start prioritizing their financial education and future today with a risk free [e-mail] iheart greenlight.com iheart get ready for the biggest contest of the year. It's the big Circle K giveaway where you'll have five chances to win $100,000. So tell your GPS, tell your passenger princess, tell the bobblehead on your dash it's time to visit Circle K. Every visit is a chance to win one of five one hundred thousand dollar grand prizes. The Big Circle K Giveaway Visit Circle K today and they'll know the Circle K app. No purchase necessary. US residents 18/ ends May 6, 2025For official rules visit circlek.com big giveaway.