How Betting Took Over Sports

Summary

Podcast Summary: The New Yorker Radio Hour

Episode: How Betting Took Over Sports
Host: David Remnick
Guest: Danny Funt (journalist and author of Everybody Loses)
Date: January 20, 2026

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Overview

This episode explores the explosive growth of legal sports betting in America, the powerful influence of gambling companies, and the unintended consequences for fans, players, and society. Host David Remnick interviews journalist Danny Funt, whose new book, Everybody Loses, investigates how betting has transformed sports and popular culture. Together, they unpack the dizzying sums now wagered, the blossoming of online sportsbooks, threats to sports integrity, and the troubling social fallout—especially among young people.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

The Normalization and Scale of Sports Gambling

• From "Illicit" to "Everywhere": Remnick opens by recalling a time when office betting was hush-hush. Now, ads and commentary about gambling are omnipresent in sports.

  “...now it sounds like I'm describing life hundreds of years ago, because these days we are absolutely inundated with ads offering same game parlays and no sweat bets.” (01:21)

• Massive Growth: Funt highlights the staggering figures:
  • About $150 billion wagered annually in the U.S. (03:08)
  • NY State had a record $2 billion in a single November

  “It's hard to wrap your head around those numbers.” (03:11)

• Demographics: Young men aged 21–34 are the main target; about 30% of Americans are estimated to be betting, often online. (03:24–03:38)
• Betting on Anything: Even obscure sports (e.g., Eastern European table tennis during the pandemic) become popular if they’re the only option.

  “...all they could bet on was Eastern European table tennis. And they continue to bet millions of dollars every month. I guess they got hooked on ping pong.” (03:44)

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The Gambling Industry's Perspective and Practices

• Industry Mindset: Funt explains the industry’s “predatory” nature.

  “There was an executive who told me, if you think about it, he said, my job is basically to slowly bleed someone dry.” (06:47)

• Few Win Long-Term: Only about 1% of customers come out ahead, and professional-looking bettors are quickly limited.

  “As soon as you show any signs of competence, not even winning, but just placing the sorts of bets that might give you a chance of winning, they'll limit how much you're able to wager down to literal pennies.” (14:23)

• Bookmakers’ Controls: FanDuel and DraftKings control about 75% of the market. Most betting is online (06:15–06:19).
• Supposed Consumer Protections: Legalization was meant to provide safety, but the core business model remains geared toward extracting maximum profit from users.

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The Impact on Sports Integrity

• Recent Scandals:
  • Portland Trailblazers coach arrested for insider information.
  • Cleveland Guardians pitchers indicted for rigging pitches, allegedly in coordination with live bets. (02:26–02:34)
• Erosion of Trust:
  • Reference to 1919 Chicago White Sox scandal and the ongoing fear of game-fixing.
  • Modern concerns mirror old ones, despite athletes being better compensated today.
• Public Perception: After scandals, the public’s trust drops significantly.

  “...a poll came out that showed that 65% of Americans think some athletes are colluding with gamblers to affect the outcomes of games.” (10:53)

• Failures in Monitoring:
  • Legalization proponents claimed regulation would safeguard integrity, but effective oversight is impossible due to the scale and the continued existence of underground betting.

  “...these companies can't possibly investigate every suspicious bet tied to a pitch in a baseball game.” (11:34)

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Betting Beyond Sports and Social Concerns

• Political and Event-Based Gambling:
  • Growing popularity of betting on elections, interest rates, and even wars/natural disasters through platforms like Polymarket and Kalshi.

  “...betting on natural disasters or wars or things like that is much more serious business than sports.” (15:41)

• Moral and Civic Consequences:
  • Critics argue that betting on elections may “cheapen” democracy and distort civic participation.

  “...if you're betting on elections, it could cheapen how you engage with politics.” (16:04)

• Addiction Among Youth:
  • Reports of young people, even elementary students, being preoccupied with gambling.
  • 20% of college students have used tuition funds to gamble. (17:02)
  • Gambling addiction is uniquely insidious, often hidden for years.

  “...with gambling, it can take years for a problem to take shape.” (17:02) “I was fine until I suddenly won $10,000, and I spent every day chasing not only that money, but that feeling. And that is so dangerous.” (17:40)

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Regulatory Response and Outlook

• Growing Regulatory Pressure:
  • Following recent scandals, Congress and state legislators have begun pressing for reforms.
  • Proposals include banning "prop" bets and live, in-game betting, which is the fastest-growing segment. (18:17)
  • Still, Funt is pessimistic about any sweeping federal action in the near term.

  “Whether there will be a bill in Congress that reaches the president's desk, I wouldn't bet on it anytime soon.” (18:17)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Gambling’s Transformation:

  “Wagering on the game now seems practically as important as watching it. How did things change so much and so fast?”
  — David Remnick (01:21)

• On Industry Motivation:

  “There was an executive who told me, if you think about it, he said, my job is basically to slowly bleed someone dry.”
  — Danny Funt (06:47)

• On Addiction:

  “I was fine until I suddenly won $10,000, and I spent every day chasing not only that money, but that feeling. And that is so dangerous.”
  — Danny Funt (17:40)

• On the Futility of Beating the House:

  “Only about 1% of customers come out ahead long term, but as soon as you show any signs of competence ... they'll limit how much you're able to wager down to literal pennies.”
  — Danny Funt (14:23)

• On the Difficulty of Enforcement:

  “...these companies can't possibly investigate every suspicious bet tied to a pitch in a baseball game.”
  — Danny Funt (11:34)

• On Regulating the Industry:

  “Whether there will be a bill in Congress that reaches the president's desk, I wouldn't bet on it anytime soon.”
  — Danny Funt (18:17)

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Segment Timestamps

• Personal history and context: 01:21–02:20
• Scale and demographics of gambling: 03:08–03:44
• Industry perspective and “predatory” practices: 04:05–07:09
• Evolution of legalization – from PASPA to Adam Silver: 07:09–09:14
• Sports scandals and integrity risks: 09:14–12:19
• Professional gamblers and limits: 14:01–15:08
• Wagering beyond sports: 15:08–16:46
• Youth addiction and social implications: 17:01–17:55
• Moves toward increased regulation: 17:55–19:12

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Tone

The conversation is candid, sometimes wry, with a blend of reminiscence and urgency. Remnick brings a journalist’s skepticism and historical perspective; Funt is direct, occasionally self-deprecating, and thorough in his critique of the industry.

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Conclusion

This episode presents a probing look at the transformation of sports culture through gambling—its billion-dollar boom, largely unchecked power, and the cascading consequences for integrity, society, and individual well-being. The discussion gives voice both to the statistical scale and the intimate, human costs, ultimately asking whether lawmakers can or will reverse course, even as the gambling juggernaut keeps rolling.

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For additional reporting and Danny Funt’s articles, visit newyorker.com.

Transcript

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[New Yorker Radio Hour Announcer]

This is the New Yorker Radio Hour, a co production of WNYC Studios and the New Yorker.

[David Remnick]

This is the New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick. When I worked at the Washington Post early in my career, one of my colleagues had a little bit of a side hustle. Late in the week in the fall, he'd go around the office taking bets on the weekend's football game, and then he'd relay those bets to a bookmaker. Now a lot of us would put some money down, small bets. Nobody was losing their shirt, but still we had a sense that it was somehow illicit. Some something you did on the qt. Now it sounds like I'm describing life hundreds of years ago, because these days we are absolutely inundated with ads offering same game parlays and no sweat bets. You just can't turn on pro football or listen to a call in sports talk show without hearing the odds, without emphasizing gambling. Wagering on the game now seems practically as important as watching it. How did things change so much and so fast?

[Danny Funt]

Literally, I was watching the last World Series and right before the first pitch, they said, and by the way, here's a parlay you might want to consider.

[David Remnick]

Placing Danny Fundt has been reporting on the gambling boom for the New Yorker. We've seen some pretty startling headlines lately. The Former coach of the Portland Trailblazers was arrested in part for allegedly providing insider information to gamblers. And then there was those two pitchers on the Cleveland Guardians who were indicted for rigging individual pitches. They were purposely throwing wild pitches to align with live bets. They've all pleaded not guilty. Danny Funt's new book about the boom in sports betting is called Everybody Loses. So can you give me a sense in dollar terms of how big a business this is now?

[Danny Funt]

About $150 billion are wagered every year. Just last November, New York set a record with more than $2 billion wagered in the state of New York alone. It's hard to wrap your head around those numbers.

[David Remnick]

Who's gambling?

[Danny Funt]

Mostly young men. That's the target demo. 21 to 34. It's hard to know exactly how many people total are betting. I've seen like 30% is a good ballpark.

[David Remnick]

30% of that demographic?

[Danny Funt]

No, of Americans. Of as.

[David Remnick]

30%. All Americans are laying down bets. On what? What are the most popular things? Pro football.

[Danny Funt]

Absolutely. The NFL is king. All the major sports. I mean, even in Colorado, where I used to live when it was legalized during the pandemic, most sports were shuttered and all they could bet on was Eastern European table tennis. And they continue to bet millions of dollars every month. I guess they got hooked on ping pong.

[David Remnick]

So from the title of your book, it's pretty clear what your POV on legal sports gambling is. Or am I getting this wrong?

[Danny Funt]

That's fair. I hope you'll trust that I didn't have that title locked in as I started this. It was a realization of talking to hundreds of people, mainly in the industry and seeing how they think about their customers, how they think about their business. Left that impression that not only are we losing a staggering amount of money as we were just talking about, but the credibility of sports, the integrity of sports, the independence of sports journalism, the list goes on.

[David Remnick]

Are you a gambler yourself?

[Danny Funt]

Yeah. There's a stat that about half of people who bet, they admit that they're not honest about how much they bet and how often they bet. I'm in that demographic.

[David Remnick]

How would you describe the dimensions of your own activity?

[Danny Funt]

Mostly when I'm watching a Lakers game, particularly when my wife is out of town and I've got nothing better to do. I'm trying to liven up a night.

[David Remnick]

You're scared of your wife and you're a gambler?

[Danny Funt]

Exactly. Like a lot of people, it's a thing to do when you're bored and lonely.

[Quince Advertiser]

Yeah.

[Danny Funt]

I'll be honest with you, though, just hearing again and again and again how impossible it is to win, how these sportsbooks do everything they can to prevent you from coming out ahead long term. I've backed off a lot in the last year.

[David Remnick]

Explain what a Sportsbook is for the uninitiated and then talk to me about how they do their work.

[Danny Funt]

So Sportsbook is a company that takes bets. They have bookmakers and odds makers and hundreds if not thousands of people who are dedicated to offering as many things as they can possibly think of on every sport in existence. Practically 95% of this business is now conducted online. So back in the day, this was kind of an amenity to lure you into a casino. Just like all you can eat buffets or whatever it was. Let's bring people in. Hey, you can bet on sports, but hopefully you'll play some craps while you're here.

[David Remnick]

So how am I gambling now?

[Danny Funt]

On your phone, predominantly.

[David Remnick]

And what are the big companies?

[Danny Funt]

FanDuel and DraftKings control three quarters of the market.

[David Remnick]

Why are you so tough on the gambling industry? I mean, people pay their 50 bucks and they lose a little bit more often than they win. What's the harm?

[Danny Funt]

The idea of legalization was that, among other things, this would install consumer protection so that you could. People have always been gambling. Let's make sure you can do it fairly, get paid when you win, not get chased around town. If you owe someone some money, there's.

[David Remnick]

A lot of your thumbs won't get broken.

[Danny Funt]

Exactly. But just learning so much about how this business is done, you hear the word predatory again and again. There was an executive who told me, if you think about it, he said, my job is basically to slowly bleed someone dry. And the techniques that they do to do that, I don't think you have to be moralistic to find issue with that.

[David Remnick]

So I'm old enough to remember Bart Giamatti being running baseball and other sports commissioners were staunchly against any betting at all. They thought it would really have a deleterious effect on a number of fronts. And betting was made illegal back in the 90s with the professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act. Right?

[Danny Funt]

Yes.

[David Remnick]

Paspa, I guess you would call it. Although Nevada was grandfathered in. How did that get overturned? You mentioned in your book that Adam Silver, who is the very popular commissioner of the NBA right now, was really the first to come out in support of this change. Talk about that a little bit.

[Danny Funt]

So his predecessor, David Stern, was among the commissioners who testified during the PASPA hearings and said, this is an evil. He went even further with that, speaking with Chris Christie, who was leading the.

[David Remnick]

Charge for the governor of New Jersey.

[Danny Funt]

Yes. Christie told me that David Stern, who's passed away, said that gambling treats athletes like chattel. And he just got very animated describing how awful it was the year that Stern resigned and his deputy, Adam Silver took over. He wrote an op ed in the New York Times in 2014 saying, legalize and regulate gambling.

[David Remnick]

What was Adam Silver's rationale publicly, that.

[Danny Funt]

This was happening underground? Anyway, he quoted a number that $400 billion were being wagered illegally every year, which I think is a.

[David Remnick]

What you said publicly. As if he had another motivation.

[Danny Funt]

Yeah. My understanding is he was looking mainly at British soccer at the English Premier League and how incredibly it had grown in recent years, in large part because teams there embraced gambling and got all this interest from foreign gambling sponsors that put their brands on the fronts of jerseys and poured all this money into the epl. And Silver, who very clearly wants the NBA to grow internationally, said, what are we doing missing out on that opportunity?

[David Remnick]

I think the most famous gambling scandal, and there have been many, you know, City University had its days in basketball, but the most famous scandal was the 1919 infamous Chicago White Sox. Do we fear that this kind of large scale scandal will happen in modern sports? Cause we're seeing signs of that now.

[Danny Funt]

Yeah. Hard to understate what an existential threat the 1919 World Series was to the future of baseball and sports in general. After eight players on the White Sox, including Shoeless Joe, obviously, and others, colluded with gamblers to throw the World Series, it was eventually sniffed out by a reporter. They were prosecuted. They were exonerated, ultimately. And there's a funny scene that someone else reported that they and the jurors celebrated at a Italian restaurant after that verdict was read. But there's so much to learn from that. And every, as you alluded to, every decade since then, there's been a gambling scandal. And you might say athletes make too much money nowadays. They would never do something so foolish.

[David Remnick]

Yeah, but now you've got, for example, there's a pitcher at the Cleveland Guardians, Emmanuel Clase, who was allegedly throwing wild pitches on purpose because he was making bets on himself. And, well, we had it in the NBA recently. You had the Trailblazers. Coach Chauncey Billups was arrested and charged for gambling with insider information. Other incidents are starting to pop up. I assume you have part of your concern is the integrity of these sports themselves.

[Danny Funt]

Yeah. Which once again, was exactly What Bud Selig of Major League Baseball and David Stern and Paul Tagliabu and all these commissioners predicted was you would have actual instances of corruption and a general degradation of trust in the integrity of what we're watching. And immediately after Klasse and Chauncey Billups and others were arrested, a poll came out that showed that 65% of Americans think some athletes are colluding with gamblers to affect the outcomes of games. A key argument for legalization was, in fact, it'll strengthen the integrity of games because we'll be able to monitor all this betting activity.

[David Remnick]

Why are they wrong?

[Danny Funt]

I've spoken with the companies tasked with doing that monitoring and they say a there's still a lot of betting going on under the table. We can't monitor that. Any savvy fixer is not going to go bet on fanduel. They'll go offshore or with a street bookie. We'd have little chance of catching that, so we haven't snuffed out that threat. And beyond that, there's simply too much ground to cover when you carve up a game and do thousands of betting opportunities. Like you were saying, a single pitch is something you can risk a lot of money on. These companies can't possibly investigate every suspicious bet tied to a pitch in a baseball game.

[David Remnick]

I'm speaking with Danny Funt. His new book is called Everybody Loses More in a moment.

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[David Remnick]

If I were to bet on FanDuel or the like over time, can I win? In other words, I watch these movies like Uncut Gems or Rounders, and you've got these savvy professional gamblers who figure out how to beat the house and and win consistently. Is that ever true for sports gamblers?

[Danny Funt]

Well, let's not accuse Adam Sandler's character of beating the house. I think he's a mess. He got a bullet in the head when he finally did. Not only do about 1% of customers come out ahead long term, but as soon as you show any signs of competence, not even winning, but just placing the sorts of bets that might give you a chance of winning, they'll limit how much you're able to wager down to literal pennies. I've seen guys who can't get down more than a cent on an NFL game. Of course, there are ways that you can bend the rules, and they'll definitely show you the door. In that case, what I'm talking about has nothing to do with that. It's simply outsmarting the bookmakers. And they'll say, we're not gonna take your bets because of that.

[David Remnick]

Well, now gambling has gone well beyond sports. Danny, you've also written for the magazine the New Yorker about companies like Polymarket and Kalshi, who they set wagers on everything from election outcomes to interest rates. A recent Polymarket user made a bet, and he made more than $400,000 betting on the Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro being captured. Unbelievable. Is this more or less concerning than whether some player might throw a game?

[Danny Funt]

Of course. And by the way, insider trading, that seems to be at hand. And how else could you have been so confident that the US Would invade at that moment? Of course, betting on natural disasters or wars or things like that is much more serious business than sports.

[David Remnick]

But why? I mean, it's unattractive. It's, as we say, a bad look in some way.

[Danny Funt]

Well, we can have an easier time understanding that if you're betting on elections, it could cheapen how you engage with politics.

[David Remnick]

Is that possible in this?

[Danny Funt]

People like Elizabeth Warren would say so.

[David Remnick]

Tell me about that.

[Danny Funt]

They think that, of course, people vote at times based on who they think will influence their pocketbook in a more favorable way. But if You've got a bet on the line. Could that be an even more problematic way of thinking about who you should vote for? I think when we're talking about what's someone gonna say on a talk show or will it rain tomorrow? That seems like we're just turning every single thing in our lives into an occasion to gamble.

[David Remnick]

But that's an argument that's moral above all. Right, and how are you going to get legislators excited about that if they.

[Danny Funt]

See surging rates of gambling addiction, particularly among young people?

[David Remnick]

Are we seeing that?

[Danny Funt]

So many educators I talk to say they're panicked at how suddenly preoccupied with gambling kids as young as elementary school are, if you can believe that in college, 20% of students dip into tuition funds to fund their bets. And I spoke with an expert in this named Jeffrey Derevensky, who specializes in youth problem gambling. And he pointed out that one of the dangers of gambling versus drug addiction or other things where you can kind of tell quickly if someone has a problem, typically with gambling, it can take years for a problem to take shape.

[David Remnick]

So why is that?

[Danny Funt]

I've spoken with so many problem gamblers in recovery who say, I was fine until I suddenly won $10,000, and I spent every day chasing not only that money, but that feeling. And that is so dangerous.

[David Remnick]

Finally, now that we've seen some of the really negative outcomes of legal sports gambling. Death threats for players, fixed games, users going bankrupt, the levels of gambling addiction that you've described, is there any push in the government to regulate this activity again?

[Danny Funt]

Yes, particularly after those arrests in the NBA and Major League Baseball. The House and Senate sent letters to Adam Silver saying, please help us make sense of what you're doing so that more of this doesn't happen. Brian Schatz, the Democrat from Hawaii in the Senate recently proposed regulating prop bets. A New York assembly member has proposed banning live betting, which now makes up more than half of betting activity is placed during games. Whether there will be a bill in Congress that reaches the president's desk, I wouldn't bet on it anytime soon. It's hard for anything to pass, obviously, but people like Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut have really made senator from Connecticut. Yeah. Yes. Have said this is so out of hand and the industry is so brazen in what they're doing to defy just common sense of what's fair for customers. The federal government needs to weigh in.

[David Remnick]

Danny Funt, thank you so much.

[Danny Funt]

My pleasure. Thanks for having me.

[David Remnick]

Danny Funt's new book is called Everybody Loses, and you can also read him on the gambling [e-mail] and of course, you can always subscribe to the New Yorker there as well. New yorker.com that's the new Yorker Radio Hour for today. I'm David Remnick. Thanks for joining us. We'll see you next time.

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