*UNLOCKED* The Banana Ball Shuffle feat. Lauren Walker

Summary

TRASHFUTURE – UNLOCKED The Banana Ball Shuffle feat. Lauren Walker (April 7, 2026)

Main Theme & Purpose

This episode of TRASHFUTURE, featuring Lauren Walker of "Batting Around," dives deep into the surreal intersection of capitalism, sports, viral culture, and the relentless gamification and financialization of leisure. The crew explores "Banana Ball"—baseball’s TikTok-fueled, hyperactive cousin—as a jumping-off point for broader questions about contemporary sports, spectacle, gambling, and the psychic trauma inflicted by capitalism. The discussion swerves between absurd developments in sport (and sports-adjacent industries), the effects of social media virality, dystopian predictions for the future of gambling and fandom, and their implications for society as a whole, all with the show’s signature wit and irreverence.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Rise and Nature of "Banana Ball"

• What is Banana Ball?
  • A viral, highly commercialized, TikTok-centric reinvention of baseball, prioritizing spectacle and engagement over sporting purity.

    “Banana ball, if you don’t know, somehow, is the biggest baseball, like, entity on TikTok ... A lot of baseball purists hate it because its stated goal is to make baseball fun and its audience is primarily young women. And those are things that baseball just historically always hated.” – Lauren Walker [05:10]

  • Its origins: started as a quirky summer league team, exploded during the pandemic via silly, meme-friendly TikToks [06:10].
• Banana Ball as Entertainment Brand
  • Less a sport, more an "entertainment lifestyle brand."

    “You’re just watching people film TikToks on the field ... It’s not like a Harlem Globetrotters thing where it’s an entertaining version of the sport you can watch … like, you want to go to the filming of a TikTok, right?” – Lauren Walker [07:23]

• Spectacle > Baseball
  • Increasingly minimal "actual" baseball: more dancing, viral stunts, even a "Banana Ball cruise" [08:22–08:44].
  • Fans are now burning out, with matches hard to attend, expensive, and dominated by influencer antics.

2. Viral Logic and Cultural Parody

• The TikTokification of Everything
  • Panel jokes that TikTok has "infected" baseball and other cultural products, replacing substance with viral spectacle.
  • Influence is so pervasive that the "dancing plague" devours other media, including ESPN's new coverage model [09:11–11:41].
• Gently Mocking the ‘Planned Orbsolescence’ Trend
  • Discord’s new ad-driven ‘orbs’ as satirical examples of digital commodification and “planned orbsolescence” [01:55].
  • Extended riffing on new ‘orbs’ and digital rewards systems as absurd symptoms of engagement-driven capitalism.

3. Neom and Sports as Statecraft

• Saudi Arabia’s NEOM Project & Football
  • How sport is used for nation branding and soft power, via massive investment in football clubs and infrastructural spectacle (e.g., the Line) [15:16–20:54].
  • Hilarious, absurd details:
    • Imported ultras (“NEOM Unit”), stealing clubs à la Oakland A’s, surreal plans for sky-pitched stadiums.
    • A Brazilian football manager named "Pericles Chamusc." “Just one of the most Brazilian names I've ever heard.” – Christian [18:08]
• Potential for Neom Banana Ball
  • Panel jokes about exporting banana ball spectacle to NEOM ("desert banana ball"), further parodying the commodification of culture for state interests.

4. Gambling, Surveillance, and Capitalism's Endgame

• The Sports Betting Explosion
  • A deep-dive into how gambling has become the “biggest moneymaker” in sports, eclipsing traditional revenue like merchandising or TV rights [29:55–30:29].
  • Discussion of AltSports Data: a startup offering betting odds on alternative/extreme sports, pushing micro- and macro-betting on everything from surfing to HI-LAI and power slapping [33:34–44:52].
• Gambling Destigmatized = Social Harm
  • Lauren and the panel discuss how normalized betting alters fan behavior, increases financial risk, and even leads to harassment of college athletes and mental health crises [38:23–46:26].

    “There’s a direct correlation … between legalizing sports gambling and a skyrocketing percentage of bankruptcy declarations. It’s like one to one.” – Lauren Walker [37:15]

  • AI-personalized broadcasts tailor betting prompts and emotional manipulation to individual users, erasing all friction from wagering [50:07–51:30].

    “We’ve invented the world’s most persuasive bartender and he never cuts you off.” – Christian [51:38]

  • Parody of PR lines: “We did it for the players.” – Christian [48:05]

5. Athlete Brain and Sports Absurdity

• ‘Athlete Brain’ and Professionalization
  • The narrowness of the athlete’s cognitive horizon, shaped by total investment in their sport from childhood.

    “Every major professional athlete has only ever been good at their sport ... The less you’re thinking, the better you are at the sport. So those are not muscles they’re super used to engaging.” – Lauren Walker [28:14]

• Comic Athlete Moments
  • Favorite excerpt: NHL Utah Mammoths players marvelling at dinosaur skeletons and debating how many people it would take to defeat one:

    “This was walking the earth at one point. You kidding me, bro? This fucking thing.” – Canadian Hockey Player [26:28]
    “Independently reinventing old Twitter jokes.” – Christian [26:43]

6. Baseball’s Culture Wars and Conservative Weirdos

• Wacky and Problematic Players
  • From St. Louis Cardinals' coded Trump gestures, to players refusing COVID vaccinations (“the Kansas City Royals left 10 players at home”) [58:32], to closet cases on Pride Night [55:34].
  • Lauren’s tales of plausible deniability and minor scandals, e.g., the dugout “fight, fight, fight” gesture justified as a DJ Biscuit homage [53:51] and the euphemistic logic behind anti-Pride actions.

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Memorable Quotes & Moments

• “It’s planned orbsolescence.” – Milo [01:55]
• “Banana ball … is more of like an entertainment lifestyle brand at this point than it is like, an actual sports product.” – Lauren Walker [05:10]
• “You’re just watching people film TikToks on the field ... it’s like the Gen Alpha version of … coordinated, like, stunt dances.” – Lauren Walker [07:51]
• “It’s like the TikTok algorithm killed baseball.” – Milo [11:33]
• “Do you think it’s like some minor league or ... Tampa Bay, like level, baseball player made like a cursed monkey’s paw wish that he wanted to play, he wanted to sell out stadiums?” – Milo [09:58]
• “There’s a direct correlation … between a state here legalizing sports gambling and … bankruptcy declarations. It’s like one to one.” – Lauren Walker [37:15]
• “We’ve invented the world’s most persuasive bartender and he never cuts you off.” – Christian [51:38]
• “Numbers are going up and down and it’s related to the thing you’re seeing. And ... the only people making money off of is the guys selling hot dogs.” – Milo [40:17]

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• [01:23–04:16] – “Orbs” and digital economy satire
• [04:28–14:33] – Introduction to guest Lauren Walker; What is Banana Ball? Its TikTok rise; Spectacle vs. sport; Audience and burnout.
• [15:16–22:25] – NEOM’s football project; Sports as soft power; Absurdities in state-led sports spectacle
• [24:24–28:55] – Utah Mammoths, Canadian “athlete brain”, and sports comedy vignettes
• [29:55–38:23] – The rise of gambling in sport; AltSports Data; “Participation” as micro-betting
• [38:23–46:46] – Impact of gambling on fandom, athletes, and mental health; From college sports to ethical collapse
• [47:02–51:38] – Sports betting tech dystopia; AI-personalized broadcasts; Gamification and compulsive engagement
• [53:09–59:21] – Lauren’s gallery of bizarre baseball players, COVID/trump era tales, and minor scandals

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Tone, Style, and Takeaways

As always TRASHFUTURE is dense with irony, parody, and gallows humor—it analyzes late capitalist absurdities not with solemnity but with comedic, often sardonic, incredulity. The hosts and guest weave together contemporary news, lived expertise, leftist critique, and pop culture references to illuminate the links between virality, commodification, and the hollowing out of enjoyment for profit’s sake. The result is at once hilarious and sobering: a warning not just about the future of sports, but about how capitalism turns every sphere of life—leisure, community, competition—into sites of extraction and psychic harm.

If you’ve missed the episode:
You’ll come away with a madcap overview of Banana Ball’s rise, a sharp critique of sports gambling’s new frontiers, and plenty of anecdotes about the weirdness, pathos and engineered fun of American sport in 2026—plus a handful of Deadwood, Mad Men, and NEOM references for good measure.

Transcript

[Host]

Hello Trash Future listeners. We have all had scheduling conflicts and as a result, we're unlocking a bonus episode for this week's free one. But it's a very fun episode featuring Lauren Walker from Batting around and we hope you enjoy it. Also, a few plugs up front. First, you may have heard that no Gods, no Mayors will be performing live at Big Belly Comedy in London on the 25th and 26th April. There's a link in this episode's description where you can get tickets and they're going fast, so definitely check that out if you're interested. In addition, Milo is currently on tour in Australia and you can get tickets to all of his shows down there via the link that's also in the description. And finally, I've got some plugs. First Lions led by donkeys will be performing on 29 May at Richmix in London. There's a link in the show notes again where you can get tickets. And in addition to this, my band Second Homes just started pre sales on our debut album on Bandcamp. It was produced by friend of the show and Bottleman alumnus Dan Beckner, and there's a link in the description where you can check it out. We'll be back on the bonus feed with a new episode in just a few days and there'll be a new free episode next Tuesday. Thanks for being a listener. Thanks for your patience and have a good one.

[Milo]

Look, none of you understand that there's a new orb, okay?

[Christian]

Okay, that's true.

[Danny]

That is true.

[Christian]

When I do my kind of rigorous, like, spiritual examine at the end of each day, I think to myself about my weaknesses. And one of them is, I don't understand. There's a new orb.

[Milo]

Yeah, like none of you have actually really metabolized that there's a hot new orb on the scene.

[Danny]

Just when I grasp the ones that exist, another one just shows up.

[Christian]

Well, this is how it always is. You know, you get in and you think my orb's going to be the orb for all time. And it never is, you know, because there's always a newer orb.

[Milo]

Yeah, look, you know what? It's planned orb solescence. And I think it's actually, thank you very much. No, I'm going to Look, a hot new orb has dropped on the scene. Discord. I don't know if you know this. Discord orbs are a new type of reward earned through performing quests.

[Christian]

How many can I use on a single ape?

[Milo]

Well, I don't know if you can use them on an ape yet. What I do know is that they allow you to change your profile Picture on Discord 1, 2. That you get them by watching ads. Quests are watching ads, by the way. A quest. Okay, Yeah. A medieval villain.

[Christian]

So J.D. vance, who is still in a Discord server with a bunch of like 15 year old Neo Nazis, is going to be raking in the orbs then?

[Milo]

He is. He is rich in his orb. Rich is J.D. vance. Unlike many of the other orbs we've talked about, these are not. There's not a physical orb. This is not the FIFA.

[Christian]

Waste fucking time.

[Milo]

Oh, I'm sorry. I'm sorry if the digital future passed you by. Right. That every. It's all computer. Everything's computer. The orbs are computer now.

[Christian]

Yeah.

[Milo]

And they said they. Discord said the chief marketing officer of Discord. We're dedicated to making Quest the most authentic engagement centric advertising product in all of gaming. And we're taking a huge step on this today.

[Christian]

I've never thought, what if Discord could be more exploitative? But I guess when you work at Discord, that's where you have to be.

[Milo]

Yeah. Well, I'll tell you what happened. Why this has happened is that Discord is trying to IPO and they're desperate to increase their revenue, so they invented orbs and quests.

[Danny]

Yeah. I'm the ad guy who went to Discord and I just unveiled on my whiteboard, I just wrote on the whiteboard orb. Everyone stood up and they applauded.

[Milo]

Yeah, that's right. Here with a TF bonus episode today we have a guest who's I think been quite a long time coming. Very excited to have her on it is batting around's Lauren Walker. And we're gonna talk baseball, football, other sports, possibly high. Alai, Lauren, welcome to the show.

[Lauren Walker]

Howdy, y'. All. Thanks for having me on.

[Christian]

Welcome, Lauren. I completely missed the intro on account of I was getting a package.

[Milo]

Yeah, it was your orbs I sent you.

[Christian]

Yes, of course. Thank you for the orbs. Obviously. Really appreciate them physical.

[Danny]

Can I just go back for a second? Are they called Disc or.

[Milo]

Uh. We need to call Discord right away.

[Christian]

That would be a better name. Yeah. What you've done there is kind of unwaged labor for Discord in branding.

[Milo]

What if you just called them discs?

[Danny]

Yeah.

[Milo]

Whoa. Cooking here. This is. This is.

[Christian]

Yeah. Okay. This is like season one Mad Men shit where we're firing on all cylinders.

[Milo]

Uh huh. I mean, there. Actually I've planted another season one Mad Men reference later in the show.

[Christian]

Oh, okay, good. It's nice to know that that's out there, because previously, if you were looking for those in the show, you were delusional.

[Milo]

Whereas now, the special kind of schizophrenic where you think we're not talking to you through a mass medium, but, like, we're talking to Don Draper.

[Christian]

Being Mad Men stalks.

[Milo]

Yeah, I'm being Mad Men stalked. People keep smoking near me, and all the ties have got very skinny. One guy came up to me and said he didn't think about me at all, which I thought was weird. But no, we got Lauren on, and we're gonna be talking sports. So, you know, I'm gonna answer number one, once and for all, my question, which is, what the fuck is banana ball? And why does it seem so popular in what you could refer to as America Bee?

[Lauren Walker]

That's a fascinating question. It's also one that the baseball community has had a really. The baseball community, the people who get paid to talk about baseball, has had a really hard time figuring out the people of baseball. People with baseball preference. Yes. Banana ball, if you don't know, somehow, is the biggest baseball, like, entity on TikTok. A lot of baseball purists hate it because its stated goal is to make baseball fun and its audience is primarily young women. And those are things that baseball just historically always hated. That's one way to think about banana ball. The other way to think about it is a product that people go to that's more of, like a. Like an entertainment lifestyle brand at this point than it is like, an actual sports product. Like it. The history of it. It goes back to, like, 2022, and they were sort of like a real baseball team. They were, like, associated with, like, a college summer league. They played actual baseball, but, like, they were goofy with it. Like, they'd grill on the sidelines. And over time, specifically in the pandemic, they really blew up in a huge way by doing silly dances on TikTok, which, as far as my understand, Alabama is the entire platform still.

[Christian]

Because silly dances have never happened in baseball.

[Danny]

Like, no inevitable showdown between the baseball crank and the banana ball crank.

[Milo]

That's right. I like to imagine, like. Like in. In. In Deadwood, they're getting the baseball scores from, like, the 1893 World Series or whatever. Like, four weeks later by telegram. I need to know, did the pitcher on stilts successfully complete a backflip?

[Christian]

Al, of course, we never mentioned the nested layers of Deadwood references been putting in over previous episodes.

[Milo]

That's right. Every time Someone speaks the British accent. It's a reference to elsewhereengine. Actually.

[Lauren Walker]

Our brains are fully calcified in the years of the golden age of television from 2008 to 2017.

[Christian]

Yeah.

[Lauren Walker]

There's no coming back from it.

[Milo]

Yeah, yeah. It's like Timothy Oliphant just gets to do what he wants. Yeah.

[Christian]

I'm unconventional by our standards because I'm primarily into Boardwalk Empire, but, you know,

[Lauren Walker]

a real Nucky Thompson head. You don't see too many of them.

[Milo]

No, no. Banana ball seems fun because it's like they've taken baseball and we're like, what if it was also a TikTok hype house, but also baseball? And it's like, this is the single most popular sport in America overnight, it seems.

[Lauren Walker]

Yes.

[Milo]

Which is crazy.

[Lauren Walker]

Literally, like, they had more followers on TikTok than any MLB team. And they are selling out, like, football stadiums. 70,000 seat football stadium. That's like kind of the new take on it. People are now burned out on it because, like, actually going to these games, it's impossible to get tickets. They're super expensive when you can get one. And then, like, you're just watching people film TikToks on the field. Like, it's not like a Harlem Globetrotters thing where, like, it's like an entertaining version of the sport. You can watch, like, it. And they've got.

[Christian]

Hey, babe, you want to go to the filming of a TikTok, right?

[Lauren Walker]

Exactly. This is like the Gen Alpha version of, like, coordinated, like, stunt dances.

[Danny]

What if phones, but way too much.

[Milo]

Yeah.

[Christian]

Why?

[Milo]

Well, what if everything's computer extended to baseball? We thought it was going to be something to do with sabermetrics, but actually it was. What if baseball was about, like, nine different groups of people doing unconnected TikTok dances around rounded diamond while sort of mostly forgetting to play baseball.

[Danny]

Yeah, I was gonna say. So at no point, like, does baseball really get played in this, despite it being kind of centered around baseball.

[Lauren Walker]

There's, like, baseball, like, things happening on the field. Someone will be standing at the diamond swinging a bat, and occasionally there will be, like, contact and the ball will travel to the outfield. But there's less and less of that because that is baseball and that is boring. And they want to get rid of the boring stuff and just do the fun TikTok dances. Like, the most successful thing they're doing right now is actually the banana ball cruise.

[Christian]

You know, it's washed when there's a tenuous connection for a cruise event.

[Milo]

I also, I love the banana Ball cruise. They're just like. And it's out again. Yeah, it's another bun. It's another bun. If you. Basically it's. If you don't bunt, it just goes out.

[Christian]

You cannot fit a regulation banana ball field onto a cruise ship. It just can't be done.

[Lauren Walker]

No. So it's just like the hype dancing over and over again.

[Christian]

Amazing.

[Milo]

It's the infection of TikTok into like everything that it touches. It's like a kind of dancing plague really.

[Christian]

So when are we pivoting to video?

[Milo]

Yeah, maybe actually pretty soon. But I don't think we'll be dancing to watch some space, but. Right. This is just something that. Because I see it and often people be, is this Christian? Is this Mormon? Is this. What is this? And it's like, no, it's just TikTok. It's just the dancing plague that's infecting everything it touches by replacing everything with TikTok dances.

[Lauren Walker]

I would say that it probably is somewhat Christian in some way. Mormon just given like the excess of guys who are like almost professional baseball players that they rely on. It's very Mormon coded from time to time. They're like sexy in a safe Mormon way. I think is part of the appeal to a lot of the audience.

[Milo]

Yeah. Do you think it's like some minor league or like Tampa Bay, like level baseball player made like a cursed monkey's paw wish that he wanted to play, he wanted to sell out stadiums?

[Christian]

I want to, yeah. And you kind of go, well, I want to play baseball in a God honoring way. Which of course the fallen and heathen sports and baseball does not allow you to do in major league.

[Lauren Walker]

I think this is so much closer to the truth that you got like we're doing a bit here, but this is also. Is pretty literally what happened and how it was built. Like this is basically a supercharged form of like what the minor league baseball system already does. Like you're just trying to get people to come out and pay eight bucks for a ticket and you've got to find somebody to entertain them in normal baseball is like, okay, we're in like a president's race. Put a big mascot head on someone, run around the field in between innings.

[Milo]

This is just like we could be.

[Lauren Walker]

Make a lot of money doing that, like cranked up to 15.

[Milo]

God. It's just, it's. It's so strange just to like see a cultural phenomenon emerge from whole cloth but have it be copy paste of so many other cultural phenomena in the sort of. In the great sort of machine that turns everything into TikTok dances.

[Lauren Walker]

And what's weird to me is we don't really know how big it can get before it, like, implodes on itself. Like, it's already at the point where they're selling out their world tours, like, before any of them even get announced. Now it's like they're partying with ESPN to broadcast games. They're like. And ESPN is getting out of the baseball game. ESPN is not going to cover Major League Baseball after, I think, next year. Like, they got rid of the deal, but they will be broadcasting banana ball. Yes. It's going to be a banana ball only league. It's going to be football banana ball in, like, 10 minutes of hockey.

[Milo]

Oh, my God. That's so weird.

[Lauren Walker]

Yeah.

[Milo]

It's like the TikTok algorithm killed baseball. Yeah. And also, why would you watch it on ESPN? You watch it on TikTok.

[Christian]

ESPN has to become more TikTok. Like, because TikTok is the thing that survives.

[Milo]

Yeah. God damn.

[Lauren Walker]

It's also weird in the context of, like, baseball is actually growing as well. Like, the rumors that baseball is dying are kind of inaccurate at this point. Like, the sport has seen growth. It's just not seeing the venture capital 300% year over year growth that banana ball has. So that's where the eyeballs go and that's where all the money's going.

[Danny]

Now I'm looking forward to, like, the Pee Wee banana ball league. And if I was American, I'd put my son in the peewee banana ball league. And I'd yell at him. I'd yell at him for not doing the dances properly.

[Christian]

It's even funnier to do that if it's a bubble, though, to be like, you're kidding. Kid grows up and is like, hits 18 is like. I did, like, 15 years of high alai lessons because my dad was convinced it was going to be the next big thing.

[Milo]

Yeah. I became the rival to Fast Eddie at Yo Yoing.

[Christian]

Yeah.

[Milo]

And now I just have to go get a job as an accountant. What the fuck?

[Danny]

There's a lot of, like, extreme sports that are like that. I remember, like, meeting a guy who was like, he was doing some extreme sport, which was sort of like an evolution of roller skating. And I can't remember what it was called, but it was, like, briefly popular in, like, the mid-2000s.

[Milo]

Was it soaping?

[Danny]

I can't. It might.

[Lauren Walker]

Yeah.

[Danny]

No. Yes. It could have been, but it might have been something else. There were lots of these, like, random Sports that were sort of showing up. And for like three years he like went all in trying to sort of be a professional and trying to get like quicksilver to sponsor him. And then, and then it was just like, yeah, like the sport doesn't exist. You're basically the only one doing it now. And I'm not sure what he does, but like, yeah, this, this, this feels like it's very much similar trajectory.

[Milo]

I think that we'll know that banana ball has reached escape velocity when the Saudis astroturfing a league in Saudi Arabia rival.

[Lauren Walker]

Yeah, it's gonna happen. And I think like to that point, a very weird angle of this is like the owner of banana ball who runs the whole thing. One of his like weird bits that is also like a real thing in the organization is he lets everyone pay what they think they're worth. Like that's the actual salary. Like they set their own salaries. Which I'm sure leads me to believe they're all incredibly underpaid for how lucrative this is. Yeah, that's just one of the games.

[Milo]

I'm not even a good baseball player. I'm just doing TikTok dances. You shouldn't pay me more than 50k or whatever.

[Christian]

It's vintage Mormon stuff.

[Lauren Walker]

Like when, when they started, they were sen guys to the major to the actual professional baseball. Like they were graduating guys into that system. And now they do just hire based on like, okay, you can walk on stilts. So you're in.

[Christian]

Yeah, yeah, I was in.

[Lauren Walker]

The stills guy is a very important component of their whole system.

[Christian]

Oh, God. Okay, sure. I was, I. I was. I came up in the banana ball draft.

[Milo]

Like it was. Yeah, so I gu. I was in. I was in the Savannah Bananas and then I was actually drafted to the Toronto Blue Jays. And it was weird because I only really know how to walk on stills. I'm not that good at baseball and I'm their switch hitter, which is crazy. It's a little anti Blue Jays material from a long term disappointed Canadian. There we go.

[Lauren Walker]

No, they do this year. Yeah, yeah.

[Christian]

Anyway, I have a question. Related question. Are people still playing Blaseball? Are people still following that? Is that still a thing?

[Lauren Walker]

No, Blaseball kind of died in unfortunate death a couple years ago. I think the guy who's running it got kind of tired of it. The server costs were exploding. That's one of the many like baseball, pop culture things that just explodes because there's no money in it unless you're promoting the league itself.

[Christian]

Surely that won't Happen again?

[Lauren Walker]

No, never. Not to us anyway.

[Milo]

No, no, no. This is. I predict sunny skies and clear sailing for banana ball. Especially when like the sort of again, very strange man in charge of it who again feels evangelical or Mormon. Even though we don't know for sure. It was like, great. I'm gonna go invent a new kind of banana ball that's played only in Neom. It's gonna be wonderful.

[Christian]

Desert banana ball?

[Milo]

Yeah. Speaking of neom, I knew that any sports episode that we're doing would be remiss. I'd be remiss if I didn't include a NEOM sports update.

[Christian]

Of course. Yeah. Have they sorted out the holding the football matches on the kind of suspended 500 meters in the air pitch thing?

[Milo]

No, no.

[Christian]

Okay. Okay.

[Milo]

They haven't. Right. So right now. So Neom FC is now one of the best funded football clubs in the entire world.

[Christian]

Perfect.

[Danny]

Sick.

[Christian]

Okay, well they're gonna need that for like transfers after. Anyone who goes for a corner too energetically gets sort of like Operation Condor death flighted off the the pitch.

[Milo]

Anyone who makes an own goal, they get escorted to a different changing room and then there's a new guy there the next day. So basically what happened is that Neom fc, there was a really good article in the Athletic about this which was about the. How they made Neom fc, which is, it's now based in Tabuk, which is not far away. It used to be like a normal, like a normal sort of Saudi third string team. So they were like, you know, struggling to get like a dozen people in when it was called its old name, Al Sicore. And I just, I want to read a brief quote from this article. Says we're here to cheer, says Fares, a former youth player of Al Sakur who at 18 had given up on his dream of playing professional football in the Saudi leagues. He felt no loss for his own club and was now all in for Neom sc. He was part of the NEOM unit, previously known as the Al Sakur unit. So Neom Football Club has a firm.

[Christian]

Fantastic. Perfect. I've always thought that it would look great having these kind of vertical walls of glass with a bunch of guys setting off like road flare and stuff.

[Milo]

They have a group of ultras, the NEOM unit.

[Lauren Walker]

Well, I didn't realize that like something I thought was a very local American phenomena was a global phenomenon because like I didn't realize that football, soccer had their own Oakland A's where they're just going to move a team to the desert and maybe Building the stadium.

[Christian]

At some point these guys are going to get like there's going to be a kind of firm rivalry between them and you Marava, you know, entirely linear.

[Danny]

Sissy.

[Christian]

You'll never see that.

[Danny]

What's the Neon like equivalent to the Millwall brick?

[Christian]

What can you smuggle into Neom to do violence with?

[Danny]

Well, because also like none of it's made of brick, right? So it's going to be like a glass thing of some kind.

[Milo]

Oh, you know what it would be? It's that you grab the severed arm of whatever like European glasses guy most recently failed to reach his design targets and then you just hit someone with his hand. So yeah, they have a football firm. Very funny that that happens.

[Christian]

I will note this is a passing name alert that their manager of Neon Messi is Brazilian and his name is Pericles Chamusc. Just enjoy that information for a second.

[Milo]

Just one of the most Brazilian names I have ever heard.

[Christian]

Completely normal. Football manager, but his name is Pericles.

[Milo]

Yeah, the only way we could make that more Brazilian is if he was called Pericles.

[Christian]

Funny you should mention full name. Pericles Raymondo Oliveira Chamuska.

[Milo]

We gotta get like Stieglitz in there as well and maybe like a Digiovanni. Anyway, so he says I was a player for Al Sucor and then they got bought by Neom. I switched to being a fan. I'm too fat to play anymore. So the best thing I can do is cheer for my team to be better. We made noise that was so loud today. It was dangerous and we will win.

[Christian]

That's really good. Delivered in like your reading stuff affects as well.

[Milo]

Anyway, so what I like though is this. I'm skipping ahead a little bit because this isn't really a full reading. Don't worry, I'm going to read that in the Meshari. Al Muhtairi, the chairman of Neom SC was a man of influence. He was not a member of the House of Saud, but he did have one of the most powerful jobs at Neom as the executive director of government affairs and also the captain of the owner of the football team, the manager. Excuse me, of the football team.

[Christian]

Pericles, boss.

[Lauren Walker]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Milo]

It highlighted just how important those in charge viewed as the football club to Nyon's future. He said this is part of the revolution led by his Royal Highness. We're trying to add DNA to this club by building the structure so it can compete with the other big clubs in the kingdom. But the players and staff, they all say they're not just attracted by money to play on Tabo because that's the solution.

[Host]

Right.

[Milo]

So they don't have the 500 meters off the ground football stadium. They could also do a 500 meters off the ground banana ball stadium and this stilts guy just goes over TikTok dance off the side. Is that they're just. What they've done is they've just basically set up shop in another city. So Neom SC plays in Tabuk and

[Christian]

Which is a completely like normal setting.

[Milo]

Yeah, it is a regular place. Has the NEOM football team. I think what attracted them all to Neom is the project. So the. And what they're aiming for. The project of course is everything we've talked about whenever we talked about Neom but it's also and this is another old orb callback to win the club World cup and take it from the Oval Office.

[Christian]

Yeah, of course you two can get the most microphone by weight trophy in

[Milo]

the world they say. So they're basically we're going to incubate this club in this little city. We're going to steal it Oakland A style, incubate it in the desert and then transplant it to the line just in time for the 2034 World Cup. Just in time. They're going to nail it.

[Christian]

It's just in time. Delivery.

[Milo]

Yeah, exactly.

[Lauren Walker]

So they're doing trust the process and the process is hoping Saudi Arabia develops non petro indust.

[Milo]

Yeah. Or hoping that Saudi Arabia gets temporary exemptions from the laws of physics such that it can build its line. So also I love that they're like, oh, we don't know if we're going to get promoted in the Saudi Premier League this year. And it's like no, them being in the Premier League is pretty important to the NEOM project. So I'm pretty sure NBC is going to have security.

[Christian]

Are you suggesting that the Saudi royal family exercises an improper influence in football in Saudi Arabia? No.

[Milo]

Are you.

[Christian]

Do you mean to suggest to me that the Saudi pro league is in any way politically compromised?

[Milo]

I think that's preposterous. Nobody tells me where to kick. I told you I'd have some neon for you and I did.

[Christian]

Oh, this was, this was delightful. Thank you.

[Milo]

I love. I just. Every time, every time someone has to like take it seriously, like, oh, we really, we were really working hard to get that promotion to the Saudi Premier League this year. Who knows? It's a real nail biter.

[Danny]

I'm making, I'm making a prediction, right. 20, 30, Charlton will, you know they will, they'll Sort of do very well. Well, in the Champions League, they'll finally get to the Premier League and then they will. They'll be the first team from England and more importantly from South London to be champions. In Saudi Arabia, I think the thing

[Christian]

is, right, because we know English football teams are perfectly willing to sell out to Saudi, but there is one team that is willing to sell out even more than that, right? I have the funniest proposal possible, which is you take MK Dons and you just turn them into the Neom Dons. And then from all the way to Wimbledon to Milton Keynes to the line, you have the most betrayal fueled football club. And they can all lose against Cristiano Ronaldo. Well, wait, no, you can make Cristiano Ronaldo lose to them because of the thing like, oh my God.

[Milo]

Yeah, it could be like the San Marino football team finally wins.

[Christian]

Cristiano Ronaldo with like a laser sight on his chest watching like a fifth guy from Wimbledon from like from Milton Keynes get past him.

[Milo]

It's, it's Christian. There's a helicopter hovering over the field and there's just Cristiano Ronaldo's son just stand just being dangled from it.

[Danny]

We should, we should revisit one of our old business ideas because many years ago we talked about buying a football team, not like a big football team. We talked about buying like a non league.

[Christian]

It was really fucked up that we said that in earshot of the always sunny cast.

[Milo]

Because, yeah, like, okay, no, that would be the funniest thing actually is if on Saudi Netflix they did a version of welcome to Wrexham, but it's MBS instead of like Rob McElhenny and Ryan.

[Danny]

Welcome to Neom. Danny DeVito still like that for some reason. Also, it's about football and the football team involved is Thamesmead Football Club, who are now like reigning champions of like the Saudi Premier League. And no one, no one knows why it's happening. More importantly, no one knows why they still have the same like, like horrible concrete stadium.

[Christian]

Yeah. Watching, watching. Welcome to Neom. And being like this feels really kind of exploitative when you think about it.

[Milo]

More than just the usual amount.

[Christian]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Lauren Walker]

Also, why is the aviator Jim's Jin still there?

[Milo]

I promised you also that we're going. We. I told you. I told everybody. We're going to read that New Yorker article. You know, the one with the outrageous. The outrageous interview that came out on June 2nd and nobody can shut the fuck up about it. I told you we're going to read it. Then we're going to do a sports related startup.

[Danny]

Yeah. So I got interviewed by Isaac Whatsoever.

[Christian]

Isaac Chartney. Yeah.

[Danny]

Yes. Sorry, I completely. I missed a landing on that.

[Milo]

His question was what's my name? Okay. Square brackets, pronouncing it wrong. Isaac Jotner.

[Lauren Walker]

Yeah.

[Milo]

So look, everyone's been, I've been messaged this artist article like dozens of times because we, you know, it's just, you know the New Yorker article that came out on June 2, right?

[Christian]

Oh, of course, yeah.

[Milo]

It's tusks up for the Utah Mammoth about the newest hockey team in Utah and the adventures of two of their players in New York City.

[Christian]

Let's fucking go.

[Milo]

Yeah. Lauren, this is, this is what I actually have via you. I think it's a perfect, it's a Perfect Athlete Brain 100 exchange that these guys have.

[Lauren Walker]

Yes. This is great. It's not a long article. It's really funny. It's like, it's a great way to signal to people that you read the New Yorker. I love reading the New Yorker and telling people about how much I read the New Yorker. The New Yorker. It's really quick beat where they sent a couple guys from the Canadian Utah Hockey Club. Two Canadians. Very important because it's, it's, it's Canada funny. It's a very like Canadian funny sense sense of humor. Because the NHL recently changed their. They are going to be the, the, the Utah Mammoth is going to be their NHL franchise. So they send these two guys to the Museum of Natural History in New York to see a mammoth skeleton and to talk to like the mammoth science scientists.

[Milo]

I mean, those two guys, we got Canadian hockey players. It's like, yeah, we're going to go meet with this mammoth in New York City.

[Christian]

Not sure why he lives there.

[Milo]

You know, I mean he's probably really rich because he's really old. So that's how we can afford to live in New York City. Dude, we're going to be, we're going to be living in New York City after living like mammoth. We're going to live like fucking mammoths, man. Yeah. It's so Canadian hockey player. It's perfect. I laugh for hours reading this.

[Christian]

This is this, this the owner of the Utah Mammoths. Wikipedia headshot has him wearing a backwards base.

[Milo]

It's so cool. So basically, basically this is, this is my favorite exchange from, from this, from this athlete brain article. Because these two guys, they go to, they go to hang out with the mammoth and like interview the mammoth. They're Sean with the mammoth. Yeah, there's Sean Dersey and Alex Kerfoot, both Canadians. First quote from Dersey. I love the museum. It's so cool. Kerfoot admired a 60 foot skeleton of an apatosaurus. Like a brontosaurus. This thing's huge, eh? Der Z turned around. This was walking the earth at one point. You kidding me? You kidding me, bro? This fucking thing.

[Christian]

I love, I love Canadians. I love hockey players. These guys are beautiful.

[Milo]

I always say, like the stereotype of Canadians that most people have should be these guys. This is what we are. How many humans do you think to take down one of these guys? Kerfoot asked. Dirty answers.

[Christian]

Independently reinventing old Twitter jokes.

[Milo]

Jersey answers. I don't know. I don't want to fight it. I like these guys. But hypothetically, probably just me, I could do it.

[Lauren Walker]

And an apatosaurus is better known as a brontosaurus. They weigh. They weighed 35 tons.

[Milo]

Yeah. Well, have they ever been cross checked?

[Christian]

I am going to need you to know that Alexander Kerfoot majored in economics at Harvard.

[Milo]

This was Dirsey. This is Dirsey.

[Christian]

Okay, sure. Okay.

[Milo]

Yeah. Kerfoot responded. If it was me, I'd say 10,000, an entire legion of guys. Which is, that's probably true. I think 10,000 people working together, maybe moving up a tech tree could probably manage to do like 10,000 of the primitive technology guy.

[Christian]

I mean, at that point your role is more. You're kind of like a, like a sea anchor on the mammoth. Right. Like your dead body is weighing the mammoth down.

[Milo]

Yeah. You're overwhelming it in a human tie.

[Christian]

You're doing the same thing that those bees do when wasps get in their nests. Right. Like it gets too hot inside the ball of 10,000 Canadians for a mammoth to sustain life.

[Lauren Walker]

Well, I was also. I'm not 100% sure the players are aware that dinosaurs and humans didn't exist at the same time. I think bringing up the concept of like egg eating mammals is a little over their, their heads.

[Milo]

Yeah, they, they don't quite. I mean, look, they're great at hockey, but they don't quite get it. But what, what. When we talk about athlete brain and what. This is such a good example of how, how do you understand athlete brain?

[Lauren Walker]

Lauren? I think it's very important to understand that every major professional athlete has only ever been good at their sport. And it's because they've only ever thought about their sport from the age of about six or seven onward. Like the level of professionalization that exists in sports now means they just don't have the time. Other things And I think hockey. And you see it in baseball, too. Like third base especially. The less you're thinking, the better you are at the sport. So those are not muscles they're super used to engaging with on a regular basis.

[Milo]

It's this. You see it in football over here as well, where it's like, anytime they'll always, like, bring Jack Grealish up to, like, do an interview where they're like, hey, Jack Grealish, what's America? And he's like, I have no idea. What are you talking about?

[Christian]

I have been thinking about football in that for, like.

[Danny]

It's very profound, actually, as an answer.

[Milo]

Hey, hey, hey, Jack Grealish, are you aware of country you're in? He's like, wales.

[Christian]

And I mean, it's kind of fucked up as well, because, like, I'm assuming it's the same as it is for football academies here, where what you do is you just grab a bunch of kids and go, okay, you don't really get an education. You are joining the circus, right. And at the end of that, you have this insanely competitive process to, like, become a professional athlete. And if you don't make that, you just get kicked out on the curb with all I know how to do is kickball into net and not well enough to, like, make a living off of that.

[Danny]

And if you do, and if you do make it, you end up on, like, you know, the junior squad, on, like, the Saudi. The Saudi Saracens or whatever.

[Christian]

You are the guy who has to, like, stand next to Ronaldo while he gets his, like, his kid's life threatened so that the line dons can score on him.

[Milo]

Yeah, a huge part of this industry as well. This, like, grabbing guys, putting them through. Basically, like the process you go through to become a space Marine, but instead of dying, if you don't make it, you just, like, have to go be, like, a real estate agent, I guess. Yeah. You know, is so much of this increasingly. So much of the economy around this is centered on gambling, right? Like, this is. That is the biggest moneymaker in sports now, it seems. It's not just. It's not like, licensing. It's not. It's not licensed merchandise. It's not tv, like broadcast rights. It's not ticket sales. It's gambling. Gambling, gambling, gambling.

[Christian]

Well, that's why every shirt sponsor in football is, like, most unethical company you can possibly think of outside of, like, the arms industry.

[Milo]

Yeah, yeah.

[Christian]

Which maybe they should get into it. Maybe I want to see, like, BAE Systems sponsor, like, a non league Team.

[Milo]

I want to see some really niche arms industry players sponsor like Charlton elbit the Charleston JDams.

[Danny]

Charlton are not an obscure team. They got to the Champions League this year. They're going. They're the best South London team that we've got.

[Milo]

You don't live in South London anymore.

[Danny]

In my heart. In my, my heart. Well, yeah, actually that's true. The best team in southeast London now

[Christian]

that's still not true.

[Milo]

That's also Crystal Palace. They're in southeast London.

[Danny]

No, arguably it's Millwall. But anyway, look, I'm going to like, stop my. I'm going to. I'm going to. I'm going to. I don't want to get into trouble like Milo does whenever he talks about football. So I'm just going to.

[Milo]

They're the best team in a certain

[Christian]

area of southeast London.

[Milo]

They're the best team in central southeast London, south of Crystal Palace.

[Christian]

Yeah, they're the best team in Charleston.

[Milo]

They're the best team of an area that touches the. The. We're getting to inside Britain. We're going to pull it up because I have a startup for you all. It's called Alt Sports Data. Sports Data, Alternative sports Data.

[Danny]

It's looking at internal data and it's logging two sports in particular. One is called Banana Boar, the other is called Quidditch.

[Christian]

I think it's the data that's alternative rather than the sports. So you're logging the players like haplogroups and posting histories.

[Danny]

Yeah, my idea was that. Oh, it's like gambling. It's like, like sort of like normal sports gambling before, like relatively obscure sports that no one really pays attention that

[Christian]

much attention to uncut gems and how he's got like an 18 way Harley on his Quidditch back.

[Milo]

It's like, it's like, all right, New York Giants pitcher Logan Webb. How many books by non male authors has he read this year?

[Christian]

Trying to see how many members of the Maple Leafs can beat the for a dollar, name a woman thing.

[Milo]

Connor McDavid. We're going to see if he can. How long he can be friends with a woman without falling in love with her. The over under is six weeks.

[Christian]

It's getting, getting like increasingly sentimental and profound until you're just like looking at this shit and you're making Auston Matthews watch In the Mood for Love and it's not even clear why you're doing that anymore. But somebody has money on it.

[Milo]

No, you're trying, yeah, you're trying to fix the match. You're doing Point shaving for like, like seeing if these guys, if Mitch Marner can be made into like a generous lover.

[Christian]

I see you two are also on wikipedia.org torontomapleafs hashtag players and personnel.

[Milo]

These are the only players that I know because I looked at the New York Giants picture. But I do know my Toronto Maple Leafs.

[Christian]

Unfortunately they got a guy called Kale Yarn Crock, Pontus Holmberg. Okay, next time I need names for anything, I'm looking up ice hockey players. This is beautiful.

[Milo]

Anyway.

[Danny]

Anyway.

[Milo]

Lauren Alts sports. What do you think? What do you think it is?

[Lauren Walker]

This kind of thing is rife across baseball now. So I'm familiar with a bunch of versions of this, including a bunch of which are owned by teams in incredibly scary, compromised ways. So I believe we discussed earlier their main thing is. What was it? It was F1.

[Milo]

Not quite. AltSports data is bringing the next wave of consumers to sports betting. By empowering alternative leagues to participate in legal live betting. Altsports Data enables their partners to activate, monetize and retain fans, giving the world greater access to the sports that truly love. So what they do, what does that mean?

[Lauren Walker]

They.

[Milo]

I'll tell you. They collect odds on sports such as surfing, skateboarding, rallycross, drifting, motocross.

[Christian]

Hussain, you were right.

[Danny]

Yeah, I wasn't that far.

[Milo]

Yeah, you were pretty much right. Darts, rodeo. Yeah, we got a, we got a really, really good clown in there who's going to be a ringer. Nobody knows he went to Golie. And so only we know. So we got darts, rodeo, arena, soccer, all combat sports. Coming soon is of course snowboarding and cycling. And so then what happens if you're DraftKings or 32Red or whatever, you engage Alt Sports Data and then you can offer because you have these odds now in this information feed you can offer your customers betting on fucking anything. Any.

[Christian]

I can go like the Tour de France. Which one of these like incredibly rich twinks is going to like fucking die

[Milo]

first we'll get to like the kind of things you can bet on because it's crazy because the other thing is it's all 100% live. Oh OK. So the other so but it's funny, you know what their newest sport is? Alt Sports Data, the leading innovator in sports technology, the most electrifying company in sports technology, today announced a groundbreaking partnership with Phoenix Real Time Solutions, the leading provider of scaling real time streaming technology to provide real time streaming of the second season. 1 Mad Men reference gentlemen, imagine the perfect mixture of athletics, spectacle and speed. HYLAI Hi, Alai.

[Christian]

Fuck off. You're telling me I set you up for that joke?

[Milo]

Unintentionally, yeah, like 35 minutes ago.

[Christian]

Oh, God, the chess master. I'm looking at you so differently now.

[Milo]

Why do you think I brought up Mad Men in the first couple minutes?

[Lauren Walker]

It always goes back to jail eye in the end.

[Milo]

Good. Yeah. You are all in my fronton. I came to play on real live streaming of Hialai matches from the World Hy Alai League to the Hard Rock Cafe Sportsbook. This collaboration marks a significant milestone in bringing the fast paced, exhilarating sport of High High Alai to a broader audience of sports enthusiasts and betters. So, yeah, this is. But this is the idea, right, which is what if sports betting, this thing that is causing, I think, untold social damage in places where it's become popular in the age of being accessible on a smartphone, it's causing untold social damage in the States, it's caused enormous, like, urban blight here as well. In the uk, like, sports betting is a curse.

[Christian]

Yeah.

[Milo]

Of course, to be like, there's not enough of that. There are some long tales of like, you know, soap shoeing or whatever or, you know, playing the spoons and we could get people betting on that, which to me seems completely fucking evil.

[Lauren Walker]

Yeah. No, there's a direct correlation that's been proven for years between like a state here legalizing sports gambling and like a skyrocketing percentage of like, bankruptcy declarations. It's like one to one.

[Milo]

Yeah, it's. It also, like, I also think that the fact that sports gambling in the US became widely legalized and also completely destigmatized, just like Iraq around Covid meant that it just, it turned a generation of young men into degenerate gamblers. And it's pushed by every major institution as well. There's no pushback in the States. No, of course, at all.

[Christian]

I mean, if you want to talk about. Well, exactly, you want to talk about the Labour Party's links to the gambling industry, which are intense. Like, it's, it's just, it's wild and it's one of the most unambiguously evil things we regularly do.

[Milo]

Yeah.

[Danny]

It's also probably worth noting that like so many of, like the AI companies, they are sort of very openly like gambling companies as well. Right. And so that's going to be great. Just all around. Well, any state that's sort of like wanting to be very open and different to AI companies basically are just going to have to deal off a Lot of. Well, yeah, a lot of gambling.

[Milo]

Yeah. Before I go on, I mean, you know, Lauren, as someone whose, like, main thing is being engaged in sports, I just. Can you sort of say a little more about how gambling has just changed people's relationships, relationship with it, with one another, with like, ha. The concept of having fun.

[Lauren Walker]

Oh, for sure. It's changed, like, the fundamental nature of baseball itself. We've seen that recently in like, this huge, these huge changes to the league. For the longest time, the biggest black mark in baseball was professional sports betting scandals. It was the Chicago Black Sox and it was Pete Rose. And we saw it like a couple weeks ago with Pete Rose issuing a pardon or sorry for of Donald Trump issuing. Who didn't commit any crimes that he was arrested for. He certainly committed crimes. But like, that they, they have totally sold out whatever integrity the league once had to the point where, like, there is now, like, the scandals of players getting caught with gambling apps on their phone that they're betting on is, like, happening more and more. It nearly touched the golden boy of the sport when Shohei Ohtani's like, best friend turned out to be defrauding him for millions of dollars to so he could sink it all into gambling and baseball. Buying baseball cards. Like, several players have been suspended now, arguably hypocritically, because they've been caught gambling. And I think the most recent one, one was like, an umpire got caught in a gambling scandal. It's like increasingly like threatening the sport itself in a way that like, even a couple years ago would have been like, shockingly scandalous. And now everyone's on board because the athletic runs gambling articles. They put the odds on the screen. It's. There's no part of the game that's like, not touched by this. And I, I'm most bothered by it because I am like, I appreciate baseball for the stats. I am a huge, like, Excel nerd when it comes to baseball. And I don't like seeing the pure, innocent numbers that I love about the game harnessed for evil, which is what essentially this is. They should just. You should just be able to appreciate them for what they are, which is weird, abstruse statistical anomalies. Not something that you can be used to make money.

[Milo]

Yeah, we're creating weird, abstruse statistical anomalies for their own sakes. Exactly. That's the joy of baseball.

[Lauren Walker]

Yes.

[Milo]

Yeah, it's. Numbers are going up and down and it's related to the thing you're seeing. And no. 1, the only people making money off of is the Guys selling hot dogs.

[Lauren Walker]

Right. The point is that you should be able to, like, talk down to the woman you're at a game with. Not, like, actually, like, profit in any way.

[Christian]

No, of course.

[Milo]

So back to Alt Sports Data. It was founded by two guys who used to be executives at GoPro, one of whom was like, the chief marketing officer. And they were like, oh, shit. We have all these relationships with, like, professional snowboarders or whatever. Let's bet on this shit. Let's enable people to bet on everything. Let's enable them to gamble.

[Lauren Walker]

The really baffling one here is Power Slap they're giving, which I don't know if you're familiar with. Power Slap. It's literally just a slapping contest, what you gamble on, other than I think the bigger guy will get knocked down by the smaller guy. What other bet as possible?

[Christian]

Well, it's a really fun way to, like, even more than, like, football or boxing, get a bunch of, like, traumatic brain injuries. Just really get those going.

[Milo]

Yeah. And you begin betting on, like, when they'll sort of start forgetting stuff, you know, I bet I don't know any power slappers, but I bet, you know. Power slap. Jim. No, the Crazy Hawaiian, that's a power slapper.

[Christian]

Where did you pull that from?

[Milo]

I'll tell you why. It's that I look at Saudi sports and what Saudi money is investing in, and the Saudis invested in Power Slap match that was going to take place in Riyadh where one of the guys was called Duck Crazy Hawaiian.

[Christian]

Amazing.

[Milo]

Yeah. It's all part of the Trump bribery sort of system. You know, I knew what it was. I remember I talked about it on one of those episodes where it's 30 minutes of me talking, like, just straight about something with like, an expert on it. So that's why you didn't hear. Yeah, but I still did pull it. It was from months ago anyway, so. Yeah. Well, you can bet on when Duck Crazy Hawaiian is going to to start buying milk when he already has a full fridge full of milk and just drinking the expired milk. So he says there are a lot of leagues out here that are not the NFL, the MLB or the NBA that, quite frankly, I feel have been systematically set up for failure in sports betting because there's no real innovation or thought put into them, said Todd Ballard, Alt Sports Data's chief marketing officer. Alts Sports Data also works with sports such as Formula One, which recently made the company its official sports betting supplier.

[Christian]

That must have been, like, some of the biggest concentration of evil in one room outside of like, Republic National Convention stuff.

[Milo]

Oh, God, yeah. Especially if they did it in, like, the Baku Grand Prix. If that's where they clinched it.

[Christian]

God, yeah.

[Milo]

Yeah. As well as the X Games and the World Surf League made Alt Sports Data their official gambling partner.

[Christian]

Some of the biggest concentration of dumb

[Milo]

guys in one room. Yeah. Someone who's like, I've been doing rollerblade flips since I was 4. I have no other skills. These guys came. These two GoPro guys came along and gave me $400,000, which is the most money I've ever seen in one place before. And now apparently I have to have a wearable because people are betting on my heart rate.

[Christian]

I remember. I'm old enough to remember when extreme sports guys had listened to Goldfinger's spokesman one time in their life and therefore, on the basis of that, only distrusted or professed to distrust corporate interests.

[Milo]

So Ballard said lifestyle sports like this have massive fan bases but not much representation on sportsbooks. We aren't milking these people. No one's just enjoying surfing.

[Christian]

No, of course.

[Milo]

Yeah. So they say it's approach targets bringing these fans into the sports betting ecosystem in sports they care about. You should be ashamed to write that copy. It's like their approach is getting children hooked on cigarettes.

[Lauren Walker]

Yeah.

[Milo]

You know, with fun cartoon mascots and fun fruit flavors and then get. And that makes them comfortable on betting on sports more broadly.

[Christian]

That's so fucking evil.

[Danny]

It's so evil. But I think it's like, there's an interesting point. There's a sort of point that I would say there's an evil point to be made which is just like, twirl

[Milo]

your mustache for me while you're making that point.

[Danny]

No, it's, it's. I think their innovation is sort of like, to redefine what participation in, like, sports means. Right. And basically linking gambling to participation in the same way that, like, you know, e cigarette companies have, like, the ways in which they sort of, like, linked passive time or the concept of, like, passive time to, like, consuming their products because obviously you couldn't, you know, these, these were like, you know, e cigarettes were not things that were supposed to be enjoyed in theory. They were not supposed to be had for leisure. They were supposed to be, you know, the sort of, like, play was. Oh, well, you know, their ways of, like, reducing, you know, smoking on cigarettes. But, like, with this, it sort of feels like, okay, like, you know, and I've heard this from, like, people at stake and stuff whenever they get criticized, which is just like, oh, we're just opening new pathways for people to enjoy sports. We're just wanting to like, get more people to be sort of involved in sports and to have fun. And there are lots of different ways to do that.

[Christian]

What are you cheering for, like, Charlton? Because you like them, right?

[Milo]

Yeah, you.

[Danny]

And this is it. Like your participation in sports is evil. You join a firm and beat people up or you gamble those, those are your two options. I just feel like with the gam, like it feels like the very obvious play here is to link sort of sports participation with gambling and the ambition is for them to sort of like be like, oh, you know, you can't just like watch sports. You can't just like, you know, watch it with your mates in like non existent third spaces or whatever. But what you can do is participate with them on these like very strange, very fast like gambling systems where you can make loads of money by like making very, very weird bets. But if you lose, you can share that with your friends and it can be really, really entertaining.

[Lauren Walker]

So it's.

[Danny]

And that's like, I mean it's incredibly evil, but it's also just like this feels like the most. This feels like the best way to sort of understand what these guys are doing, but also what basically every betting company is trying to do.

[Lauren Walker]

I think that's totally correct. I think it's also demonstrably true in that you can like clearly see a huge upswing in those now more invested fans sending death threats to players on Instagram all the time.

[Christian]

Yeah, because he's not just like the guy who missed the thing, he's the guy who cost you like 150,000 doll is going to get you uncut gems.

[Danny]

I didn't even think about it like that. But like, no, you're right. And like imagine what that does if you're a young player or if you're like someone who's just like in a very sort of precarious position in terms of your own employment in sports. And like you realize, oh, like you haven't just got fans who are like kind of wanting to see like, who are sort of depending on you, but you also have people who have like remortgaged their houses perhaps to like have, you know, to do that.

[Lauren Walker]

And it's one thing if you're like a professional athlete making you can water off your back if you're making millions of dollars, hopefully. But like, this is also a huge problem than college sports where like tons of people who are not getting paid are getting these like people coming out of the woodwork to like scream at them at games about like, oh, you cost me my parlay in the middle of like a women's college basketball game. It happens all the time now.

[Christian]

Jesus.

[Milo]

Yeah, it's, it's, it's going on here. There's another. I read an interview with their chief data scientist and one of the most evil publications that exists, which is called Sigma and it's like about, it's like buy and for the sports betting technology industry.

[Christian]

Oh, cool.

[Milo]

Yeah, yeah, awesome. So Sigma News spoke with co founder Michael Jordan and director of Data science Tim Wahl. Different Michael Jordan. Still gambling, but different Michael Jordan. To find out just what the company's vision means to the sports betting industry. We believe that the real opportunities with iconic sports like F1 are things happening moment to moment within the race. So whether the fifth position car will overtake the fourth position car on an upcoming turn is way more engaging than who's going to win the race in like two weeks hours. Which is, it's insane. They're like bet on every moment.

[Christian]

Yeah, it's like microtransactions.

[Milo]

Yeah, it's, it's like they're micro. No, don't, don't micro bet. Macro bet. Just macro bet on everything. Everything that happens. So you know, our bit at the beginning of just like does Connor McDavid read female authors is not so far off. So Jordan says we recognize that sports betting was becoming legal in the U.S. wow. Well noticed.

[Christian]

Yeah, yeah.

[Milo]

Likely thing for a sports betting company to do and we wanted to boost the economy of these sports for the players. For the players.

[Christian]

We did it for the players.

[Danny]

Yeah.

[Christian]

Well, thanks.

[Milo]

Yeah. Because you know, the alternative sports don't have gambling. So the players are underpaid because they don't have gambling. So these athletes put it all on the line for our entertainment and almost all of them have full time jobs to support themselves. We want to build up our league partners to the point where athletes earn enough without a second job. Admirable.

[Christian]

Sure.

[Milo]

No, not admirable, of course.

[Christian]

Oh, I was so excited.

[Milo]

Yeah. The vision is second by second betting bet by the millisecond. We want the fan to be fully immersed, watching the event lives and placing bets constantly as the action unfolds. They want to be part of every moment, not just the final score. That's what it is. Right. It's like you're buying your way into feeling like Lando Norris for a second.

[Lauren Walker]

I have a good, like some good numbers into what it looks like in practice and it Goes back to the Shohei Ohtani gambling scandal over. His assistant, Ippei Mizuhara was stealing millions of dollars from him, impersonating him. And this is someone who had essentially had unlimited funds to gamble all they want. And between December 2021, January 2024, both through apps and through illegal bookies, he placed 19,000 bets, or about 25 bets per day. So that's the ceiling on this. That's like the most a human could possibly gamble.

[Milo]

That's. And they're like, hey, 25 per day. Let's get that to 25 per, like lap of formula one.

[Christian]

Yeah. You know, what if we could increase the fucking thing?

[Milo]

Yeah. What if there was more? And what if there was more in more places? I keep reading in this. More evil sentences in the. The previous ones. There's no reason why sports betting can't be as fast and immersive as video games. Oh, boy.

[Christian]

Not that the game. The video game industry doesn't have its own gambling problem with loot boxes and stuff.

[Lauren Walker]

Video games are trying to be gambling. Gambling's trying to be video games now.

[Milo]

Yeah.

[Danny]

All this, like, lag issues, isn't that just like a very obvious tech kind of thing? Just like.

[Milo]

Oh, sure.

[Lauren Walker]

If you're closer to the stadium, you get an advantage.

[Danny]

Yeah. If you're doing like micro betting or speed betting or whatever, then like some

[Christian]

would call this wire fraud.

[Milo]

All sports data's vision reads like sci fi minus the dystopia and with a lot more fun wagering.

[Christian]

Oh, okay, good.

[Milo]

Yeah, they took out the dystopia. Where there was dystopia, they added in fun wagering. They think of a fully AI curated broadcast stream tailored in real time to your preferences, bets and behaviors. I see it as a holistic stream. Driver cams, dynamic views, personalized narration, all based on what you've bet on historically. Your screen isn't just showing you the game. The commentator speaking directly to you as you gamble.

[Christian]

And he's. He's telling you so much about Madman. Yeah.

[Milo]

As a sports fan, how does this sound to you as a way to consume baseball? Or, sorry, banana ball, because there's no more baseball now.

[Lauren Walker]

That's true, but it's all bannable all the way down. I. I am of the opinion that most sports should be watched with absolutely nobody talking to me. If I could turn off the announcer on any broadcast, I would. Unfortunately, that technology doesn't exist yet and I don't like that we're now generating new ways of guys to annoy when I'm Trying to watch a game.

[Milo]

Yeah. And also, like, probably encouraging you to gamble.

[Lauren Walker]

I mean, the regular broadcast does that too, so.

[Milo]

Yeah, but encouraging specifically you like, hey, Lauren, you know you always like to bet on a, on a foul ball sometimes around sometime around this point of the game, why not put up your favorite bet? So the AI knows your favorite athletes, fantasy picks and social follows. It cuts the right camera angle, remembers your last wager, and offers frictionless voice act activated bets. That's what I was thinking is the problem with gambling too much friction? Yeah.

[Danny]

Also, I think it's a really good idea to have an AI that sounds like a human and sounds like it wants to be your friend tell you like, yeah, just try again. Try again. It'll work this time. It'll work again.

[Christian]

Yeah. We've invented the world's most persuasive bartender and he never cuts you off.

[Danny]

Yeah, I was going to say we've invented like the guy in the pub who like, keeps telling you, like, even though the slot machine's broken and you never win anything, it's like, yeah, just put in, just put in like another tenner. You'll win it, you'll win it, you'll win it.

[Milo]

You can put in a coin, you gotta spin it, and then that actually makes you more likely to win. So they give an example. There's a key turn coming up. Kate, want to put $5 on Albin overtaking Antonelli? I don't, I don't, I don't agree that would happen that much because Alex Albin's not that great. But how much, how much would I win? You could win $11. Okay. Place bet. Great. Let's see what happens. There we go. That's. Hey, what if, what if instead of having to, like, look at an amount, type it in, hit a button. Are you sure? Yes. They were like, no, that's. That causes people to pause. Pause too much. We need them doing bigger and dumber easily.

[Lauren Walker]

They're now at this point, like, positing that AI shouldn't be the computer from Star Trek. It should be like if the computer from Star Trek was trying to rob

[Milo]

you the computer from Star Trek, if they were trying to, like, trap you in debt. Basically. Think video game speed, Netflix personalization and odds for every moment. It's fast, it's immersive at little times, at times a little absurd. But more importantly, it is possible. Possible. No, it's not. It's not possible. It's absolutely not possible. What they're saying that they're going to do so that's how we're all going to lose everything, by trying to impress the AI with our high alai bets.

[Christian]

Perfect.

[Milo]

I'm excited. Now, Lauren, I asked you to curate some wacky baseball players for us, and I would be very pleased if you could share them.

[Lauren Walker]

Certainly. I've got a couple here that I think are okay. Unfortunately, baseball is not really in an era of great village because there are obviously a lot of, like, Trump supporters and conservatives, but they're all, like the whiny kind of conservative that doesn't want to own their opinions. So, like, anytime they do something that's, like, obviously a Trump thing, they'll, like, reel it back and try to pretend it's not. First example I had of this was Alec Burleson and a couple of guys in the St. Louis Cardinals who, shortly after Trump got shot, started putting one hand on their ear and one hand up in the fist in the air. Like the fight, fight, fight thing. Like, they did a double and they'd all do it in the dugout. And their excuse for why they're. They weren't doing a Trump thing was that one of the players was a college RA named Biscuit, and it was a reference to a DJ listening to his headphones.

[Milo]

So they were trying to do, like, a Trump Jesse Owens thing, basically. I like that one of the players was a college rapper called Biscuit. It's an athlete who has one more thing about him compelling.

[Lauren Walker]

That's a very, like. That's a very, like, baseball coded, like, big DH lump of a guy thing to do. Yeah.

[Danny]

Yeah.

[Milo]

So I also. I do enjoy the. Yeah, the. No, don't. Nobody's allowed to get mad at me. My job is hit ball. I'm going to be a big Trump guy. But if you ever. If you ever get mad at me, then I'm going to get so depressed I shave off my mullet. Basically.

[Lauren Walker]

It's all that up and down. Yeah, we saw it with Manny Machado when he was wearing a let's Go, Brandon shirt at spring training. He's another one who's, like a famous red ass throughout the sport. And he's like the king of plausible deniability. He will, like, slide into guys running from first to second and then, like, pretend like it was an accident. He'll, like, stomp on players, like, legs and kick them in the heels and stuff and running through the base, and every single time, he just pretends that it was. He's just, like, hustling. He's the total.

[Danny]

He's.

[Milo]

He's A baseball version of what we in hockey call a goon.

[Lauren Walker]

Very much so. I think good is more honorable profession than being Manny Machado. There's a history there. Like, this is how baseball was played 30 years ago. The rest of the sport has moved on, and he's just out there breaking ankles for the love of the game. Yeah.

[Milo]

He's like, look, it's all too woke now. Everyone's trying to protect their ankles. I'm going to play baseball like they used to back in the good old days of 1990s when you were allowed to take steroids and you could really roid rage out on someone else's, like, metatarsal.

[Lauren Walker]

And when guys like him would, like, get racistly called out for lack of hustle every single day. Yeah. Fascinating guy. Also probably a borderline hall of Famer, unfortunately.

[Milo]

Yeah. I mean, there must be so many borderline hall of Fame baseball players who are just, like, utterly reprehensible people.

[Lauren Walker]

Oh, yeah. It's been a repeated scandal in the last couple years where they keep taking their, like, candidacies right in before they get elected into the Hall. Another funny one, because we're LGBT pod hosts on a baseball podcast, we keep really close watch on, like, Pride Night stuff. And one of my favorite scandals of the last couple of years was when five players in the Tampa Bay Rays peeled the Pride Night logo off of their hat. And again, it was that thing where, like, they didn't want to own what they were doing. They're like, we disagree with the lifestyle, but we still want the stadium to be for everyone. They couldn't just say, no, we. We don't think they should be here.

[Milo]

Yeah, they had. They had to be like, no, the. The sticker was slightly weighing down my helmet, and I was not going to be able to respond to curveball.

[Lauren Walker]

Exactly. Taylor Walls is also on the raise, and he's part of that. He's like a fumble because he's invented a new way to insult umpires recently that I really enjoy. This came up in a game the other day where, again, he denied doing this, but it was, like, a borderline bad call. The umpire got wrong. It was, like, slightly outside the strike zone, so he called it a strike. So Taylor Walls discovered he can really get pissed off the umpire and get thrown in the game just by tapping his hand on the top of his helmet.

[Milo]

What is it with umpires? Why are they so sensitive?

[Christian]

Well, you can just aggro them. Like a Skyrim npc, pretty much.

[Lauren Walker]

And like, this is. This was funny because the context Is that they're working on an automated strike zone system with a computer. And the way you challenge in that system that you want to call revealed is you tap the helmet. So he's really like. It's a pretty firm fuck you to the umpire saying, like, I think your job should be replaced.

[Milo]

Yeah. Okay. So that's more of like a learn to code thing to the Empire.

[Lauren Walker]

Yeah.

[Milo]

Learn to become code. Yeah.

[Lauren Walker]

Get ready to go, like, get a real job.

[Milo]

Yeah, yeah. You should go get a real estate license with all the other guys who couldn't make it up to this level. Basically.

[Danny]

Yes.

[Christian]

Getting kicked out of umpire school of brutal.

[Milo]

Yeah. They had those two umpires go visit the Mammoth in New York City, and they were like, you're fucking out of here.

[Lauren Walker]

This is another thing where we joke, but, like, it actually is, like, incredibly competitive to be, like, a professional level umpire. They do go to umpire school. It is, like, hyper competitive. There is like one woman who's gone through the program and suffered her abuse the whole way. It's like all the same thing for sports, but the umpires get to do it too.

[Milo]

I would love to see the umpire schools baseball team, like, what meticulous rule following. I would say. You know who else he got?

[Lauren Walker]

I think this goes back a couple years. And this is more like a funny one. It goes back to Covid. There was a window of time in the 2022 season where Canada had a requirement that you need to be vaccinated across the border. And baseball is obviously played in Canada, in Toronto, famously. Famously. So there was this window of time where we actually got to see into the inner brains of players in a way that's they're usually closed off from. And we got to see the sheer number of players, meatheads who refused to get vaccinated and so had to be left at home on the road trip to Toronto. And we kept really close. We actually, at the time podcast, did, like, statistical analysis of what the team was leaving behind. My personal favorite.

[Milo]

You could have gotten advantages in betting markets. I mean, which of these red asses is not going to go across the border?

[Lauren Walker]

They did. The Kansas City Royals left 10 players at home for a game series. They literally, they basically fielded a triple A team in Toronto because there are too many guys in that team were just like, suckers. My favorite was the Red Sox leading Cutter Crawford and Tanner Hunter. How come twice on two different series, because they're in the same division, they play more often. And like, Cutter Crawford was a starting pitcher that year. He probably cost Them. Several. Several, like win winning games in a very competitive league.

[Milo]

It was like, if you wanted to do point shaving in like 2021, all you'd have to do is open up Facebook in front of any one of these players and then they would, like, refuse further vaccinations for a long time.

[Lauren Walker]

I think actually like the, the real, like, success you could. The trick you can find in gambling isn't to follow the players, it's to follow their wives on Instagram because they're the ones who I think get them into the conspiracy theories.

[Christian]

Oh, yeah, of course.

[Lauren Walker]

I think they're the ones in, like the alternate health yoga websites. Because these guys don't think about any of this stuff. They're. They're getting it, I think, from the Wags. Yeah, yeah.

[Milo]

They, they. They hit ball with dick and then ball go. And I don't get jabbed. No, I, I do crystals.

[Danny]

Like.

[Christian]

Like being married to a dog.

[Milo]

Yeah. All right, all right. I, I think that's about time for us today. But, Lauren, I want to thank you so much for coming on this little bit of a behind here. Frequently rescheduled due to personal conflicts with my. With my schedule episode of the podcast. It's been delighted.

[Christian]

Refusing to get vaccinated.

[Milo]

Yeah, they won't let me go to Canada where, of course, I record every Monday and Thursday I fly to Canada.

[Danny]

Little do any of you know that I've actually been making secret bets on when this episode was going to take place. And I may have got a very healthy £10 and 50 pence.

[Milo]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. You kept on booking me those, those appointments all across town when we. Otherwise it was.

[Danny]

It was a very long. It was a very long, complicated process. But it was. But was it worth it? Yes, it was.

[Milo]

Absolutely. So where can people find batting around if they want to hear more about baseball statistics?

[Lauren Walker]

Yeah, sure. We're betting around, I think is the handle on Blue Sky. It's batting underscore around. On most other social platforms, we talk about baseball maybe 60% of the time, so I wouldn't recommend it. People who don't like baseball at all. But yeah, we're pretty niche.

[Milo]

Yeah. So if you like baseball 60%, then do we have the podcast for you? Anyway, Anyway. But Lauren, it's been a real delight. It's been a long time coming. Thank you very much for coming on. And to you, the listener, a few things. I'm going to try to remember all of them. TF Live show is on the 21st of June. We're going to be doing that. We're going to actually be doing the Curtis Yarvin article. The Curtis Yarvin long ring. We're going to be talking all about Yarvin.

[Christian]

We will all be weeping openly on stage all the time about stuff we made up in our head. Yeah.

[Milo]

We're all going to be awkwardly wearing leather jackets as though we're trying to look like excess cigarette advertisement but failing.

[Christian]

I listen, maybe.

[Milo]

Anyway, that's going to be a good time.

[Christian]

Because you said that I might not.

[Milo]

Oh, no, I'm going to.

[Christian]

No, that was going to be my thing, like, unintentionally, anyway.

[Danny]

I'm just.

[Christian]

I'm catching strays meant for Curtis Yavin.

[Milo]

It's rife. Anyway, we have that happening. There's also lions led by donkeys and glue factory either side of that. It's some kind of a podcast festival thing. I haven't really paid too much attention, but there is that. You can go to all of them. There's. It doesn't matter. Come see us and the rest. Otherwise, there's an Edinburgh show on July 31. That one is selling really quickly. So do get involved. If you are going to be in Edinburgh on July 31, or even if

[Christian]

you're not, you know, buy a ticket.

[Milo]

Well, we want people in the room, so it sounds full. I guess.

[Christian]

So, yeah.

[Milo]

Buy a ticket and transfer it to someone else. Make sure they listen to the show because it's awkward if we're doing a live show in front of people. People who don't listen to the show, just come. You know what? If you buy a ticket, just come. It's way easier that way. All right. All right. I think that's all the end matter. So we will see you on the free episode in a few short days.

[Christian]

New Left Unread is coming. We're recording that tomorrow.

[Milo]

Yes, it's happening. M. Son of the century. I am. I am. I'm. I'm walking around just saying Italian names like Philippe, like Filippo Giraffe. Oh, what a tragic figure. Who will talk about tomorrow? Anyway, that's all the end matter Left Unread's now coming back. There was a whole bunch of stuff that made it not happen for a few months, but it is back. It is back with a vengeance in a big way. We are leaving things on red. Okay, we will see you on Monday for the free episode. Bye, everybody. Bye.

[Lauren Walker]

Bye.

[Milo]

You. Know,