Final Revision (podcast)

Sports betting addictions among youth are becoming more prevalent due to easier access to online betting platforms. Many young people do not view sports betting as gambling, but rather as an investment. Sportsbooks trap consumers through enticing offers and advertisements, as well as by implementing tactics like delayed cashouts. To gamble responsibly and avoid getting trapped, it is advised to have a separate bank account for betting, stick to a specific unit size for each bet, limit betting frequency, and avoid betting on games that you wouldn't normally be interested in. What's up guys, it's Matt Spivak here and I want to welcome you guys back to my podcast. Today is March 20th and I wanted to talk and spread awareness about sports betting addictions and how youth are more at risk than ever before. So I'm going to break this into three different segments. I'm going to start off with why youth are more at risk than ever and then I'm going to transition to how sportsbooks are trapping consumers and I'll finally finish off with how to avoid the trap and how to gamble responsibly. First, I just want to start off by saying I am a sports bettor and I really wanted to learn more about this topic so I can educate myself and make sure I don't fall down a bad path as well as being able to spread awareness and help anyone I see, my friends, my family, anyone going through this just to let them know more about it and how they can help themselves. So let's start off with why youth are more at risk than ever. Starting with the transition from betting solely at the casino to now betting can be done basically all online. With that comes easier access for individuals who would not have been able to get into the casino with now it's just an app or a website on the computer, a family member, a friend, a brother, anybody over the age of 21 can log you into their account and once that one time, once that happens once, you have access to it basically forever kind of thing. It doesn't make you re-login and even if it did, if you have their passwords, that's that. So that is very dangerous and that is of the responsibility of guardians and just people over the age of 21 being responsible knowing maybe I shouldn't buy alcohol for them, maybe I shouldn't buy weed for them, oh it's probably the same, I shouldn't let them start gambling so young and then once they are 21 they are already a little bit addicted. That is terrible. And then another reason why youth are at risk, this goes for not just youth but it pertains to them as well, it's that they often don't think of sports betting as gambling because they maybe more see it as an investment. Most sports bettors are previous athletes, people who have been around the sports world, people who watch games and these people have a false sense of an advantage because oh I'm knowledgeable, I know if I just look up what this team has done recently then maybe I can predict what they're going to do tonight. Well little do you know all these sports books have hundreds of people that's their sole job to basically predict what is going to happen in every single game and you're not going to beat out all these people who it's their full-time job. Yet a lot of teenagers, especially college students, have that mindset. In an interview I did a couple months ago with Dan Trollero, he is the co-founder of Epic Risk Management, a company that just helps spread awareness and helps go do speeches and just talk about gambling addictions. He visited college campuses and went to talk to students and see what their relationships were with gambling and with sports betting and he found that a lot of them, when he asked them do you gamble, they would say no I just sports bet, showing how they view it as a different activity altogether when in reality it's still a form of gambling. It's very much gambling, you don't know what's going to happen. That covers why youth are more at risk, now let's move into how sports books are trapping us. This is one of the big problems as well. I'm going to start off this segment by just reading a sponsor message by DraftKings, which appears in podcasts like this, in a lot of YouTube videos, or these are the things that you'll see on TV. $200 instantly, just for that $5? DraftKings, listen to me. You listen, you listen good. I appreciate you for recognizing how valuable my time is. But instantly, stop! You're not going to make me sweat a little bit? Feel some extra bump bumps in my chest while the game is going on? Oh look, wait a minute, there's my $200. That was fast. Download the DraftKings sports book app. Bet just $5 to get $200 in free bets instantly. Action so good, why the NFL playoffs? Anywhere else? Just that! Nah, interception. Now, to start off, if I put in $5 and I'm winning $280 in free bets, I mean, that sounds like a deal too good not to be true. That sounds amazing to me. All I have to do is risk $5 and then that's $280 for me? So these are the type of things that draw people to the books, and what the sports book wants is maybe you win $100 off that $280 in free bets, and you're like, oh, I might be good at this a little bit, and then you take out $50 and you put, you put, you keep $50 in there, and then you bet a little bit, maybe you lose that $50, maybe you even win again. If you win again off that $50, then you're up like $200 at this point. Now you really think you're a great sports bettor, and that's basically free money. In the long run, most people do not win. It's just how it works. Another way they're trapping us is that sponsor message, that appears if you're like watching a game, you're watching a basketball game, you're watching a baseball game, you're watching a football game, you can expect to see up to four or five advertisements for different sports books that are sponsored with the television channel or that are sponsored with NFL or NBA, and that is, that is very hard for someone who is a recovering addict to sit down and watch a game and to see five ads. That's going to want to get you back on right there. And even for someone who's not a sports bettor, if you're sitting here and looking at bet $5, win $250 on all these different books all the time, you might go try it once or twice, because why not? And then not only do they do that, they have celebrities like LeBron James and Kevin Hart promoting it, and I mean, those are big name guys who a lot of people look up to, and I don't think that's a good way to do it. And then they have a lot of sneaky things, too. Some of them will be giving, like the sports book I'm on is called FLIF. It allows 18-year-olds to bet, so it's technically an illegal site, but they give you a free dollar every day, so that's what entices me to open their app every day. I get a free dollar that I get to bet, and it's not even coming out of my pocket. Some sports books will give boosted odds, which just make your payout higher. And then a lot, most sports books will only let you cash out every five days. Now, that may not seem like a big deal, but if you're consistently betting, and if you win, and then you cash out, let's say you cash out $25, and then the next day you win again for $25, you can't cash that out for four more days, meaning you have to open that app every single day and not bet that $25 that's in your account until you can cash it out on day five. Most people maybe go one day, maybe two. By day three, they're probably already placing that $25. They don't want to wait the whole time. That is a huge way that sports books trap you, and a lot of people just don't know, or they don't realize it, and then they'll be like, oh, I can't cash out for five days, whatever. Next couple days, go in, spend their money they were going to cash out, and then they kind of forget in the end because they end up losing the money, and it didn't become real at all. Lastly, I want to end this podcast episode with letting you guys know a couple tips that I learned and I researched on how to gamble responsibly and how to just avoid getting trapped by the books. A big one is having a separate bank account or a bankroll different from your bills and all your other expenses that you can know how much you put in there, how much you're allowing yourself to bet, and it doesn't come out of your bills. It comes out only from that bankroll. That's one great way to separate it and help not get dragged down financially. Another way is having a specific unit size, which is basically a set amount that you, let's say your unit size is $5, that means every bet you place, you're putting $5 on it. This helps you not overthink each bet because you may be more confident in one than the other. If you're more confident in this one, let's say you put $20 on it, but you only put $5 on the other one, and then it happens that your more confident one lost, so you lost $20, you only won $10, and it's now uneven just because you were more confident on that one. Sticking with the same unit size helps, it very much helps you not look back and second guess your decision on how much you put on a single bet. Unit size is a big one. One of the final ones would be only betting once, maybe twice a week. According to gambleaware.gov, betting one time a week dramatically reduces your chance of getting addicted, as well as they mentioned only betting on one or two products. By that, they mean if you're on DraftKings, then stick on DraftKings, or maybe you can DraftKings and FanDuel, but don't do DraftKings, FanDuel, BetMGM, ESTN bet, prize picks. If you're on four, five, six, seven different sportsbooks, it's harder to, or it's easier for you to get addicted and to get lost in the sauce, and you're getting a boosted pick from this app, and this app's giving you $2, and this app's doing that, and all of a sudden you're only five bets riding today when you weren't supposed to. And then personally, I would add on to not betting on games that you wouldn't be watching, or you wouldn't be interested in if there was no bets on it. Like the Super Bowl, you're going to watch that regardless, most people, if you want to throw a bet on that. I mean, it's entertainment, it's understandable, all that, but if it's baseball season and you're not really a baseball guy, but all there is is baseball on, and you just feel the urge that you need to bet, and now you're sitting watching random baseball games at 12 noon, or you're sitting here at 7 o'clock at night watching, I don't know, random stuff that's taken away from your family time, taken away from just getting out in nature, socializing, all this stuff, but now you're watching useless games that you wouldn't be watching just because you feel like you need to bet. So, if you implement a lot of those things, most of them, you should have no problem gambling responsibly, and that's basically what my mission was here today, just to spread some awareness, educate you guys a little bit, and just give you the best knowledge to make your own decision on if you want to be gambling, how to do it responsibly, and how to maximize just how to do it as an entertainment activity and not have it lead into an addiction, which we know can spiral and go and lead people into terrible lives. So, hopefully this was interesting, and thank you all for tuning in, and hopefully you guys can all gamble responsibly now. Thank you. Peace.