How Betting Took Over Sports
Listen to the original audio · Transcribed with NVIDIA Parakeet · Timestamps stay in sync with the live audio
This is the New Yorker Radio Hour, a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker. This is the New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick. When I worked at the Washington Post early in my career, One of my colleagues had a little bit of a side hustle.
Late in the week in the fall, he'd go around the office taking bets on the weekends football game, and then he'd relay those bets to a bookmaker. Now, a lot of us would put some money down, small bets, nobody was losing their shirt, but still, we had a sense that it was somehow illicit, something you did on the QT. Now, it sounds like I'm describing life hundreds of years ago. Because these days we are absolutely inundated with ads offering same game parlays and no sweat bets.
You just can't turn on pro football or listen to a call in sports talk show without hearing the odds, without emphasizing gambling. Wagering on the game now seems practically as important as watching it. How did things change so much and so fast? Literally, I was watching the last World Series and right before the first pitch they said, and by the way, here's a parlay you might want to consider placing. Danny Funt has been reporting on the gambling boom for the New Yorker.
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