Sports Betting, Apple, and Antitrust

TOPICS DISCUSSED

  • The Department of Justice v. Apple

  • Sports Betting

  • Outside of Politics: Hat Shopping with Chad

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TRANSCRIPT

Sarah [00:00:07] This is Sarah Stewart Holland.  

Beth Silvers [00:00:09] This is Beth Silvers.  

Sarah [00:00:10] You're listening to Pantsuit Politics.  

Beth Silvers [00:00:12] Where we take a different approach to the news.  

[00:00:14] Music Interlude.  

[00:00:29] Thank you so much for being here. Sarah is on spring break with her family, and filling in for her is my absolute favorite person in the world, my husband, Chad Silvers. Chad, I'm so glad that you're here today.  

Chad Silvers [00:00:38] I am so glad to be here.  

Beth Silvers [00:00:39] We're going to lean into some of your interests today. We're going to talk about technology and gambling and hats. Your three favorite things.  

Chad Silvers [00:00:46] I'm ready.  

Beth Silvers [00:00:47] Is there anything not on that list that should have been, if we were just covering the territory of Chad's favorite topics?  

Chad Silvers [00:00:53] We could just talk about you.  

Beth Silvers [00:00:54] Very good. Well, before we get started, we want to remind you that next week is a big week for our book club. We're going to close out this round with our interview with Marissa Moss on the book Her Country. We'll also be launching our summer series. Now, our premium members who are already really into the book club, chose the two books for this series. The are novels that we hope you'll enjoy for the summer. They are The Displacements by Bruce Holsinger and The Sentence by Louise Erdrich. Premium members of the Spice Cabinet will have first access to buy the curated boxes containing both books and some other treats put together by listener Lisa, who runs The Bookshelf on Church in Irvington, Virginia. The sales will start on Monday, April 8th. Based on your level of support, there are a limited number of boxes, so the best way to ensure that you get one is to be in the highest level of support that you feel comfortable providing here at Pantsuit Politics. Whether you buy the books through Lisa or not, all of our premium members get to participate in discussions which happen through those spaces: patreon and Apple Podcasts subscriptions. We have community discussions and interviews with the authors. We are really excited to talk about the displacements with the author this summer, so we hope you'll join us. I wanted to tell you a little bit more about our premium spaces and why that membership is so important. We just got a report from our sound design company, Studio D, that showed in 2023 we needed about 900 hours of production done by them to our shows. So those kinds of expenses of running this business and keeping the podcast free and available for all of you here are what the premium space makes possible for us. So thank you to everyone who's part of that, and we hope that you will consider joining us in the book club if you aren't there already. Next up, we are going to talk about the Department of Justice's lawsuit against Apple.  

[00:02:39] Music Interlude.  

[00:02:49] Chad, you are an early adopter of all tech and you've been with Apple for a long time. Do you have any disclosures you need to make about your involvement with Apple?  

Chad Silvers [00:02:57] Yeah, it's been a while. I've been an Apple shareholder since before the iPhone launched. I've used their products for a long time. I've used plenty of other competitor products, too. I'm an early adopter. I tried Google Glass, if you remember that crazy thing. I had a watch that got notifications before the Apple Watch was invented or launched. So, yeah, I've been around the tech world for a while.  

Beth Silvers [00:03:24] Okay. Well, I wanted to talk to you because of that about the lawsuit that the DOJ has brought against Apple. So let's go back to June 2019 for a minute, when the FTC and the DOJ sat down and said, okay, we got to do some antitrust work against Big Tech here. Everybody's getting too big. We can have Big tech, but I guess not mega tech or something. And so the FTC took Meta and Amazon and the DOJ took Google and Apple. So this investigation has been in the works for a very long time. And it grows out of a theory that antitrust law should target market concentration. It's just inherently bad, even if it doesn't cause prices to be higher. There is a theory in the Biden administration, this New Deal style anti-monopoly campaign, that if you get too big, if you have too big of a market share, that's a problem. So the DOJ filed this case on March 21st, along with 16 states, and it's brought under the Sherman Antitrust Act. Now, the Sherman Antitrust Act says that you can be a monopoly if you're just really excellent and that's how you became a monopoly. But you cannot do predatory things to get there. Before we get into the details of this complaint, Chad, do you think in just common parlance that Apple is a monopoly?  

Chad Silvers [00:04:45] I don't know.  

Beth Silvers [00:04:46] And why not?  

Chad Silvers [00:04:47] The rule about whether or not it's monopoly is whether they've gained their market share through nefarious means, right? I can't say that they've done that, or at least I don't see direct evidence that they've done that beyond the nefarious acts that every large company does.  

Beth Silvers [00:05:08] Do you think that it's a monopoly in the sense that it doesn't have real competitors?  

Chad Silvers [00:05:12] No, I think there are very big competitors. I mean, Google is a competitor. Samsung is a competitor. Those aren't small competitors.  

Beth Silvers [00:05:21] I know that every time we have ever discussed, "Well, maybe we should make an app for this," it sounds really daunting because you would have to make it for both Apple and Android. I don't know if that cuts in favor with the DOJ is saying here or against it, but I do have that competitor in mind. When we have those discussions, it's not like I forget that Android exists.  

Chad Silvers [00:05:42] Yeah, I'm involved with people that make applications and have to deal with Apple, Google, the Amazon Fire TV platform. I mean, there's a lot-- Roku. There's a lot of different ways that you have to develop an application to work on devices in general.  

Beth Silvers [00:06:02] Okay. Well, let's talk about what the DOJ says. I think that this sentence from the introduction is really the heart of the complaint. They write, "Rather than respond to competitive threats by offering lower smartphone prices to consumers or better monetization for developers, Apple would meet competitive threats by imposing a series of shape-shifting rules and restrictions in its App Store, guidelines and developer agreements that would allow Apple to extract higher fees, thwart innovation, offer a less secure or degraded user experience, and throttle competitive alternatives." Now, I think the complaint reads like melodrama. It's like if Apple is not stopped, it will take over the whole universe. We have talked before about Apple as a walled garden. The DOJ calls it a competitive moat.  

Chad Silvers [00:06:50] That's a great tonne of phrase there. I think I bristle at just the very first part of that, that Apple has raised prices to further their monopoly. That sounds backwards to me. Apple never started out as cheap to bring in customers, like a lot of companies do. Get a critical mass of subscribers or customers and then raise the prices on them after you've eliminated competition. Apple wasn't cheap from the get go. Their price has been relatively higher since the Macintosh, maybe even earlier, like the Apple two. Definitely when the iPod launched. The iPod was kind of their first foray into a higher end device built mainly on design or one of the big features of it being the design. People were buying it not just because it was a good piece of technology, but because of the social cachet of doing so. But with Apple stuff, at least, I think anybody paying attention from early on has known when you're buying Apple, it's going to be a little quirky because it is that walled garden.  

Beth Silvers [00:08:00] And do you think that that degrades the user experience?  

Chad Silvers [00:08:03] I don't. Steve Jobs' plan very early on was control the hardware and the software. And when you do that, you can provide the best experience because you know the limitations of the hardware. You know the strength of the hardware. And you can develop the software to go with it. Now, today, of course, you're going beyond that. You've got hardware, software and experience slash utilities associated with it.  

Beth Silvers [00:08:34] Yeah. The DOJ seems to be with you for a minute. Apple has always been expensive and it's always been really good at design. And the DOJ says that Apple spends an awful lot of money on marketing, and that's part of why the prices are so high here.  

Chad Silvers [00:08:49] I mean, we should go after Coke.  

Beth Silvers [00:08:51] I know. I hear you. I feel the same way. But then it says the first mass market success Apple experience was the iPod, and that was because of iTunes. It was the marriage, like you said, of hardware and software that made that product really successful. And it is also ironic because Apple was able to get iTunes on PCs much more popular than Macs at the time through an antitrust lawsuit against Microsoft. And I think the isn't this rich tone comes through throughout this complaint.  

Chad Silvers [00:09:26] Yeah, I think that's a little different. They're letting applications on to a platform. Apple has let applications on if they meet their guidelines, they just don't want to have a third party app store as part of their ecosystem. And that's kind of what we want here. Or maybe the central point of the argument is that ecosystem mentality. And Apple's not the only thing that we're used to having an ecosystem.  

Beth Silvers [00:09:57] A competitive moat around? 

Chad Silvers [00:09:58] A competitive moat around. I talked about marrying hardware and software so that you don't overtax a processor or that you use memory efficiently, but if you have that third party app store, you're letting other apps use the hardware that you have. So it's no longer just a processor and memory and a screen. There are sensors and the data coming through there, they can pull. So when you're talking about a third party app store, you're trusting a lot more people with your information, with even just your phone. You spend a lot of money on that. So when you're using those third party app stores, there's less trust.  

Beth Silvers [00:10:42] Well, the DOJ says Apple is not so much worried about trust as much as it's worried about money because of how Apple takes a lot off the top absolutely everywhere. So not only are new iPhones expensive and you feel like you need a new iPhone every time one comes out, but they also take 30% on apps. They take 30% on additional features within apps. They take fees on every tap to pay transaction. They take a cut from Google on ad revenue that comes through Safari searches, and all that results in Apple's net income exceeding any other company in the fortune 500, as well as the GDP of more than 100 countries. So they say, sure, trust it's about money.  

Chad Silvers [00:11:24] Yeah. And that ties into another lawsuit that happened in the EU. Spotify claimed that Apple didn't let them inform customers of cheaper alternatives to subscribing within iOS. Your audience probably knows that if you subscribe to some services directly through that service's website, you'll pay X. And if you subscribe through your iPhone, it's going to be X plus something, and that's there to cover those fees. Now, I can't feel too sorry for Spotify here-- I mean, I'm a Spotify user. Great service.  

Beth Silvers [00:11:56] I love Spotify.  

Chad Silvers [00:11:57] I think that's where your own marketing needs to step in. Spotify isn't a startup. They've got the marketing wherewithal to do this. It's incumbent upon them to advertise and let their customers know or let the public in general know that it's more expensive because you're going through Apple. Now, if they're saying they wouldn't have got those customers if they couldn't get them through Apple at the higher price, then that's what you're paying those fees for. Apple is doing the advertising for you and bringing you customers. So aren't they entitled to something for it?  

Beth Silvers [00:12:33] Well, we've been talking in generalities. I want to get to the five specific ways that the DOJ says Apple is suppressing competition. So the first thing is about super apps. Will you just explain to me? I'm not sure I really understand what a super app means.  

Chad Silvers [00:12:48] So it's what Elon Musk wants to do with Twitter. 

Beth Silvers [00:12:52] So it's WeChat?  

Chad Silvers [00:12:55] WeChat. Alipay. There are applications that are messaging applications, and within those you can do payments and other functions.  

Beth Silvers [00:13:04] So it's like a mall inside an app.  

Chad Silvers [00:13:07] Well, it's more than just shopping-- although shopping could be part of it-- but it's an app that does more than one thing. I mean, you can do that now with iMessage. You can do that with Facebook's Messenger app, where you can send payments through there. But it is I guess you'd say, a more expansive view on it.  

Beth Silvers [00:13:28] Okay.  

Chad Silvers [00:13:29] When you're doing all of those third party widgets (I think might be a good word) within the app, it gets to be closer, like an app store.  

Beth Silvers [00:13:38] Okay.  

Chad Silvers [00:13:39] Which Apple does not want.  

Beth Silvers [00:13:42]  It's a mini app store within the App Store. And Apple doesn't want that why?  

Chad Silvers [00:13:48] Because they want to control the experience. I know part of it's got to be profit driven too.  

Beth Silvers [00:13:52] And the fees too.  

Chad Silvers [00:13:53] Yeah, the fees too.  

Beth Silvers [00:13:55] Because what those super apps could be designed where Apple is not able to take its cut from every transaction that's happening within them. Is that the deal?  

Chad Silvers [00:14:04] Yeah. Because it's through that application. I guess they could impose fees upon it. But the way that the apps are written, it may not let them see everything that's happening.  

Beth Silvers [00:14:14] Yeah. I just want to understand why Apple looks at something like that and doesn't see an opportunity, but sees a problem.  

Chad Silvers [00:14:21] Yeah, I'm sure it's control, right? But like I said earlier, the control is sometimes why we do something or why we buy something.  

Beth Silvers [00:14:31] We want Apple to have the control.  

Chad Silvers [00:14:32] We want the experience of it. And Apple's not the only one. You go to Amazon and shop and you get very used to Amazon's style and the way that you can buy and have things shipped in a timely manner. How many times now are we asking our Echos to set a timer, turning the lights on and off. It's doing more and more and we like that. It's easy. 

Beth Silvers [00:14:56] And we like that. We all use Macs and Apple products. Everything in our house is really seamless because we're all on similar devices.  

Chad Silvers [00:15:04] And the control of that is a lot of tying into how that experience is. So being someone who before Apple really got prolific, we'd use windows and you would install programs (or at least I would) on my computer, and after a while you install certain programs and your performance suffers. That's what they're seeing as a potential downside or the direct downside that they want to avoid.  

Beth Silvers [00:15:35] Okay. So the super apps are one of five issues. The second is cloud streaming game apps. Why doesn't Apple want cloud streaming apps?  

Chad Silvers [00:15:42] Well, they want you to buy a newer iPhone that will do a lot more and process everything there. Now, this is one I think is going to change with time. The cloud streaming apps are relatively new, and Apple's not the fastest to adopt new features. They tend to test them and make sure that they are going to meet their criteria and their expectations for user experience.  

Beth Silvers [00:16:09] Now, I don't think I understand this either, but I'm not a gamer or a tech person, so does that just mean that I would play through like an internet browser, or what does this mean?  

Chad Silvers [00:16:22] Typically, there's an app to access it. Connectivity hasn't been fast enough in the past to really do cloud gaming, because you're controlling something on a joystick or gamepad or a keyboard and mouse, that has to be transmitted to wherever the game is being processed and then streamed back to you. So the latency there with a slower connection hasn't made that possible. Now internet speeds are getting where it can do it. So the processing for that game is housed somewhere else. You don't have to have the very best gaming computer or laptop to make that happen.  

Beth Silvers [00:17:02] So it just kind of gets back to that hardware-software marriage that they find so successful. Is that right?  

Chad Silvers [00:17:08] Yeah. And, again, I think this is one of these things that is going to change. I think it will come to Apple's ecosystem. It just might take a while.  

Beth Silvers [00:17:17] Okay. This is the one I really do understand, the messaging app. It is really funny in a federal lawsuit to see commentary about the green bubble versus the blue bubble when you're texting. But the DOJ says that is anti-competitive activity.  

Chad Silvers [00:17:34] I mean, I laugh about it. I think any iPhone user hates when you're on a thread and you've got one person that uses an android and it throws everything off. I don't know if it's an esthetic choice, but it's always felt like a big middle finger to Google and any other messaging company.  

Beth Silvers [00:17:53] But I struggle with how that's different from any kind of branding. If we're all on a basketball court together, players can wear different brands of shoes and it not be that big of a deal. That's how the messaging feature has always felt to me.  

Chad Silvers [00:18:07] Yeah, there are some there are some features that aren't usable from iMessage and Apple services when you're using an Android device that's in the message because of those green bubbles. Android's working on some ways to make it like if you do the tap back where it's a thumbs up or haha, Android made some changes that let that show through to their devices. But then Apple changed something else to where the response back on your phone shows as a separate message saying, "Beth liked this."  

Beth Silvers [00:18:41]  Which who cares? I almost think that reminds us all that there are competitors to Apple, that there are other devices out there that people are liking and using.  

Chad Silvers [00:18:48] It's just not as smooth of an experience. It's not.  

Beth Silvers [00:18:52] I don't think we're entitled to a smooth experience everywhere. 

Chad Silvers [00:18:55] No, I don't either. And this is where I get back to the beginning of are they doing it for nefarious means or is it marketing? Is it what everybody does?  

Beth Silvers [00:19:06] Okay. Four out of five complaints smartwatches, it's hard to pair anything but an Apple Watch with the iPhone.  

Chad Silvers [00:19:12] That just goes back to tying all the hardware together, right? You've got all those sensors in your watch in your phone. It's how that data is passed back and forth. Again, they've created it or they have launched their version of it, and they're going to give it the best connectivity, the best access to the features that they have on their devices.  

Beth Silvers [00:19:35] Okay. And then the last one is the digital wallet that you have to use Apple's digital wallet with the iPhone. And that makes it harder to switch smartphones because once you started using the wallet feature, you're kind of in it. This is probably the one that I, on my first read of the complaint, was most intuitively drawn to. I thought, that does sound problematic to me.  

Chad Silvers [00:19:56] Well, this is another feature that has been, I think, slow on the uptake. So Android users will-- every time Apple rolls out a new feature that they say is new, but Android has had for years. I think the newest one is something coming on the newest IOS will let you move icons around on your home screen and not completely fill it. You can have like a big blank area if you want to. That's been on Android for over a decade. Apple is like, oh, brand new thing, be excited. With the digital wallets, Apple added that near field communication feature to iPhones, and they use it with tap to pay. That's what that is. That has recently been opened up in the latest version to allow third parties to use NFC. So I think it's coming right. The Apple Wallet still will be the preferred and probably most secure way, but I think more openness will come to it.  

Beth Silvers [00:21:03] So the DOJ has anticipated the security argument that we need this control to make sure that things work well and that users privacy is protected. And the DOJ says Apple just says that when it's convenient for Apple; that it is an elastic shield that can stretch or contract to serve Apple's financial and business interests. And I don't doubt that. It's not that I think Apple is perfect or that this lawsuit is baseless. And antitrust law is very complicated. The allegations of this complaint are very complicated. But I wanted to highlight this because I think the question of whether all tech is anti-competitive, if it gets too big, is a really interesting and important one. And I also think the question about how much competition we want in that space to let people move fast and innovate without the sort of weight attached to those decisions that Apple and Google now feel. Obviously, I think they move slowly for reasons they've got so much on the line. And I think there's something healthy and good about that. It just feels like maybe tech is so pervasive in our lives that your traditional monopoly analysis doesn't layer onto it very well.  

Chad Silvers [00:22:16] Yeah. The statement that a monopoly inhibits growth and innovation, I think, can be read the opposite direction too, right? If you have too much regulation on them, that may stifle growth as well. I associate a lot of this with the right to repair movement. Have you heard about that?  

Beth Silvers [00:22:36] Yes, I did a More to Say episode about it.  

Chad Silvers [00:22:39] Exactly. I was just doing that to let you call back [crosstalk]., 

Beth Silvers [00:22:41] Thank you so much. That's very kind of you.  

Chad Silvers [00:22:43] So companies make a desirable product, but want it tightly controlled. This can be more costly to consumers if they choose that product. So Tesla doesn't want you messing around with the electrical systems and sensors and computers within their car. But also think about this, Mercedes uses specialized parts that only certain mechanics may have the tools to work on. So is that kind of a similar anti-competitive practice? I don't know. They're protecting their dealers? Like we said, Apple wants to control the experience. I think this started out as a check on how the hardware and software best work together. I know some percentage of that has to be profit driven. That percentage has surely grown, just like the App Store fees have grown right over time. But I like to think that part of the reason is making a good product.  

Beth Silvers [00:23:40] While I'm really glad that we had you here to be the voice of the product is good. I respect the product. I respect their the practices. And now I want to ask you to be the voice of the gambler in our next segment, because I would like to talk with you more about sports betting.  

Chad Silvers [00:23:55] I bet I can do that for you.  

[00:23:56] Music Interlude.  

Beth Silvers [00:24:06] Chad, I sat down to do some research, and I want to just read you three headlines that I found as soon as I googled sports gambling. Our entire society is becoming addicted to sports gambling- that's from the New Republic. It's not just Shohei, a massive scandal involving sports betting is just around the corner- that's Yahoo Finance. And Louisiana banning instate collegiate prop bets for safety and integrity of athletes from The Athletic. So it seems like this is a timely discussion. I learned that 38 states, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico have legalized sports gambling since the Supreme Court's 2018 decision, allowing that to happen. And guess what? Everybody's making a lot of money off of this. So much money.  

Chad Silvers [00:24:50] Yeah, there's a ton of money out there for it. I do think addiction can be a problem. It's something new. It's something novel. It's something that's definitely been advertised as quick money.  

Beth Silvers [00:25:02] Yeah. And let's talk about how much money for a second, because I was prepared for big numbers, but not this big of a number. The American Gaming Association estimated that 2.7 billion (with a B) dollars, 2.7 billion whole dollars will be bet on March Madness this year. What? That's so much money- $2.7 billion. Also, the teams are profiting from this right now because number one, they have a gazillion sponsorships. There are some stadiums and ballparks where you can bet on-site, like they just have it right there for you to do.  

Chad Silvers [00:25:40] Or just outside, right?  

Beth Silvers [00:25:42] Yes.  

Chad Silvers [00:25:42] The Red Stadium, there's a bet MGM location right outside the stadium.  

Beth Silvers [00:25:48] And signage everywhere about it.  

Chad Silvers [00:25:51] All the teams have their sponsorship and their signage. You go to the Bengals game, Betfred is showcased.  

Beth Silvers [00:25:57] Yes. I thought this was really good from the New Republic article. "To watch sports in 2024 is to be told to gamble, or at least to be reminded that you could also be gambling and that it's apparently more fun that way." And I think that's true. It is so integral to the experience of being at a live game right now that you do kind of think, am I strange because I haven't put some money on this game.  

Chad Silvers [00:26:16] That's right. I mean, you could be having as much fun as Jamie Fox and everybody else that's in all of the ads that you see on TV.  

Beth Silvers [00:26:24] The other way that teams are making money is that people are watching sports more, and they think that that is because people have money on the game. There was a survey last year finding that 49% of viewers would stay with a blowout game if they had a bet down, compared to 29% of people who would keep watching if they didn't.  

Chad Silvers [00:26:43] Yeah, that's the prop bet part of it, right? You may have a team to win, but I need so-and-so to get two hits.  

Beth Silvers [00:26:51] So I want you to talk about prop bets for a second. I want you to define that term for us, and I want you to give some examples of the myriad ways that you place bets on games that we watch.  

Chad Silvers [00:27:01] We'll have to open up the history on the various apps that I use. So a prop bet is a proposition bet. Now with that, you can bet on about anything. Let's talk about baseball since we're doing baseball right now. So a prop bet for baseball may maybe if a player gets a hit, how many hits the player gets? How many bases they record. So a single versus a double total bases. Number of strikeouts from a pitcher. You can bet on pretty much anything that's going on with the game.  

Beth Silvers [00:27:36] And you often bet those things in combination with each other.  

Chad Silvers [00:27:39] Yeah. So when you put multiple bets together into one bet, that's called a parlay. So you could parlay multiple games. I'm going to say the Reds are going to win and the Atlanta Braves are going to win. That would be a parlay. And both of those have to hit to to make that bet payout. You could also do within the same game something that's very much pushed on apps, is the same game parlay. So that is picking two or three proposition bets within one game and putting them all on there. So I think during baseball the other day (and I hit this one) I had Ellie Dela Cruz getting a hit, Spencer Steers getting a hit, the pitcher baseball getting over six and a half strikeouts and the Reds winning.  

Beth Silvers [00:28:31] I recall this because I remember that we were really hoping for Stear [sp] to get that hit in before the game ended. So in addition to addiction as an issue, targeting young people as an issue, the blanket advertisement, we have some scandals. Will you talk about Shohei Ohtani? This is the unbelievably talented baseball player who can pitch and hit in a way that feels almost miraculous when you watch him.  

Chad Silvers [00:28:59] Yes. So Shohei Ohtani, double threat player that came up from Japan and played for the Angels for a few years, has just moved over to the Dodgers and signed the biggest contract in baseball history- $700 million, deferring 680 million of it. So his interpreter appears to have a gambling problem and has placed bets in California on sports, which is illegal. California is not one of those 38 states, and that may have caused some of the attention to be drawn to it.  

Beth Silvers [00:29:39] Well, my understanding is that $4.5 million were sent from Ohtani's bank account to an illegal bookmaker, and that his interpreter took responsibility for this and was fired. But they're still investigating. He says he had nothing to do with it. Ohtani says he had nothing to do with it.  

Chad Silvers [00:29:55] But that's the part where it gets interesting because these payments were made to a bookkeeper. First, they came out in Korea right after the first game. The Dodgers played the Padres in Korea, and the interpreter made a statement to the team. And then the interpreter was offered up for an interview, a 90 minute interview with ESPN. And during that one, he said that Ohtani paid his debts for him, that the interpreter placed the bets and Ohtani had paid off his debts for him. Well, a couple days later, they come back and Ohtani attorneys have gotten involved, and he hired the firm out of L.A. that's kind of a crisis control firm. Retracted all of that and said, this is not true. This is the first time Ohtani has heard about this, and that the interpreter had stolen this money from him.  

Beth Silvers [00:30:59] And they were friends, right? He wasn't just his interpreter. I understand they had a pretty good relationship.  

Chad Silvers [00:31:05] He's known him since 2013 in Japan. Yeah.  

Beth Silvers [00:31:09] So we'll see what happens with that one. We also have an NBA scandal right now. Jontay Porter of the Toronto Raptors being investigated after there was a surge in prop bets on his performance for two games where he exited early due to injury or illness.  

Chad Silvers [00:31:25] Yeah. And no one's saying that he has placed the bets here. It's just these companies conceive when there are really high concentrations of bets on one particular proposition, and these seem to happen with consistency around the games that he left early on.  

Beth Silvers [00:31:43] We have 13 Iowa and Iowa State student athletes accused of illegal sports wagering. Ten have entered guilty pleas. We had an NBA player recently given a technical foul and a huge fine because he made a money counting gesture at a ref after a call he didn't like. So there is a lot going on here. And from the perspective of someone who really enjoys gambling on sports, I just want to know if you think it's ultimately bad for the game. Even if we could really deal with addiction and get everybody to bet and sort of the healthy, I've limited the amount of money I'm spending on it way that you do, even if we could do that, do you think it's bad for sports?  

Chad Silvers [00:32:25] Well, the gambling and the scandals around it is not something new. This is not new with sports betting being legalized in the US. So go way back to the early 1900s, the Black Sox Scandal, those players were given not guilty verdicts for throwing games, but they were banned from baseball.  

Beth Silvers [00:32:47] Pete Rose.  

Chad Silvers [00:32:47] Pete Rose, who had a little moment with this Ohtani stuff where somebody had him on camera and he's like, "Wow, I wish I had an interpreter back in the 70s and 80s."  

Beth Silvers [00:32:57] Yeah, not a great way to handle it.  

Chad Silvers [00:32:58] Not great. But there's been point shaving in college sports. The referee thing that you mentioned in the NBA where they got a technical-- kind of funny because a few years ago we had a ref who was betting on games and making calls that would make the games turn out in his favor where he would win bets.  

Beth Silvers [00:33:21] But what is new is the ubiquity of it. That everybody's doing it, that you don't even have to leave your house to do it. And social media. So these players are telling reporters, I just get harassed constantly online, coaches getting harassed. This Cleveland Cavaliers coach quote really struck me. He said gamblers got his phone number and we're sending crazy messages about where he lives and his kids. He said, "We may have a 10 point lead and the spread is 11, and people are yelling at me to leave the guy in so we cover the spread." That's outrageous.  

Chad Silvers [00:33:54] It's a lot. You talked about individual prop bets. Maybe we take some of the potential for scandal out with not having those or some adjustment to where it's not just on one person, but even that in a baseball game the pitcher matters so much. 

Beth Silvers [00:34:20] Yeah, I don't know that I think you should be able to bet on college sports at all. Sorry.  

Chad Silvers [00:34:27] Sad.  

Beth Silvers [00:34:29] You see what I mean? It's already about money in the pros. So let them regulate it and figure it out and punish people when they break the rules. But I just think bringing this to student athletes where there's already so much tension about how much money they should be able to make from playing and their performance. And it's just a lot for people who are under 30 to be dealing with all the time, so I would like to see that end.  

Chad Silvers [00:34:55] And you say that about not betting on college sports. Can't bet on them, but they can get their NIO money?  

Beth Silvers [00:35:01] I know.  

Chad Silvers [00:35:01] It's tough.  

Beth Silvers [00:35:02] It is tough. It's all tough because there is so much money there anyway. It's all tough. But this level of harassment I think is uncalled for. And I appreciate Louisiana banning those prop bets. I appreciate the NCAA saying we shouldn't do the prop bets anymore, and I would take it further.  

Chad Silvers [00:35:19] We will continue to clutch our pearls until we figure out the best way to go forward.  

Beth Silvers [00:35:24] Stop it. I know that I'm clutching my pearls about it, but I think some things are pearl clutching worthy and that this might be one of them. And I enjoy watching you gamble. I have no desire to do it, but I know how you do it, and I trust that it's not tons of our money on the line in these games. It's just like buying a ticket for an experience for you.  

Chad Silvers [00:35:43] I do it for fun. Gosh, March Madness has not been kind to me other than just Kentucky losing. But baseball's here, and we've had some good baseball days. But, yeah, do it as fun. That's kind of individual choices how you handle that. And I hope there's enough in place to really help people that are struggling with gambling.  

Beth Silvers [00:36:07] Well, Chad, thank you for representing the voice of the gambler in this episode. I don't know that you represent the gambler experience though because you do it in such a limited way, but I'm glad that you enjoy it and can speak to it from that place so that Sarah and I are not just like, "Down with all games!"  

Chad Silvers [00:36:22] Yeah. I mean, you let me out of the box. It's not a sporty Thursday. You just take me out and dust me off every now and then when you need something.  

Beth Silvers [00:36:31] I do have Chad on More to Say with me occasionally for Sporty Thursday, where we get to chat about sports. So we are going to end, as we always do, Outside of Politics.  

[00:36:39] Music Interlude.  

[00:36:50] Chad, recently, I made an offhanded and in retrospect somewhat careless comment about the experience of shopping with you, and you wished for an opportunity to respond. So here you go.  

Chad Silvers [00:37:01] So I'm going to stand up for the large headed Americans trying to find hats, especially when those large headed Americans have themes whose colors, in Beth's words, fight with your skin.  

Beth Silvers [00:37:17] Okay, so we were looking for baseball hats. And Chad is very careful about all of his purchases. I think this is why he's good at keeping his gambling contained because he is very discerning. So we're looking at hats, and it is hard for Chad to find hats that fit him well. In fairness, the shopping experience takes a minute. But also another offhanded and in retrospect careless comment I made, was that Chad's Scottish complexion, his reddish hair, that red tends to fight with his skin a little bit. So I encouraged him to go more of the gray, black or white route as he is looking for primary color swear in support of our team.  

Chad Silvers [00:37:59] Yeah. It's tough. They are the Reds.  

Beth Silvers [00:38:04] They are the Reds. Well, tell the people what has been successful for you as a large headed American in your hat buying.  

Chad Silvers [00:38:12] I think people understand here you can go buy fitted hats. First of all, this one size fits all- complete farce. Not true at all. But you can buy fitted hats and they make those very big. I mean, our neighbor is in the same situation. Most of the time you'll see a fitted hat in a seven, seven and an eighth, maybe so much as seven and a half. That's not enough. You've got to hit the seven and three quarters, seven and five eights area to get close to fitting. So it's hard. It's hard finding those. Also, flat bills- they don't work for me.  

Beth Silvers [00:38:54] I agree with that. I agree wholeheartedly that flat bills do not work for you.  

Chad Silvers [00:38:57] But I have found lately-- I know everyone's on the edge of their seat.  

Beth Silvers [00:39:03] Please talk more about them in five minutes.  

Chad Silvers [00:39:08] I think the market's getting better. There are some bigger hats out there. New Era just has this stretch snapback hat that seems to fit. Exciting news.  

Beth Silvers [00:39:24] Well, I want every person who listens to the show to at some point feel seen. And I hope that someone does buy this conversation.  

Chad Silvers [00:39:31] Yeah.  

Beth Silvers [00:39:32] Thank you so much for joining me. I love it when you record with me. Thank you all for listening to our chat. If you enjoyed this episode, maybe you know someone who's interested in sports gambling that might enjoy it, we'd love for you to share it. I'll be gone next week, but Sarah will be here with you. Don't forget we have lots of book club content coming up, including the sales of our summer boxes for our premium Spice Cabinet members. So we hope that you'll sign up on Patreon or Apple Podcast subscriptions to get access to that. Everybody, have the best weekend available to you.  

[00:40:01] Music Interlude.  

Sarah: Pantsuit Politics is produced by Studio D Podcast Production. 

Beth: Alise Napp is our managing director. Maggie Penton is our director of Community Engagement. 

Sarah: Xander Singh is the composer of our theme music with inspiration from original work by Dante Lima. 

Beth: Our show is listener-supported. Special thanks to our executive producers. 

Executive Producers: Martha Bronitsky. Ali Edwards. Janice Elliott. Sarah Greenup. Julie Haller. Tiffany Hasler. Emily Holladay. Katie Johnson. Katina Zuganelis Kasling. Barry Kaufman. Katherine Vollmer. Laurie LaDow. Lily McClure. Linda Daniel. The Pentons. Tracey Puthoff. Sarah Ralph. Jeremy Sequoia. Katie Stigers. Karin True. Onica Ulveling. Nick and Alysa Villeli. Amy Whited. Emily Helen Olson. Lee Chaix McDonough. Morgan McHugh. Jen Ross. Sabrina Drago. Becca Dorval. Christina Quartararo. Shannon Frawley. Jessica Whitehead. Samantha Chalmers. Crystal Kemp. The Lebo Family. The Adair Family. 

Sarah: Jeff Davis. Melinda Johnston. Michelle Wood. Nichole Berklas. Paula Bremer and Tim Miller.

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