A MARTÍNEZ, HOST:
We're going to focus on the sports betting allegations from federal prosecutors with someone who's watched the evolution of sports betting in the U.S. Jonathan Cohen is the author of "Losing Big: America's Reckless Bet On Sports Gambling." So, Jonathan, is there something about the way sports betting is run now, the way it's regulated, that makes it easier for players to potentially influence bets?
JONATHAN COHEN: Yeah, absolutely. When this all started and when sports betting arrived in 2018, we were probably imagining sort of the version like we had in Las Vegas for a long time - we could bet on a team to win. You could bet on, you know, a team to score a certain number of points. But what you have today, as Becky was alluding to, are these sort of small fractional bets, you know, over-under on the 15th player on the Toronto Raptors and whether they're going to score 15 or more points or get five or more rebounds. And the technological availability, you know, the availability to bet not just on these obscure players or these obscure sports, but to do it on your phone. So I think it just makes it so much more inherently dangerous than if we had that sort of older traditional model that was a bit more slower and a bit less prone, not not prone at all, but a bit less prone to being violating the integrity of the game.
MARTÍNEZ: Yeah. And the thing is, when you bet the under, or at least if a player wants to exploit that, I mean, they can control missing a shot on purpose, if they want to score hardly any points or no points at all. But if they want to try and score over, which is, say, they're maybe targeted for 20 points, that could be difficult because they could have an off night. So the under is a very easy way to exploit this.
COHEN: Right. And while some of us score - some of us struggle to score two basketball points, no matter what the context. But, yes, I think this is actually the concern of the league, as well, as well as the NCAA, which is working on its own prop bets, which is giving players almost too much control and leaving too much in players' hands, not just for the threat of rigging, but even as Bruce Brown was alluding to in the last clip, the threat of fans are getting mad that they bet...
MARTÍNEZ: Yeah.
COHEN: ...On a player to perform a certain way and the player doesn't live up to expectations. And I think the NBA, in fact, has been, even before this, but - and certainly now, thinking about or rethinking whether all of these types of bets should be allowed to give players so much control over an outcome that is - that can be bet on by gamblers.
MARTÍNEZ: What do you make of the argument that this kind of behavior has gone on for years, that, you know, athletes do this and they've done it a hundred years ago, they're going to do it today, but that legalized sports betting has actually made it easier to monitor and catch athletes who are influencing betting?
COHEN: That's sort of true, but are we supposed to believe, then, that the sports leagues were just completely defenseless against illegal gambling until legalized gambling arrived? Of course, they were not. They were monitoring illegal gambling. They were monitoring offshore casinos, legal casinos, and they could tell right away if there was some suspicious activity. So even putting that aside, I think we would be - we'd remiss not to acknowledge the rising temperature, the rising culture of sports gambling in the country, such that you don't just get NBA players who are gambling, you get these sort of obscure college athletes who, yeah, some of them might have been gambling, otherwise. But my bet - ha-ha - is that many of these players would not have even thought about gambling if they weren't getting a DraftKings ad shoved down their throat every five minutes. So sort of the leagues are claiming that this is proof the system works, but I think the system has maybe worked a little too well in terms of the rising prevalence of gambling leading to more cases like this than we would have seen otherwise.
MARTÍNEZ: Really quick, Jonathan, just a few seconds. When it comes to watching sports this weekend, can we trust what we're seeing as real?
COHEN: Well, you know, trust is in such high supply in American society. I think, generally speaking, you can trust it, but I don't blame folks if they're getting more wary because of scandals like these.
MARTÍNEZ: Jonathan Cohen is the author of "Losing Big: America's Reckless Bet On Sports Gambling." Jonathan, thanks.
COHEN: Thanks, A.
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