McKay Coppins

Some of it's happening, you know, kind of in a more analog, old-fashioned way.

But the key point here is that because it's almost impossible now to watch a sports game without getting bombarded with ads for sports gambling, because it's almost impossible to consume sports media without hearing your favorite sports media personality talk about

money lines and point spreads.

I think that it's just much more in the culture, in the conversation.

I think young people are much more fluent in the vocabulary of gambling than they were a generation ago.

Yeah.

I mean, I have to say, like, I was skeptical of these sportsbooks claims that they are committed to what they call responsible gaming.

Even at the outset, I kind of figured that that was good PR.

And then I spent time talking to some of these executives, and I think they really believe it.

Right.

They will tell you.

We have all these different policies that are designed to identify and slow down users who are exhibiting reckless and addictive behaviors.

If people are really acting and gambling in reckless ways, we'll actually kick them off our platforms.

And they claim that they even have a self-interested reason for that.

They say, we don't want any revenue from someone who has a gambling problem.

If people are burning out too quickly, they're not going to be customers for very long.

And, you know, there is actually a term of art for this in the industry.

They call it loss smoothing.

Gamblers, by the way, call it the slow bleed, which is basically if you lose money slow enough, you'll just keep losing money.

But