McKay Coppins

And a consensus had formed over really the past century in America that gambling posed an existential risk to organized sports because, you know, there had been these kind of high profile scandals, right?

The point shaving scandals in the

in college basketball, shoeless Joe Jackson in the 1919 World Series, that it basically convinced the league commissioners that if legal sports betting expanded too much, it would undermine the credibility of the games.

And that was the consensus on

All the way up until the Supreme Court ruled in 2018 to overturn the federal ban on sports betting, which basically opened the door for states to legalize it if they wanted to.

And very quickly, dozens of states followed New Jersey's lead and started legalizing it.

partly because they were seduced by the possibility of the tax revenue that could be generated and partly because these online sports books, which were scaling up exponentially and, you know, basically printing cash, had very good and effective lobbying operations that worked on state legislatures all across the country and convinced them to legalize it.

And in very short order,

Right.

I mean, what's almost comical about this is.

Almost overnight.

They had been so opposed to sports betting, they had used all this kind of righteous language about how bad it was for the integrity of the game, how bad it was for athletes.

And then as soon as it became legal in states, they realized that there was a huge opportunity here.

And I mean, this also corresponded with organized sports in America kind of facing a number of problems, right?

TV ratings were beginning to dip for the live broadcasts as viewers had more options with streamers and whatnot.

They also were dealing with the fact that younger fans were beginning to drift away.

And

They saw sports betting as a way to kind of engage younger fans, revitalize public interest and, you know, to bring a lot more money into the leagues by partnering with these very, you know, cash flush sports books.

Yeah.

In October of last year, the FBI announced the arrests of more than 30 people.