Share This Podcast

• Check out Hannah’s reporting – www.nytimes.com/athletic/author/hannah-vanbiber/
• Call Congress – 202-224-3121
• Subscribe to the What A Day Newsletter – https://tinyurl.com/3kk4nyz8
• What A Day – YouTube – https://www.youtube.com/@whatadaypodcast

Follow us on Instagram – https://www.instagram.com/crookedmedia/

TRANSCRIPT

Erin Ryan: It’s Monday, February 9th, I’m Erin Ryan, in for Jane Coaston, and this is What A Day, the show that would never make you remember Roman numerals. [music break] On today’s show, a far-right Japanese leader takes a big gamble, and it pays off. America’s Winter Olympians parlay their time at the top of their sports into an opportunity to speak out about their own government’s malfeasance. But let’s start with Sunday’s Super Bowl. If you tuned in yesterday to watch the Seahawks take it to the Patriots, you may have had a little bit of money riding on the game. If you’re really into the gamification of every aspect of sports, you might have even gotten wacky with it and bet on something like whether or not Bad Bunny would say fuck ICe during his halftime performance. But even if you’re not a gambler, and even if don’t particularly care about sports, you’ve probably noticed that in the last few years, sports betting has gone from obscure to nearly omnipresent. 

[clip of Draft Kings ad] Trade on the big game now in your state with DraftKings Predictions. Make your big game prediction and try putting your money where your knowledge is. New Draft Kings Predictions customers get a first trade bonus up to 75 predictions dollars. The crown is yours. 

Erin Ryan: Come on, give it a try, it’s so easy, it is so fun. Just download an app and tickle your brain’s risk-reward center from the privacy of your couch, or the privacy of your favorite bathroom stall at work, or from a stoplight. Actually, on second thought, if you feel compelled to check your bets while you’re behind the wheel of your car, that might be a problem. From primetime TV ads to targeted ads on social media, the legalization of online sports betting has transformed the way sports are watched and even played. But not necessarily for the better. According to a Pew survey, 43% of adults say legal sports betting is a bad thing for society. So seeing as Super Bowl Sunday is the biggest betting day of the year, we thought it was the perfect time to get a sense of how big betting markets have gotten, where the industry is headed, and who, if anybody, is making sure that everybody’s playing safely. I spoke to Hannah Vanbiber, a senior editor at The Athletic, who covers sports betting ahead of Sunday’s big game. Hannah, welcome to What A Day. 

Hannah Vanbiber: Thank you so much, I’m really glad to be here. 

Erin Ryan: Well, let’s get started with a small question. Why is sports betting so popular? 

Hannah Vanbiber: I want to say, uh have you ever met a man, but uh that’s not really why. 

Erin Ryan: Unfortunately I have, I’ve met several. 

Hannah Vanbiber: Yes, yes. It’s really popular because, I mean, partially because sports are popular, right? Everyone loves sports and the way that sports betting is built is to keep you more interested in games, to keep your watching, to keep you invested. Like we all love a little bit of a gamification. And then there’s the promise of winning money. Like there’s just something really attractive about that. But then of course, you get into the more addictive parts of this and it’s easy to see why just like a smartphone or just like any other algorithm, it’s built to keep you coming back. So there’s that more, maybe you could say insidious element to it as well. 

Erin Ryan: Mm-hmm. Yeah, despite its popularity, a 2025 Pew Research Center survey found that 40% of adults say it’s a bad thing for sports themselves. So what concerns do you think are driving that skepticism? Like, is it a bad things for sports? 

Hannah Vanbiber: Yeah, the argument there is that people feel like it affects the purity of the sport. So we’re always wondering before there’s sports betting, if you lift that out, there’s still people who are like, oh, well that that was scripted or that ref was paid off by someone. And then you add in all of this money floating around, a lot of people having stakes on the outcome of a game or even the outcome of like what one player does for one play. And then, you can see why it easily becomes people have doubts, people have questions as to whether this is the pure sport or whether it’s rigged so. 

Erin Ryan: Mm hmm. Yeah, well we’ve seen sports gambling seep into the fabric of professional sports teams. Players and coaches have gotten caught up. Prop bets were a key issue in recent federal indictments involving the NBA and MLB. Can you explain what prop bets are to those of us who maybe have never placed a sports bet in their life? 

Hannah Vanbiber: Yes, absolutely. I feel like I have this conversation a lot, so those people are not alone at all. A prop bet, it stands for proposition bet, but it’s really any kind of bet that doesn’t have to do with the outcome of the game, like the not the final score, not who won, but it could be like, will LeBron James score 30 points tonight, yes or no? You can pretty much gamify any part of a game from start to finish, and that’s where props come in. The MLB had a problem with that, with pitchers throwing pitches that were intentionally slower than they would normally be, and people were betting on how fast the pitch would be. 

Erin Ryan: Okay. 

Hannah Vanbiber: Um. So that was rigged. There were point-shaving schemes in college basketball where players intentionally scored fewer points. That was in college baseball. In the NBA, um people were giving injury information that wasn’t public, and so then people could make bets based on that. So there are a lot of different ways that that can happen, where there can be corruption within a game, within a league. 

Erin Ryan: Wow, it really sounds a lot like how financial markets are manipulated, but just with easier to understand terms and figures. Um. Is anything going to change, like given all the scandals that you just listed and the fact that it is kind of putting a ding in the credibility of some sports and some audiences? 

Hannah Vanbiber: So I’m gonna play devil’s advocate right now and kind of say. There’s an argument for the legalized betting because it can be tracked. So while a lot of people feel like betting brings doubt into the outcome of a game or a sport, there’s also the argument that if there is something going on, it’s all tracked in a legal way. And that’s honestly why we found out about these scandals happening in the NBA and the MLB. A lot of people like to say that cheating has been around as long as gambling, which has been around as long as sports and only now are we starting to have the data and the legal systems in order to to find those people and hold them accountable. I do think that there is change on the horizon. I think that these scandals with prop bets that we saw in the last year had leagues really responding, kind of beefing up their data, beefing up um their surveillance. But the interesting side to that is that then along come prediction markets, which are not regulated in the same way as sports betting. There’s a lot of change happening there too, but it is even less regulated than the sports betting industry, which is kind of a wild thing to say out loud. 

Erin Ryan: Okay. Yeah, that does sound pretty wild. So can you explain to our listeners what are prediction markets and why are they such a big deal in the sports betting space? 

Hannah Vanbiber: So prediction markets basically are event contracts, which is basically you can take any event. Um. Is Maduro gonna be taken out of leadership? That was on a prediction market. Or, you know, who’s gonna win the Super Bowl? You choose a yes or a no on those event contracts. So there’s only two options. They’re all based on a dollar, the concept of $1. If it’s 20 cents to buy a yes contract on the Patriots winning the Superbowl. That means that people think there’s a 20% chance the Patriots will win, no offense to New England. So then if the Patriot’s do win, that contract will settle at a dollar and you take home the winnings of that. So it’s better if you can find a cheaper contract, you’ll make more money. Uh. But that’s basically how they work and you can have a prediction market on basically anything and then this idea of utility in the market, which is sort of how prediction markets started. And it was a seen sort of like crypto as this decentralized way to predict what’s going to happen. So if you have a ton of people in the market putting their money where their mouth is making these predictions, you can kind of figure out what’s actually gonna happen, which people point to the last election and how it was correct about Trump winning. But you could also argue that people could manipulate the market to make more money, which would not make it more accurate. So much like stock markets, it’s easy to manipulate these things if enough people are involved and agree to do it. In some ways, everything is becoming gambling and that’s not really going away soon. The conversation is more about how do we regulate it and make it safe for people, give protections to people who might be struggling with addictions, give protections to people who are putting money on these markets. So that is the conversation happening right now. 

Erin Ryan: Yeah, let’s talk about that, because I have heard from people that work in mental health that a gambling addiction is a really hard thing to treat, it’s a really hard thing the kick. And, you know, seeing the proliferation of sports betting advertisements, the fact that you can bet on pretty much anything, for some people that’s kind of a dangerous environment for them to be in. Um. As somebody who reports on this, are you seeing negative impacts on people’s daily lives, and is it actually hurting people that sports betting is this available?

Hannah Vanbiber: Yeah, I think that we do see a lot of problems with what’s happening in states where there is legalized sports betting. There’s an uptick in credit card debt. There’s an uptick in calls to the gambling hotlines. I think that in some ways the toothpaste is out of the tube and what we need to do is find out how to build systems much like we’re doing with social media right now um and how it affects young people. We need more studies. Is it just correlation? Is it cause and effect? We need to have a lot more safeguards on how the apps work, how much oversight there is. And you know if you win something, even something as simple as like a little confetti or changing colors, like all of that is so addicting. So how do we approach this in a way that we say, listen, if people wanna gamble, sure they can gamble, like it’s a free country, but how do we make it safe and make sure that consumers aren’t being taken advantage of. 

Erin Ryan: Yeah. Okay. Well, let’s let’s pivot to something a little bit less serious. You’ve written about some crazy bets on prediction markets. Can you tell us some of the wild things that people bet on for this Super Bowl specifically? 

Hannah Vanbiber: Yeah, and prediction markets, I think this is part of why they’ve become so popular because you’re kind of like, wait, can I really put money on this and then like, win money because Bad Bunny wore a hat like you can. Uh. One of the wildest ones we found on Polymarket was you could bet on whether Bad Bunny would say Fuck ICE during the halftime show. Um. And you would just say yes or no. I think the no’s were prevailing last time I checked. Because if he wears it on a shirt, you still wouldn’t win that. He has to actually say the words. But there’s plenty of markets like that, what will Bad Bunny say? Those are called mention markets. These mention markets are truly wild um because, for example, with something like, let’s say, the Grammys or something pre-taped, they will still offer mention markets that anyone at the taping knows what was said, but you can still bet on it. So that’s kind of like, it just hurts people’s brains a bit, to be like, how is that allowed? And to be fair, it might not always be allowed. Like I think regulation is– 

Erin Ryan: I think that sounds like a pretty bad thing to be allowed. 

Hannah Vanbiber: Does it? 

Erin Ryan: I mean it would–

Hannah Vanbiber: Yes. 

Erin Ryan: I guess it would encourage people to make more well-connected friends in diverse industries who could feed them insider information. Um but–

Hannah Vanbiber: Wow, that is such a positive view of this. 

Erin Ryan: [laughing] Um. Final question, do you ever place bets on sporting events? And did you for the Super Bowl? 

Hannah Vanbiber: I personally don’t gamble on sporting events, mostly. I’ve done it in order to make sure that I understand how it works. So I’ll take you know a dollar and put it on a game. But I personally, for fun, do not gamble. I just think I like to stay above the fray, I guess, have more of an objective view on it. So I do it if it’s a work assignment, which is also an odd thing to say, but I don’t personally enjoy it. 

Erin Ryan: All right, well, we’re taping this the week before the Super Bowl. What’s your prediction? Just, no, we’re not gambling, we’re just predicting. What’s your prediction for the Super Bowl? 

Hannah Vanbiber: I love, I love predictions. I do love, I mean, I work in this industry, I find it fascinating. So I am going to predict that the Seahawks win this one. 

Erin Ryan: From your lips to God’s ears, Hannah. [laughing] Thank you so much for joining me and for explaining it so clearly. Thanks so much. 

Hannah Vanbiber: Thank you, so much, glad to be here. 

Erin Ryan: I know she said she doesn’t gamble for fun, but maybe she should. If Hannah had bet on the Seahawks, she’d be a few dollars richer today. Oh well, she can be rich in the pride that comes from being right. I didn’t bet on anything, but I kind of wish I’d bet on how long Charlie Puth held out the word free in the second to the last line of the Star-Spangled Banner. Did you wager anything on the game? If not, what’s a goofy bet you’d be tempted to place? Let us know in the YouTube comments and we’ll be right back. [music break]

[AD BREAK]

Erin Ryan: Here’s what else we’re following today.

[sung] Headlines. 

[clip of Public Service Announcement about the Epstein Files] I was 14 years old. I was 16 years old. I was16, 17, 14 years old, this is me. This was me. This is me when I met Jeffrey Epstein. This is me when I met Jeffrey Epstein.

Erin Ryan: A public service announcement featuring survivors of convicted sex offender and disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein aired before the Super Bowl on Sunday. The ad features women holding pictures of themselves at the age they met Epstein. It encourages viewers to pressure their congresspeople to demand Attorney General Pam Bondi release the remaining Epstein files. So far, the Department of Justice has released about half of the six million documents regarding Epstein that they’re legally required to make public. Now, the deadline to release the files passed over a month ago. Kentucky Republican Representative Thomas Massie told CNN that Bondi is scheduled to testify before the House Judiciary Committee Wednesday. He plans to ask her why the latest tranche included victims’ names, unredacted photos, and identifying information? Good question. As well as why the alleged perpetrator’s names are redacted. Suffice to say, Massie is not fan of the Attorney General. 

[clip of Representative Thomas Massie] She’s been all over the map. She has no credibility on this. She said there are a bunch, there’s a ton of files, they’re on my desk, I’m gonna release them. And then she said there’s nothing but you know child sexual abuse material and nobody wants to see that. And then, she said, oh, we found a whole bunch more and they’re gonna be more investigations. But what are those investigations, for instance? And so there’s whole host of questions for her, but. I’m glad that she’s coming to judiciary. She hasn’t been there since she’s been attorney general. 

Erin Ryan: I will be tuning in on Wednesday. As of this morning, members of Congress will have access to the unredacted Epstein files to review ahead of Bondi’s testimony. 

[clip of Hakeem Jeffries] The ball is in the court right now of the Republicans. Either they’re going to agree to dramatically reform the way in which ICE and other immigration enforcement agencies are conducting themselves so that they’re behaving like every other law enforcement agency in the country, or they’re making the explicit decision to shut down the Coast Guard, shut down FEMA, and shut down TSA. 

Erin Ryan: House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries told CNN on Sunday that Democrats are willing to partially shut down the government if Republicans don’t meet all of their demands for reforms to the Department of Homeland Security. If lawmakers can’t strike a new deal to fund DHS by Valentine’s Day, the department, including FEMA and the TSA, will shut down, though Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Patrol are already funded by Trump’s big, beautiful bill. Last week, under growing pressure from their constituents, Democrats sent Speaker of the House Mike Johnson and Senate Majority Leader John Thune a list of demands, including that DHS agents display their IDs and end racial profiling when conducting stops. Tennessee Republican Senator Bill Hagerty said Sunday on Fox News that Republicans don’t plan to budge. 

[clip of Senator Bill Hagerty] I think Democrats are going to have a very hard time shutting the government down just so they can perpetuate the kind of chaos that’s going on in Minneapolis. 

Erin Ryan: Japan’s Prime Minister, Sanae Takaichi, security-sweeping two-thirds supermajority for the governing party in parliamentary elections on Sunday. That’s according to Japanese media, which cited preliminary results. The ultra-conservative Takaichi said in an interview with the public television network NHK that she’ll now pursue policies to make Japan strong and prosperous. The governing Liberal Democratic Party, or LDP, has struggled with funding and religious scandals in recent years. The prime minister called Sunday’s early election after three months in office, hoping her popularity could boost the party’s prospects. And it appears to have worked. NHK reported that the LDP secured an absolute majority in Japan’s lower house. And though her party is still in a minority in the upper house, Takeichi hopes to make progress on a right-wing agenda. Think old-school Thatcher tax cuts and a Reagan-style defense buildup. Oh, and plenty of antagonism with China. No wonder she’s gotten the thumbs up from President Trump. 

[clip of Hunter Hess] It brings up mixed emotions to represent the U.S. right now, I think. Um. It’s a little hard. Um. There’s obviously a lot going on that I’m not the biggest fan of, and I think a lot of people aren’t. 

Erin Ryan: This is Oregonian freestyle skier Hunter Hess fielding a reporter’s question Friday about how it feels to represent the U.S. at the Milan Cortina Winter Olympics. And the thing he’s not so much a fan of, well, ICE raids and the such. Hess did say mixed emotions, but apparently that was enough for Trump to swoop in anyway. On Sunday, the president targeted Hess by name on Truth Social, calling him a loser and ending a post saying that Hess, quote, “shouldn’t have tried out for the team, and it’s too bad he’s on it. Very hard to root for someone like this.” Challenge him to a race, Donald. See what’ll happen. Why don’t you try skiing? See how well you do. For whatever reason, Trump hadn’t lashed out at other athletes with stronger statements, such as Olympic skier Mikaela Shiffrin, who quoted Nobel Peace Prize winner Nelson Mandela and added she was representing values of inclusivity, diversity, and kindness. Pretty American in my book, just saying, and perseverance. Let’s not forget many of these athletes have risked a lot to participate. Take veteran skier Lindsey Vonn. Check out the announcer’s narrating as she left the gates Sunday morning for her downhill run only to have her take a scary spill just 12 seconds in. 

[clip of unknown Olympics announcer] Lindsey Vonn pulls out of the gate in hopes of more Olympic glory. I just know after the years of watching her, she will ski at her limit. The tone is set right here. Oh my goodness! No! 

Erin Ryan: Now, usually I avoid Olympic spoilers, but in this case, I was pretty glad I’d heard about this before I sat down and tuned in to watch one of America’s most decorated skiers break her leg. How scary, we hope she’s okay. And that’s the news. [music break] That’s all for today. If you like the show, make sure you subscribe, leave a review, don’t be surprised that President Trump folded when a racist social media post depicting the Obamas prompted outcry even among MAGA loyalists, and tell your friends to listen. And if you’re into reading, and not just Republican elected officials offering the tenderest possible scoldings of the President’s frothing racism like me, What A Day is also a nightly newsletter. Check it out and subscribe at Crooked.com/subscribe. I’m Erin Ryan and oh my God, don’t racists get bored with themselves? They have like, they have like three jokes. And all of them were boring when Rush Limbaugh was doing them like 35 years ago. How are people who thought that post was funny so delighted with themselves, what miserable hackery? What A Day is a production of Crooked Media. It’s recorded and mixed by Desmond Taylor. Our associate producer is Emily Fohr. Our producer is Caitlin Plummer. Our video editor is Joseph Dutra. Our video producer is Johanna Case. We had production help today from Greg Walters, Matt Berg, Sean Allee, Peter Geyser, and Tyler Hill. Our senior producer is Erica Morrison, and our senior vice president of news and politics is Adriene Hill. Our theme music is by Kyle Murdock and Jordan Cantor. We had help today from the Associated Press. Our production staff is proudly unionized with the Writers Guild of America East. [music break]