KUT-FM (Austin, TX)

Is the Texas standard? I'm David Brown. Well, the ads seem relentless. Turn on a game, open your phone and there's draft kings telling you. It's now available in all 50 states, Texas included. Wait a minute. Did Texas legalize sports betting while we weren't looking? Better check the fine print draft. King's traditional sports book isn't available in Texas, but its prediction markets certainly are letting users put money on the outcome of a game by buying and selling so-called contracts. The federal regulator appears to agree that these apps fall under federal financial regs, but states are challenging that position in court. But beyond what we call it, what does all this mean for the people putting their money on the line? Joining us now Dr Timothy Fong he's a psychiatrist and co-director of the UCLA gambling studies program. Dr Fong, welcome to the Texas Standard. Well, thanks for having me. If I put money on whether the cowboys win and I win or lose money depending on the result. What difference does it make from your perspective, whether that's called a sports bet or an event contract? How do you see it? Well, that's an excellent question. That is the question I would say to you what happens to our brain, what happens to our mind when that happens and whether you call it A be t a wager, a prediction market, an event, contract, investing, speculation? It does the same thing to the brain it activates regions that our brain associated with reward with fun with. Interest and when you lose, it does exactly the same thing. So I think these are all just different ways of explaining the same type of event, which are risky financial activities that have a consequence on the body, the brain and the mind. That are essentially the same. What are the implications now that you know that the casino is in our pocket? It used to be that it would take a deliberative, you know, effort to place a bet, and that certainly is true when you're talking about investing right right? Absolutely, and you said it so well Gambling. Is relentless. Investing is relentless. Financial opportunities is relentless and frictionless. So we've created a World. Where markets never close, where opportunities to make money never stop. We've normalized it in a way that if you don't do it, you're kind of seen as an outcast. We've made it such that it is so much in the air and the water and everything that it is literally part of our DNA. Not just entertainment, but also viewed as a way of making money, as a side gig, as a side hustle. Put it all together, we forget. The very basics of why we regulate gambling activity because there's risk of financial loss, there's questions of fidelity, there's questions of is the game I'm playing fair, just like any other entertainment product. Is the mattress I'm buying safe? That's why we've always regulated gambling, but I think we've kind of. Homogenize all these risky financial activities and call them different names. But ultimately, at the end of the day, they can represent tremendous risk to anyone of a certain age. Again, is there any other form of adult entertainment that we say is good for anyone under the age of 21? Alcohol, tobacco, cannabis, these are all adult products. Gambling in every state in America with legalized gambling, is an adult product. But when it comes to investing, we said Oh, you know what, hey, you know if you're 18 or you're 16, go ahead and write and do it, But I think we've missed the boat there for certain, saying that there is risk involved with many of these type of risky financial activities, and by calling it a different name we create different rules. That's why I get super super confusing. In my mind. The implications are clear. We have to do a better job of. Getting standard language? We have to recognize that, whatever you call it, what do you do for folks that have incurred harm, what do you do for folks whose lives have been damaged by the very activity that they got into willingly and no? Let's step back, though, when we're talking about what the apps are doing, or when we're talking about how individual behavior can negatively affect someone, is it the repeated exposure to the apps that affects people's behavior, or is it the actual activity of gambling itself that you're most concerned about? I think it's both. I mean think of it like a like a drug or a substance like alcohol, cannabis or a crack cocaine. So everyone's going to react to it if you ingest it, but when you have it available 24/7 and it's super easy to get it. More and more people are going to ingest it, and particularly the ones who are biologically vulnerable are going to develop an addiction. So it's the same thing with gambling and investing. And essentially, all of this is because we have digital online access. That's 24/7. So the danger comes in being able to do this all the time, non-stop, with no end in sight. The real problem, of course, is access to money and Capital. There is no. Thing is a gambling problem. Unless you have access to money now, with the Internet, it's not just gambling apps that are available 24/7, it's access to money. I think back, like in the eighties, if I wanted to get money, I got to ride my bike down to the bank, wait in line and fill out a slip. Right now I can move money across hundreds of thousands of dollars instantaneously from my phone. So we've created