FanDuel’s President on reining in risky betting — Terms of Service

[0:01] Welcome back to Terms of Service. I'm CNN tech reporter Claire Duffy. It is NBA playoffs season, so I wanted to revisit a tech trend that we've talked about before, one that has exploded in popularity in recent years, online gambling on sports through apps like FanDuel. [0:19] Regular listeners will remember the episode we ran back in February, where I interviewed gambling counselor, researcher, and advocate Harry Levant. He talked about the risks he believes online sports gambling can pose to individual bettors and to public health. [0:33] This is no longer our grandparents' sports gambling. Where traditional sports gambling, you would bet on the winner and loser of the game, you might bet on the total points in the game. Now, betting takes place every 11 seconds or faster. [0:47] This is where the real danger comes in, because we're talking about an addictive product that has been normalized. [0:54] Following that interview, FanDuel, the biggest of the U.S. sports betting apps, expressed interest in sharing their perspective. [1:01] And because here at Terms of Service, we want to introduce our listeners to all kinds of voices working in and around the tech industry, that is what we're doing today. [1:11] Today, I have Christian Janetsky, president of the FanDuel Group, here with me. [1:15] We're going to talk about the history of the company, how their technology works, how they're addressing concerns about gambling addiction, and their efforts to ensure users and fans gamble responsibly. [1:26] My conversation with Christian after the break. [1:35] Christian, thank you so much for being here. [1:37] Thanks for having me. [1:37] So, just to start, you joined FanDuel back in 2015 as chief legal officer, and that was three years before the Supreme Court struck down a federal ban on sports gambling, which subsequently led to 39 states and the District of Columbia legalizing it, which has led to this explosion that we've seen in sports gambling over the past few years. [1:57] Tell me a little bit about why you decided to join the company at the time, and did you have a sense then that it was going to become the big business that it is today? [2:06] I'd love to tell you that I saw the path, but I really didn't. [2:10] So, I joined in 2015, as you mentioned, as the chief legal officer, a company, FanDuel, that had about 80 to 85 employees, had just completed a Series D financing round and was a fantasy sports company. [2:24] That was the entirety of the business, was matching people up from across the country to play in fantasy sports contests against one another. [2:31] I had been an avid fantasy sports player myself for 25, 30 years at that point, and so it was a really exciting opportunity for me to get into sports, and I think the reason I was brought in at the time, which ultimately did prove, I think, very helpful to the company with where it ended up going, was I was brought in to help bring regulation to the fantasy sports industry. [2:53] The plan when I joined was to build a long-term, interesting fantasy sports company, but a different sliding door opened, obviously, in 2018 and changed the trajectory of the business. [3:06] Yeah, as you mentioned, FanDuel has gone through some big regulatory shifts, obviously a huge expansion. [3:12] What has stayed consistent at the company since you've joined? [3:15] It has always been paramount for us to build trust in our brand, a trusted relationship with consumers. [3:21] We've embraced relationships with the sports leagues. [3:24] We've always believed that for the long-term sustainability of our business, partnership with the sports leagues and having their endorsement was critical to our success. [3:35] We want to operate from within the sports mainstream and sports ecosystem, not outside of it. [3:42] If you've never used FanDuel, when you open the app, you can scroll through upcoming big games with their corresponding betting opportunities and odds. [3:50] There's a carousel of different sports you can click through and also a tab showing events happening live. [3:56] Near the top, FanDuel also promotes same-game parlay betting opportunities, a wager that multiple different things will all happen within a single game. [4:05] Christian said that in 2025, FanDuel averaged 4 million active users per month. [4:11] You know, certain days, Sundays in the fall, that user count is going to be higher than it is on a Wednesday in July. [4:18] So, you know, we track the sporting calendar in terms of how many actives are on site in a given day. [4:25] But we have, you know, millions of users now that use the app every year. [4:30] And how much does the average user bet on the app in, say, a month? [4:34] Is there sort of a ballpark range? [4:36] So, the average bet size is, for a same-game parlay, ranges, you know, 8 to 5. [4:43] The most common bet is $5. [4:46] The average overall is around $15. [4:49] For straight bets, it's more like $28, I think, for the average bet. [4:54] Again, the most common bets are typically in the single digits, you know, $10 or less. [5:01] The total spend per year obviously varies widely amongst different users. [5:07] But the most, if you took 80, 85, 90 percent of our user base, you're talking about a couple hundred bucks a year. [5:14] Got it. [5:15] We have all seen the ads for sports betting apps. [5:19] Often they have promotional offers for new users. [5:21] How often do you see users coming in because of those offers, taking advantage of those offers? [5:27] We certainly see acquisition from TV. [5:29] I think we're probably not going to be in this world that much longer, but we're still in a world where television advertising seems to be what, you know, what people remember and what resonates, particularly for non-customers. [5:40] But we obviously do a ton of digital advertising that's more targeted at meeting potential users and current users where they are on the Internet. [5:50] There's definitely a sense, and there have been a number of articles written about sort of the explosion of advertising and, you know, people seeing advertisement during games. [5:58] I think part of that is because this is new. [6:03] People did not see sports betting advertisements prior to 2018. [6:07] You know, there have been studies done. [6:08] While it may feel like there is a high volume of advertising, and there certainly is a fairly sizable amount, for every one sports betting ad that you see on TV, you see four mobile phone ads and 39 pharmaceutical ads. [6:24] So if you think about it in rotation, those ads have just been around for a while. [6:28] I think people's senses are a bit dulled to them. [6:31] But it's something we're mindful of all the time about, you know, kind of finding the right medium. [6:37] I think in terms of user acquisition, though, our best performing channel is Refer a Friend. [6:41] So the top way that we get new customers to FanDuel are from existing customers of FanDuel promoting the platform. [6:50] And how does that work? [6:51] Is that, like, promote or refer a friend and you each get, you know, a little bit of bonus money or something like that? [6:56] Yes, exactly. [6:57] Exactly. [6:57] I'm curious what the conversion rate is like. [7:00] If somebody comes in for one of those sort of new user offers, how often are they then staying and spending their own money on the platform? [7:08] Yeah, we have fairly strong conversion rates from, you know, download to first-time deposit. [7:15] You know, we have churn like any business in any app. [7:18] It's not for everybody for a long period of time. [7:20] We have a lot of people who are seasonal participants on our app. [7:25] So, you know, there are people who love to bet the NFL and college football, and they're not really interested in betting other sports. [7:31] And so, you know, every September is a big reactivation period for us to bring people back to the platform who we know are just not interested in being there for the spring and summer sports. [7:43] You know, if you think about it, there are a lot of consumers that just this isn't for them. [7:46] They're not sports fans. [7:48] They're not bettors. [7:49] That would be me. [7:50] Yeah. [7:50] So we're not trying to attract everyone, right? [7:54] We are looking for people who already have an inclination to participate in the activity. [7:59] A lot of people, when we open new states, these are people who have been betting on sports. [8:03] They've just been betting on sports through non-legal channels because that's all that was available to them. [8:09] And so there's a big conversion of people who are, you know, at this point, well aware that FanDuel exists. [8:14] They probably have a FanDuel Sportsbook account because they've traveled to a nearby state or visited family somewhere on vacation where they had access to our app, [8:23] and they're able to set up, deposit, and play. [8:25] They go home, they can't access the app anymore. [8:28] Our most recent launch date was Missouri. [8:30] And what we saw were the majority of our, you know, quote, unquote, new activations were really people that already had a FanDuel account. [8:39] It just was a bit dormant because they couldn't use it in Missouri, and now they were able to use it in Missouri. [8:44] Interesting. [8:44] When you joined FanDuel, what is the sign-up process like, and how do you go about placing your first bet? [8:51] So it's a very similar sign-up process, I would say, to other online commerce apps, but more akin to a bank sign-up than it would be to, say, an e-commerce shopping app. [9:04] So you have to provide, first of all, you have to be 21 to use our app almost everywhere. [9:10] There are a couple places that you can be 18 under state law. [9:13] You have to provide all of your personal information. [9:17] That information is then vetted against third-party, know-your-customer databases. [9:22] We don't do that work. [9:24] It's outsourced to the same companies that do that same sort of identity verification for banks and other secure sites. [9:32] If there's difficulty verifying your identity, there are follow-up steps with, you know, providing your driver's license and other things. [9:39] So once you get through and you have your account verified, Social Security number, all these things, then you're able to fund the account after that. [9:47] We no longer accept credit card deposits. [9:50] Neither we nor any regulated sportsbook has ever extended credit to a customer in any form, and now we don't allow you to even fund your account with credit cards. [9:59] So you'll fund directly through a bank account, typically, or a debit card, and then you're good to go. [10:06] Do you see people, and you sort of did touch on this, but do you see people typically picking a favorite sport and just betting on that, or do you see users who just bet across all different sports? [10:17] You have the full range. [10:19] So we have, you know, you have the, what I would say are the emotional sports fan bettors who are, you know, they went to the University of Michigan, and they're going to show up every Saturday for college football and for every Michigan basketball game, and they're going to put a bet on Michigan. [10:36] That is fascinating to me. [10:37] You can see this in, because we operate on state-by-state basis, you can see that in Pennsylvania, the bets on the Steelers and the Eagles, the percentage of bets on those teams skew completely differently from bettors in Ohio or New York betting those same games. [10:57] So sports fans remain emotional and remain blindly loyal to their teams, even when they're putting money on. [11:05] But you also have, we have, you know, there's a very small percentage of users on our site who are actually highly strategic, betting to hopefully turn a profit, and they're looking only dispassionately at where they think they have a better idea of what the outcome of the game will be than our traders. [11:25] Most people are in the middle, and they are, I'm going to be watching football or basketball today, or I love tennis, and I'm going to watch every match in the U.S. Open. [11:33] And they want to give themselves a bit of a, you know, an investment in what they're watching and make it more exciting for them. [11:39] I think that's the vast, that's how I bet, that's how most of my friends bet. [11:43] It's, you know, when you're already interested in the sporting event and you think you know something about it, and you just want to have a few bucks on the game to give yourself a little more interest in it. [11:53] How does FanDuel calculate the odds for a given bet and decide how much somebody could win? [11:58] To sort of give the TLDR, it's a combination of mathematical models that take historical results of sports and teams and players, and you input those. [12:09] There's a human element with traders looking at, you know, the current news, who's in and out of a lineup, things like that. [12:17] And through all that, we calculate opening prices. [12:20] And you sort of start with the price for a game, right? [12:23] How many points do you think are going to be scored in this game? [12:25] Which team do you think is going to win and by how many? [12:28] And then you extrapolate from that all the inputs that go into that, which are, okay, if we think the New York Giants are going to score 21 points, [12:38] do we think Jackson Dart is going to throw for two touchdowns and Cam Scadaboo is going to run for one? [12:43] And so from there, you price out all the individual elements of a game around the statistics and things that people could bet on. [12:52] And, you know, sort of in what, that's how we price. [12:56] There's a Sportsbook 101 feature on our app for customers that aren't as familiar with odds. [13:01] And the other thing to think about from the odds is we operate in a competitive market. [13:04] So if we, you know, say the Wizards are, let's see, I don't know what a Wizards price now to win would be, but plus 1,200 in their next game. [13:17] If our competitors are offering plus 3,600, so you make three times as much if the Wizards win, no one's going to take our odds. [13:26] So there is a bit of a market normalization on pricing. [13:29] There's a, you know, like any market, there's competition around pricing, and so the prices are going to hew fairly closely, although they're hardly uniform. [13:39] And when you talk about historical data, you have relationships, as you mentioned, with the leagues, and that's where you're getting a lot of that data, correct? [13:47] I mean, most of that data is sort of open source. [13:49] Like everyone has access to what happened in the, you know, the Oklahoma City Thunder's last 20 games. [13:56] And so it's a lot of modeling. [13:58] It's not that different from what the teams themselves do to sort of measure player performance and which lineups work better with other lineups and how they might match up against an opponent that has really good defense around the rim. [14:12] You know, that may hurt a team that does most of their scoring at the rim. [14:16] Our traders are looking at that same kind of information, but with an eye on what do we, how do we think the game will play out? [14:24] What is the most likely result of the game and the most likely result of all the players and the prices hew to that theory of the game? [14:32] And so, you know, one of the reasons our customers love same game parlays so much, which is where you can bet on multiple things that might happen in the same game, is if you have a theory of the game, right? [14:44] Like if your theory is that the Knicks, the Knicks have the Sixers number and you really, you've been watching and Josh Hart's been getting hot again from three point, you know, [14:54] you can bet that the Knicks will win by more points than the spread, that the Knicks will score more than a certain number of points, that Jalen Brunson will have a certain number of assists and Josh Hart three pointers. [15:05] All of those things are correlated, right? [15:06] If Jalen Brunson has a good game and Josh Hart has a good game, then the Knicks are more likely to perform better, not guaranteed. [15:13] For a long time, that kind of correlative math was very hard to price. [15:18] And so you couldn't make those kinds of bets. [15:19] And what we've had are advancements in the modeling and the pricing of bets where, and all of this is transparent to users. [15:26] You can see, okay, the first two legs, I was going to win two and a half times my money if I win. [15:33] I add this leg, now it's seven to one. [15:36] So you know it's a longer shot. [15:37] You're less likely to win. [15:39] But if you are able to win, you win, you know, you win more money. [15:42] And it gives users a lot of control to, you know, what's my theory of the game? [15:46] What's my idea of what's going to happen and how do I pair those things together to generate a bet that's going to be fun for me to watch? [15:52] That's really interesting. [15:53] That was kind of one of my questions specifically on the same game parlay piece, just because when you're adding in all of these variables, it feels so much less likely that you're going to succeed. [16:03] And we know that same game parlays are some of the most profitable bets for the gaming companies. [16:08] I was sort of like, why does anybody do this? [16:11] But that makes sense, sort of what you're saying, if people have this broader theory about how they're approaching. [16:16] Yeah, it's an interesting question because we certainly, I'm certainly aware of people taking the position that it's a predatory bet and that we are marketing bets that have a higher margin for our company. [16:28] And we're doing that for our benefit. [16:29] It is true that they are higher margin, but if you, our company needs to be, have a sustainable business where people are having an enjoyable experience and wanting to continue to spend for years and years and years. [16:44] So, you know, there is a point, we don't want to drive up our margin so much that it's no longer a fun, considered a fun entertainment experience. [16:53] Sure. [16:53] A lot of sports betting is, it's entertainment. [16:56] People are putting a little bit of money down. [16:59] They get a story to tell out of it. [17:00] They get a game to watch, you know, that's more exciting, but it's never more important than sports. [17:06] Describe FanDuel's business model. [17:08] How do you make money? [17:10] Well, we make money on a margin in that price, right? [17:13] So if you're betting $106 to win $100, the most common price would be minus $110, right? [17:20] So $110 to win $100. [17:21] We make money off of the difference in winners and losers on our site with that price difference in the bet built in. [17:31] So, you know, our margin business is 10%, 12% at the gross revenue line. [17:37] Obviously, net revenue, we play through a lot of different expenses. [17:41] We're a major taxpayer. [17:43] We've paid $5 billion in taxes since the repeal of PASPA to state programs. [17:48] But, yeah, it's no secret that we make money off of, you know, people betting on our site. [17:54] And that's why I think it's important to contextualize that most people who bet on FanDuel expect to win some of the time, but not to win over time. [18:05] And I think they think of it as spending more than they think of it as winning or losing. [18:11] You know, if you go to a baseball game and you buy a hot dog and a beer and some popcorn and, you know, maybe a T-shirt or a jersey on your way out, you've spent a couple hundred bucks by the end of the night. [18:24] I was going to say, $400. [18:25] But, you know, hopefully you had a good time and saw a home run and something interesting. [18:31] And so for people on our site, they're investing in having entertainment on sporting events that they're already interested in. [18:39] And with our product, you get money back a lot of the time when you do that, which is great. [18:44] Or you get the ability to brag about how smart you are. [18:47] And so I think, you know, for the vast majority of our customers, that's what the experience is about. [18:53] When we come back from the break, Christian and I discuss how the sports betting landscape has changed since the Supreme Court's 2018 decision to repeal a law called the Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act, or PASPA. [19:08] We also talk about some of the big picture concerns around sports betting, like addiction and sports gambling scandals. [19:15] We'll be right back. [19:23] Why do you think it is important to legalize online sports gambling? [19:26] Yeah, look, I think sports betting has existed for as long as sports have existed. [19:33] They were betting at the Roman Coliseum, and we've been betting on everything since. [19:38] You know, I went to college in the late 80s and early 90s, and every fraternity house had a bookie at that point. [19:46] Like, this is just, it's just always been something that's existed. [19:49] But it was, you know, prior to the repeal of PASPA, you either had to go to Las Vegas, or you were betting with someone offering an illegal bookmaking service. [19:59] And, you know, organized crime was involved in that. [20:01] And then when the Internet came about, it was offshore sites operating out of the Caribbean. [20:06] And if you think about the difference, you know, now with legalized and regulated, not only the obvious $5 billion we've paid in taxes to states, which is building roads and paying for teacher salaries and first responders and Medicaid coverage for rural counties. [20:23] There are all kinds of benefits out of capturing the revenue of activity that's already going on. [20:28] But beyond that, for consumers, when you bet on FanDuel, you know you're getting paid if you win the bet. [20:36] And you know that your money is secure with us for as long as you leave it there, and you can take it out whenever you want it. [20:43] And if you have a problem with us, you have an independent regulatory body that you can take your dispute to and who will adjudicate it. [20:50] And so, just that level of trust and having recourse, you also get all the benefits of we work closely with the leagues. [20:57] We monitor every bet for integrity. [20:59] We're reporting anything suspicious we see to the leagues and to independent third parties who notify all the other sports betting operators. [21:09] So, again, we're operating from within and in partnership with the sports league and media ecosystem. [21:17] And so, I think the tradeoffs and the fact that legalization and regulatory oversight is a net positive is pretty clear. [21:26] Yeah, I was going to ask about that. [21:28] It was one point that Harry Levant made in our conversation was he sort of frames the tax revenue differently, where he's like, that is money that people have lost that they can't otherwise spend elsewhere in the economy. [21:40] Is that the wrong framing in your mind? [21:43] I think, look, this is the United States. [21:46] People are free to spend their money on what they choose to spend their money on. [21:50] I, you know, and people use their entertainment dollars in different ways. [21:56] I think if you did the bar graph and you stacked up, you know, what people spend on coffee, what people spend on their wardrobes, what people spend on vacation, what people spend. [22:06] Like, these are the things that make the economy go around and people have choice about what they want to want to spend their entertainment dollars on. [22:15] And the entertainment dollars that are generated for sports betting, again, they pay for gambling addiction research and support services. [22:24] We understand and accept and take quite seriously that our product is not for everyone and that by all accounts from experts, somewhere in one to two percent of users that engage with our platform may develop an addiction. [22:39] And it's our job to recognize who those people are, get them off of our platform, get them resources from a third party, which we do, full stop, you know, no question. [22:51] For what it's worth, estimates of what percentage of sports bettors have gambling problems or addiction can vary depending on the source. [23:00] The most recent nationwide survey from the National Council on Problem Gambling conducted in 2024 found that eight percent of American adults reported experiencing at least one indicator of problematic gambling behavior, quote, many times in the prior year. [23:14] And that percentage was higher among sports bettors. [23:17] For the other 98 percent of our users, we also take quite seriously trying to keep them on a journey that's positive for them, where they're spending. [23:26] And what someone can spend comfortably as a portion of their disposable income is different for everyone. [23:32] And we're trying to meet our users where they need, where they are and watch for. [23:36] So we have a tool called Real-Time Check-In. [23:39] And so we monitor every one of our users' deposits over time, and we establish a baseline. [23:46] So if you're someone who tends to deposit $25 every other Friday to fund your account, and then you bet off of that, you know, for the next couple weeks, and you put another $25 in. [23:57] And if you show up suddenly on a Saturday, having lost whatever was in your account, and deposit $100, and then you come back on Monday, that will be flagged from our system. [24:06] You'll get a notification when you try to make that deposit to say, here's what you normally deposit. [24:12] This appears anomalous to us. [24:15] Are you sure this is something you want to do? [24:17] And the first time the user is able to click, yes, it's something I want to do, and keep going. [24:22] But we'll then continue to monitor up to the point where we'll say, if you want to make this deposit, you have to set a limit for yourself going forward about what deposit you will make, up to and including just refusing to deposit and saying, this behavior does not look like normalized behavior. [24:38] And we want you to take a beat and check in with yourself about whether this is something you want to do, and we'll point them to all of our tools. [24:45] There's not another app that I'm aware of on your phone where you're spending money and engaging in a product or a service that is asking you if you should take a timeout, logging you out every time you're out of the app for a few minutes, prompting you to put limits on your spending, limits on your loss, limits on your deposit. [25:05] So we're doing a lot of these things voluntarily. [25:07] We're trying to build a sustainable business for the long term where people have a good experience and want to come back. [25:14] And we believe that we have a role to play in that journey. [25:18] And so we send everyone a MySpend report every month that shows them exactly what they did on our app. [25:25] We don't want people to have cognitive dissonance about how much they're spending. [25:29] We want them to confront how much they're spending and make sure that they feel good about it. [25:33] And look, look, for the record, we have, for users who spent more than 10 days on our site last year, 80% of them used one of our RG tools. [25:42] So we're seeing a, and the highest spending users tend to use them more. [25:47] So we're seeing a really positive trend. [25:49] And I think, you know, when we would survey users a few years ago, there was a bit of a stigma around using a tool. [25:56] Like, well, I don't have a problem. [25:57] I don't need to use a tool. [25:58] So we've done a ton of education to say, no, this is just taking control of your experience. [26:04] We have a group of responsible gaming ambassadors who go out and speak on college campuses [26:09] and talk about the tools and experience and how to recognize if you're having, you know, problematic behavior. [26:17] We have a program for parents called Trusted Voices in partnership with Randy and Anita Livingston [26:24] that helps parents at the right time for them think about having a conversation with their kids about gambling. [26:31] Because we understand that these advertisements that are on TV are seen during the games. [26:35] And, you know, you have to be an adult to be on our platform, but you don't have to be an adult to see the ad [26:39] and be curious about what these things are. [26:42] And so we, you know, but there are a lot of things that adult, people aren't ready to do until they're adults [26:46] that they learn about earlier. [26:47] And this is about, again, providing information, empowerment, education. [26:51] But ultimately, we believe we do have a role to be interventionist at the right points also. [26:57] Any user who ever raises their hand and says they have a problem is off of our site for good, [27:02] given resources through a company called KindBridge. [27:04] We're working with the other operators in the industry through our responsible online gaming association now [27:10] to create a universal exclusion. [27:14] So if anyone has ever said to FanDuel that they believe they're having a problem and they wish they could stop, [27:20] we want DraftKings and Fanatics and Bet365 to, in an anonymized fashion, have that information [27:26] so that if the user comes to their site, they can't bet there either. [27:30] Interesting. [27:31] That's the right answer for the customer. [27:34] And, you know, the industry recognizes that and is working to make sure we can achieve it. [27:38] So at the time we're having this conversation, last week there were two lawsuits that were filed [27:43] against FanDuel and your competitor, DraftKings, in coordination, I should say, [27:47] with Harry Levant's Public Health Advocacy Institute, accusing the companies of intentionally developing [27:52] addictive features that have harmed users. [27:54] This took inspiration from the legal approach that just succeeded against Meta and YouTube in California. [28:00] I understand this is ongoing litigation, but do you have any response to that suit? [28:05] We don't comment on litigation at all. [28:06] And I'll confess I have not read the complaints, so I don't even have really a baseline of information about them. [28:12] It's clear that there are, you know, if you pull back, there are, you mentioned the Meta lawsuit, [28:18] there are a lot of, there's a lot of litigation interest on apps on your phone, things that people interact with. [28:26] You know, I would go back to what I said before. [28:28] The FanDuel app and our competitor apps, I think, are doing more to educate, empower, and intervene [28:36] with users' spending relationships with them than any other app on your phone. [28:42] You know, there are apps that are very open about algorithmically trying to keep you in the app [28:47] for as long a period as they can. [28:49] They're ad-supported. [28:50] Time on-site is what matters. [28:52] You know, our app is logging you out after 15 minutes or sending you check-ins to say if you think you should, [28:57] you've been on the app for a while, do you think you need to take a break? [28:59] So we have a, I think, a very fundamentally different approach to user interaction, [29:05] and we feel very good about what we're doing. [29:08] There have been several high-profile instances recently of team staffers or athletes being charged [29:14] with participating in betting schemes involving FanDuel and other gambling apps. [29:19] Is this just sort of inevitable part of sports betting now that it has become so widely accessible [29:24] and available? [29:25] And do you have structures in place to flag or stop schemes like that? [29:29] Yeah, look, I think this is, you know, we're still in the, you know, early innings, [29:34] to use a sports metaphor, of this category and its development. [29:38] And these sorts of stories have a, by the time they are public, they have a pretty long tail to them. [29:45] So they tend to have happened two to three years ago by the time they're reported in the news. [29:50] And what we've seen is that because there's a legal and regulated market where we are monitoring, [29:59] if you think about it, in all of these cases, FanDuel's a victim, right? [30:03] We don't want people to be betting with inside information and knowing something that we don't. [30:09] That's by far the least important part of the story. [30:12] The integrity of sports is by far the most important part of these stories. [30:17] But what I would tell you is that there were betting scandals off and on long before sports betting was legalized in the U.S. [30:25] And you have to wonder how many more of those there would have been that existed that we just never knew about. [30:32] And what we're finding out now are instances where some team staffer or friend of a player is betting $1,500 one time on one bet. [30:45] And if you look at the percentage out of the overall bets that are made on our platform, [30:50] the percentage that have involved integrity issues, it is sub 0.0001%. [30:56] So it's a very, it's a needle in a haystack, yet we're pulling the needle out of the haystack. [31:01] Every time it's happening, we're reporting it. [31:03] And I think what you will see over time is people will understand you cannot get away with this stuff, [31:10] that you will be caught and they'll stop doing it. [31:14] Like I said, I've been a sports fan for 50 years. [31:16] I cannot stand hearing these, it's painful stories of people, you know, messing with the integrity of sport. [31:23] And I hate that FanDuel has any part in that. [31:25] But I do think that we are moving towards a very positive place where it's the right thing to highlight and elevate these instances [31:35] and be transparent about them so that we eventually root them all out. [31:40] Yeah. [31:41] You touched on just sort of the culture around all of this, the culture around sports. [31:46] How do you think about sports betting changing the culture around fandom and watching sports big pictures? [31:52] Like we've got a producer on the team and you mentioned kids. [31:55] He no longer watches sports on TV with his kids because he doesn't want them exposed to gambling ads. [32:01] I know you also recently sat down with the Atlantic writer McKay Coppins, [32:04] who wrote this long piece about his experience trying out and sort of getting sucked into sports betting. [32:09] And one of the things he describes is this moment of feeling like irrationally angry at a player who messed up one of his bets. [32:18] How do you sort of weigh, like, does this make watching sports less enjoyable for some people? [32:24] You're talking about it makes it maybe more enjoyable for some people and you're talking about it in your group chats. [32:29] How do you think this is changing the culture around watching sports? [32:32] Yeah, I think there's a difference, first of all, between people who bet on sports and people who don't in their experience of sports. [32:43] And I think you don't have to opt. [32:45] No one is making anyone bet on sports. [32:48] You know, McKay did it voluntarily with the Atlantic's checkbook. [32:52] I mean, the statistics are clear that people who do bet on sports watch more games, watch them longer, are more engaged. [32:57] There's a little bit of chicken and egg. [32:59] These are people who like sports anyway. [33:01] And so, you know, but it's clear that the level of engagement that sports betting brings to sports is a positive. [33:09] I think we do have to be honest and sort of think about, you know, one, I mentioned this earlier. [33:14] One thing that's different is there is advertising, advertising on television. [33:18] I have 12 and 14 year old daughters. [33:19] They understand what FanDuel is. [33:21] They know betting is not for them. [33:22] It's something for adults. [33:24] I'm very comfortable talking to them. [33:26] I mean, I think there are a lot of things where parents should just talk to their children about something and give them context and help them understand that. [33:33] We like to leave people with a little bit of practical advice, takeaways. [33:37] If people want to make sure they're using these apps responsibly, what is your advice? [33:42] I would click on the RG symbol on the FanDuel app. [33:46] Most apps have something that's probably RG on most of the apps, but something similar. [33:50] And take a look at all the resources that are available to you and click through. [33:56] Think about what kind of experience you want to have. [34:01] You know, deposit a little money, play around with the app, but set some limits for yourself if that's important to you from the outset. [34:07] And the app will be there to support you on that journey. [34:10] Well, Christian, thank you so much. [34:12] I really appreciate you taking so much time, and I have learned so much from this conversation, so thank you. [34:17] Thanks for having me. [34:21] It was interesting to hear Christian say that he thinks most people understand that sports betting is not a meaningful way to make money, but rather a place to experience a new type of sports entertainment. [34:32] That feels important for users to be aware of. [34:35] For parents, don't ignore frequent sports gambling ads when you're watching sports with your kids. [34:41] Start an age-appropriate conversation to emphasize that gambling is an adult activity, one that can be entertaining but can come with real risks. [34:50] If you are betting this weekend, take the time to scroll through and turn on responsible gaming tools. [34:56] Even if you think it's just for fun, you don't want to risk going overboard before you've considered where to set your limits. [35:02] And if you are interested in a deeper dive on the NCAA basketball betting scandal and the money in collegiate sports, CNN has a fascinating new documentary called Money Madness, College Basketball at a Crossroads, that's streaming on CNN All Access. [35:19] That's it for this week's episode of Terms of Service. [35:21] I'm Claire Duffy. [35:22] Talk to you next week.