- December 20, 2024
- Gambling
On this episode we take a look back on many interesting moments from the important conversations we’ve have over the last 12 months.
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Transcript:
00;00;03;20 – 00;00;33;04
Unknown
Hello, everybody, and welcome to Wager Danger. I’m Bob ness, the producer of the podcast. Once again, I’m very pleased to be able to put together an end of year compilation of 2024 as guests and highlights. This year’s guests touch on a wide variety of topics, from financial literacy and recovery journeys to banking patterns and questionable advertising tactics. Shane’s docket was filled with experts with no shortage of insight, information and intelligence.
00;00;33;07 – 00;00;58;05
Unknown
Our first clip is from when Shane sat down with Alex DeMarco to talk about Gam Fin, an organization that brings together both mental health professionals and financial professionals to address the needs of people with gambling debt as a result of their gambling addiction. So what we’ve heard from treatment providers is that if we’re just addressing the financial issue.
00;00;58;07 – 00;01;27;17
Unknown
So, for example, if someone declares bankruptcy or if they get a bailout, you know, family member pays off their gambling debt, but they’re only addressing the financial issue in isolation. Eventually, if they haven’t addressed the underlying gambling issues, they often return back to where they started. They’re back in the same, place where they started financially. So we really want to think about how to provide financial counseling in support of the problem.
00;01;27;17 – 00;01;59;14
Unknown
Gambling treatments basically provide a holistic service to the individual so that they can treat both sides, you know, where they aren’t helping them improve where they are financially, and come up with a plan for long term recovery from their, disorder. So, yeah, we don’t want to work alone, and just deal with the finances. The second thing is, like when we do what we do, we’re focused on providing the right financial counseling for the individual.
00;01;59;14 – 00;02;29;28
Unknown
We’re not promoting any products. We don’t get paid a commission. We’re they’re acting in the best interest of the individual, and we get paid for that. Service, a fee for service. Basically. We’re not like a traditional financial advisor who might, get paid based on a fee based on their assets under management. So we’re really there to solve problems, for the individual to help them come up with a plan that’s going to help them get better and ultimately restore hope.
00;02;30;01 – 00;02;59;25
Unknown
That’s really the key element is giving people a sense that it might take a long time. It may, you know, be several years, to get out of this situation that they’re in maybe some hard decisions to be made along the way, but they’re usually as a plan to get to a better place financially that restores hope and with that, then you can, you know, keep working with your treatment provider to work on on the the gambling side of the issue.
00;02;59;27 – 00;03;27;26
Unknown
Next, Shane as Dave Wolf, the new executive director of the Illinois Council on Problem Gambling, to look into his crystal ball and give his thoughts on RPG’s future, Dave also dips into his background in health care to emphasize the importance of understanding gambling disorder as a serious addiction, rather than simply a matter of willpower. We’ll see how clear my crystal ball is, but one you know, as we are primarily grant funded right now.
00;03;27;28 – 00;03;44;18
Unknown
We would we would like to, over time, develop some other sources of funding so that if, if the grants did go away, hope hopefully they don’t. But if they do, we want to still be able to provide these services. You know, we’ve we’ve we’ve gotten a great start where we’re I really feel like we’re reaching out, touching a lot of people.
00;03;44;21 – 00;04;05;17
Unknown
And it would be nice to, you know, to, to, to work on that. As I, I mentioned, one of the things that we’ve, we’ve seen when we’ve go to some of these conferences with counselors who, who are not problem gambling counselors is, again, they don’t, you know, they don’t know about ICP. And a lot of them behavioral health counselors don’t realize that gambling is a problem.
00;04;05;23 – 00;04;26;15
Unknown
Again, as, as as we’ve we’ve seen the big thing I’ve learned is, you know, gambling is it’s just like I just, you know, just don’t go to the casino. Just stop gambling, and you get over it. So our goal over the next year, the next five years, it’s a really expand our audience and and you know, Heather, Heather when I started Heather’s passionate about she’s all about brand recognition.
00;04;26;15 – 00;04;47;11
Unknown
And we would love for every counselor and really every health care provider in the state to know that if you need education on problem gambling, there’s only one place to go and it’s ICP. So we want to spread the word, get our name out there. We want to really expand our audience as well, because it’s not just behavioral health counselors that, you know, might be that first, the first stop for for somebody with a problem gambling.
00;04;47;11 – 00;05;05;22
Unknown
I, I came from from the health care field. And I know that, you know, I’m thinking back when, you know, one of our physician offices, if if somebody goes into a doctor’s office and you know, they have a problem with, with drugs, you know, they notice sending them to some counselor, they have a problem with problem gambling. They would have no clue what what to do with them.
00;05;05;22 – 00;05;22;00
Unknown
So, there are a lot of of entry points to the that problem gambling treatment program. And, you know, we’d like to hit all of those as many as possible so that people know, you know, they may not really treat it, but we want to give them the resources to, you know, this is how you talk to them.
00;05;22;00 – 00;05;42;01
Unknown
This is what this is the next step to get them the help they need. So it’s going to be a big task. But I think I think we’re up to it every year. Wager Danger has done an episode outside the studio and this year was no exception. We took the mobile studio up to Waukegan to an event for Mike Castle, where Shane spoke to Doctor Sandra.
00;05;42;01 – 00;06;12;06
Unknown
Adele, who was a keynote speaker promoting her book called Confessions of a Slot Machine Queen, in which she details her journey into the depths of gambling addiction. Shane began by asking Doctor Adele why she started keeping a journal when she came home from the casino. Something that was not quite right was what I saw in the casinos. From the very beginning, the first time I went into a casino in April 2005, what I saw disturbed me.
00;06;12;08 – 00;06;38;18
Unknown
And that was it was middle of the day, and there were lots of elderly people in the casino. They looked like zombies, you know, totally mesmerized in front of their machines. They were smoking. I remember seeing a man walking around with it. Oxygen tank. So, you know, that said to me, this person is not healthy, right?
00;06;38;21 – 00;07;00;08
Unknown
And, the environment itself was just very puzzling to me. First of all, when you go into a casino, you can’t even find your way through a bath to a bathroom. You have to walk through rows and rows of slot machines. It was very depressing. The the the environment. And I didn’t understand how this could be fun.
00;07;00;11 – 00;07;20;18
Unknown
Right? Yeah. And I went because somebody invited me to go to the casino. She just called me at a date when I was bored. I said, let’s go for a ride. Well, the ride from Madison, Wisconsin to, Ho-Chunk casino along highway 12 is very pretty, and I’m an outdoors person. Okay. And that was the other thing walking out.
00;07;20;18 – 00;07;47;19
Unknown
It was a beautiful day. And walking into this dark place that didn’t smell good. It stank. I say stank, not stink and stunk. It was just the whole thing was disturbing to me. So from the very beginning, I was in a place that I didn’t like. Found no, pleasure out of it, but then somehow got hooked, right.
00;07;47;21 – 00;08;11;07
Unknown
And that getting hooked was that first, you know, thousand dollar win that I got. I’ll take that in 100 and $1,000 bills, I said as I landed my hand, my voucher to the man behind the cashier’s counter. The Queen had done it again. This is another thing. You know. We have delusions about ourselves. So I was winning these little jackpots, you know, for $100 here, $300 there.
00;08;11;13 – 00;08;31;29
Unknown
I thought the thing was my personal ATM if something bad stuff started to happen. So I was a queen of slot machines. Okay, so I had done it again. I hadn’t been in the casino more than 30 minutes and had won $1,011 on a ten times play machine. The cashier counted out ten crisp hundred dollar bills, 110 and a single.
00;08;32;01 – 00;08;55;11
Unknown
Oh, by the way, they those dollar, those hundred dollar bills are like, really fresh, like lube. I stuffed the single with some change, from my pocket in, in, in the guy’s tip box and neatly folded the hundreds in a little leather wallet. I used to keep my gambling money from my separate from my real money, because money changed its value in the casino.
00;08;55;11 – 00;09;19;05
Unknown
You know, it’s the casino’s money. As long as you gambling when you start losing your money. And then, having lost it, I think it was $1,200, maybe not $1,000, because that $1,200, then you have to pay taxes on it. So I didn’t pay taxes on this. And anyway, maybe $1,000, but I played back 200 of that and lost it, and I couldn’t understand this.
00;09;19;08 – 00;09;45;25
Unknown
It’s like, this is weird. I had $1,000 in my hand and I gave a machine back $200, so I worried me. But the whole environment was is very depressing. It’s not healthy. I didn’t understand at the time that casinos, market very heavily to older people during the day. That’s why I saw so many older people during the day.
00;09;45;27 – 00;10;06;03
Unknown
And so I just began taking notes because, frankly, I thought I was going to bring down the whole gambling industry. I was going to expose what was happening in the course that didn’t work. One of the recurring themes we’ve heard in Wager Danger throughout the years is how gambling apps and their accessibility are changing the gambling industry.
00;10;06;06 – 00;10;36;26
Unknown
In this clip, Jodi Beckel, the CEO of the Better Institute in Pittsburgh, talks about the changing landscape of gambling addiction and how young professionals seem a bit more predisposed to addiction, especially regarding gambling apps. These apps have fundamentally changed a generation, and young man’s relationship with sports and sports gambling. It’s truly an eye opening study. Yeah. The research there’s a lot of research that’s supporting, the average age is, 26.
00;10;36;28 – 00;11;01;22
Unknown
Male sports better, tends to be educated. So college degree and, disposable income, which I always would love. You know, to understand that. But what that really means is they don’t have a lot of those, life expenses yet. They’re not coupled up. They’re not, you know, raising a family yet, but they have a good income because they’re educated.
00;11;01;22 – 00;11;32;28
Unknown
And so to them, they have a lot of money to do whatever they want with because they don’t have all those expenses. And that’s the group that I see the most right now, coming in for care is that they’re like, what the heck happened? So how did this happen to me? Most of the comments are I was doing okay, just doing, you know, daily fantasy sports here and there or, a sports league with my friend until it went online.
00;11;33;01 – 00;11;58;02
Unknown
So we know there’s something about being online, because then it’s on your phone. It’s on your computer, tablet, what have you. And that group, that age group is so comfortable with technology, that is, I call it the crack cocaine of gambling. At this point, I, you know, 26 to 32, the amount of financial devastation that is caused by the gambling.
00;11;58;02 – 00;12;43;05
Unknown
And for these individuals and oftentimes their families, because many of the families will rescue them or bail them out the first time. And only after the second time of getting into financial devastation do they then come to someone like me for professional help. So that is absolutely a group that we’ve got to have a lot more, prevention and early intervention, you know, public awareness, marketing whatever, because they’re seeing so much of it in the gambling space, many don’t even know how to watch sports without having gambled on it, because they’ve been doing, you know, some form of for such a long time.
00;12;43;07 – 00;13;07;26
Unknown
And while I’d love to help people return to being a fan, right, some of these individuals were never just a fan. They always knew there had to be some discussion about, you know, points over under who’s on what team, what are their stats? Does that make them better? All in a way to, you know, feed into what ultimately now is the sports betting world.
00;13;07;28 – 00;13;33;24
Unknown
So it’s it’s an interesting group and it’s it’s it’s it’s difficult. It’s sad. When is enough truly enough? In this powerful episode of Wager Danger, Jimmy shares his raw personal journey through gambling addiction and into recovery. Here, he describes a moment he realized that neither jail time nor willpower alone could stop his gambling, and how finding the right support finally helped him turn his life around.
00;13;33;24 – 00;14;01;27
Unknown
After years of struggle and going to jail doesn’t help him stop gambling. Nothing will. And they were 100%, wrong because, the only thing that really could, could save me and stop me from gambling was Gamblers Anonymous. So, did it three months and two weeks after I got out of out of jail. I’m sorry.
00;14;01;27 – 00;14;30;05
Unknown
Gambling again? How old were you at this point? I am 29. Okay, so you continue to gamble there. And, up until you said there was a watershed moment when you were 31. And what was that? Yeah. So. So, gamble for the next two years and then, again of my parents and, it seemed like, you know, they bail me out again because as parents, you know, I’m not a pair myself.
00;14;30;05 – 00;14;48;21
Unknown
But you’d have to think, you know, if I were to put myself in their shoes. You know, if I don’t pay this off, this debt off, you know, potentially my son could could harm himself, kill himself. Right. And I think that’s what their biggest worry was. So then they always did, knowing that it wasn’t good for them to bail me out.
00;14;48;21 – 00;15;06;06
Unknown
They always bailed me out. And, the last time they bail me out, they kind of turned their backs on me. And, you know, usually, usually what would happen as they would bail me out, be upset, not talk to me for a couple weeks, and then it would slowly come back. And like, that was the routine that we did for, you know, ten years.
00;15;06;13 – 00;15;28;27
Unknown
Sure. And, you know, this time was different. I, they, they lasted months and, you know, usually like, and it was kind of weird because a lot of times that I had to ask them for money. It was always around like some type of holiday. And, and they would always ask me, like, even if they didn’t like me, they would always say, listen, we understand what’s going on, but you need to be with your family on the holiday.
00;15;29;01 – 00;15;59;28
Unknown
This is, you know, you need to be here with us. And I was like, you know, pity party. I was like, no, I don’t deserve to be there. And and my dad just made sure that I was there. And, and I, this last time, which was February, February 2012. Then Easter rolled around and I got a, text message from my brother saying that, we don’t want you, you’re not, you’re not welcome.
00;16;00;03 – 00;16;23;27
Unknown
You’re not welcome at, at dinner, Easter dinner this year. And, you know, for me, that was, that hurt a lot. And I felt alone, and, I was alone, and, I think I think that was that was the start of it. I think, you know, people, a lot of people ask me what was the, what was the defining moment?
00;16;23;27 – 00;16;47;03
Unknown
What made you would put made it click into to me, it wasn’t one thing. It was it was a bunch of things. And then they all ended up to just slowly, one day at a time, just the recovery, just started to get better and better. And I just started to see, I guess you could say the light more and more and things started to become more clear for me.
00;16;47;05 – 00;17;17;08
Unknown
I was lucky enough, actually. In January I signed up for the Chicago Marathon. So during those those early months, I was training for Chicago Marathon. And that was, you know, there’s a lot of like studies on and how, you know, working out and and running and all that could like is is helpful towards addiction. Rob ODAAT whose last name stands for One Day at a time, transformed his recovery journey into viral content that is generating real change.
00;17;17;11 – 00;17;42;04
Unknown
From YouTube to TikTok to Instagram, his authentic approach to sharing both information and personal stories is helping people recognize their gambling problems and find help. He receives so much feedback from his global audience that he is in the process of getting his gambling coaching certification, so he can dispense proper feedback to those who are in real need. Here’s his strategy for creating engaging content.
00;17;42;07 – 00;18;04;00
Unknown
It’s definitely evolved over the course of the time that I’ve been doing it, but right now, I work with a consultant on YouTube, and we’ve developed a strategy of three different types of content. So the first type of content is how to or informational content. So that’s sharing. How did I get myself away from my gambling addiction.
00;18;04;03 – 00;18;39;02
Unknown
How can you do it? How can you help a loved one? How can you find resources? You know the things that are really important, the information that people need, but not necessarily the information people are entertained by, which is where category two comes in, which is a wider reach of content. And that is everything from myths about the casino industry to social media trends regarding gambling and the gambling addiction, to the secret world of casino streamers that are out there using fake money to lure kids into gambling online.
00;18;39;04 – 00;19;03;25
Unknown
And all of this, of course, gets packaged into TikTok content as well. But, the last category is also what I think is the most important, and it’s storytelling and personal sharing. So it’s the kind of things that you would see at a support group where someone’s sharing what’s going on in their life. My best performing video ever was my gambling addiction story, Six Years of Hell on YouTube.
00;19;03;27 – 00;19;21;02
Unknown
And that’s where I sat down in my car. No edits, no clips at all. And I just put the phone in front of me and told my story front to back about how I got started, how I got myself out of gambling, and what I’m doing now. People really feel alone, especially in this addiction, because it’s so isolating.
00;19;21;02 – 00;19;48;18
Unknown
Isolation is what we’re usually drawn to so we can keep gambling and no one notices around us. So when you kind of knock that barrier down, I think it gives people a reason to seek help. Yeah. Do you do you hear from some of these people all the time? Yeah, yeah. It’s it’s gotten it got to the point that I decided to go out and I’m one passing, one test away from getting my exam.
00;19;48;21 – 00;20;10;19
Unknown
The gambling coaching certification, because I get so many messages to the extent of my life is ruined. I don’t know what to do. What? What can I do to get help? And I wanted to equip myself to be better suited to answer that question. I’d say on a on a good week, good meaning like good content, performing week.
00;20;10;21 – 00;20;40;28
Unknown
I probably get 500 messages, with the large majority being where do I get help? And some some of them being, can you give me money? Which of course is a terrible idea. But, you know, people are lost. Next, can you’re banking patterns predict a gambling problem? Doctor Kasra Gagarin, director of research at UNLV’s International Gaming Institute, is pioneering new ways to identify gambling disorders through payment data alone.
00;20;41;00 – 00;21;08;22
Unknown
In this clip, he reveals how analyzing deposits and withdrawals could help banks and payment providers spot concerning patterns before they become devastating problems. So the data we had access to was like kind of kind of a gambling specific Venmo or PayPal or whatever it is. So you basically transferred money from your bank account to this wallet, and then you could use that wallet on an online merchant or in a casino to deposit money onto the machine or onto the website.
00;21;08;24 – 00;21;29;17
Unknown
So all we could see really was deposits and withdrawals. We didn’t see bets way, which is typically what a lot of the work that has been done in the past on like data analysis and machine learning, a lot of it is looked at the bet information. So like how much did someone bet, how often did they back, what games did they bet on?
00;21;29;19 – 00;21;57;01
Unknown
That was a kind of, not so much analysis done on this kind of higher level. The deposits in the withdrawals were happening, and so we focused on that, and it was quite interesting what we found, because it looks as though simply from just those deposits and withdrawals, you can actually extract some behavioral patterns or markers that could indicate someone is perhaps someone you could monitor a bit more closely.
00;21;57;03 – 00;22;19;09
Unknown
It wouldn’t like you wouldn’t be able to diagnose someone. The game be sort of based on player data. That would be very difficult. But you could perhaps identify clusters of people who would warrant further monitoring. So so that’s kind of what we found. I think it’s quite important because it shows that payment providers in the industry maybe have an onus of responsibility here.
00;22;19;09 – 00;22;47;04
Unknown
Right? Right. And maybe then that maybe financial institutions, because your bank can see your deposits and withdrawals to gambling merchants wherever. Right. So I think it’s important because it shows that we can use that kind of data to identify people who potentially could warrant further monitoring. When Christina Cook couldn’t find support specifically for women struggling with gambling addiction, she created one herself.
00;22;47;06 – 00;23;08;23
Unknown
In this clip, Christina shares how the broke Girl Society grew from a personal need into a thriving community of over 2300 women supporting each other through recovery. It just kind of let me know that there’s a need for more support for women, right? Which this was always kind of my goal is just trying to to find more support for women, women.
00;23;08;23 – 00;23;32;06
Unknown
And I didn’t necessarily set out to be the face of like women who gamble or anything like that. It was never like, this is what I want to do. But there was a sense of tremendous purpose from the time that I started doing the social media stuff, started the, the podcast. Like when I talk about that piece, there’s also a very profound purpose in there.
00;23;32;13 – 00;23;49;06
Unknown
Just kind of let me know that everything that I’ve been through the previous 15 years, there was a reason for it. Right? Like I had to I had to make it. I had to understand why I was struggling so hard and why I did the things that I did and and all these. There had to have been a reason for it.
00;23;49;06 – 00;24;07;07
Unknown
And so for me, it was really finding my purpose in all of this. And so the next thing for that was I’m going to create a space for all these women that, that I’m talking to to come together and support each other. Right. It didn’t just have to be me in one person. It can be me and all these people.
00;24;07;07 – 00;24;35;25
Unknown
And so I started the Broke Girls Society, Facebook group. And once I did that, I mean, it was slow going because I didn’t advertise it. I didn’t say, hey, there’s this group for women. I can’t I wanted to keep it as safe as possible. So I kind of just let it organically grow, as people say on the podcast, you know, then they would find the groups or like as word kind of got out and the podcast grew and clinicians started kind of utilizing the podcast to help aid their clients and things like.
00;24;35;25 – 00;25;02;04
Unknown
So it’s just kind of organically grown over the last three years into now, we’re, I think, just surpassed 2300 women in there. Wow. And I know it doesn’t seem like if somebody is listening, 2300 women isn’t a lot. But for a niche, you know, for a niche podcast for that’s for women who struggle with gambling, harm it. You know, you look at that number and you’re like, man, I wish it wasn’t so many, you know what I mean?
00;25;02;04 – 00;25;26;05
Unknown
Like, I wish there weren’t so many struggling with this issue and having to seek support. We have very different expectations a lot of times in different roles. And so I would think that the support would look different as well. I have had a lot of conflict in like people not believing that women and men should, should, you know, recover in separate spaces, that it should be a co, you know, recovery space.
00;25;26;05 – 00;25;44;11
Unknown
And I’m like, that’s great. If that works for you. There are plenty of options for that. But, you know, it’s also the kind of the darker side of that is if you take a woman who’s maybe experienced abuse, trauma, severe PTSD at the hands of a man, and you say that the only safe space for her to recover is in a room, right?
00;25;44;13 – 00;26;09;24
Unknown
Has men. Like, what? What are we doing for this person? Right. We’re sending them somewhere that could be potentially traumatic and triggering and, you know, really being a deterrent to her recovery. And so it’s like that’s that’s where I see the value in spaces that are just specific to women. We can come in, we can talk about motherhood, marriage, because all of these things really, at the end of the day, impact our recovery.
00;26;09;24 – 00;26;36;17
Unknown
They impact the work that we’re doing and how we prioritize ourselves and all of those things. So it’s it’s a very different vibe. What happens when angry sports bettors target college and professional athletes? Dan Tarullo joined Shane to talk about how his gambling and recovery journey informed his work at IC3 60, an organization that offers training and education for athletes in this all access world of gambling apps.
00;26;36;19 – 00;27;04;04
Unknown
From Venmo requests to threats on social media, Dan exposes how expanded sports betting is creating dangerous new pressures for young athletes and what’s being done to protect them. And some of the concerns we see are around the student athletes or even professional athletes putting it on the field, you know they’re performing on the field. You know, you have people that are wagering on these events that will start sending nasty messages, you know, threats through social media.
00;27;04;06 – 00;27;25;23
Unknown
You have fake deep fake images. You have AI utilization, you have, harassment, intimidation. There was a young man from one of the colleges a couple of weeks ago, came out and said he gets Venmo requests regularly from people who bet on the game or bet on his performance and loses money, and they’ll say, you suck this week.
00;27;25;24 – 00;27;45;25
Unknown
You owe me $100. Oh, come on, here’s my Venmo. Send it to me, and it gets nasty. Some of the work we’re doing now. And while I was with epic and, you know, just Paul Buck was my was the CEO and the founder and remains a good friend. You know, he and he believes in people first. You know 40% of epic is lived experience.
00;27;45;27 – 00;28;03;18
Unknown
And we always try to collect as a lot of data from the schools that we would go to because we want to get the feedback. And we started seeing this, this concern over student athlete harassment and threat. Coach Jay Wright from Villanova actually expressed that when I was there three years ago. He said his men’s basketball team constantly receiving threats.
00;28;03;18 – 00;28;21;17
Unknown
That’s what would keep him up at night. So we started hearing this and then we started seeing the patterns. We started seeing your FBI gets involved in cases. You know, we start seeing these areas of opportunity to provide education. You know, how do you keep yourself safe? How do you protect your brand as a student athlete, so to speak?
00;28;21;19 – 00;28;43;06
Unknown
You know, digital safety, digital media. We we’ve now started doing that at IC3 60. Where at where I presently am working. Yeah. Well I was I was hoping I was setting us up for a good segue into that. You’re currently doing because the I see 360. The whole platform is designed to help create a little more integrity in that space, right?
00;28;43;06 – 00;29;02;23
Unknown
Yeah. So I b c they were formerly known as US integrity. And they’ve been in the space for several years, right around when sports betting was when passport was repealed in 2018. The founder and CEO, Matt Holt at the time said there’s going to be an issue with this just kind of having the foresight to see ahead.
00;29;02;26 – 00;29;23;05
Unknown
And so they started creating some technology there. Originally a technology monitoring company, where they would look to monitor for prohibited bettors. People who are not allowed or shouldn’t be betting, like athletes are not allowed to bet on their own sport or related sports, depending. Right? Maybe nefarious activity, maybe people looking for inside information, maybe bets. Let’s just look for the the anomalies.
00;29;23;05 – 00;29;55;18
Unknown
Let’s just look for the stuff. And with that, they started growing and they ultimately merged with ODS on compliance, which is a a compliance company. So now we have integrity compliance. 360 see. 360 sports gambling advertising seems to be everywhere you look. You can’t watch any game without being inundated with ads for gambling apps that the Serena King, the clinical psychologist studying youth gambling for over 20 years, stopped by to have a conversation about how young people are a particularly vulnerable audience for these predatory ads.
00;29;55;20 – 00;30;21;12
Unknown
And she wants to help this population see through these deceptive marketing tactics. In this clip, she explains how personal stories from those affected by gambling can counter the avalanche of sports betting ads, promising easy money and big wins to vulnerable youth. Advertising is a really interesting and, I think understudied area in the gambling field, and that’s where I’d like to make some, you know, progress in that area.
00;30;21;12 – 00;30;48;11
Unknown
I think the first thing that people need to think about is where is the ad placed and who could be the potential audience. So, for example, you talked about sports betting advertising. We’ve seen pop ups show up in all sorts of places, including, you know, YouTube, which could be potentially an underage audience. Right. We see it on TV, perhaps even on primetime television.
00;30;48;16 – 00;31;20;11
Unknown
We see it on the internet all over the place, social media, the list goes on. Right. So just taking, for example, sports betting, advertising, I think where we start to worry is if there’s widespread exposure where youth could be exposed. And in all those places, youth are and can be exposed to that type of advertising. The second piece is what kinds of tactics are advertisers using to to get people to engage in this behavior?
00;31;20;11 – 00;31;53;15
Unknown
Right. So that includes incentivizing. That includes, if, for lack of a better word, promises made. About how and when, you know, people can cash in on an incentive. And these sorts of, incentivizing type of advertising. Advertisement can bring in new players and can be very alluring to young people. And then you combine that with who’s doing the advertising, what the sort of sub text context is.
00;31;53;17 – 00;32;19;21
Unknown
If it’s athletes, if it’s young people, if it’s driving excitement, if it’s, you know, sort of, glorifying the win. And, you know, I don’t want to say promising, but promising the hope of, big wins. I think those are concerning elements, especially when you think about a young audience. And so those are points of of contact.
00;32;19;21 – 00;32;50;11
Unknown
But we need to think about how we can shape and reshape young people’s, you know, perspectives on this. How do you go to some 14, 15, 18 year old? How do you get in front of that age group with debunking that? Yeah. So one of the, ideas I’ve had and we haven’t yet tested this in the lab, but I’m pretty excited to think about it, is to leverage the voices of young people who have been, affected.
00;32;50;17 – 00;33;18;02
Unknown
So that means including people in the conversation who are on the other side of that incentive and, you know, showing through their experience what they’ve lost in terms of monetary loss, as well as maybe even emotional loss, the ways in which they thought they were going to win, or the ways in which they thought they were going to get the extra amount of cash, whatever incentive it is.
00;33;18;04 – 00;33;50;25
Unknown
And really having a person with lived experience talk about the before and after. Right. And so I think for young people, this really resonates potentially. And the language can resonate. The experience can resonate. The motivations behind why and how an advertisement has, got pulled them and gotten them hooked, to, you know, that game play. I think that actually is a place where we can do some good work.
00;33;50;28 – 00;34;10;28
Unknown
Last, John Harris from A5 digital stopped by again to give us an update on the Are You Really Winning campaign. His firm has been working out in collaboration with the state of Illinois. As a campaign moves through its second year, John and Jane discuss the unique marketing strategies are using to reach out to diverse communities across the state.
00;34;11;00 – 00;34;39;09
Unknown
Here, John explains how the campaign is meant to emulate the high impact visuals on the big gambling apps. For every person affected with a gambling issue, it impacts, another half dozen people. So to a point, just just having that presence and, inviting people in to have that conversation is really, important and powerful. And again, raises where awareness and then educates and then hopefully motivates to do something about it.
00;34;39;12 – 00;35;14;18
Unknown
You made another point, which is, which is interesting about the branding and yes, the are you really winning shield, is designed and the entire campaign is designed to, to be on a level and on a par with the fan duels and the bad MGM’s of the world, too. So we specifically wanted the brand to look, walk and talk on that same highly professional level as they’re presenting, because their marketing is very effective.
00;35;14;18 – 00;35;50;25
Unknown
And quite often in the world of nonprofit or government branding and marketing, the message is just very straightforward. The level of graphic design work is not up to the same level or par. It is our experience and our expertise as, as brand or as branding folks and marketing folks that, by by asking people, you know, if you can’t stop betting nonstop and if this is causing you an issue with friends, family, coworkers, are you really winning?
00;35;51;01 – 00;36;14;15
Unknown
It invites people to think and to connect versus saying. And then going into the Wayback Machine here. And it was of the 80s and Nancy Reagan and just, you know, you know, don’t don’t do drugs, right? You know, we have to meet people where they are, or we have to invite them in and have to them and their friends, family and coworkers to really think about.
00;36;14;18 – 00;36;35;23
Unknown
Maybe there is something going on here. So there’s several levels of that engagement that you pointed out. That’s yeah, that’s really important to, to actually, you know, having success and helping people get help that they need and want. Well, there you have it. Wager danger 2024 is in the books. And we want to thank everyone for listening.
00;36;35;25 – 00;36;58;00
Unknown
One thing is very clear. As gambling and gambling apps continue to proliferate, we need to have as much information and assistance available to people who find themselves placing bets for more than just recreation. We hope everyone has a safe and happy New Year, and we look forward to providing you with more information and education in 2025. Thanks again.
Are You Still Winning? | John Harris, Principal, a5 Digital & Branding
