How sports gambling blew up

By Michael Lewis,

Mary Childs, Martina Castro, Emma Peaslee

Published December 18, 2024 at 8:10 AM EST

Sports gambling isn't exactly a financial market, but it rhymes with financial markets. What happens on Wall Street somehow eventually also happens in sports gambling. So in the 1980s, when computers and deep statistical analysis entered the markets, it also entered the sportsbooks and changed the world of sports gambling in ways we see every day now.

On today's episode, we have a story from Michael Lewis' new season of his podcast Against The Rules. We hear from a bookie who was able to beat the odds using statistical analysis, and the other bookie who managed to beat those odds, using an even more subtle science: behavioral analysis. Plus, how it's harder than ever to win against the house, and why those offers of free bets in TV ads are maybe not such a good idea.

This episode was hosted by Michael Lewis and Mary Childs. Our version of the podcast was produced by Emma Peaslee and edited by Martina Castro. It was fact checked by Sierra Juarez, and engineered by Cena Loffredo. Alex Goldmark is Planet Money's executive producer.

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Music: NPR Source Audio - "New Western" and "The Westerners"

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Michael Lewis

Mary Childs

Mary Childs (she/her) is a co-host and correspondent for NPR's Planet Money podcast. Before joining the team in 2019, she was a senior reporter at Barron's magazine, where she covered the alternatives industry, the bond market and capitalism. Before that, she worked at the Financial Times and Bloomberg News. She's written about the pioneering of new asset classes like time, billionaire's proposals to solve inequality and diversity and discrimination in the finance industry. Before all that, she was also a Watson Fellow, spending a year traveling the world painting portraits. She graduated from Washington & Lee University in Lexington, Virginia, with a degree in business journalism and an honors thesis comparing the use and significance of media sting operations in the U.S. and India.

Martina Castro

Martina Castro is the Managing Editor of KALW News. She started her career in journalism as an intern at National Public Radio in Washington D.C., and worked with NPR as a producer, trainer, and freelancer before coming to KALW. Martina's independent work has been featured nationally on NPR's Morning Edition, All Things Considered, and Day to Day, as well as the online radio magazine The [Un]Observed.

See stories by Martina Castro

Emma Peaslee

Emma Peaslee is a 2020-21 Kroc Fellow. Before coming to NPR, she reported for Atlanta's member station, WABE. She covered public forums about toxic chemicals leaking into neighborhoods, the world's largest 10K race, and the federal government's plan to resume executions. Peaslee has a master's degree in journalism from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill where her work received the 2020 Edward R. Murrow Award for best student newscast. She is a Minnesota native.

See stories by Emma Peaslee