Three days later. It’s the first Sunday
of the NFL’s regular season. Thirteen
games are on the schedule, which
means twenty-six teams are playing, which means the betting op-
portunities are aplenty. DraftKings, the second-most-popular
mobile-betting operator in New Jersey, has decided to make an
event of it, holding a pop-up party with a few former NFL play-
ers at a bar not far from Hoboken Terminal. The vibe is upbeat,
though contrived. Maybe it’s the cost—fifty dollars, unless you’ve
been designated one of the app’s VIP players—or the company:
Guest appearances include legitimate onetime star Donovan Mc-
Nabb as well as Rashad Jennings, whose career on Dancing with
the Stars is more distinguished than his career in professional foot-
ball. Or maybe it’s an issue of convenience: Why bother going to
a party to place bets when you can do so from your phone?
Ali, twenty-nine, like several attendees I meet, is a carpetbag-
ging gambler. “It’s just annoying that we can’t do it in New York,”
he shouts over the din of four games blaring from four television
screens. “It’s stupid.” Until that changes, he’s limited by the va-
garies of geography and time. “Unfortunately, I can’t bet weekly,
because I don’t have the time to come in every week.” (Ali, like
everyone else I spoke to for this story, despite my best efforts to
find otherwise, is a man.)
I head back to Hoboken Terminal. There, on the platform, gam-
blers abound, though not all are willing to talk. Nick, twenty-
eight, from Queens, explains: “It”—gambling—“has that
negative stigma behind it, you know, where it’s like you’re a de-
generate, you’re a shitty person and whatnot.” (Say what you
will about sports betting’s morality, but placing bets has nev-
er been illegal. It’s taking them that was banned.) He learned to
bet from his father. “Other kids throw a baseball in the backyard
with their dads, or they’re into cars or fishing. With me and my
dad, it was always, What’s the line on this game?” Nick, hope-
ful that public sentiment is shifting, hosts a sports-betting pod-
cast called Veterans Minimum.The whole ecosystem is changing. ESPN and Fox Sports 1 are
already airing shows dedicated to betting. Buffalo Wild Wings is
testing a pilot program to roll out sports betting in its New Jersey
franchises. Major league teams are investing in technology to bring
in-game betting to arenas and ballparks, where one day you may be
able to place bets on every pitch or free throw or first down from a
screen at your seat. As NBA commissioner Adam Silver argued in a
New York Times op-ed in 2014, a landmark moment for the move-
ment, states run—and profit from—the lottery. What’s so differ-
ent about sports gambling? Silver didn’t spill much ink on the fact
that the major leagues and their teams stand to profit from a pot of
money previously illegal and out of reach.
What about the fans? How might legalized betting alter their
relationships with the sports they love? The ban was put in place
for a reason, after all: Those with a financial stake in the outcome
have been known to sway a game or two—just ask the 1919 White
Sox or the 1978–79 Boston College basketball team. Then again,
the ban was never all that effective, as evidenced by anyone who’s
ever collected the betting pool for theirFanDuel said that as
much as 25 percent
of its business comes
from New Yorkers
crossing the border.
... during NFL opening weekend.
Tickets are $50 for the plebes and free for
the app’s high-rolling VIPs.
(continued on page 113)