The New York Times Magazine - USA (2022-05-01)

Screenland

10 5.1.

Opening page: Screen grab from YouTube. Above: Shutterstock.

betting. Still, the question surprised me.
I wanted to say I was at Madison Square
Garden to watch the game, not bet on
it — as if this distinction made me some
kind of righteous purist. After almost a
decade in New York, I had adopted the
lowly Knicks as my own, hoping to estab-
lish with them an allegiance as devout
and excruciating as the one I’d had with
my hometown teams in Baltimore. This
seemed to me to be the most dignifi ed
form of fandom, a birthright uncorrupt-
ed by capital, or by the fact of winning
or losing at all.
It was not long before these pieties
gave way. Within a week, I’d squandered
the $50 FanDuel off ered me for signing
up. More has been squandered since.

If you have watched even a few min-

utes of a sporting event over the last year,

you have probably seen the commercials.

FanDuel’s parent company reportedly

spent over $863 million on sales and mar-

keting in fi scal year 2021; its rival Draft-

Kings is reported to have spent a similar

sum. One ad stars Jennifer Coolidge as

‘‘Lady Luck’’ as she tries to smuggle a lep-

rechaun through airport security. (She’s

spending her winnings on a trip to Bora

Bora.) Another caters to realists, assuring

users that they can cash out of a bet any-

time they think it might go south. But the

FanDuel spot you’re most likely to have

seen — the one that makes the strongest

case for depositing your money into this

treacherously user-friendly app — is the

one that promises to ‘‘make every moment

of the game mean more.’’

This ad’s seductive premise is that the

experience of watching sports will be

enhanced by generating more and more

fi nancial stakes, with money wagered on

as many elements of the process as pos-

sible: Which team will win the opening

coin toss; who will be leading at halftime;

whether, say, Steph Curry will make more

than fi ve 3-pointers. Combine all of these

outcomes into a parlay bet, and you could

win even more — and, if the adspeak is to

be believed, create more ‘‘meaning,’’ too.

The commercial itself is a dizzying

supercut of clenched knuckles and jittery

knees, and a vision of modern sports fan-

dom in which the locus of action lies not

Photo illustration by Max-o-matic

The commercial

also rests on

the surprising

assumption

that sports are

often boring.