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SportsTranscript
00:00I think there are so many things, Jim, that you could wager on.
00:05I think it's certainly possible that the elimination of college sports prop betting, I think is
00:11upon us.
00:12It may not be in six months.
00:13It may not be in a year.
00:15It just seems like there's a lot of steam with this.
00:17Yeah.
00:18And we saw a handful of states already take some individual action on outlawing college
00:26prop betting within the last year.
00:30And Congressman Paul Tonko included an outright ban on college prop betting in his Safe Bet
00:36Act that he unveiled with Senator Richard Blumenthal a couple of weeks ago.
00:42And Congressman Tonko, he's from my district, actually, up here near Saratoga in upstate
00:48New York.
00:49And he was in town last week to have a roundtable at Siena College to discuss with the players
00:56and coaches there just to see what sort of vitriol they're receiving and abusive messages
01:04that they're receiving on social media.
01:07So a handful of the athletes did say that they have been the victims of death threats
01:13and abusive, threatening messages on social media in regards to prop bets that they were
01:22ultimately unsuccessful in carrying out for these bettors.
01:27And we've really seen that sort of abuse on social media really grow and get, you know,
01:36to be quite honest, out of hand, really.
01:38And that's why a lot of states took some action on this within the last handful of months.
01:43Like I said, Tonko's bill, the Safe Bet Act, calls for an outright ban on college prop
01:49betting at the federal level.
01:51So obviously, that would require all the states to back it.
01:55But Tonko was in town, talked to a bunch of athletes and coaches, including new Siena
02:01head coach Jerry McNamara, who won a national championship with Syracuse back in 2003.
02:08And he said that this is a new sort of challenge that current student athletes are facing.
02:15He said that he did not face any of this sort of social media backlash, really, during
02:21his playing days.
02:23The NCAA, too, they just put out a study last week that found that about 12 percent of abusive
02:30comments on social media directed towards college athletes in the last couple of years
02:35were related to sports betting.
02:38Like I mentioned, a couple of states, Ohio, Louisiana, Maryland, Vermont, they took action
02:44on banning the college prop bets this year, New York, Massachusetts.
02:49It's not allowed in either of those states.
02:51That was baked into the regulations before those markets even launched.
02:55So it remains to be seen what sort of success the Safe Bet Act on its own will have.
03:02It was met with some pretty stiff criticism when it was released and formally introduced
03:09a couple of weeks ago.
03:11In addition to that college prop betting ban, it also calls for regulating sports betting
03:17at the federal level with affordability checks, deposit limits, advertising restrictions,
03:24as well as limiting the use of A.I. by sportsbook.
03:27So Craig, a lot still to come on this Safe Bet Act.
03:31This will obviously stretch into the new year.
03:34Nothing's going to happen on it before Congress breaks for the year here in the next couple
03:38of months after the election.
03:40So we'll see what Tonko does with this bill.
03:43He did tell me when I spoke to him the other day that they do plan to file this bill again
03:48in the new session once the new year begins.