60 Minutes to Air Hit Piece Warns of Young Men Gambling Their Life Savings Away (Full Video)
60 Minutes has released a sneak peak at its Sunday segment about sports betting as the Super Bowl looms large and millions of people across the world will be placing prop bets on everything from Taylor Swift to the first touchdown to the coin toss.
The segment is entitled "The Mismatch".
Ahead of next week's biggest betting day in the US, 60 Minutes looks at sports betting and a mismatch between bettors and betting companies using AI-powered tech. Jon Wertheim will be the correspondent.
"60 Minutes" is the most successful television broadcast in history. Offering hard-hitting investigative reports, interviews, feature segments and profiles of people in the news, the broadcast began in 1968 and is still a hit, over 50 seasons later, regularly making Nielsen's Top 10.
As with many of the 60 Minutes segments on sports betting in the past, this one doesn't look positive.
"I have young men who have gambled federal student loan money," one interviewee, presumably a doctor, is seen saying in the trailer to this weekend's episode. "I have young patients who have gambled away their inheritances."
"The sportsbooks and the commercials and the leagues themselves are making it so cool to gamble and risk your money," one young man says.
But as 60 Minutes notes, these big gambling corporations are armed with technology such as AI and data banks.
CBS News on Friday discussed novelty props that are not available at most of the regulated sports betting sites like DraftKings, FanDuel and BetMGM. These include such things as the length of the National Anthem, Halftime outfit props and a ton of others (Taylor Swift included). Gambling sites licensed outside the US like BetUS will be more than happy to offer these types of wagers, including to US residents (those 18 and up of course).
"Novelty props that have nothing to do with game itself are incredibly popular," BetMGM spokesperson John Ewing told CBS MoneyWatch.
BetMGM is among the US regulated sites that are currently taking bets on the color of the Gatorade bath, though they are only accessible in about half the states.
"The general rule of thumb is the further off the field it is, and the less a part of the game it is, the more likely it's not going to be offered by a legal sportsbook," AGA spokesperson Cait DeBaun told CBS MoneyWatch.
- Nagesh Rath, Gambling911.com
