I'm t T and I'm Zakiah and this is Dope Labs. Welcome to Dope Labs, a weekly podcast that mixes hardcore science with pop culture and a healthy dose of friendship. It's Super Bowl Sunday, Oh yes, and I feel like it's highly anticipated by a lot of folks, not necessarily me, but I am excited for the halftime show. I can't say that, yes, bad bunny, Yes, fresh off the heels of a Grammy win a year. Oh, It's it's up,
It's up, It's up. It feels like even if the super Bowl isn't for you, it's still for you, like if you like the ads, or you're just there for the buffalo chicken dip at the party, or even if you're just making it alone.
You know.
I feel like this year, though, people are already talking about the bets who they're betting on, right, and look, I just don't remember that as much from the past. Honestly, I remember. I don't remember any of that. And it feels like the whole betting thing has is like not new because people always been betting, but like so in your face, that feels like no recent thing, Like I even just saw that Kendall Jenner put a million dollars on the Patriots. Like, when do we know what the
celebrities are doing? I know Drake always says every year who he always is, but I mean, it just feels like so in your face these days. And I think because it feels so in your face, you know me, I'm like, let's pull out our magnifying glass. I am curious about it. So let's go ahead and jump right into the recitation. What do we know? Okay? I think the first thing that we know is that sports bring us together, Like sports is one of the great uniters.
Whether you have rival teams or you are supporting the same team, people love using sports to bring them together. We also know that there's a lot of money in sports, particularly fantasy sports. Oh my gosh.
Yes.
In twenty twenty four, the market was estimated at over twenty four million dollars and it's projected to reach over fifty five million in twenty thirty. That's huge. I need to put my little coins over there, because that feels like a lot of growth. And that growth is not just limited to fantasy but it also extends to sports betting and even prediction markets. Now that gets us right up against what we want to write, because that's the
limit of the things that I do know. So I want to know what's the difference between everything, Like I hear these words fantasy betting, prediction markets, Like what is the difference between all of this? Yeah, like where's the best Exactly when does it go from fantasy to being a bet or bet to being fantasy? Right? Because I've
been seeing a lot of players in different leagues. NBA has had some controversy, but other these too and their players have been like tied up in gambling or sports betting, And I'm like, is this something we need to keep our eye on? Right? And then it also feels like sports betting is everywhere. I see ads for fan duel and DraftKings, and I'm not their target audience. I don't think because I don't know the first thing about it
that it's everywhere. I mean, even when they're the sports casters are doing their thing, they're talking about the betting, Like how has the rise of legalized betting changed sports culture and media? I want to know, like what the impact is now that it's everywhere? And you know, I think we have just the right person to answer those questions for us. So let's jump into the dissection. Today's expert is Jess Bryant.
Just Brian. I'm senior editor in Fantasy Sports and Betting at the Athletic.
Now, Jess, we're excited to talk to you because t T I did pickskin pick them? But have you ever done fantasy sports pigskin pick them? No, I've never done fantasy sports. Never. Yeah. Back in grad school, Bj, the guy who used to sit behind me was like, you can participate in this fantasy sports league with us. All you do is pick the win. So I never made a full team. Oh, I just picked who I thought would win out of the matchups each week. Okay, that
sounds simple enough, Jess. I mean that's my extent of fantasy sports. So does that count?
I would say, I would say your pigskin pick and falls into the category of fantasy sports because.
You are picking.
I don't know if you had a pool, did you have money.
Involved in your pigskin?
Okay, yeah, I mean that's that is one that I was really right on the line. And so are the March Madness brackets, which for us at the Athletic are some of our biggest stories and clicks are just on the bracket sheet download.
It qualifies it as.
Fantasy, but it isn't traditional fantasy sports, which are more rooted in players often than teams. But yeah, it's kind of on the line between fantasy and betting. I would say, I think fantasy typically you're thinking of a traditional twelve team league in any given sport, where you're drafting a roster of those individual players. That's what people think of
when they think of fantasy sports. I would say, you're still a rookie with that experience, but or at least maybe a second year player or something you know early in your career.
I think my question kind of piggybacks off of that one. Now you are participating in fantasy sports, what are you doing week to week? Like what skills are you looking for? And like what does that look like, you know, from game to game.
I want to first say you can do as little or as much as you want, and you don't even have to have twelve teams. Like, if you have six friends that want to play, you can start a league on any platform, Yahoo, ESPN, Sleeper. For the people who are a little bit more experienced in it, week to week is a lot of research, and a lot of people pay premium subscriptions to various websites to do that. So Fantasy pros is one that has a lot of
data and information and consensus rankings. And then we at the Athletic have Jake Seely's our ranker, but we also have a lot of fantasy experts in the space, and you're really researching different stat lines, matchup ratings.
If it's football, because.
We're at the end of football season, who is the quarterback playing, who are the coverage matchups? Is it a given team good against tight ends or wide receivers particularly, are they good at the pass rush? Do they stop the run well?
Part one?
And then like part two, you're looking at once you're say four weeks into the season. You can find trends with players and how they're playing and what types of matchups they're more likely or less likely to do well. So there's a lot of research that can go into it. And then a lot of fantasy folks that are called themselves fantasy experts, who are fantasy experts have multiple teams they're playing against experts. A lot of them have their
own projection models. If they don't have their own projection models. They're at least adapting someone else's oftentimes to see what they think.
If you want to win, basically you have to have a part time job. I mean, you told me the minimum, But if you're really in this thing to win, you got to find somebody that's ranking or some model or you know, you have to have this information. You have
to collect the data, you have to analyze it. I'm sorry it's giving sciencey for some of this, yes, and so I'm curious though, because as much as people say they hate math, I'm like, this is giving a lot of statistical things I'm curious about, Like what makes people stick with fantasy year after year? Like, I know you've done some stories just that follow people who are in a fantasy sports, but I'm like, this is a lot of work. Why are people continuing to show up and do this?
Yeah, I mean, I think the most basic reason is community. A lot of people are playing against their friends or coworkers, or even if they are in more cemented leagues, people that they have met randomly, but I have played with for a number of years. I think the community aspect is what keeps people coming back. I've talked to groups of people who have started leagues just because they want to talk to their friends. More so, a group of women who did not know like people in their life
liked sports, but they didn't really enjoy sports. But they were all good friends who lived across the country, went to college together, wanted to stay in touch. The group chats weren't working, and they're like, what if we just start this fantasy football league, you know? And that was their way of like all season, they're texting back and forth, they're being competitive.
That was a league.
I think that was free and it was only six people. So again, you don't have to have a lot of people to play fantasy. You don't have to play for money.
But what if you actually do like sports and you're super competitive and you are following all the teams, like I have a cousin in mind, I have a husband in mind.
If you are a sports fan, it adds another level to the game. So if you think about watching a football game and maybe the score is like seven to zero at halftime and it feels kind of like a boring game with very little movement, if you're invested in a player in that game, the second half is still very meaningful to you you know, and how that player
plays is meaningful to you. So I think once people do get into it, they enjoy that they're able to watch multiple games and those games become more meaningful, and then they become a bigger fan of like the sport and not just their team. And I think that's another reason people come back outside of the competitive nature. And then obviously experts who do use it as a career
or sometimes part time, sometimes full time. I know somebody who left a freelance writing job to enter a high stakes fantasy basketball draft.
What's the winnings?
So I don't want to be exact on this, but my memory is that it was a sixty thousand dollars entry fee for this particular person, and then the winnings can be over a million because he plays with a larger league and more people and more experts. So he and another person teamed up to run this fantasy basketball team. And it's so much work, so they are doing it full time, committing their resources and like you said, doing a lot of math and a lot of research.
All this makes me think of Moneyball. Have y'all seen that movie?
Oh my gosh, I did a long time ago.
So it's about a baseball team. It's about the Oakland Athletics, and they were struggling and then they hired somebody on to do like all of these statistics about like which pictures, all these things like that, and then they were able to you know, course correct and ended up doing really well. But it was like a brand new strategy. So I guess that impacts like how people would be able to bet if all of a sudden you have this pivot
in how well your team is doing. But if we're thinking of fantasy and gambling, do those circles just overlap? It's fantasymbling is gambling fantasy? What is the distinction between the two?
By nature?
If you're entering money and then hoping to win, that's gambling. But when you enter in fantasy, you're entering against other people, and you don't have to have like the best players. You just have to have the players that are relatively the best, like relatively the best lineup. But in betting, you're not competing against others. When you're betting, you're playing against the house. They're statistical models, their algorithms, their proprietary
systems are incredible. I mean, fantasy players could look at betting sites at MGM, DraftKings, FanDuel and see what the lines are and what some of the player proposition bets are and actually probably help inform their fantasy lineup. But you know, the house does all of this research to win, so you're already at a disadvantage, right, because they're going
to win. That's why they're multimillion dollar businesses, whereas in fantasy is still I think gambling, but with I don't know, with a little bit more level of a playing field and yeah, a different overall strategy.
Do players pay attention to their fantasy stuff? Because I feel like this would affect myself a Steve. If somebody was like, get Tt off that team, you need to put Zaki in as quarterback. TT sucks, I'm like, oh my god.
Yeah, and I think there are huge problems with it. So players pay attention on accident. A lot of times, if they don't do well or if they're injured, they might hear from fantasy players even more so better.
A lot of them don't love it.
Because the value isn't placed on them as like a human right, which they would love to be humanized more. In sports, each player we typically dehumanize them and Myriya out of ways, but so it kind of dehumanizes them, and when they're injured, it's about, oh, who can we replace this person with, not like can you imagine.
What will soon?
Like right, I think they're often paying attention out of like self preservation and responding to how the fantasy sports have impacted the game.
When you were talking about the auction league, I was like, this sounds terrible. Valuing people at different mouths and putting a team together.
When we write or and when I edit, myself and the folks on our editorial staff are always trying to veer away from like who do you own on your team, like just making sure the language doesn't own or purchase or buy or you know, to your point about auction leagues, like we do try to pay attention to the language of that, but inevitably, I you know, like you're saying auction links, there's this purchasing aspect and evaluation of people into dollar amounts.
Yeah, that's real.
This was making me think a little bit about this control element, which it feels like a lot of this is the ability to control who's Like when we were talking about replacing people, if they get injured. And it's also making me think about that book by Christopher Mems
Arriving Today. Arriving Today, there's a book by Christopher Mems who writes for the Journal, and it makes me think about like the changing workforce, where we were trying to get people to perform against metrics and to be faster, and it feels like a little bit of that is in the fantasy world.
Oh yeah, I think there's not a lot out on some of these human elements around fantasy sports, or like I said, like the humanization of players. I mean a lot of it is like the illusion of it, because you have no say in these players' lives. They are not working for you. But it gives the illusion of control. And that's one of the reasons people like fantasy sports compared to betting, is like it gives you the illusion
of managing a team. It gives you the illusion of fairness and like if you do well enough, then you, as a good manager, will succeed, and that can give people confidence or maybe it can give people arrogance. But certainly I think in folks minds, they are managing a team, they have control. That's what inspires them in some ways or keeps them playing.
I think in.
Sports, across sports and all arenas, we have all of these issues of control and workforce when you look at ownerships, racial demographics, players, racial demographics, et cetera, and thinking about how the owners and managers make decisions the rules that they have to follow versus the rules that players have to follow. Even in betting, the leagues obviously make a lot of money off of betting, a lot of money off of betting, and yet are penalized for betting players
who have less money than those corporations. And of course you have to keep legitimacy in the game, and you have to keep your game legitimate, and so there have to be repercussions I suppose for betting. But it is a sort of this idea of like, we can profit from it, but you can't.
How do they make that money?
Advertisements? You know, a lot of it's advertisement sponsorships. That the betting houses do have money, a lot of it, and they do inject it into the sports space because that's where you know, primary betting happens or on happens.
Okay, we've talked fantasy and we've talked to sports betting fantasy is basically being relatively better than the other people you're competing against, and betting is being absolutely right against a well researched organization. Betting and fantasy are different, but
the legislation has them tied together. When I was looking at the connection between fantasy and basically sports betting, particularly like on your phone, I was looking in two thousand and six the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act, which was targeting unlawful Internet gambling, but that explicitly carved out a space for fantasy sports, and that said that you have to be using skills. You've already defined what skills are
required for fantasy sports. I don't have them. I do have them, but I don't know that I've used them. I've used them to predict experimental results.
Not I'm just about to say you have them, and I'm sure, actually you could create an amazing model, you know, and I'd love to see that.
Yeah, but I but I'm curious. You know, it feels like sports betting was kind of dampered down there, but then we had fan duel and DraftKings, and now it just feels like sports betting has gotten so much bigger, And I'm like how did that happen?
Yeah, so, states historically have regulated sports betting and the control of like sports betting, legislation is in the state's hands until recent so we're at California and Texas, it's illegal to beout on sports as an example.
But prediction markets, which.
Are new to sports, I mean, they've existed for a very long time, over a century, but lately there have been startups. I don't know if you've heard of Calshi or poly market. Yes, so Polymarket and Calsha are two new prediction market apps that have launched and they're doing incredibly well. And in December mid and late December, fan Duel and DraftKings ended up also creating a prediction markets app that is separate from the typical app, and really
they're trying to target Texas and California. Those are two
big markets that don't allow sports betting. Whereas sports betting is monitored by the statewide legislation, these prediction markets, which are different because like fantasy, you're actually only competing against other individuals, but you could be competing against super users you know which there are, but you're still competing against other individuals, and the companies make their money off of transaction fees and commissions versus the actual cash that's invested,
and those are run by the federal government. Donald Trump Junior is an advisor on the board of both Calshi and poly Market, And like I said, the prediction markets are controlled by the federal government versus the state government.
Is that even legal? Well, first aside out to the one degree removed from power with you know Trump Junior being on the board of both of those companies. But are these sites legal and does prediction market betting have regulations?
So these are legal and there's some regulation, but not much. You can pretty much bet live on anything from you know, which team will win a game, or whether a certain player will have a certain amount of receiving yards, or will the Seahawks win the Super Bowl too? Will Hamnet win Best picture?
Right? I feel like one day prediction markets were just everywhere, though where did they come I'm from.
They became popular or more known during the twenty twenty four election because you were able to bet on the result of the election.
So these prediction markets have come up quite a bit for us, and just in some things we've been working on. We just interviewed a music critic and cultural writer Sidney Madden, and she was talking to us about the Grammys, and she kept saying, don't bet based on what I'm saying. And I was like, are people really betting on the Grammys? Like I might say to teach, you know, like I bet this person's not gonna win. But she was like, no,
people are betting on these things. And so it seems like the prediction market is the place where you can bet on these types of outcomes. I remember even recently, like people were betting on whether or not your president was going to say certain phrases in his speeches and how many times. Pew Research in the past couple of months just released this survey data asking people like, what do they think about sports betting? How many people are
betting on sports? Twenty two percent of people they surveyed are betting on sports. That's at least one in five. But interestingly, forty three percent of people that they surveyed said they think sports betting is not a good thing for sports. And I was like, so are those mutually exclusively I don't know right, or are you like saying I don't realize I can make a little bit of money so I'm here, I'm here. Yeah, what's been the sentiment among you and your colleagues in the sports world.
Yeah, so a couple of my colleagues spoke to Calshit and they said that ninety percent of future is betting predicting. The production markets are on sporting events ninety percent or on sporting events. So obviously that's relevant to us. And then in terms of twenty three percent of betting and forty two percent of people being against them, it actually makes sense just based on what we see as responses to some of our content. But also there is this
getting back to the legislation. There is the Safe Bet Act, which was reintroduced this year twenty five twenty six, that is trying to propose to limit betting advertisement during games and prohibit AI driven micro betting, so betting on if somebody's going to throw a fast pitch or a curve ball. But there's this other thing that they kind of called a nuclear option, which is if you are an individual better and you think you have a problem, you can
file a formal request with the government. And obviously we're in a time of different people trusting our government in different ways, but theoretically In this bill, you can submit a request to the government, a formal request that says, I would like to stop betting. Please take my name off of like every list. Please make sure that if I bet, you arrest me. If I bet, you will
take away any winnings I get. And it's a contract almost that says that the person is submitting saying I feel like I have a gambling problem, and so to cut myself off. I know if I send this formal request, I won't bet. Now we know how addiction works.
Yeah, we spoke to an expert about addiction a few labs ago, and across the board, no matter the level or substance that you're addicted to, relapse rates are high, especially in the first few years.
And so I feel like this is a very potentially dangerous rule and doesn't work on harm reduction. I think there's a lot of work to be done there. And I also don't think with this administration and how much they support prediction markets and betting generally, that we're going to be seeing much regulation in that way, or that
that bill would get through. But yeah, so I think that there are people who probably think betting is bad who also participate in this, and I think a self exclusion list, you can put yourself on the self exclusion list.
I think multiple things can be true, like I would want to be excluded, but I also feel like saying arrest me is a step too far. Not me. No, yeah, I'm sorry. But I wonder if these private organizations do they have the ability to keep up with what's going on. I've been seeing players popping up with some betting activity, and it's not I think people think it's just basketball. It's not just basketball. I've seen this in a lot of other sports.
Yeah, there have been a couple things that have been done. It is across the board, but starting just with the NBA, because they actually did make some changes based on what was happening two way players and people on ten day contracts, so folks coming up from the G League.
They've worked with betting.
Partners like these apps that we're talking about. They've partnered and taken away player propositions, so bets on a player's perform over under. Does Lebron James score over under twenty three point five points per game? You know? Okay, just Tray Young score over nineteen points per game? For you Atlanta folks, you know he's gone now, but but those are prop bets. How many is he going to score over under this amount assists? Will so and so have
over under five assists. So what they've done is they partnered with the sites and apps, the law betting and said, we need to figure out something together where props for players who are on ten day contracts or two way contracts with a G league cannot be better on. And that's because those players are making far less money than the players who are in the league, and they are higher risk of being tempted to make additional money. And actually the restriction is only on the under So the
thing you can control more is the under verse. You know, they're not going to try as hard exactly, so it limits that. So that's one thing that's been But they have to work in partnership with the betting organizations and that's hard. So this year many states have banned prop bets on individual college athletes, but for a different reason, and that's to prevent harassment.
Gosh.
Yeah, So earlier I talked about fantasy sports and players being injured and not feeling humanized. Well, it gets worse than betting because people are losing money on a player's poor performance, sometimes a lot of money.
And what will happen is they will.
And obviously this is not every better, but you know a few will, and more than a few because it's a movement, but people will harass the athletes. Death threats have been sent to athletes who have not scored up to the level that somebody thought they should. So they've encountered death threats, constant social media bullying dms, etc. And even in person interaction at games, people will yell at them.
And it's gotten so out of control that in college sports some states have banned player propts on college athletes many states, so the harassment has gotten out of control lately, especially in the last maybe two years three years.
It really makes me sad for the players, especially when they're in college and they're really well. Now they can make some money, but most of them aren't making life changing money like you know, like an Angel Reese or Chadoor Sanders and things like that, and having to put up with all of that. It's not like they say, Okay, I'm going to go home and you know, everything's great. They're going back to their dorms and grinding and making sure that they're getting their homework done and stuff like
that while also reviewing tape. And it's just mentally, I think that it's a good move. And when I think about the people who are making a ton of money on this off the backs of folks mental health, physical health, it's really like disgusting, you know. And so with all of that in mind, who do you think bears the most responsibility for setting and maintaining boundaries within you know, the league platforms, media companies? Like, who do you feel like should be responsible?
I think you have to say the state and federal governments are the most responsible, just because that's really the only way that any kind of like sweeping changes can be made. Leagues might try to protect a portion of their players, like the NBA did with not being able to bet on player propits for players making under a certain amount of money. Leagues benefit too much from betting.
Media benefits a lot from betting, you know. I think Ballei Sports was bought by FanDuel Sports Network, So FanDuel has a sports network that they end so obviously that that means they can run like tickers and betting lines and things on the bottom of the screens as they go by. And really, if you watch any broadcast now, there's a lot more talk about betting in the pregame show and even during the game.
Yeah they're talking about the lines or whatever. Yeah, they're talking about it. And it's really shocking when you're watching and you start hearing the betting because and I know it's a recent thing, and we can remember when that wasn't a thing. Yeah.
Yeah, when I was young, I watched Sports Center and there was no talk of betting. It was all narrative, right, it was all the narrative of the team, the narrative of the player. And so now you'll have that, but you'll also have betting lines, like you said, and it's not uncommon to see just as much talking about betting lines as stats. The thing about betting is like the research behind it that you know, puts out the lines
and makes the spreads and determines the player props. That research is probably the best in sports or up there, because they're making sure they win, you know, and they don't want to lose money, so their algorithms are really informative to you, even if you're not a better to understand what might happen in that game or work at least what's most likely to.
Happen in that game. And really you.
Have to to win in betting, you have to beat their algorithm and their statistical model. And for most people that's just not going to happen. You know, people who make their careers out of it can start to do that. But it has changed the media landscape obviously.
Okay, now I'm curious. You know, we're approaching the super Bowl, and I feel like everybody becomes the fantasy player at the super Bowl. And also people just get beside themselves. And I don't know if it's because it's so late. I don't know if it's because they've had too much Buffalo chickens.
We just did a fantasy food draft actually, so.
Oh tell me about that.
My coworkers and I we have a list that are fantasy rinker. Jake Seely he makes it. He's known for his lists. I love his personality. I think in his writing he'll have his rankings and then he'll be like ten best Ductails movies or shows. He really loves the duct Tails, so it'll be like ten best and worst Deserts. And he has really hot takes like he does not care what you think about his opinion on desserts. That's where he doesn't care. He will just he had best
and worst Christmas songs. So he's very known for these things, and so he puts together this food draft. In Buffalo, chicken dip was the number one food taken. Well, you say last year was the number one food taken. This year, it was like proclaimed that it should have been the number one food taken because the dips category is small. So on fantasy, there's only eight dips to draft from. You better grab a good dip quickly, right, yeah, okay, we do find it in the dips snacks on trays,
and then we have qualifications. You have to draft to local fairs, so local to the Super Bowl teams and different rules like this is fantasy. We did. That's a fantasy draft of sorts, you know. And the article will be coming out later with all of our draft pick So we just did that. Oh, super Bowl, super Bowl's coming. It's big, and it's the most bad on sports event of the year.
I'm ashamed to say I don't think I even know who's in the Super Bowl. Now. I know Russell Wilson isn't because I saw him cooking at home with Sierra. I think, okay, but I did see something that said when there's a new pope, the Seahawks make it. So maybe the Seahawks are.
Playing Yeah, yeah, that's true.
That's right now. I don't know who the other team is. It is the uh Cardi B's boyfriend Stefan Diggs is on the Patriot. It's him them. There you go. This is I love that these are different in roads to the information.
That's right, and that is what my right up in the fantasy food draft was about. I was basically like, my friends don't care about sports, so I have to give them good food.
I can't be drafting pizza.
No, you know, no, just to get them to watch it with me, I have to do so much work.
I tell people narratives like Seattle is playing the Patriots.
It's a rematch from twenty fifteen where Seattle lost on the one yard line when Russell Wilson threw an interception instead of Lynch running the football, and this is this is a rematch. So I talked about the Seahawks revenge narrative. I was at college when Cooper Cup was at Eastern Washington. I was doing my mfaan poetry when he was there, and then I'm like, build this narrative around Sam Donald and his comeback.
So Sam Donald's the quarterback for the Seahawks. He was dismissed by the Jets.
As terrible, he played terribly for them, thrown off to the side, goes to the Panthers, I think for a little bit of time, and then goes to Minnesota. Last year, does really well, but they caught him in favor of Jaj McCarthy, the rookie who had some of the worst underlying metrics this year. But now it's on Seattle new coach Mike McDonald, who has a chance to probably win Coach of the Year. And now they're projected winners of
the Super Bowl. They did start with very low long shot odds ahead of this season, but now they're the projected winners of the Super Bowl. So there's some like narrative to get behind in it, you.
Know, And that's what I like, bring back the stories to sports.
I agree.
I want to hear, you know, what their traditions are before the game, like what kind of music they're listening to. I want to see their grandma's like all that.
Yeah, that's how my wife is, like, we watch Hard Knocks, which is a football show about training camp, and that's like how that's her entry into getting to know the team and the players. She wants the narrative, she wants the emotional touch point, yes, and to be invested. And I think that's important and it's all there. All of those narratives are there and more that have have been told.
So yes, what does that make you feel like for where we are in sports culture? Like, what do you see for the future and where it's headed.
I mean, you saw with Taylor Swift dating Travis Kelce, right, Like what that could do for sports culture, television media?
How often that narrative.
Was spoken about last season when the Chiefs were in the Super Bowl and we're playing bad bunnies doing a halftime. This year, you have Cardi b talking about Stefan Diggs another superstar there, and then you have Simone Biles, Jonathan Owens.
There's a lot of this happening.
And I think because we're living in the social media era, the media is changed in that way, for better and for worse. Better, we get more opinions and more people caring about different elements of the game and bringing more fans to the game through social media. You know, you have ideally we bring in folks who aren't just invested in sports. One to wide an all audience and create more community, but two, I think to influence change within
the sport. You know, if we do have more people who are less concerned about their team winning, we might have people who are more concerned about players who are more concerned about some of what we've talked about occasionally here, and we'll just get different viewpoints coming in in different ways that the league has to be accountable to different types of people.
I really hope that.
We bring in tons of women, hopefully queer people, hopefully folks of color, you know, in different spaces to continue to broaden the audience and therefore influence conversation. Let's have like better conversation, or at least just different conversation.
I have one last question. If somebody is listening to this and they're like, Wow, Jess's job is so cool, what type of skills do they need to have to work with you, work for you? Like, how do you get into something like this? Because I know that there are a lot of sports fans who don't really feel like there is any science related.
Data analysis across the board for all of our teams is a need. I think data visualization, data journalism is another route people can go to get in the sports space. App development, program development. We need tons of that. We need those product developers to be it. Please come and work at BAUT And then we need a lot of data analysts, and then we need data visualization folks, and we need people at SEO. So it's not just people who are beat writers, you know, or fantasy nerds or.
Folks who know about betting.
One of my favorite product developers does not have a ton of sports knowledge and develops these amazing products for us. So I think there are just so many ways to get into sports, and advanced analytics is just creeping.
Up and up.
But yeah, I think there are tons of ways.
Awesome. This has been great, very eye opening, and it really has made me look at all of this differently in the sense that now I feel like I know more and so when I hear these things and it'll trigger something in my mind to think about kind of like the bigger picture. And also now I'm thinking about myself as part of the sports enterprise, like you know, knowing that little bit about Sierra and Russell Wilson, I will maybe I'll be the NIXT sports writer on subs Day. Subscribe.
You can find us on X and Instagram at Dope Labs podcast. You can find me ct on X, threads and Instagram at dr Underscore t sho, and you can find Zakiya at z said So. Dope Labs is a production of Lemonada Media. Our supervising producer is Keegan Zemma. Dope Labs is sound designed, edited and mixed by James Sparber. Lemonada's Senior Vice President of Content and Production is Jackie Danziger. Executive producer from iHeart Podcast is Katrina Norvil. Marketing lead
is Alison. Original music composed and produced by Takayasuzawa and Alex suki Ura, with additional music by Elijah Harvey. Dope Labs is executive produced by us T T Show Dia and Zakiah Watley.