Every at bat is a chance to win big on FanDuel

Fortunately, that's the only option

As I’ve watched this year’s playoffs, I’ve seen the ad multiple times per game. A guy on a couch is watching a baseball game. The announcer says it’s the top of the first, and then “Swing and a miss, strike three.” The guy gets an alert on his phone saying “YOU WON!” A FanDuel backdrop slides down and a press conference immediately starts, with a reporter asking him how he feels about his “nice win on FanDuel” when it’s just the top of the first.

The guy says, “All those nights of studying film really paid off.”

The reporter asks, “You mean watching baseball?”

“That’s correct,” the guy says.

The FanDuel backdrop slides back up into the ceiling, and a voiceover guy says, “Whether you want to bet on a hit in the first or a homer in the ninth, every at bad is a chance to win big on FanDuel.” Then he goes through the deal they’re offering to give you back $1,000 of your bets if you don’t win.

That’s it. That’s the commercial.

I hate this commercial.

I’ve never liked sports gambling, but it’s not because I have some moral issue with it. If you want to spend your time and money betting on baseball, well, fine, but I’d prefer you didn’t talk to me about it because, like your fantasy team, it’s boring. I mean, not YOUR fantasy team, which is the only one that’s endlessly fascinating, but that’s an outlier. Fantasy teams in general are not interesting, and neither is their rich cousin, sports betting.

Sports betting takes something inherently dramatic and unique, and flattens it. It means that when you watch a game, instead of marvelling at Manny Machado’s exceptional defense or that over-the-shoulder catch that Cody Bellinger made, your takeaway is how those plays affected your wallet. It takes something whose value in large part comes from it being a communal experience and makes it about you.

And it insists upon itself.

Recall, if you will, that the commercial starts with the guy winning a bet he made on a first inning strikeout. A first inning strikeout! That’s not an inherently dramatic or memorable situation (I know it could be, but if you go by the announcer’s volume and cadence, it definitely isn’t). The only kind of person who makes that bet is a gambling addict.

That’s exactly what FanDuel (and DraftKings, who are definitely not any different) want. They want gambling addicts, because gambling addicts will eventually lose all of their money, and since that’s the most money FanDuel could possibly earn off of a person, as far as they’re concerned, that’s mission accomplished. They’ll get there by putting commercials on TV that normalize betting on first inning strikeouts, that glamorize small wins that are essentially random by acting as if they’re huge events that are worthy of a press conference, even if it’s only in your mind.

They convince people that just “watching baseball” will mean you know enough to be a winner. They make it seem like you’ll get that endorphin rush every inning, as long as you’ve watched eough baseball (which you have!). And yes, that’s generally what all commercials do, but in this case, pushing an app that will result in addiction and financial ruin is different than encouraging people to eat more Flamin’ Hot Cheetos than is medically wise.

And then, just to get you hooked on that sweet, sweet feeling of winning, they offer you a refund of up to $1,000 if you don’t win your first bet. Now, that offer is only legal in 16 states (a list that does not include California), but it’s enough to get people in the door, and once they’re in the door, they’re more likely to get hooked, and once they’re hooked they’re on the road to losing all their money, which again, is a good thing to FanDuel because they’re the ones who find said money and keep it forever.

This app and this ad are terrifying dystopia shit. They use all sorts of psychological manipulations to get you to lose money on your phone in an era when other companies are using psychological manipulations to get you to constantly stare at your phone. It’s so hard to avoid this thing which should be extremely easy to avoid, and that’s by design. It wants to destroy you. It wants to eat you alive.

And mostly it’ll fail! That’s a relevant point here, I think, because 9 out of every 10 people will be totally fine. Even most sports betters will be totally fine. But when you get that 10% that won’t ever stop, that’ll keep betting and keep losing long past the point when they needed that cash to pay their rent, that’s where the money is, and those people will have their lives ruined.

“Every at bat is a chance to win big on FanDuel,” the tagline goes, and that is the appeal. You can bet on everything. Every AB of every inning of every game. You should not be doing that. Nobody should be doing that. But you can! It’s so tempting to think of the excitement of winning, but again, every at bat. That’s so many. It’s what? 70 times a game?

That’s 70 times every game that you could be losing money. Their bet is that the 20 wins you get will be way more memorable than the 50 losses. You’ll keep coming back, chasing that high. It’s bad for you. It’s bad for society. It’s bad for everyone except FanDuel. Every time I see that ad, I get annoyed, both that I’m seeing it and also that it exists. Go away forever, commercial. Go away and don’t come back.

In conclusion, I do not care for this FanDuel ad.