Becoming disappointed in the Bill Simmons (gambling) Podcast

Writing this not meaning to come off as a hater, or trying to piggyback off or put down recent sentiments here. Just trying to share my opinion.

I've listened to Bill for over 5 years straight, never missing a pod. I'm 27, and my first job out of college required lots of driving, so I'd listen to all different podcasts. But I knew Bill as a sports personality and I've listening since then, along with other baseball and NFL podcasts.

I like Bill's NBA discussions and his—to a debatable degree maybe—institutional knowledge and history about the game. I feel when it comes to football he can totally be a Patriots homer—Bills fan myself so I've learned just to laugh at it—but usually he can talk about the games and match-ups in an interesting way.

Since I graduated college, I've become a social worker and therapist. In my work I've helped adults and teens with substance use disorders. I haven't come across gambling addiction in my practice yet, but with the growing numbers nowadays, I anticipate it becoming more noticeably prevalent to me personally. We all know stories of people with gambling addictions, and how they are at 10x or more risk for suicide than general population. I have a family member who almost lost his home and life savings due to someone else gambling and losing his money. I believe it is a vice, like substances, alcohol, etc, and even though not everyone who uses a vice will suffer or experience harmful effects, the risk is still there for the general population.

Due to recent lobbying and laws passing, it has been shamelessly shoved down our throats to profit companies/lobbyists/sportsbooks, knowing that it is a harmful product that DEFINITELY has a negative overall impact on society, and DEFINITELY has a harmful effect generally—or at the very least, exposes the individual to the risk of catastrophe if not managed properly—on the individual who engages in it. I believe it will be looked upon in 30 years with shame, like cigarette ads of the past, and while it has always been part of society, it has obviously not been glamorized/pushed to this extent in general media.

So what about Bill?

Over the last year or so I've come to think of the BS pod as a gambling podcast—I've started to call it the BS Gambling pod in my mind—which is not the reason I initially subscribed. Maybe it has always been this way and I wasn't paying attention, but now it seems like every discussion about the NBA or NFL—the biggest topics on the pod—no longer talk about any actual match-ups, strategy, or gameplans. Bill brings on guests and talks about lines, over/unders, props, awards races, etc. It's like an abstraction from the actual games. They talk about the betting action on the games, or how an unexpected upset ruined their parlay, and not the game itself. It just feels so pointless and gross, and not why I subscribed to the pod in the first place: to hear a knowledgable sports fan talk about sports with friends/talking heads. Now it feels like a gambler talking to other gamblers—a few I'd be clinically concerned about if I saw them in therapy just based on how they talk on the pod. Some guests, especially Rusillo, actually talk about the content of the games/sport, and they're the guests I look forward to most. But it seems like they're the exceptions.

Disclaimer: I've never gambled before, and don't plan to, based on how harmful I believe it to be, as I wrote above. And I know I can just unsubscribe from the pod, but I'm just sad it may come to that soon.

I distinctly remember Bill having on a guest—don't remember who—talking about sports betting, and they gave Bill mild push-back, and Bill's general response was "people are going to gamble in the underground, so we should bring it to the light where it can be regulated/taxed, and it'll be generally safer." While I agree with this somewhat, that is not an excuse to promote a vice that destroys lives to your audience, just like if for some reason heroin was legalized and a podcaster talked about the best dispensaries or distributors to get it from. I don't think he's doing it maliciously, but his attitude towards it reeks of "multi-millionaire who bets with his pals for fun" and doesn't get how he is a cog in a very destructive societal machine that has been turned on in the last 10 years that has generally no positive public health benefits except to line pockets of the wealthy elites/corporations like Bill and Fanduel/Spotify. If he enjoys it and can afford it, great—having hundreds of millions of dollars will definitely take the sting out of a bad betting weekend that would ruin one of his listeners if they bet the same—but his non-chalant attitude towards promoting a vice to the general population who are not in the same universe as him financially is like a tech-bro influencer promoting extreme-risk crypto/shit-coins when their podcast is called "Johnny's Computer Science Podcast".

I'm not expecting podcasters to turn down ad deals if they can benefit from it, because would I do the same in their position? Maybe. But if my show is a sports-analysis podcast, I would be very careful to not have it turn into a quasi-gambling podcast sponsored by Fanduel, Miller Light, Michelob Ultra, etc.. To me it wouldn't feel right, and would miss the point of the pod in the first place. Especially if I sold my company to a conglomerate like Spotify who has generally unlimited resources, and I've made more money than the bottom 99% of all humans in history combined, so it's not like I wouldn't be able to pay my mortgage if I turned down an ad deal from DraftKings and took a less-lucrative one from say, Simpli-Safe or Hello Fresh.

Not expecting Bill to change necessarily, and maybe I'm just not the target audience anymore, and that's okay. Just very disappointed to feel this shift in the pod; if I wanted to listen to a gambling pod, I'd sub to the Ringer Gambling show. If people want to tell me I'm wrong or my feelings aren't accurate, that's okay too.

TLDR: I feel recently the pod has been taken over by sports betting/gambling conversation and it A) hurts and doesn't align with the primary purpose of the product and B) pushes potentially life-ruining vices to the general population solely for elite/corporate profit