Craig Carton Blasts ESPN Over Objectionable Cartoon Gambling Guide

Craig Carton (0:00)

Tin roof rusted. A little B-52s on a Friday, why not?

888-808-109, did you happen to see?

Chris McMonigle (0:12)

Of course I did.

Craig Carton (0:13)

You did?

Chris McMonigle (0:13)

Yep.

Craig Carton (0:14)

Oh, good. Move on from that one, then. Let's go right on to the next one.

Chris McMonigle (0:16)

Let me go to topic number two.

Craig Carton (0:17)

Did you happen to also see? You didn't see this one?

Chris McMonigle (0:20)

No, not yet.

Craig Carton (0:21)

So ESPN, who has kind of like Trump, been the only two organizations that can't figure out how to make money with gambling, right? So they failed miserably with ESPN bet. Then they got in bed with Penn Gaming, did a 10 year, $2 billion deal. That failed miserably, so they got out of that deal. Then they just decided to take a check from DraftKings to be the official sports book of ESPN. It is what it is, right?

They did something last night that I find, I don't want to overstate it. Like I want to say, I'll just say objectionable is the best way for me to put a Big Mac.

So they are not delivering the goods based on their partnership with DraftKings where they're not turning ESPN viewers into customers at the rate that everybody had hoped for. That's the genesis of all this, okay? And they didn't with Penn and they didn't with ESPN bet. And despite having all their top personalities, you know, beg you to gamble with them and do all that stuff, they've just never, they've never been successful at it, okay?

Chris McMonigle (1:19)

Who shows dogs?

Craig Carton (1:21)

Right, it's never worked. They did something yesterday that is so objectionable, it shows you that they have no soul.

They put together a guide for beginning gamblers.

Chris McMonigle (1:35)

Okay.

Craig Carton (1:36)

Okay? Okay.

And it's literally things as elementary and rudimentary, as this is what minus seven means.

Chris McMonigle (1:45)

Right.

Craig Carton (1:46)

Like I'm talking as if you just fell off a boat, and I'm going to teach you the ABCs.

Chris McMonigle (1:51)

Gotcha.

Craig Carton (1:52)

Just to understand where I'm at, okay?

Chris McMonigle (1:53)

That rudimentary.

Craig Carton (1:54)

So it's about, I don't know, like eight or nine, ten slides deep into this full on presentation, where they explain to you gambling terms, how to gamble. It's a full tutorial for novice beginning gamblers going in really for the first time. They did it as a cartoon.

Chris McMonigle (2:14)

Really?

Craig Carton (2:15)

Yes. They did it to attract kids to start gambling for the first time. Now, they will deny that, but that's the only reason you put it out there in cartoon form.

The best comparison I have for you, I'm not a vapor, you're not a vapor. No. But the best example, because you've heard of the company, there's a company that's essentially non-existent now called Juul.

J-U-U-L-E. I remember Juul. Juul, for a very short period of time, was a hot-to-trot vaping company that had like the majority of market share. And then they got cute. And they started marketing to kids. And they had like Froot Loops flavor and bubblegum flavor. And you know, things that obviously adults are like, hey, time out. You're aggressively marketing to children based on the flavors and the names of the different, you know, vapes that they sold. And they effectively lost 90% of their business because they got shut down from doing that. Okay, I think they still exist, but when's the last time you heard about Juul? Right?

That's what ESPN, in my opinion, is now doing. They're not successful in the world of gambling. They recognize that the fastest growing segment of the population happens to be, unfortunately, you know, teenage kids into their very young twenties. Now in the majority of states, you cannot gamble legally until you're 21 There's a couple of states in the Midwest where 18 is the actual number, but that's a few and far between.

Why would you create a gambling tutorial with the basics of what's plus seven mean? What is a parlay? Those types of things. And do it as a cartoon.

And there's only one answer. You're trying to get kids to start doing it. You're trying to get kids to go to their parents, open up a DraftKings account through ESPN, so that we can do this together. It's, objectionable is probably not a strong enough word. It shouldn't be allowed. There's a reason why you're not allowed to market gambling sites on campuses. Because of the obvious concern that kids at a certain age aren't mature enough to know how to gamble responsibly. And I say this with the full admission that the majority of people will do it without a problem. That is still a fact. But if you're looking for a group of people where the percentage of problem gambling is far greater than any other group of people, it's 18 to 22 year old kids. And when you put out a gambling tutorial in a cartoon form, you are doing that to try to attract children to gamble with their parents, an older brother, an uncle, a mom, whatever it is, on your site. And it is fundamentally wrong.