Fox Sports’ Golden Boot

**John Aranda** (0:00)
The Varsity Podcast is presented by MLB.
The National Pastime will be celebrating America's 250th birthday with a summer full of special promotions and events, including MLB All-Star Week in Philadelphia. Fans can find more information at mlb.com/july4.

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**John Aranda** (0:55)
Congratulations. You made The Varsity, the podcast. My name is John Aranda, and I am Fox Sports correspondent and the host of this pod. And today, I'm really happy to welcome Eric Shanks to The Varsity. Eric is the CEO and executive producer of Fox Sports, and he's in the middle of an amazing run with the World Cup. We're almost three weeks into a World Cup that has been a runaway success by nearly every measure, so we're going to spend a lot of time talking about the tournament. But before we get to Eric, today is Wednesday, July 1st, and here's what I'm watching. It's another week, it's another gambling scandal. This time it's NBA players Malik Beasley and Ed Davis, who were indicted by federal prosecutors on Monday on sports gambling charges.
This dates back to January 2024 when the Bucs played the Cleveland Cavaliers. A prop bet for that game had Beasley collecting three and a half rebounds. People in the know took the under, he ended up with only three rebounds, the under. It was the same story about a month later when the Bucs played the Hornets. Beasley's associates bet the under on points and the over on rebounds. He scored six points, the under, the prop bet was at 12, and he had four rebounds.
The over, the prop bet was at 3.5.
Now, sports betting proponents will say that the sunshine afforded by legalized sports betting makes it easier and quicker to discover Beasley's illegal activity. Even sports betting detractors will admit that it's impossible to put the toothpaste back in the tube, as it were, and make sports betting illegal. But something more really needs to be done on these prop bets, which seem to be so easy to manipulate.
Betting companies love prop bets, after all, it increases engagement. But leagues should do something to put more guardrails on these types of bets. Okay now, let's get to Fox Sports' CEO Eric Shanks.
Eric Shanks, thank you very much for joining the Varsity Podcast, especially during this busy time for you, the World Cup, which has taken over just the media. You see full stadiums, you see just my social feeds are filled with things. First time the World Cup has been in the state since you've held the rights. What surprised you so far about this?

**Eric Shanks** (3:18)
Well, first of all, John, thanks for having me. It's great to see you.
I would say we knew this was going to be big, and we knew that it was going to creep up on the country. It's a big country to get excited about something. It takes a lot of work. But I would say you're right. There have been some surprising things that probably have made this exceed expectations. I would say that every part of the company here has put everything into it, whether it's us here at Fox Sports or Fox News, The Stations, Tubi, Fox One. But the thing that has probably, besides the ratings, which have been tremendous, we could probably go into more about that in a minute. I would say to me, it really has been how obsessed the rest of the world is with coming and visiting America. I think it's taken over all of our feeds, like you said, and I think that has fed people into their social media, and then back into wanting to watch, why are all these people from all over the world coming to watch soccer in the United States and enjoy their time here as well.

**John Aranda** (4:34)
Do you have a favorite of those social things? Mine is either the guy in the Mexican restaurant that got the free chips or the Brit that tried his first Philly cheesesteak in Philadelphia.

**Eric Shanks** (4:47)
Yeah, there was a guy that was eating his first biscuits and gravy.
Which was amazing and it stopped him in his tracks. Then I think it was, there was a group from South Korea that was eating their first beef rib. The beef rib was about as big as the guy. It was absolutely incredible. Then how about all the people going to Buc-E's? They can't imagine Buc-E's.