Hey everybody, Jeff Bennett here, and this is the PBS News Podcast, Settle in.

March Madness tips off next week, and if last year is any guide, Americans will wager more than

$3 billion on college basketball over the next few weeks.

After the Super Bowl, it's one of the biggest betting events of the year, from office pools

where you toss in a few bucks, to legal wagers on digital sports betting apps

that have exploded since legalization started back in 2018. Sports gambling is now legal in 40

states and Washington, D.C., and nearly half of men under the age of 50 have an active betting

account. Our guest is author and journalist David Hill, who has written about sports

betting for Rolling Stone, hosted a podcast about professional gamblers, and has a forthcoming

book on the industry, and he's also a gambler himself. We'll talk about the rapid rise of

legal sports betting and where regulation is falling short. So, settle in and enjoy our conversation with David Hill.

David Hill, thanks so much for making time. We appreciate it.

Appreciate you, Jeff. Thanks.

So a lot of people feel like sports betting exploded overnight, essentially, after the Supreme

Court cleared the way for legalization back in 2018,

is someone who studies this and has spent a lot of time in this world, is that perception

accurate, or has gambling always been deeply tied to American sports in some way?

I think both things are true. I think that gambling has always been tied to American sports

from the beginning, and betting that gambling has always been tied to American sports from the beginning.

And betting on sports has always been around, but it is true that it really did explode after the repeal of PASPA.

So tell me more about that, that connection between the repeal and the explosion of betting.

After the repeal of PASPA, that sort of paved the way for individual states to license and regulate sports books, we saw that a lot of companies just put a lot of money into trying to expand as quickly as they could in the United States.

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