Episode 275: All bets are off: How sports gambling has conquered the world

Amira, Brenda, and Lindsay review how sports betting has seeped into politics and provided the stuff of fantasies for people in dire economic need. Women represent the final frontier for exploitative betting companies, and BIAD asks how we can save women’s sports from such scourge. The hosts consider ways to regulate the industry in order to save sports. They also have plenty to burn (looking at you, Sophie Cunningham) and honor the torchbearers giving them hope. 

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Show notes:

Transcript

Amira: I think the question at the heart of this is, is gambling, does it look different in women's sports? Does it bring the same concerns or more? It's not this apples to apples type of scenario. 

Brenda: Welcome to Burn It All Down. It's the feminist sports podcast you need. I'm Brenda Elsey, and today I'm joined by Amira Rose Davis. 

Amira: Hey. 

Brenda: And Lindsay Gibbs. 

Lindsay: Hi.

Brenda: And we want to take a moment to introduce our honorary executive producer for today's episode. It is flamethrower Jaclyn Mahoney. And this isn't just any executive producer, Jaclyn is the daughter of a former professional basketball player, but she writes, “I unfortunately inherited my dad's athletic abilities. My mom was the first woman to receive a full athletic scholarship to Temple University–”

Amira: TU?!

Brenda: Yay! We have an alma mater situation here. 

Amira: Owls are everywhere. 

Brenda: “–And she was the first woman to score 1,000 points for their women's basketball program.”

Amira: Wow.

Brenda: Jacqueline shared that she is proud, “to be part of the team that released the entire history of NCAA women's college basketball statistics, resurrecting my mom's statistical accomplishments so that her legacy as an athlete can be celebrated in the same way we celebrate men's college sports athletes.” And our own co-host, Jessica Luther, points out that she uses this reference on a weekly basis when she writes and researches women's college basketball. So how cool is that? 

Lindsay: That’s incredible. 

Amira: Very cool. What a gift to her mom, but also to all of us who are interested and care about this history and what it means for the present. 

Brenda: Absolutely. 

Lindsay: Jaclyn's one of my favorites. I haven't talked to her in a while, but hi, Jaclyn. This is so fun. 

Brenda: The last thing she shared was, “the nerdy name for what I love the most about sports is collective effervescence – that shared feeling of excitement and belonging that you get when you're part of a crowd cheering for a team. Sports are at their best when they make you feel joy and togetherness. And I'm proud to support efforts like BIAD that challenge sports to be at their best, always.” So thank you again to Jaclyn Mahoney. We admire and appreciate you. 

Lindsay: Thank you. 

Amira: Thank you.

Brenda: On today's show, we're going to be talking about the state of sports betting, which is more ubiquitous and corrosive than ever. Then we'll burn things that deserve to be burned, and highlight the torchbearers who are giving us hope during this dark time. Before we get to all of that, here's a quick recap of the fun stuff we've posted to patreon.com/burnitalldownpod. Jessica interviewed Lori Lindsey, former professional soccer player and current soccer match analyst. Shireen and I previewed the men's World Cup final. And Lindsay just recorded an interview with three-time WNBA champion and WNBPA Vice President Alysha Clark. Here's a quick preview of that one.

Aysha: All the headlines were about, they're being offered million-dollar contracts and the average salary is $500,000, plus. But nobody was talking about the minimum salary. And it's like, you know, when you have your maximum salary that's 20% of the cap, and then you look down at the minimum salary, and I think at the time, maybe it was like 3% or something like that. They were wanting to keep the minimum salary the same percentage. And it was like, well, you're going to increase maximum salary, you need to increase the minimum salary as well. And that was a fight.

Brenda: Oh yeah. You can access all of our past and future bonus content and support Burn It All Down by becoming a patron. Just five dollars a month gets you access to all of our bonus content. Go to patreon.com/burnitalldownpod or visit the show notes to learn more and sign up.

We have just finished the most watched sporting event in history, and the most gambled on. Even adjusting for the higher number of matches, the FIFA World Cup 2026 exceeded expectations. And we can also see the gambling industry as a factor in sports leadership's decision-making, when FIFA deepened its ties to gambling sponsors, who no doubt were pleased by an expanded tournament that was likely to produce quite a few upsets and surprises. The gambling industry is estimated to yield over $1.5 trillion, a significant amount of which is on sports. According to Play the Game, an NGO dedicated to fighting corruption in sport, three out of four bets from U.S. gamblers are through illegal platforms. And according to their reporting, cryptocurrency bets enable this to become easier and more prolific. And this isn't entirely new, though, right? We should think about history a little bit. Some sports have always been based on betting, often the ones that are easiest to fix, like horse racing. The horses can't tell you, for example, that they were pulled back at the end, right?

In the Americas, gambling went hand in hand with other criminal activities. During Prohibition, places with legal everything like Panama and Cuba became hubs of sports betting. While pari-mutuel betting, where there is a shared pool of wagers and dynamically changing odds and payouts, was illegal in many parts of the world, the Caribbean tracks thrived, and for the last century, sports betting has been intimately tied to drug cartels. Now, in comes 2018, and the Supreme Court essentially legalizes sports betting with its decision in the Murphy v. NCAA case. In deciding Murphy, the Court struck down the Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act, which had prohibited states from authorizing sports betting – with the dissent from Sotomayor, Ginsburg, and Breyer, just for the record. Since that decision, the U.S. revenue on legal sports betting in the U.S. has gone from $0.9 billion in 2019 to $17 billion in 2025. And part of this has been exacerbated, obviously, by new technologies and quote unquote, “innovations” of this industry. That's a kind of recap of where we are as it ruins sports and people's lives. Lindsay, Amira, how do you react to this?

Lindsay: This topic is pretty depressing to me because I think it's something that, I don't know, maybe there's a way to do it kind of somewhat responsibly, but the way that it's been allowed to proliferate is just so dangerous. And the ties it has to the leagues, to journalism, we're going to get into all of that. I think it's hard for me to even think about sports gambling. I used to think of it as just the games, right? So you're betting on a winner or a loser. Who do you think is going to win the Super Bowl, right? What's the record of a team going to be. You're talking about bigger things, and what's been really disturbing, I think, is just the prop bets and how much these prop bets and parlays have just kind of taken over the sports world, and these apps make it so easy. So now, you can bet on an individual player’s stat line, even if this is like a bench player, right? You can bet on, is Jontay Porter – I'm using that because he was actually banned from the NBA for participating in these prop bets, right? They would bet on his number of assists or how long he was going to be in the game, his minutes. You can bet on every little statistic of every single player out there.

And that's what to me just makes the corruption and the addiction part and the harassment part, it just exacerbates it so much. You know, this NBA, you’ve probably heard the names, Chauncey Billups, Terry Rozier, Jontay Porter, like I was just saying, and this scandal isn't over them fixing a game. They're about these micro things, and you can get the players to kind of buy in. Like, they can't necessarily...A bench player can't fully control the outcome of a game. Can they kind of control if they get five rebounds or six rebounds? Yeah, they can. It's just opened the door for so much of the bad stuff that comes along with gambling and in the sports world. And it's almost this gamification. I think it just makes people see it as fake and takes away the humanity from it. And it's ruined a lot. 

Amira: Yeah, as someone who admittedly, like, I hate bets, like, I hate that. I hate bets that are like, fun bets. I will know I'm 100% correct on something – you can ask my husband who'd be like, let's make a bet. And I'm like, no, he's like, but you know you're right. And I'm like, no. And for those of you who know how anxious I already get with sports, the idea of having other things at stake on it, like, I would just flatline, I'm not built for that. But at the same time – I know Brenda has given us already some history of it – I'm very understanding of the long history that gambling has played in entertainment and how we consume things. Longtime flamethrowers will remember us even playing audio from my uncle Quentin, you know, calling me in the middle of our recording, asking, what team you should bet on. So I know that, I think as Lindsay was saying, the explosion that we've seen of not just traditional betting spaces like the ads for DraftKings and MGM and things like that. But as we'll get into soon, prediction markets that really sit at this nexus of corruption and deregulation, and the ways that I think we're setting people up for harm in various ways with it. 

But also I have come to see much of this that we're about to talk about as just a response to late stage capitalism, and I think for me it's impossible to talk about this topic without the context of the world absolutely being on fire and people looking for dopamine where they can get it, looking for financial security wherever they can get it. It might seem counterintuitive to find that in a betting market, and yet for many people that's exactly what it is, and I get it, because I've also been to a place where I have $32 in my bank account and I'm walking by a place like, damn, but what if that lottery ticket is the thing that changes my life? Like, it's very easy, I think, to see this as grasping for security and stability and joy in a very bleak landscape. And so I'm trying to hold all of these things simultaneously as we dive into a discussion about some of the nuances that we're seeing with the rise of sports betting, the gamification of literally everything, and the way that this has some intersections that you might not know. I can say that I learned a lot by diving deeper into this topic. And I think what we're about to do is try to get into the mess and murk and see some of the things that are impacted by this that may not be on the radar. And hopefully after this episode, there's a little bit more that we think about when we see all of the commercials that we will undoubtedly see during, you know, whatever sporting event you're looking at. 

Lindsay: Yeah, and I feel the need to just kind of like, like, hi, my name is Lindsay, and I have placed sports bets before, you know what mean? [laughter] Like, I have used the FanDuel and DraftKings or one of them – I honestly don't remember – before. My boyfriend does it, you know, not a lot. He'll go through phases, you know, where he's doing it more and then he'll forget about it for a couple of months and he breaks even and, you know, just kind of considers it part of the entertainment of the game itself, and pretty much all the sport shows he listens to just incorporates it as part…It has become really normalized, I do want to say, we're not here to shame anyone who has ever engaged in this system – or I’m not. Maybe my co-hosts disagree. [laughs]

Amira: It's like, maybe they're shaming. [laughs]

Lindsay: You know, like...No, but I mean, in an ideal world, this would be something that could in fact maybe add a little bit of fun and people wouldn't take it to these extremes and it wouldn't lead to this increase of abuse and corruption and danger. But we don't live in that world. And so I guess I'm just like trying to acknowledge that I am aware that people can do this kind of somewhat normally. 

Amira: And responsibly. 

Lindsay: And responsibly. But then also it leads to a lot of the stuff I don’t…And like a lot of things here at Burn It All Down, I'm not quite sure how to hold both of those things together in one pile, but…

Brenda: Well, I think one of the interesting things that I thought of when we were doing this episode is a way that I made sense of growing up kind of working class and watching my relatives go play the lotto all the time and rolling my eyes at them and then thinking to myself, you know what? Like, their chance of winning this is about equal to their chance of landing a professional job or a college scholarship. 

Amira: Right. 

Brenda: So, to the late stage capitalism response, it's not so crazy, when you think about how the consolidation of capital works and the likelihood that they're going to get a job with benefits being as low as it is in this kind of a society. And so, yeah, I'm glad we had this conversation because we are not here to morally shame anybody – except the corporations that are profiting off ruining people's lives.

Amira: Exactly. And lastly, before we dive deep into it, I think about this very similar to how I thought about fantasy, is that all of a sudden there was an explosion of fantasy sports. And there was a way that because of how fast and how quick the growth and proliferation of that was, there was all these ripple effects that I don't think people really saw coming at the beginning. The online abuse to players who didn't perform on fantasy teams. The rise of technology that allowed you to communicate these type of things. And I find myself thinking about this in a very similar way. Like, decontextualized, fantasy is a great way to engage with the game besides just watching it, right? And also, it then produced all of these kind of other systems and institutions that got built up around it, that starts these ripple effects. And I see that very similarly as this point of the time that we're talking about. As Brenda said, there's corporations, there's institutions, there's structures that now have gotten their claws on something. And I think we're swimming in troubled waters that have been made turbulent by these other things and not necessarily by like an individual who is like, I just want to lay some money on. 

Brenda: What about like the fake sports aspect of fantasy? 

Amira: Well, yeah, that's something I really want to…

Brenda: Yeah, tell me a little bit. That was new for me.

Amira: I thinking about this, especially on a global scale. This is a great example. The need and desire to have sports betting markets has produced places called sports betting farms. This is really especially prominent in Russia at the 1xBet management company where there are 24/7 live sports that you can bet on. Here's the thing: none of these sports exist in real leagues. They are farms. They are places where people get paid to play a series of games. Sometimes it's sitting down soccer and the camera's on the ball and people's feet, they're just like sitting in chairs and kicking the ball. They might be playing five-a-side. They might be playing paddle. There's all of these different things. These are not in leagues. These are people who are getting exploited to make content for it to be bet on with the goal of providing somebody 24 hour access to bet. 

So three in the morning, seven in the morning, 2 p.m., whatever time, you can go on here and there'll be activity. It's very Black Mirror-y to think about the people who, you know, this becomes a viable job, but there are horrible reports coming out of the people who work in these sports betting farms who have to produce the content created just so people have something to bet on, because the the mentality is the more we can give people to bet on, even 24 hours, like anytime we're not placing bets, we're losing money. And so we're seeing this...And just because I was doing a deep dive on it, one of the things I learned is this is not the first time that there has been concerns around these things. Actually, back in 2020, there were concerns raised around table tennis in particular, because there were a number of leagues that were popping up that nobody could verify as real leagues. And this is when the global and the technological aspect of this really comes into play, because people here were hearing like a fake league name and thinking, well, that's just in East Asia somewhere. It has to be legit. And they're laying all of these table tennis bets.

As people started looking into it, they realized that half of these matches were being held in undisclosed locations with dubious ties to leagues that may or may not exist. This was like, Russia Liga Pro, Moscow Liga Pro, that brought in bettors every day for a table tennis league that was not a thing. when people pressed them on it, the leagues were like, no, no, no, these matches are totally legit. They're taking place in China, Czech Republic, Belarus. But the more people looked into it, they found that it was producing a lot of irregularities. And that was six years ago, that there was worry that people were making fake leagues and fake matches to provide more opportunity to bet, and to see that that has only been further institutionalized with these like 24 hour betting farms, that’s when I was like, oh, we are at a place. 

Brenda: Yeah. 

Lindsay: I feel like Black Mirror-y is going to be apt descriptor for a lot of what we're talking about and the way this is gone. It just reminds me of like maybe 15, maybe even 20 years ago, my dad's friend said well before like a lot of this was legalized, my dad's friend found out I loved women's tennis and started asking me these questions about the most like obscure women's tennis players. And I was like, this is so cool! You know, this is so cool that he knows who, you know, these players are. And then it very quickly came out in the conversation that it was because like he bets on women's tennis because there's so much betting, because tennis is taking place…Like there's a small tennis tournament – and these are real tournaments, you know, because they're, the structure is a little bit more public and recognizable, I think, you know, to people than the table tennis.

But, you know, they're much smaller levels, and they're taking place at all hours of the day because they're taking place around the globe, and they're small little individual matches that you can bet on. So tennis players were getting so much abuse and so much hate and, you know, the biggest audience for these small little challenger matches would be bettors. And, you know, I think the tennis world had to deal with a lot of this well before some of these other sports when the prop bets became really popularized. 

Brenda: And one of the things I've been noting as we were researching this is a number of articles about how sports gambling, including this, everything, betting, everything gamification, is starting to shape political attitudes more broadly. And we know it from the Nate Silver sort of stuff, right, that this has been brewing in terms of the connection for a long time. But a lot of the articles cite that the demographic that is most vulnerable to the illegal platforms are the most politically disengaged. So, young men, young white men in particular, who have at least dabbled in an alt-right sphere. So, that's extra scary, when you're thinking that they're now politically disengaged, and then this sort of Polymarket is coming in to engage them, in what way? So a lot of fears there. Amira? 

Amira: Yeah, and as we're getting into the way that this is politically informed and connected, especially when we're talking about prediction markets, I think it's so important to think about these things like what Brenda is introducing. So, prediction markets, that's Polymarket, that is Kalshi, which, Kalshi is now like the ad I get the most often. It almost feels like it should be like a granola brand. And for a while I was convinced it was. Then I realized like, no, it's actually...

Lindsay: [laughs] That’s Kashi!

Brenda: That's too close!

Amira: That's so close. But indeed, it's Kalshi. So actually Netflix just released a new very quick 36 minute documentary about the rise of prediction markets and sports betting in particular, and I highly recommend checking it out just so you can like see some of the things I'm about to talk about.

But a few things struck me about that, and I think are really important to our conversation, that stuff like Polymarket started as a political prediction market. It was formed during the pandemic by a man who was, you know, searching for something to do. And when they built the prediction model, it was around Trump and Biden's first debate. And he talks about how during the debate, you saw wild prediction swings about Biden dropping out of the presidential election. So much so that somebody was like, if he drops out, this is going to solidify Polymarket as like the place, right? That is actually predicting things. And of course he did drop out and it did solidify that.

And now if you put that at the same time that traditional pollsters were making predictions that were very publicly becoming, were very off. It solidified this like objective market as like the measurement tool for being able to be correct about things, which is very dangerous, because one of the things they talk about a lot is that it's very hard to distinguish if a large group of people pouring money into the betting market changes perceptions as the market moves of what's going to happen and becomes like preordained, right? If the small number of people who are on Polymarket during the debate move that line and now it's a headline, like, “Betting markets have flipped from Biden to Trump,” and all of a sudden you're like, oh, something's really going a different way – that informs your decision-making. We see how that happens.

Now, this is starting in a political sphere. The reason why we see now when we're talking about Kalshi or Polymarket, which started as political things, but now on Kalshi, sports are 85 to 90% of the predictions happening on that app. Polymarket, similarly high. And there's something to be said about how sports in particular becomes a really ideal vehicle for these kind of prediction things. And I think that's similar to the reason why I don’t…I spoil everything for myself. Movies, TV shows, I'm gonna read what happens before I watch it, because that is how I de-stress, because I don't want to be stressed thinking something's about to happen. No, I just would rather know what's coming. But the one place I can't do that is live sports. And so I think it makes sense that sports are driving so many of these things.

But it also is, I think, there's a reason why prediction markets have been under scrutiny before. Back in the early 2000s, the Department of the Interior and the Department of Defense had a program, DARPA, that they were testing out, political prediction markets for things, where you could lay bets, predictions, on regime changes, on assassinations, on things of this nature. And it very quickly was retracted and condemned by bipartisan efforts because people were like, hey, guess what? If you are saying that you are doing payouts for if a terrorist act is going to take place, you're going to see more terrorist acts take place. And it very was quickly shut down. And I was thinking about that when we were having the issues with like the dildos being thrown on the court during W games, because you could then bet on if a dildo would be thrown on the court at a W game.

And so you were seeing people, to make bets come true for them or their friends, then going to throw a dildo, like it became a cycle. And so I think that the way that this is entangled, lastly, before I pass it on, brings us right back to the seat of corruption, because the prediction markets have found loopholes using federal law, under administration that's very for their solvability, and has passed laws that has put these prediction markets solely under the purview of giving the FTC the exclusive regulatory power over prediction markets, which means states who are trying to regulate or chomp down on any of this are running headfirst into strengthened federal protections for these prediction markets.

And I'm sure it's just a coincidence that this is coinciding with Donald Trump Jr. having a stake in both Polymarket and Kalshi, that this administration is suddenly opening the doors to protecting these companies. And if you watch the Netflix documentary, the CEO is talking briefly, and the interviewer says, what would you say to states who are trying to enact regulations around these things? And he said, I would say the federal government is going against you, so bring it on, we'll see you in court. And the way that it's being protected right now goes hand in hand with this proliferation.

Lindsay: Yeah, I mean, it's you can literally bet on war right now. It's super horrible, like this…It’s a gamification of life, right? It's like, you can kind of see how sports is susceptible to it because it is a literal like win or lose, you know what I mean, outcome. There are these clear things. But then it just seeps into every aspect of life with these prediction markets and it's really grotesque. And then you have to go back to the corruption thing, you know, it just makes me second guess literally everything and wonder who has stake in what. And I'm talking even about like fun things. So we all agree, like the war thing is insane. You know, that should just like never be allowed.

But you had last summer, or maybe this trade deadline, I don't remember exactly when, but it was when one of the Giannis trade cycles was going on and all these rumors were going around and all these different reports, Shams and The Athletic reporters and everyone saying where Giannis might go. And then he ends up writing this long thing about how he's staying in Milwaukee. And then the next day it came out that he was investing in Kalshi, which of course had so many prediction market bets on where Giannis would land. So it's like, was he getting money off of prolonging the trade question? It's gross! [laughs]

Amira: Absolutely, and I think what we're seeing, I talked about Brendan Sorsby a few episodes ago, the Texas Tech quarterback who had been doing this, but also, as you said, we were seeing the master sergeant Special Duty Forces soldier who made $400,000 on betting if Maduro would be removed from power, and who was part of the raid, who was using classified information, non-public information to lay bets on Polymarket. He laid 13 bets totaling $33,000 on Polymarket, wagering that Maduro would be removed from power using classified information that he was receiving because he was part of the team that was carrying out the raid in Venezuela. And then he made $400,000 on Polymarket for that. And he got found out.

So that case is ongoing. But thinking about these things, like Lindsay said, is you can just see how it is ripe for insider trading for, you know, if you're making bets on anything, if everything becomes open to it, think of how much more potent the information that any individual has for something. Like, insider trading used to be a concept that was like, wow, you have to be on the inside to have any information to impart it on people, right? But now we're seeing that, like, Lindsay's example with Giannis, like, you can have insider information for anything that is going to be up for prediction or a bet. 

Brenda: And in fact, it's more than information, it's fingers on the scale. 

Amira: Indeed. 

Brenda: And that's, you know, one of the important things about its relationship with journalism, which we'll talk about more, but... It's very quiet out there about all the fingers tipping all the scales, which leads people to have a sense that things are more fair than they are in these betting scenarios, because there are active agents with not only insider information, but direct ability to shape outcomes. You know, that really messes with the perception. Gambling companies don't want people to know that. You know, they want you to believe in it. And, you know, thinking of all the things it's ruining, I want to pivot a little bit to women's sports and women as gamblers and spectators for a minute, because women are kind of the final frontier of this industry. In an article I was reading by Anne Blythe for the North Carolina Health News, really good article, Professor Michelle Malkin of the Gambling Research and Policy Initiative explained that the growth of women's sports gambling increases with its social acceptability. Like, that's really important for women. It's a different demographic than those disengaged, you know, young men that we were talking about before.

Blythe wrote that, “the old theory among gambling behavior researchers that men gravitated towards strategic, high stakes, face-to-face games like poker, blackjack and sports betting, feeding on the thrill and excitement. Whereas women were believed to favor more passive chance-based games like slot machines, et cetera, low-stake activities,” she says, “that allowed solitary escapes to alleviate stress, loneliness, and boredom.” So I wanna get into this question because that feels like an anachronistic description of women, particularly now as they're sports fans en masse. I mean, always have been, but. What's your reaction to this? 

Amira: It’s interesting because as I was doing a dive on this too, I found that both of these rhetorics keep being applied. So I was reading one thing about how women's sports bettors, online sports gamblers as women, is on the rise. I think in 2020, it was like a quarter, like 26 percent, and now it's nearly 40 percent. So we see that growth there. But when people are quoted in these things trying to figure out why, on one hand you have, well, you have women who are engaged with sports from a very young age and this is one that allows them to continue to be engaged in sports. And so you have that rhetoric. But then you have this other one where it's like, well, it's very easy when you don't know anything about the game. It's very easy to get into with a romantic partner who watches sport because it's a way that you can get involved even if you don't understand the sport. And so having both of these kind of rhetorical things that seem to be on the opposite sides of things leading to the same point is very interesting.

But I do also think the data is there showing that there is a huge uptick. For instance, of chapter seven bankruptcy in the last 12 months, that has listed things like Fanduel, Draft Kings, Bet MGM as the creditors that they're in debt to, nearly a quarter of those are now coming from women. The CEO of the Better Institute, has been helping gambling addicts for about 20 years, Jody Bechtold, the CEO, said prior to the Supreme Court legalizing online gambling in 2018, women were just about 40% of her clientele. And now, to Brenda's point, now they make up nearly 90% of her clients. And this to me really stuck out for A) both just the number, but also what it says that they also now have an over-representation in addicts seeking help. Because one of the things that is discussed is the stigma, because as Brenda said, they kind of fit outside of the mold of who we imagine sports gamblers to be, it can be harder to get help or have people see the warning signs of gambling addiction in a woman if you're outside of the imagination of what a gambler is.

At the same time, it seems like women are more likely to seek help for a gambling addiction on their own, even if they're less likely to be identified by families and friends as somebody in need of help. So I find that in both cases, we're kind of at this, you know, weird paradox where, like, the things informing an uptick in women's sports betting habits seem to be both coming from over-engagement in sports and a lack of engagement in sports still leading to the same place. So I'm finding that on its head to be really interesting. 

Lindsay: Well and it's like, you know, oh, it's so sexist to say that like women don't like gambling, right? Like these are like, you know, can't understand…Because it's the same kind of logic as women don't like video games, or you know I mean? Like, anything like that. So it's like, it's sexist to keep this from women, but also I kind of don’t like women to have the negative impact of it, right? [laughs] But also I don't want to wall off women from this collective societal thing. And so I go back and forth on it. And I kind of feel the same way about gambling and women's sports.

Like it used to be, you know, honestly, I remember FanDuel having like a – honestly FanDuel or DraftKings, and I don't care which one – had a deal with like the Liberty and the Knicks way back when, right? And they had like a patch deal with them, but they didn't have any WNBA prop bets on the site or any WNBA fantasy stuff on their site. So it used to be that these gambling companies, sports gambling companies just ignored women's basketball and women's soccer and things like that. And that was, there was a level of sexism there. I mean, it was just flat out sexism, right? Just being like, this isn't even worth paying attention to. And from that point of view, women's sports were kind of walled off from a lot of the benefit. Because every good has bad, every bad has good, right? So, the so-called benefits of the promotion that comes with and the engagement that comes with, and the building of new fans that comes with these sites and the way they're doing their promotions. Now, women's sports are much more heavily represented on these sites. And of course, that's leading to some really toxic places.

I go back to the prop bets. I mean, we just had situation in the WNBA where Chelsea Gray shared messages she was getting after an Indiana Fever game, calling her the n-word, right? And it was traced back to a guy who does gambling and to prop bets, right? He was mad at her for not scoring the amount of points that he needed her to score for his bet. And so once again, it wasn't about the team winning or losing, right? It was that he could zone in on these individual players. And I guess there was a so-called happy outcome to that because his real name was attached to the profile. And since Chelsea Gray did make it public, the Aces reached out to his employer and he was fired. Like, he lost his job, right?

Brenda: But your point stands that it perpetuates…

Lindsay: Yeah, it perpetuates abuse. 

Brenda: And, you know, of LGBTQ and women athletes. 

Lindsay: Right. Like, the queer and black players are going to get the brunt of this. And they're going to get it in more dangerous ways because it's going to feature racism and homophobia, the abuse that they get, as well as the sexism. And look, women don't have as much security and exist in the world in a more perilous spot than men do, and especially than male athletes do. And that especially for black and queer women. And then that just leads to the target on their back and the fact that they're not safe in public, you know, and don't feel safe in private. It's all wrapped into fandom anyways, and toxic fandom, but the sports betting just exacerbates it in really scary ways. 

Amira: And it reminds me a lot when you were talking, Linz, of like what Brenda, the question Brenda has always asked, like, what does feminist football look like, right? Like, what does it look like when we're not just replicating harmful models. And I think about this even for those flamethrowers who have been here since our awkward ad read days. I distinctly remember doing an ad read for BIAD for some sort of betting something because we were talking about how many hot dogs Joey Chestnut would eat. But I think about this because what we're even seeing now is not just what Lindsay was saying about the investment in leagues by these things, but investments in media.

So, how many podcasters are getting investments from DraftKings, who are getting investments from these companies to promote on their shows? And what it means, like, if you want to play in the same way, that kind of legitimizing factor it has. I've seen many people say, oh, I would watch women's basketball if I could bet on it. And like back in the day, as Lindsay was saying. And so if the measuring stick is men's sports, which we already talked about the corruption there and the dangers there, sometimes that search for legitimacy on that standard or with those things means that you further just replicate a lot of those harms. And I think about that as like, there's a lot of positives that come with accepting an investment from a DraftKings, right? Like, maybe that is the thing that lets your podcast be heard by more people. Maybe that investment is gonna get you paid so that you can continue to do the work that you need to do.

Brenda: Are they gonna sponsor this episode? Is that what we're thinking? [laughter]

Amira: Yeah, there you go. Exactly. Like, and so here we are. 

Brenda: Don’t worry, Jaclyn, it's all you. [laughter]

Amira: But it's real, you know? And I think that question of like, what…Actually, to borrow from Jaclyn, if one of the things that drives people, I know, I like it too, is that collective effervessence. How do you build that without like needing engagement to be because you have money on the line? How do you build that gratification without that dopamine hit that comes through landing a bet? And I think these are some of the bigger questions. And it goes, I think, alongside of some of the research I was doing about what we don't know about women gamblers, because there has been less studies done on them. And one woman who is in charge of Voices of Problem Gambling Recovery, who's worked with addicts for 16 years, said one of the things that's so under-researched in her opinion is actually the hormonal relationship to gambling. 

In particular, she was finding that women who were looking for escape when they were up in the middle of night nursing or struggling with new life changes, or were in a depressive state, were very easy to fall into the dopamine hits of online gambling because it was in solitude and it was a way that they did not need to ask for help because there was an assumption that they have it all together. And they talk about how that instant gratification and hormonal changes, especially in certain things like postpartum or, know, PMDD, which is even like, you know, anybody who menstruates can have PMDD. And the way that that plays in to dopamine hits that people need. Except that that type of research isn't being, I mean, is research at all being funded right now? That's up for debate. But like, these gaps in the things we know, it really is what's coming to mind when we're talking about this. Because I think the question at the heart of this is, is gambling, does it look different in women's sports? Does it bring the same concerns or more? It's not this apples to apples type of scenario. And I think that we're seeing that very clearly.

Lindsay: Yeah, I just want to shout out Katie Nolan, who was recently public about the fact that she doesn't accept betting ads on her podcast called Casuals, and just saying that she wanted her listeners to have a space where sports didn't have to be synonymous with that. And she had enough clout and power and finances, not that I'm sure she didn't lose some, but to be able to make that, like...I don't think I can make a promise that for the rest of my life I would never do anything that had any sort of betting sponsorship, right? Like, for the rest of my career. I don't think I can make that promise right now because if that's where so much money is coming from, you know, also like all my projects, I don't get to pick every sponsor. Do you want to mean like it's, you know, I write for CBS, which has deals with gambling. 

Brenda: And it all has relationships with leagues at this point that you're covering. 

Lindsay: It’s everywhere. And it's just like, you know, in many ways, I mean, I'm thinking of how many podcasts I listened to about the NBA gambling scandal that was presented by DraftKings. It's just a part of it. The Pat McAfee show just had, he was just bragging about how Shams told him he needed to come on the show to give a definitive statement about LeBron James, where LeBron James was going. Pat McAfee was like, if Shams is saying he needs to come on, that he has news, then I'm going to go ahead and bet, you know, double down my money on the decisions that I think he's going to make, because I think they're going to happen today. So he's bragging essentially about using insider info in the show that's sponsored by betting, in a company that's now propelled by betting, in leagues that are propelled by betting. I mean, you cannot escape it. 

Brenda: So, I mean, is it ruining sports journalism? As much as it makes me question games and sports themselves right now, it also makes me question a lot of sports writers. 

Lindsay: Yeah. It's tough because there's so little money in this industry right now. You know what mean? That it's tough to be like, people shouldn't accept any money from it. I mean, sports journalism…It is tough to get money from anywhere about anything. So I can't, like I've said, I can't be on the high horse about it. And I don't think you're automatically a hypocrite or corrupt if you've accepted a podcast sponsorship by this and then you're criticizing a gambling scandal. We have to exist in a world where both are right now, but it is uncomfortable, and it does make me second guess things. And I don't think I can say it's ruining it, because I think a lack of investment is ruining sports journalism in general. But it's certainly making the waters murkier in ways that I will never be comfortable with. I hope I'm never comfortable with.

Brenda: So that's a good place to maybe brainstorm a little bit on what we think can be done, if it's not possible for everyone to just reject this money and immediately expel it from sports and that's not realistic. What types of things can we do if it's late stage capitalism? You know, are we just waiting for a late stage capitalist revolution? [laughs] Or can we do something in the meantime about it? Do either of you feel strongly? 

Amira: As a roundabout way to answer, I find that it's right in along with many things like influencing culture, OnlyFans…There's all of these responses, right? That popped up, for people trying to find safety and security in this moment. And I think that we find solutions when we better see the intersections between the way things touch, you know, impact each other. And when I was listening to people who bet and why, what struck me was that they were talking about how they were looking for a job or they were, you know, emptied out the last of their savings to go all in on this as like the only hope, right? That they had the same way…An OnlyFans creator was saying like, this is the way forward, and it paid the bills. And then it becomes in some ways romanticized because like if you watch the Netflix doc that I referenced, you'll see a 19 year old who's like, yeah, I made a million dollars in three months. Of course, that's gonna feel more inviting when you see that. My daughter was telling me that this one OnlyFans creator who makes like two million a month, easy. And she was like, and that's just for feet pics!

Brenda: I was told the same thing. I said, good luck with that. 

Amira: You know, Samari was like, I'm 18, like, you know what I need to do to make money? So it opens up these avenues at a time where the job market is collapsing and people are, you know, de-skilling in many ways. And I think, to me, that's why a broad based solution to these responses are the only ways I can think of this, because, you know, at a time where they're making it harder for people to get an education, harder for people to apply their education to their given job, impossible to own a house, all these things. And then you have these fissures in the gray market economy that are opening up when they're like, but I could lay a bet or I could sell my feet or I could film every minute of my life and monetize it. Of course these are responses. These are almost rational responses to an irrational time. And so, I don't know, that's kind of a screed, but I just think that it's part of this kind of bigger ecosystem. 

Brenda: And I think it's part of this country's horribly violent individualism. And just, you know, you're just on your own, you know, so you're lonely and you develop a gambling addiction. And now there's no social network, there's no mental health care that's going to come, unless you have a good job and you have access to that. It's all privatized. It's the same with rehab, you know. 

All I can think of is treating it like we've treated international drug cartels, in terms of prosecution and international networks of prosecutors. I'm gonna bring up that Danish institute again – Play the Game, it’s good to check it out – they’ve done a lot of really good stuff toward trying to come up with programs and ideas of how you prosecute people, how you eliminate these illegal platforms. But we also need consumer protections and a bigger state. And basically, the state in which we live is a kleptocracy. And so that's impossible unless we can change these larger things. So going to both of your points about this, not arguing but adding on, I mean, think about the horribly punitive taxes we could put on gambling, like we do cigarettes, that could fund schools. 

Amira: Yeah. 

Brenda: Roads. Or healthcare projects. 

Amira: Yeah!

Brenda: Or, you know, obviously, you know, help for addicts. So, that would be totally possible. I mean, give them a 40% tax. Then again, are you hurting the addicted people? Absolutely. So you've got to put it towards helping them, too, that money. But that is possible. It worked with smoking. It can work with other addictions. I don't know. That's all I can think of. 

Amira: I completely agree. 

Lindsay: You guys have such great points about like, at that level. And I just, you know, I've spent so much time with what's going on in the WNBA thinking about the athlete abuse angle of all this. And so less about how do we protect the gambler itself and more how do we protect the athletes from the gamblers, and the abuse that comes with it. And in terms of that, it's for me, it's pretty…Like, I do think that prop bets just, I don't know if there's any hope of banning them, but they just, they are just a black hole towards such dangerous things. They are just taking this way, way too far and leaving these sports and these athletes, the sports open for corruption, and the athletes open for manipulation and abuse in such extreme ways.

But also like, I think there just really need to be, you know, as far as the link between social media accounts and these online sites, there needs to be more…You need to connect all your identities, right? Like, you should not be able to like anonymously abuse these athletes. You should have to have a public account tied to your FanDuel account or whatever. So your name, you know, that there's a way to link it. I know that there's ways to get around this stuff, but I think it's a start, right? And there need to be public consequences. I mean, if FanDuel has a zero tolerance policy for anyone of their customers who is found abusing these athletes, right? Like on social media, that's going to get a lot of people to stop that, right? If they are kicked off of these sites or they lose their jobs, right?

If there are real consequences for treating these very real humans in these inhumane ways, you know, I think that's a way of starting to rein it back in because, you know, it's just this desperation loop, and the people know better. They just think they can get away with this. And if you're like, no, you can’t, like…Yes, it sucks, you just bet your rent money on this athlete and they, you know, did that. But you made that decision. You do not get to now take that anger out on the athlete. I don't know. I just think there needs to be more regulation around that.

Amira: But both of what you're saying, also a push towards regulation, is exactly what many people and states are trying to do when they're running into a federal government run by the Trump syndicate crime family who are literally pushing the charge to deregulate these markets and who are using corruption to help that along the way. So I think, like many things, some parameters and regulations to the points you're talking about would not have poured the gas on this fire that we see that we are dealing with now. Because there are ways to regulate. There's ways to do things that say, okay, if you're going to do this, here's how we make it.

You know, this is what they did with alcohol. This is what they do with, you know, weed. Like I just was in California and I could walk in and get my weed really easily. And then I was taxed out the wahoo for it, which is what prevents you from then going to do a million things. You know what I mean? Like, that's what it's there for. And I really think that what we're seeing under this administration with the push for deregulation paired with ridiculous amounts of corruption has removed any possibilities of those regulatory safeguards that are there for that kind of communal aspects of this whole thing.

And then lastly, this is also why we have to have this conversation on a global scale, because we know that a number of bets are coming through offshore markets. And we just talked about the 24/7 betting farms in Russia and in other places in the world. And because we have the technology that connects us to these aspects, or the World Cup is a global sport – LA28, that's global too – this conversation cannot happen in a vacuum because it is happening globally as well.

Brenda: But just like with so many parts of US culture, there are countries like Belgium and Denmark and the Netherlands that are doing things to regulate that we can learn from. And it's a shocking idea for many people in the United States that we can learn from other countries, but we most certainly can. And I think, if anything, we can't solve all of the problems here, obviously, but we're so in the wild west. It's such a basement situation that anything in terms of regulation is going to start to help, I think. I think. 

Lindsay: Yeah. As long as maybe these players and leagues stop also just shooting themselves in the foot when it comes to this. [laughs] Like, I feel like we have to, and maybe this can just be like our stupid little closer on this, but today the WNBA…Or I guess they released it on Wednesday. They released a video of Paige Bueckers and Angel Reese at All Star talking about going back and forth about betting $400, gambling $400 on their upcoming game between the Dream and the Wings. Obviously this was lighthearted and both of them wanted their teams to win, right? It's not this corruption, but the WNBA just put it up on social media. They just put it up on social media channels as like this fun behind the scenes video.  

And of course, they've now taken it down. They've said it missed the mark. They've said they're reiterating their gambling policy to all the players and are not going to punish Paige and Angel this time. But like, come on everyone.

Amira: But content, Lindsay, content! You need content. 

Lindsay: This is right on the heels of the Chelsea Gray thing. Help us help you! [laughter] 

Brenda: Before we get to the burn pile, here's a look at what's coming up on Patreon. For more on sports betting, Jessica will soon be interviewing Danny Funt about his new book, Everybody Loses: the tumultuous rise of American sports gambling, whose reporting has, in fact, informed the conversations we've just had. And apropos of living amidst an economic depression and a war, we will be holding our next Fireside Chat on September 10th at 7pm Eastern Time. Get more information on accessing all of that and help keep Burn It All Down going by becoming a patron today at patreon.com/burnitalldownpod. There's also a link in the show notes. And remember, oh yeah, we have cool merch! So visit patreon.com/burnitalldownpod for a link to our merch shop where you can find fun things like totes and sweatshirts and coffee mugs and stuff.

Now it's time for everyone's favorite segment that we like to call the burn pile, where we pile up things that we've hated this week in sports and set them aflame. This burn pile is sponsored by flamethrower Katherine Prevost. Thank you, Katherine, and all who supported our Kickstarter. Katherine wrote to us about the Spokane Zephyrs, which folded after two seasons in the USL Super League. Local news outlet KXLY reported that the team was, “informed by management in an unceremonious two-minute meeting.” That was from a player that said management then walked out of the room without fielding any questions.

Katherine is, quote, “still steamed up about how the Spokane Zephyrs players were treated.” And now, me too. She says, “I grew up in Spokane, but live in Rhode Island now. I was following Spokane while waiting in hope for Rhode Island FC to finally deliver on their rumored plans to start a USL Super League team. So hearing about those players being treated like that stung. More broadly, the treatment of so many athletes outside the biggest names in the biggest leagues as replaceable parts or disposable cogs in the machine of money-making or real estate deals or whatever. Costs to be minimized, not people with lives and needs and plans that should be respected.” So on behalf of Katherine, we say burn.

All: Burn. 

Brenda: My burn is not, uh, new or shocking. There is not a week that goes by without the scheming of Gianni Infantino making football worse. And in his new scheme, he is proposing a sell off of parts of the World Cup to investors, including the Kushner branch of Trump's family. The European confederation, UEFA, has already rejected the proposal. And we've just heard as we're recording that CONCACAF has also rejected the proposal, thank goodness. But even though I think Infantino has overplayed his hand, pun intended, it normalizes this blatant corruption and sexism because, think about it, in his wholesale pitch, the women's tournament, which is happening in Brazil in 2027, is not even mentioned! Just like it wasn't mentioned throughout the Men's World Cup 2026, period. So I want to burn this project and any of the vultures who are supporting it, metaphorically, of course. Burn. 

All: Burn. 

Brenda: Okay, I feel like it's going to heat up quickly. Amira? 

Amira: Yeah, so in the surprise of no one who's been following along, the Heritage Foundation, fresh off of advocating and harassing trans girls and women in sports, are now fully cutthroat coming after Title IX itself. Anybody who thought they were stopping at trans athletes has not been listening to anything we've been saying. [laughs] But a week after the Supreme Court ruling, devastating ruling that Jessica burned last episode, on July 8th, the Heritage Foundation put out a report by Scott Yenor called “Restoring a Flexible Approach to Athletics,” in which he basically parrots things that you'll recognize, Bren, from all of our research in the early 1900s about sex differences in sports.

So he's arguing that we need to “accommodate sex differences and replace competitive women's sports with cheerleading, dance, yoga, hiking clubs, recreational intramurals, and other opportunities more aligned with the average female interests and tendencies.” Because of course, he goes on to say, “high intensity exercise can increase infertility.” This is like I opened a primary source that, if you've read Brenda's book, you'll know the fear about women playing soccer. You know, if you get hit with the ball in your stomach, you lose the ability to reproduce. I'm right now finishing a chapter in which I'm writing about doctors who would take out ads and say, these modern women are running too fast and jumping too high and their ovaries are going to fall out. And then what will they be good for? This is the same language, right?

It's not surprising at all since they're trying to roll back the clock massively, but it is coming out of a particular time where we're seeing federal law and precedent being especially vulnerable to these terrible arguments that are being made. A time where going back to the vague Title IX, which has always been vague litigation, which has stood up to this rhetoric for years, which is the same arguments that people were putting forth when Title IX was being argued, but now they're finding new ground and having new life breathed into them. Helped along, of course, by all of the hateful rhetoric around trans and intersex athletes, which propose at its core that there's biological sex differences that we need to accommodate.

This person who wrote the report, of course, has in the past, just five years ago, come under fire because he called any woman who's career oriented “medicated, meddlesome, and quarrelsome.” This is the same author who– 

Lindsay: I mean, guilty. [laughter]

Amira: This is the same author in these reports who said “men are meant to be warriors, and women are worriers.” And at the heart of this, right, is this idea that is a tale as old as time. Even in the report, he quotes Coubertin by talking about how the Olympics were made for men to build up masculinity and muscles and their warrior-like things. And that's why women being involved in the Olympics at all was such a problem because that's not the qualities we need women to possess. And yet, actually that is the birth of the Olympic movement, which is why we've been talking about the structural inequalities in sports baked into their foundation. But it is absolutely perplexing to be existing in a time where we're literally going back to basics when we're saying, actually, actually all those sports that you like doing, nope, it's threatening your feminine, uh, reproductive habits. It's making you more masculine. It's making you aggressive. We are a half second away – as I'm talking, they're probably already penning the report advocating that we go back to girls rules basketball because God forbid a woman's sweat, be a little competitive, have a mind, or just the interest that she wants to follow. And again, Title IX doesn't just protect women. It's a gender neutral thing that protects everybody's access to a right to their education in educational environments, despite their gender identity. Right? So that's why boys have also used this legislation to play field hockey, because it's not tracking you into a box based on perceived sex differences or what you should like based on everybody else’s, society's idea of what you should do, especially when often that means that you're sacrificing the independence that people have to, I don't know, want to fucking run fast, or jump high, or win, or beat people, or play sports non-traditional to their gender identity, or actually do whatever the fuck they want because, newsflash, women are people. Also just like, deep-seated frustration because this continues to be the absolute work timeline. It used to be that they would write these reports and we'd just be like, hah, okay, we've already litigated that, and now they're writing the reports and we're like, oh fuck, here's the next attack, are we ready for it? So I would like to burn the Heritage Foundation perpetually, Yenor's old school approach to this, the way that trans and intersex athletes and rhetoric around them have opened the door for continued, you know, the idea you're protecting women's sports. No, now you're just trying to dismantle it, which is what we said you were doing in the first place. All of it is just absolute bullshit and I would like to burn it. So burn. 

All: Burn. 

Brenda: We also immediately need a piece of merch that says Burn It All Down, were quarrelsome.

Amira: Yes, meddlesome and quarrelsome and medicated. 

Lindsay: Check, check!

Amira: Thank you, Wellbutrin. [laughter] Just the generic kind.

Brenda: Healthcare. Linz? 

Lindsay: Yeah, so, one day my dream is that we have an episode of Burn It All Down where nobody is burning anti-trans bullshit, not because we are ignoring it or don't care about it, but because there is no anti-trans bullshit in sports to be infuriated about. But Amira already got us started, and I'm going to keep us going, because today, my friends, is just not that day. First, I want to mention my friend Ben Rothenberg who reported on his Substack Bounces that the WTA has implemented a policy requiring that all WTA players must undergo genetic sex testing in order to maintain their eligibility to compete on the WTA tour. It seems like this policy is effective immediately and it's just going into place in the middle of the season. I could go deeper into that. It deserves all the criticism and the burning. We will link you to his Bounce's post, which is free for everyone because of how important it is.

And I'm going to pivot to spend my time on someone else about this topic, which is Sophie Cunningham. In a recent ESPN profile, the Indiana Fever Guard said, “I got a lot of negative feedback about me hating trans. And I'm like, I never once said that. I think that I am here to extend love, but I also think that love is truth, being honest. And I want to protect young girls in a locker room or young girls in sport who shouldn't have to go against biological men.” She doubled down on her comments about protecting women and girls in sports from biological men and boys after that profile came out. The White House then, of course, picked up these comments and use them in memes and for its own political posturing.

In the past couple of days, things have escalated. Ahead of the Fever's road game against the Seattle Storm on Tuesday night, an anti-trans group leapt at the opportunity to use Cunningham to get attention and held a pregame rally outside of Climate Pledge Arena supporting Cunningham and, of course, two Washington state initiatives that would bar transgender students from participating in girls athletics in state schools. I'm not going to name the group because I do not want to give them the air they crave. A donor for that group purchased courtside seats for the game and put two teenage girls there in the group's merch and holding pro Cunningham signage. At the game, a minority co-owner of the Storm yelled an expletive at those girls, which put kerosene on the new cycle. The Storm apologized. The WNBA suspended the co-owner for five games and fined them an undisclosed amount. And there is now another rally planned for Friday night in Portland. And by the time you all are listening to this, there will probably be more anti-trans rallies propping up at WNBA and in particular Fever games because of Cunningham.

I want to burn what Sophie Cunningham is doing because she knew exactly what she was doing when she decided to weigh in on this debate and put so many of her queer teammates and colleagues under the microscope and under danger of even more anti-trans vitriol than they already receive. I want to burn the silence from the Indiana Fever, the WNBA, the WNBPA, a lot of the top players and coaches – not you, Cheryl Reeve, you're good. And you know what? I want to burn also leaders across the women's basketball space, the women's sports space, and the Democratic Party as a whole for their silence and cowardice over this issue, not just right now, but over the last decade as the right has used the veil of “protecting women and girls” to turn trans rights into the ultimate wedge issue. They let the bigots determine the terms of this conversation, which is why we are where we are today.

And to Sophie, back to you. These people do not love you. They are using your whiteness and blondness, but they will come for you and your sass and your physicality next. I also want to burn the USA Network for having Cunningham as part of their broadcast team on Wednesday night after all this happened. And I even want to burn the Storm co-owner for giving these people exactly what they wanted. It will never stop being heartbreaking to me how bad faith actors use the beauty and power of women's sports to attack and disparage and threaten one of the most marginalized groups in society, and how they have turned a beacon of hope into a weapon of hate. To our trans friends, I'm so, so sorry that this is happening, and I'm terrified about how much worse I fear it is gonna become. Please take care of yourself. Burn. 

All: Burn.

Amira: And also another representation that we're on the worst timeline ever because like, when, in what world does Sophie Cunningham get a puff piece with beautiful pictures made about her? Like, learn from Sydney Sweeney, it's not gonna end up how you want. And also the fact that you want to say all these things but not show up to your scheduled presser so that Kelsey Mitchell has to step in and get the questions that you should be answering. 

Brenda: Grr.

Lindsay: It’s so exhausting. 

Brenda: Now that we've established we're in the worst timeline in history, we would like to highlight some of the people that do carry the torches and are changing sports culture for the better. First up, we want to name and recognize people who supported our Kickstarter at the Light a Torch level. We cannot thank you enough for your support. 

Lindsay: Amanda Williams, Courtney Moores, Cynthia Lynch, Travis Lund, and Kristen.

Brenda: Emily Snyder Sarah Hayes Lisa Cohen, Chris Jones, and Meredith Skeeters. 

Amira: Saul Tannenbaum, Mia Kelly, Jane McManus, Allie Browne, and Kate McInerney.

Brenda: Okay, and honorable mentions. 

Amira: First, sister sister! The sisters Temwa and Tabitha Chawinga scored a collective hat trick in a shocking win for Malawi over Nigeria in WAFCON this week. This is Malawi's first appearance at the tournament and they're coming in as the lowest ranked team compared to the highest ranked Nigeria. The fact that they're sisters and a collective hat trick, like, I love everything about it. Shout out to them. 

Lindsay: That’s amazing. I wanna shout out the European Broadcasting Union that has issued new guidelines for track and field coverage, which direct camera work to avoid unnecessarily sexualizing women athletes and to emphasize performance. It's a little depressing that that had to be a guideline, but thank you for making one. 

Amira: Also shout out Women's Pro Baseball League. Their league opener between the Los Angeles Queens and the New York Heights is officially sold out. That home opener is August 1st, coming right up, and we're thrilled to see it already having the fans it so richly deserves. 

Lindsay: And what great team names, my goodness.

Brenda: Right! 

Lindsay: Those are killer.

Brenda: It's a little weird that the Queens isn't in New York, but that's fine. You know, because Queens, no? Lindsay, you’re still not laughing.

Lindsay: I do get it. 

Amira: It’s better than the women's softball teams that I study in the 30s and 40s that were called the North Philadelphia Honeydrippers, so. You know, I take these. The Queens feels nice and not dripping.

Brenda: I feel like you would like that flamethrower, Amira. I was thinking this would be a good one for you. And I'm going to shout out a difficult but important note, would like to…Congratulate is probably the wrong word, but thank and appreciate Bridie Farrell who sued the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee and U.S. Speed Skating back in 2020, alleging that they had failed to protect her from sexual abuse by former Olympic speed skater, Andy Gabel. Finally, after six years of discovery efforts, skating organizations have tried to have the case dismissed. U.S. District Federal Judge Frederick Scullin Jr. ruled that it would go to trial because factual questions remained about what the organizations knew, what responsibility they had for Farrell's safety, and whether their failures contributed to her injury. Farrell said in an article in the Washington Post, “I’m really proud to have made it this far. I feel slightly better. I feel heard. When I first read it, I teared up, because it was like: ‘Yes, it’s worth speaking up. Survivors, keep speaking up. Although this is very, very hard, we have to keep doing this.’” So thank you to Bridie Farrell, and you are an amazing torchbearer.

Amira: Absolutely. I just want to also take a minute to recognize and shout out Marc Cucurella, Spanish defender, fresh off of the World Cup win, and his wife, Claudia, who have been very open talking about being parents of an autistic child. Those who know their story have followed it for a while. They talk about their son, Mateo, who didn't come to any of the matches because changing routine and the environment were really overstimulating for him, but did decide to come for the final match. So they got really nice family pictures. But also the way that both Marc and Claudia have been so outspoken, we talked about this with Elana Meyers Taylor as well. And as the mom of an autistic kid, it's really meaningful to have people use their platforms to talk about this parenting journey. And Marc has talked about not choosing to play places that wouldn't provide the support needed for his family, but also that, you know, parenting a child who’s neurodivergent requires different things, and changing cultural standards around what we understand to make spaces even more accommodating to people with neuroatypicalities. And so it's really meaningful and I just wanted to give them a shout out and congratulations on the win again. 

Brenda: Lindsay, who's our torchbearer of the week? 

Lindsay: The torchbearer of the week is all the winners of the WNBA All Star Game. You know, we'll give Azzi Fudd a shout out for winning–

Amira: We little debate about this. [laughter]

Lindsay: We’re getting there. We give Azzi Fudd a shout out for winning the three point contest as a rookie; Elena Delle Donne, Shakira Austin and GG Banks, I believe. 

Amira: Who was so amazing. 

Lindsay: Crushed the shooting stars competition and was great to see them back. And then our real torchbearer of the week, let's be honest, is Jonquel Jones, who after recording 22 points, 13 rebounds and 8 assists, was named the WNBA All Star Games MVP. She's the first winner of the All Star MVP from the Bahamas, the first international player to win All Star MVP. And now she's the first player to ever win the WNBA's All Star MVP, Commissioner's Cup MVP, Finals MVP, and regular season MVP. In a year where the WNBA has been overtaken by narratives and everything has felt a little fake and forced at times, Jonquel Jones is one of the most down to earth and real people in women's sports as a whole, probably in the entire world. And you could tell that this honor meant a lot to her. In her quote in the interview room, she said, “I was telling some people back there, this is everything that I dreamed of, that I dreamt about, that I wanted as a little kid. I told my parents when I was five years old that I was going to be a professional athlete. The plan never changed, even when it looked murky, even when I didn't know how it was going to get done. When I was on the phone calling random coaches in the Bahamas, hoping that somebody, anybody would give me a chance. This was always the goal. 

Brenda: Aw.

Amira: Love that. 

Brenda: That’s it for this episode of Burn It All Down. Thank you again to today's executive producer, Jaclyn Mahoney. We will be back next month with a new year of college sports starting soon. We're going to be talking about the death of sports. Dun-dun!

Amira: [laughs] Nice and uplifting topics!

Brenda: Dun-dun! Very on brand. We're quarrelsome. 

Lindsay: [laughs] What is wrong with us? How do we have any fans? We are the most…

Brenda: It’s not an us problem!

Lindsay: What is wrong with you all? How do you enjoy listening to this? Why do you all support this?

Amira: Join us on our bed of misery as we sail the seven seas. 

Lindsay: What is happening? 

Brenda: Misery loves company! [laughter] Jessica will be leading that one. 

Lindsay: It’s the death of sports! Mark your calendars. [laughter]

Brenda: It’s coming up. This episode was produced by Martin Kessler, Shelby Weldon does our social media. Follow Burn It All Down on Instagram, Blue Sky, X, TikTok, and Facebook for regular positive updates. Listen, subscribe, and rate the show wherever you listen to podcasts. To stay up to date on Burn It All Down and the hosts, become a patron. Visit patreon.com/burnitalldownpod. There's also a link that is in our show description. It'll be there. Our Patreon is also where you can find, as I mentioned, our sweet merch. Visit patreon.com/burnitalldownpod. The other place to find out all this information is our website, burnitalldownpod.com. As always, on behalf of myself and my co-hosts, Amira Rose Davis and Lindsay Gibbs, burn on and not out. 

Lindsay: I love you all, I'm just kidding. 

Brenda: Oh, I thought it was hilarious. It's hilarious. I mean, soon as I read it, was like, dun-dun!

BIAD