49ers. Yeah. She wont approach any more tv cameras. Who do you like in the super bowl . Super bowl. Uhhhhhh. I think ill be fair and balanced and say nothing. Only one california team. Big football fan, judy. Thats a wrap on news watch for this week. Thanks to everybody. Im jon scott. Well see you again next week. Thanks for watching. You going to bet on the game . Watch out your government may watch out your government may john your poker game may be illegal, but government likes to ban things like ticket scalping. Weve got to get resellers out of the process soit some people want to ban mixed martial arts. School cheerleading is more dangerous than mma. John how is the ban on performanceenhancing drugs working out . With so much money in sports, should College Stars be paid . No. No. Definitely not. John lets ask a team owner. What if government ran sports . No team would be good. Big sports, big business, thats our show tonight. And now, john stossel. John sun zillions of with yoyouwill make a belt on the sur bowl. If youre a baltimore fan, your team is expected to lose. How can you make a bet thats fair to you . By taking the point spreads which at the moment is about three and a half points. That means San Francisco could win and you could still win your bet on baltimore. This makes betting more interesting and makes watching the gamewi more fun. Fine. Except where does that point spread come from . From bookies, professional bet takers. Thats illegal in most of america, and yet these point spreads are everywhere. Billions will be bet on this years game, most of it illegally. Isnt it time we legalize gambling . I asked people in times square. Should betting on sports be allowed . Never. It encourages people, poor people, to spend money they dont have. John americas politicians theyve banned many gambling like gambling on the internet. Ambling they say things like its not the right moral choice or sound public policy. There are enough dysfunctional families. My guests tonight say the government should get out of the way. Annie duke is a former professionaprofessional poker pd we have the author of gambling, a healthy bet. A healthy bet . What are you talking about. I like to gamble, but i dont think its healthy. Its real healthy. Its healthy for the individual and for society. You havent heard this narrative, this tale before. John no. Because the Research Money is goes to those people who say look, society is going to hell in hand basket. For moral reasons or because it calls all this addictive problem gambling. The truth is the evidence doesnt back it up. Its wonderful entertainment and recreation. John how is it healthy . Healthy because it helps our brains and it helps our hearts. Older folks who play bingo, very popular. Theres actually now proof that it helps the stay alzheimers, degenerative brain disease. Youre laughing, but its true. The evidence is there but its not been looked for because theres no government funding in making this argument. John you also say it teaches kids and everybody about risk, about probability. If we gamble, we learn to deal with risk, to understand risk, and thats why i think actually kids shouldea start to appreciate gambling earlier rather than it being held off the. John annie, you dont buy this healthy part, but its not so much whether i buy it or not. When i teach Decision Making and i talk about probability, i use gambling as an example. I dont think its jermaine to the argument. When people argue that we should ban it because its immoral or general harm to society where theyre notn really identifying that a person is doin anyone, tg back in sort of this amorphous societal harm, that when you start arguing the other side and saying but theres good things about gambling that youre lending weight to the arguments that really should be germane to the legislative issue. The probabl problem is the ml argument against bla gambling hs run out of political steam. What the Public Health folks have done is taken accus cues fm tobacco and obesity and said its a medical problem. It costs all of society, etc. , etc. John annie, as a professional poker player, youve seen this sort of casino sleaze. Sure. John people are chain smoking. Some people do lose all their money. Its true, but its a very small minority, so its wil less than 1 of people who engage in any kind of gambling activity that have a gambling problem. Thats compared to alcohol where 7 to 9 of people, for example, use alcohol have issues. Its a really, really small problem, but even if those peoplele are having problems, theyre making those9 choices r themselves as con sensual adults. Theyre not hurting anybody, and i dont think were supposed to legislate to protect some small minority from their own bad decision and hurt the majority who do it in a healthy way and they really enjoy it in the same way they enjoy going to a restaurant or a movie. In cultures like the british osh or the australians where they have more gabbing bling, the problem isnt any greater. John its assumed if we legalize, it will get worse. They did an experiment. If we have gambling on the internet and in peoples home, society will fall apart. John if youre alone at home. Why havent they done the same experiment with on line shopping . So theres all these people going broke with on line shopping. Were not trying to ban that. With any prohibition, people who want to do it do it anyway. Right. There are all kinds of avenues to gamble. The question is is it legal and regulated and the government gets its share of the tax or is it under the table, shady, unregulated, and the consumer doesnt have any protection . John its harder to deal with the problem gamblers and hehelp them when its illegal. Thats right. Its harder to keep children from gam ling on line when its illegal as well. John we tried to get opponents tonight, and they didnt want to come. One group, stop predatory gambling, addicted gamblers are abandoning their children in casino parking lots around the world. Scare stories are everywhere, but its anecdotal. The real evidence shows the extent of the problem is massively overstated and critically we never hear about the Positive Side of gambling which is true and far outweighs the negative. I think the issue is we dont ledges late by anec ab anecdote. John we do. We shouldnt. Fair point. There was an an eck d anecdote e slinging around about a kid who lost a lot of money on line and then robbed a bank. They were blaming that on internet gaming. When we look in the uk which has very good statistics on this thing, preinternet gaming, preand post, there wasnt any increase in the percentage of gamblers who had issues. These arent the causes of the problem. When we start saying well, any timeca somebody robs a bank, we have to look back at what caused them to do that, if it was a shopping problem or a gambling problem or you know, whatever it was, were going to ban the thing that made them make that bad decision. Its a huge slippery slope. Where are you going to draw the line . We have a really good line of are you doing direct harm . Is it consensual. Iif we go beyond that several steps back like you might hurt your family, well stop people from selling doughnuts to people who are overweight, for example. That may be coming. Very unknown to mr. And mrs. American taxpayer. Theyve actually paid for studies by their federal government into what distinguishes ga gamblers from nongamblers. The American Government found there is no difference. Well, theres one slight difference. Gamblers are more associatable, more neighborly, more involved in their community, and are more likely to donate to charity. Those are the only differences. John okay. I want to see these studies. I believe you, but i just havent seen them. Now its super bowl week. Were talking about legalizing Sports Betting. Lots of opposition from the people who run sports. David stern, nba commissioner. The one thing im certain of, in new jersey where theyve just passed a law to legalize this, has no idea what its doing and doesnt care because all its interested in is making a buck. John if theres more betting, theres mortemations to say throw this game. Even so, if youre legalizing it, everything is in the light and youre less likely to have that happen. Where you actually get more problems is in College Sports where they dont pay the players. The push to have these restrictions c john which well talk about later tonight. Whether its Sports Betting or on line gambling, its all about protecting another domestic industry. The nfl, the nba, the National Hockey league, the ncaa, theyve all joined a lawsuit against new jersey. Gambling threatens the integrity of sports. Fundamentally at odds with the principle that the outcomeor of the contest must be perceived by the public a s determined solely on the basis of honest athletic competition. They have their heads in the sand. You can bet on a game in las vegas, new jersey, and theres a tremendous amount of illegal gambling going on. You can just pay the players according to what they earn. The most ar dent supporters of all of those fans are also the most ardent legal gamblers on the sports. Nobody will watch football without the spread. Its published in usa today. Like for them to say that gambling is somehow hurting the sport, thats a completely, like, species argument because people are watching the game because of the spread. John i am. Thank you. Half the states, weirdly, even ban social gambling in some form, a friendly game. I occasionally play poker and still legal in my state, fortunately, as no one profits by running the game. I asked my fellow players about the bans in some states, and the ban on internet poker. We are intelligent enough to know our limits and leave the government out of it. Were not all mentally and psychologically Strong Enough to governor ourselves. John the liberals want government to do something. The addictive element of gambling forces, you know, the government to step in because it is addictive. Thats stupid. Smoking cigarettes is addictive behavior. They dont prevent us from smoking in our home. They dont prevent us from drinking in our own home. John i think the liberal guy made the argument that the politicians make. Protect us from ourselves. Vi absolutely, because whether were adults or children, we are unable to make rational decisions for ourselves. John or for children. The casino said hes a kid, we wont let him do it. The bigger issue is what is the slippery slope youre getting on when you try to protect people from their own addictions or own bad decisions. You have to start banning bigger problems in front of it. All of a sudden you think that youre protecting people from their own bad decisions, but you just have no freedom to make your choices. What i think is a bad decision might be different than what you think is a bad decision. John one last point to me shows the hypocracy of government. The state lottery. We have state lottery because there was a numbers racket. Organized rhyme would let people pick a number and somebody would win 100 or 1,000. We cant do this, this is gambling. We have to stop it. We cant stop it. Maybe if we compete with them since were legal, well drive them out of business. Nowim we have state lotteries ad worse. E they take 50 of the bet, and mostly from poor people, and they run these disgusting commercials which suggest give up your job, make a bet, and happiness comes from having a lot of money that you didnt earn. The governments cornered the market on bad odds. The commercials and the billboards for lotteries are aimed at poor neighborhoods and poor people, so theyre the worst offenders. Ga gambling iso different than any other form of economic enterprise. When the government runs it, it doesnt go so swell, particularly for the consumer and taxpayer. And theres no competition on the lottery. If i go to las vegas and theres competition on the slot machines, the worst slot machine i find is taking 5 cents on the dollar. The government owns the lottery. They can take 50 cents on the dollar. If there were competitors, i guarantee you would get a much higher return. John five cents from the casino, which is a scam, but 50 from my government. Thank you, annie duke, and patrick. Coming up, ticket scal pipping, should that be legal . What about steroids . Should College Athletes be paid . Thats next. Should College Athletes be paid . Next. Next. Law [ male announcer ] how do you make americas Favorite Recipes . Just begin with americas favorite soups. Bring out chicken broccoli alfredo. Or bestever meatloaf. Go to campbellskitchen. Com for recipes, plus a valuable coupon. Campbells. Its amazing what soup can do. Im up next, but now im sging the heartburn blues. Hold on, prilosec isnt for fast relief. Cue up alkaseltzer. It stops heartburn fast. Oh what a relief it is gives you 1 cash back on all purchases, plus a 50 annual bonus. And everyone but her likes 50 more cash, but i have an idea. Do you want a princess dress . Yes. Cupcakes . Yes. Do you want an etchasketch . Yes do you want 50 more cash . No. You got talent. [ male announcer ] the capital one cash rewards card gives you 1 cash back on every purchase plus a 50 annual bonus on the cash you earn. Its the card for people who like more cash. Whats in your wallet . I usually say that. [ construction sounds ] [ watch ticking ] [ engine revs ] come in. Got the coffee. That was fast. Were outta here. [ engine revs ] john notre dame linebacker manti teo might have made millions this year without concocting a fake girlfriend. Duke basketball forward Mason Plumlee would have made millions, too. Theyre worth at least that to their colleges, because their colleges make millions off their services. Some football teams bring in 50 million in profit selling tickets, media rights, clothing. Alabamas football coach was paid five and a half Million Dollarsll last year. College sports is big business, but the colleges pay the players nothing. Nada. Top players get scholarships. They dont have to pay tuition, but no cash because college is supposed to be amateur time. And thats not fair, says dr. Watkins, a professor of entrepreneurship at syracuse university, so why isnt it fair . Thats the way its done. Well, you know, i think that the burden of proof is on the ncaa for the most part. I think john the ncaa is the institution that sort of runs College Sports, and they have a rule no money. Well, they do give the player a scholarship. My question would be if you went to nick saban and said were going to take away your 5 million salary and give you a Free Education for you and your family, how would he feel about that . John the football coach made five and a half million. Exactly. Exactly. So i think that what we have to realize is that we live in america, and we live in a society where we have things called labor rights, where people are allowed to negotiate their salaries, and it doesnt make any sense that you see these games, theyre making millions of dollars. Nobody turns on a College Basketball game to see the coach. They turn the game on to see the players, so why is that players mother, father, etc. Not allowed to share in the revenue . I think thats a really important question we have to start asking. John but theres not much of a movement for it. A few Sports Writers talk about it, but its not like the College Players are organizing or complaining, even. Oh, they complain. They complain. If you go and do a survey an get the players to speak freely on the issuing, the ones who understand how much money is being made, they are very resentful of this. You remember the fab five from the university of michigan. Chris weber talks about going to stores and seeing his jersey on sale for 100 and he couldnt afford mcdonalds. Thats a bit crazy. Nobody gives away that kind of money to be nice, right. You have to kind of go in and take it. I think the quickest way to get the fair result would be for the players to get to the final four and say look, were not going on the court until you give our families some of this money because guess what . If they dont show up, there is no show. Everybody that makes millions of dollars on these guys, they dont get paid. I guarantee you that would bring them to the negotiating table pretty quick. John i agree with you that these athletes deserve to be paid. It should be a market. Most americans do not agree with us. Here are some we asked. Should College Athletes be paid . No. No. No. No. I dont think they should. Absolute not. Why . St they go to school to learn. It will take away from the greatness of College Sports. John taking away from the greatness of sports. Theyre playing for their team. Not bucks. Well, you know, we live in a free country that has a free labor market where people can go negotiate their salaries. If youre a 9yearold kid and youre going to star in a block buster film that goes and makes half a billion dollars, they with aay you scholarship, right, so john they can. Its just consenting adult child parent whatever the deal is. They could, right. John whatever contract they make. Right. Whatever the contract is that they make. What happens with the ncaa, in my opinion, is that they are allowed to operate in a way that controls the labor market in such a way it would be illegal in almost any other industry. Walmart cant get together with target and kmart and agree to restrict workers salaries to 10 an hour. They cant do that. The Justice Department will step in. The ncaa will not regulate or improveca itself. An outside force has to come in and bust itse up and say eithero this the right way or do it a different way and turn it into a professional Sports League if you want or go back to the fundamentals of academic integrity which i think is equally fine. John we did try to get the ncaa to appear on this program and defend its position but they didnt call us back. Im not surprised that no one from the ncaa came to defend that point of view. They know theyre wrong. The former executive director once he left the post came out and said look, these guys should be paid like everybody else. Its funny. Everybody who says the players shouldnt get money, most of these players are making tons of money. They always have money to give the coach his Million Dollar salary. I think the love of the game is a wonderful thick. I think most of these athletes have that, but we have to agree that its wrong that you have a star player whose school is going to make 20 million if he leads the team to a championship and the coach is going to get this hugeth bonus if he wins, bt yet the players mother cant come to the game because she cant afford a bus ticket for the game. Ive seen that. I just think thats patently unfair. John i asked the famousfoott this. Ho i said youre ripping the players off. He said were not ripping them off. Were giving them an opportunity to get an education thats valuable and per effect their skill. Imagine if thep nfl could get away with paying their athletes with scholarship. I think its time for them to acknowledge themselves for what they are. They are a professional Sports League. You hear coaches say all the time i expect my athletes to be professionals. Ive been on College Campuses for 20 years, and from what ive seen, an athlete lives a different life. They have a different set of precious from the student body. John theyre told to take serch courses, their time is all in practice. Ive had players say i wanted to major in engineering but my football coach told me he that doesnt fit with my football swedge. John if they were paid giving the crazy laws we have in america, there could be some odd wrongles which george will brought up. If Football Players are paid, female hockey players must be too because of title ix gender equity. Allowing players to be released from the restriction that keeps them from going outside the university to get paid. If im a star on the Basketball Team and i can go to the local car dealership and say buy bobs cars and bob will pay me money to do that, why cant i go downo that . Would should i be forced to live in poverty because theres a stack of rules this high protecting the ncaas revenue extreme. When you need that many rules to protect someones money, chances are youre doing something you shouldnt be doing. John thankge you. Up next, some athletes improve their performance by taking steroids. Ofs course, our government says thats a job for congress. Is it . Everyone in baseball is responsible. The owners, the commissioner, the union, and the players. We want steroids and other dangerous drugs out of sports, period. Sports. Period. Alright, lets go. Sports. Shimmy, shimmy chocolate. Shimmy, shimmy chocolate. We, we chocolate cross over. Yeah, we chocolate cross over. [ male announcer ] introducing fiber one 80 calorie chocolate cereal. Chocolate. And i was told to call my next of kin. At 33 years old, i was having a heart attack. Now im on a bayer aspirin regimen. [ male announcer ] be sure to talk to your doctor before you begin an aspirin regimen. I didnt know this could happen so young. Take control, talk to your doctor. Otherworldly things. But there are some things ive never seen before. This ge jet engine can understand 5,000 data samples per second. Which is good for business. Because planes use less fuel, spend less time on the ground and more time in the air. Suddenly, faraway places dont seem so. Far away. John i think Lance Armstrong is a despicable slug not because he injected drugs like tess toft roan or did blood doping to improve his performance. I dont care if an adult does things like that. I hate Lance Armstrong because he cheated and then threatened people, threatened to sue them if they told the truth. Hes a liar and a bully, but the drugs themselves, so what . I dont even know why theyre illegal or the governments business, but as usual, my opinion is minority opinion. Should the government investigate steroids in sports . I think so, yeah. Of course. Everyone should be drug tested. And its harmful. For the future of our nation, the government has to take a stand to show that there is no cheating in anything. John for the future of our nation,o government must take a stand. Nick gillespie pee from reaso fv disagrees. Why . If an athlete dopes his blood, hes cheating. Youre right that Lance Armstrong is a liar and a bully, but its categorically wrong to focus on performanceenhancing drugs is the only way that athletes gain competitive advantages over their colleague. There were times in the 50s and 60s when track coaches came up with innovative training regimes that they kept secret or used on only their athletes. Is that unfair competition . Is using certain times of technology, greg lemond, the First American he to win the huge create critic of Lance Armstrong. He beat a competitor by using technological advantages that the frenchman chose not to. The man he beat used drugs. He later admitted to using both descroidz and amphetamines, so the idea that drugs are the magic pill that will take any of us or me to the top of the Tour De France just isnt true, but they get vilified because people are afraid of drugs in a way theyre not afraid of eating certain types of diets or training or whatever. John i would add to your list of performance enhancers. Lasik eye surgery. Tiger woods improved his vision and presumably improved his game. Why isnt that considered as morally reprehensible. There have been baseball pitchers who had Reconstructive Surgery on their throwing arms where afterwards they can throw fasterer than they used to be. Is that bad . Athletes are competitors first and foremost. Theyre always looking for an edge. Particularly in Something Like the Tour De France going back to 1903, people have been doping the entire existence of the race. The only difference is that in the mid 60s it became illegal, but thehe activity nevr ceased. Lance armstrong, the one place he didnt have a competitive advantage over his competitive set was in using drugs because they all use them. John but what about the cheating part . Some dont use them. Some dont get caught. John they all use them in bicycle racing, apparently . I mean, it is virtually ubiquitous in various things like professional sports and what not. John i dont think theyre all using, and if s some do, soe dont, its a form of cheating. Is it cheating if people do extra sprints at the end of a practice. Ig its legal. Not all drugs are banned. Rather, certaindi drugs are banned. For instance, somebody like mark mcgwire, he was openly using certain types of performanceenhancing drugs, and they were considered legal. A couple years later, they were not. It becomes gray area once you start drawing bright lines about this is legal and moral, this is illegal and cheating. John another difference. People say these drugs make people into freaks. They really are dangerous, change your bodies. Well, you know he, there are two ways to think about that. One is that we like to see freaks. We like to see freaks like Lance Armstrong, an absolute freak of nature. The better he was at cycling, however he got that way, the more people watched the Tour De France. When we had people that werent as good as him, fewer people watched. Thats not a bad thing. No question that a lot of people and athletes do real damage to their bodies by using drugs. If you care about that, the first thinged you should do is n athletics becauseth the problem with a Football Player is not that hes taking some steroid. The problem is that hes banging his head against a brick wall for his entire professional career. If you want to make the drugs safer and if you want to make the usage more wise, you should bring it up above ground so that doctors and coaches and advisors can openly deal with whats going on, what works, what doesnt work and kindop of regulate it not by government but by common practice and best practice. John and how would that work . I look at the list of things that the people say can be caused by, say, steroids. Uhhuh. John it goes from acne and testicle shrinkage to diabetes, diarrhea, kidney damage, death. I dont disagree with what youre saying. Thats already happened. Nothing gets m made better or safer by saying this is completely illegal so the only people it will be available to are people who are risk takers who do it in the shadow of darkness. John if it were legal, there would be sports that would say none of this, some would say yes, you can do it. Wed have guidelines, wed have choices, it would be out in the open and it would be safer. There are already cases of that. For instance, body building which is one of the sports that really kind of main lined steroid use at the beginning. Theres a natural circuit and an enhanced circuit, and you know, that way audiences can choose and athletes can choose. Generally speaking, the missourir choices people have, the better we all are. John thank you, nick gillespie, of reason magazine. Coming up, governmentrun basketball, and the beauty of ticket scalping, and a sport that i love but its been banned where i live. [ male announcer ] wouldnt it be cool if we took the Nissan Altima and reimagined nearly everything in it . Gave it greater horsepower and classleading 38 mpg highway. Advanced helights. And zero gravity seats . Yeah, that would be cool. Introducing the completely reimagined Nissan Altima. Its our most innovative altima ever. Nissan. Innovation that excites. Now get a 199permonth lease on the 2013 Nissan Altima. Its a challenge to balance work and family. Thats why i love adt. I can see whats happening at my business from anywhere. [ male announcer ] now manage and help protect your Small Business remotely with adt. Arm and disarm your alarm, watch secure video in real time, and even adjust your lights and thermostat wherever you are. With adt, you get 24 7 protection through our exclusive fastresponse monitoring. You can be confident that adt is always there for you. Hey, lisa. Is that the delivery weve been waiting for . [ male announcer ] and now you can get adt Monthly Service for your business starting at less than 2 a day. [ woman ] i love the convenience of adt. I can finally be in two places at once. [ male announcer ] call today and get adt for less than 2 a day. Helping protect your business is our business. Adt. Always there. John thats mixed martial arts, mixed because its not wrestling or boxing, its fighting, and to win, you need to be good at all the martial arts. Yes, its violent, but so is boxing. So is football. In my state, new york, and in connecticut, bocking and football are legal but mixed martial arts is banned. I can go to Madison Square garden to watch boxers smash each other in the face. I can take little kids there to watch fake wrestling where people pretend to do creepier things t to each other and somef the hired help is so out of control, they do things like this. I think this is fake. You think its fake . Whats that . Is that fake, huh . That was years ago when a pro wrestler took offense at my pointing out that professional wrestling is fake and he beat me up. My point is i dont understand why boxing and violent fake wrestling is okay, but mixed martial arts or mma, as its known, is not. Lawrence epstein wonders, too. Hes the chief operating officer of the ultimate fighting championship, and he joins us from las vegas where they have a big event this weekend. So lawrence, why cant i go he to a ufc event here in my home town . Well, in 1997 the new York State Legislature passed a law that potentially banned the sport of mixed martial arts. Frankly, the sport that existed back then is different than the sport that exists today. With all the reforms that have addition ofin the sport, weight classes, time limits for rounds, Proper Health and medical safety testing for all the athletes, the sport that exists today is not the same sport that existed in 1997. However, the law that existed in 97 is still in effect today, and for the last five years weve been trying to get that overturned and, of course, have the state of new york regulate the sport of mixed martial arts. John thats what i dont get. Its been 15 years. Your organization is making tons of money ifen other places benefitting cities. Its growing faster. Itsee bigger than boxing on tv now, and yet my state politicians who are supposed to represent me keep saying no, were going to be we in connecticut, were smarter than the other 48 states . Well, part of it is an education process, educating people about health and safety, educating people about the events. John its been 15 years. Are my politicians stupider than they are in the rest of the country . Say . Do they say you havent kissed our ring . You havent given us enough money . Theres no doubt that the politicians in new york have been very deliberate as theyve taken a look at this issue. We need to get a vote on the floor, and to date, weve not had an opportunity on the Assembly Floor to get a vote. The Assembly Majority leader said i think its bar bar i can. Were taking steps to reduce bullying in schools. Legalizing m ma would endorse an activity thats blatantly violent. Nobt that type of statement is something weve heard for years and years. The reality is when you look at the facts andse what the sport s about and our safety records, those comments are just simply incorrect. John youre getting smarter about trying to influence my bullheaded politicians. I see that you sent out your very good looking female champion to negotiate with them and one assemblyman said the proponents are getting savvier. They send a beautiful woman than a bulky, threatening man. Was that you . I dont think it was me, but rhonda is a classic example of what an mma athlete is all about. Rhonda is a long time judo olympic player. She actually participated in two olympics and was a bronze medalist in the sydney olympics. Shes a classic example of an individual thats part of the organization. John john mccain called your sport human dog fighting. Hes changed his tune, saying theyve cleaned up the sport. Hes still not a fan, but theyve made progress. You talk to these guys. I try not to because they drive me crazy. Do they say we havent had time to vote . Whats in their head . Theyre losing millions of dollars. New york is a special place. Its certainly taking a bit longer for all this information to sink in. Hopefully it will sink in this year. John well, good luck. I hope it does. Thank you, lawrence epstein. Later we talk to billionaire mark cuban about what would happen if the government ran sports. Next, ticket scalping. What you think you know may not be so. Red lobsters 30 shrimp. Wow, thats a lot of shrimp. [ male announcer ] its red lobsters 30 shrimp for 11. 99 pair any two shrimp selections on one plate like mango jalapeno shrimp and parmesan crunch shrimp. Just 11. 99. Offer ends soon im ryon stewart, and i sea food diffently. Mommys having a french fry. Yes she is, yes she is. [ bop ] [ male announcer ] couldve had a v8. 100 vegetable juice, with three of your daily vegetable servings in every little bottle. For their annual football trip. Thats double miles you can actually use. Tragically, their ddy got sacked by blackouts. But its our tradition thats roughing the card holder. But with the capital one venture card you get double miles you can actually use. [ cheering ] any flight, anytime. The scoreboard doesnt lie. Whats in your wallet . Hut i have me on my fantasy team. Using robotics and mobile technology, verizon innovators have made it possible for teachers to teach, and for a kid. Nathan. Tadpole. To feel like a kid again. Because the worlds Biggest Challenges deserve even bigger solutions. Powerful answers. Verizon. John have you got your ticket to the super bowl . No . Its not too late. You can still buy some from a ticket scalper. Not just those guys going want to buy some tickets who hang around outside the stadium but internet sites. One called stubhub still has thousands of super bowl tickets listed for sale. Of course, the ticket will set you back a couple thousand bucks, in some cases, 100,000, which is the reason many people say ticket scalping should be illegal. Should ticket scalping be allowed . No. I dont think so. No. No. Then its hard to buy tickets. You cant get a ticket for yourself. John right. If stubhub bias up,00 up buyp thousands of tickets, i cant get one. Its a ripoff. Government should ban scalping and sometimes they do. Thiss economist said thats simple minded and counter productive. This is minority opinion. What are you talking about . The reality is we have a limited number of seats and a lot of people who want to buy them. How do we allocate them . Sometimes tickets are sold far in advance and we dont know how valuable theyll be or what people will value them at. Often times the secondary market steps in to sell high value tickets at a high price, and sometimes you can buy below face value or above face valuable. Its an as an ar bybitrage oppor. John how is that good for the consumer . Some people have tickets who dont value them as much as those who do value them. People who sell to socalled scalpers are the people who say i dont really want to go to this as much. I have a friend who has season philly tickets. He sells them every year to fun his purchase. He watches it on television. John the witch go to the game the rich go to the games games. Making sure equality in getting tickets is sort of at the bottom level of things we need to be worrying about. Some sports teams are using the ticket scalpers. If youre a Baseball Team and you dont think youre going to be very good and you want season Ticket Holders to come, you set your price low. All of a sudden you have a big gamelo coming to town and you didnt realize it, and all these scalpers are getting rich off your tickets. What a lot of teams did was they went and said if youre going to sell your tickets, you sell them back to us, and then well sell them on the secondary market. Its interesting where this first started was with the chicago cubs. They have one of the smallest st stadiums in major league baseball. They realized hey, we need to make as much money as we can so we can be a profitable franchise, so they set up a secondary market for their own tickets. Joilt still, the politicians are often upset about this. After a Bruce Springsteen concert where fans complained they couldnt get tickets at face value, my always quick to pander senator, senator chuck schumer, promised he would solve the problem. Weve got to get these resellers out of the process so your average ticket buyer has a fair shot at purchasing a ticket at a fair price, and my new legislation does just that. John which didnt pass, fortunately, but a fair price. Seems reasonable . Well, it depends on what we mean by a fair price. Again, we have to remember. This is some arbitrary face value put on that ticket, and so im not sure what type of legislation you can put to solve the problem of we have to al allocate a scarce resource. Who is going to get in first, people who are willing to pay more, maybe let more Beautiful People in first, maybe let of certain races or ethnic groups in. We have a fundamental problem of scarcity. Prices are a fundamental and peaful way to solve it. John and probably the fairest way. This is something that politicians often pick on because even in a nonpartisan sense, everyone hates paying higher prices. Theres a book called defending the indefensible that sort of brought my rain around to some libertarian ideas. One was in defense of the ticket scalper, but there is a downside. With lastsecond purchases, how do you know your ticket is legitimate . Watch closely as this man hand over 100 for two tickets. Minutes later, he finds out some bad news. When he gets to the gate, he finds out his tickets are fake. He tried to run after the scalper, but he was nowhere in sight. John at last years super bowl, about 200 people were turned away because their tickets turned out to be phony. What do youe do about that . You have a thriving secondary legal market. You can go to stubhub and know theres a reputation here and theyll back up their product. If you dont get in, were going to refund your money, were going to figure out a way to get you in. Thats one of the real downsides when you create a black market and people really want something. The black market will find a way to get it to people. If youre already doing illegal things, well, taking advantage of eager concert goers or sports fans is something that youre ripe for the target. John politicians banning things doesnt usually make it tter. Michigan, massachusetts, arkansas already have laws against scalping, but theyre never enforced. Rarely enforced. Its one of those things where people who buy the tickets are generally happy because they wanted to go, and people who sell the tickets are generally happy because they wanted to sell it. John on this happy note, lets end. Thank you, j. C. Bradbury. Next, what if the government ran sports . It wouldnt be fun. Transports . Transports . Ran sports you know how painful heartburn can be. 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John if you watch the super bowl this weekend, thing about this. Two teams will fight and then when one wins, theyll shake hands and move on. Lots of money will be made. People will have fun, and participates does so voluntarily. But what would happen if government ran sports . I put that question to mark cuban, billionaire owner of a former World ChampionBasketball Team. If government ran basketball, first of all, no team would be able to be good. The minute one team showed that they were better than another, wed have to go back and reevaluate and move people around so that things were fair. You wouldnt start a game with a jump ballr. Because somebody mit lose the jump ball, right, so you have to have a coin toss in basketball. John somebody would lose that. At least it wouldnt be because of someones effort. You dont want someone to look bad or you have to give them a little badge to show them that it was it okay that you tried to get the jump ball. John okay. Thats a little extreme. Probably wouldnt be that bad. Pro sports have fairness rules, too. The best teams get the last draft picks and theres revenue sharing to keep a league competitive, and its all voluntary. And cubans thought experiment about government sports has truth to it. Quarters wouldnt be 12 minutes long because, you know, youve got to make sure that everybody has an equal chance and youd probably have to make sure that each team ran the same number of plays. You know, it would just go on and on and on. John is that a fair comparison . Without question. The american way is to go out and take chances, to create opportunities, to take the initiative and a lot of what we see in government is about watering that down. John all to make it more