Even before sports gambling was everywhere, the people that watched FOX and ESPN and listened to their local sports radio station probably had heard the name Todd Fuhrman. He has been one of the constants in the gaming space, making time for anyone that wanted to talk about it with him.
You can find his content all over the place. His podcast has been going strong for a decade, he’s on CBS Sports HQ, previously worked on Fox Sports 1, and is a prolific user of X. That availability is valuable, because Todd has a perspective and an expertise not many can offer.
In our conversation for the Meet the Bettors series presented by Point to Point Marketing, we touch on what that experience can mean for the people trying to protect their sport, how the digital video audience compares to the digital audio audience, and the growing value of soccer. Enjoy!
Demetri Ravanos: How have you seen your audience change since PASPA? Do you have to do a little more educating now? I mean, there was a time when you were talking to just the hard cores, and now the practice of sports gambling is way more accessible.
Todd Fuhrman: I think our audience has kind of grown with us. I mean, we’ve been doing Bet The Board since around 2014, and we kind of dipped our toes into the water, not sure what the appetite was going to be for that particular audience. The biggest thing for us is we kind of treat it like a field position game. We may have started in the shadow of our own end zone and gradually had to move the ball down the field. Not to the point that we wanted to intimidate our listeners or make them feel uncomfortable, but as our handicapping has become a little bit more transparent in some of our methodologies, it’s passing some of those things along to a listenership group and an audience in general. I’m not overly religious, but we just don’t want to feed. We want to teach them to fish more than what you’re seeing and a lot of the content space.
I think that’s where the biggest challenge has come in. What can we do differently from our side? As an individual that has been in and around this space for a lot longer, how do I kind of differentiate the perspective that I bring to sports gambling content than an Instagram influencer who is just making picks, spending thirty seconds trying to offer up a seven-team single game parlay on a Tuesday in the middle of July for Getaway Day in Major League Baseball?
DR: So, I’m glad you brought up Bet the Board, because one of the things that I think is interesting about sports gambling content in the podcast space is your listeners have chosen to seek this out and make the effort to come back over and over again. I wonder if that is the same as your audience at CBS Sports HQ, because it’s not a traditional TV network where people are going to just stumble on it. Do you find the audience is people that are choosing and seeking out Todd Fuhrman’s content on there?
TR: That’s a great question. I think you’re exactly right that you get gamblers coming in with different aptitude and appetites for what they’re looking to accomplish in this space. You know, on some platforms, whether it’s CBS or some of the radio shows that I’ll do across the country, it’s more “okay, you know, we kind of had a lead on this particular game. Let’s hear what Todd’s perspective is,” and “Can you push us right or left in terms of how we want to try and go about investing in a particular game?” Whereas Bet the Board in the podcast space is a little bit more longform. It’s more about trying to teach our listenership there the perspective on it, kind of peel back the curtain on some of those underlying analytics and insinuate, “Hey, here’s where we think this game is going to go from projecting the betting market. Here’s where we’ve actually bet some of these games, and here’s what we’re looking for.”
So for me, selfishly, as a content creator, it’s given me an opportunity and an avenue to try and have a voice to get to a variety of different sports bettors that are looking for very different things, whether it’s picks on one end of the spectrum, or it’s learning how to handicap and trying to get an eagle-eye view on the perspective that it takes for folks that may want to get into this in a little bit more serious capacity.
DR: You mentioned those influencers that are just posting their thirty-second “here is every pick in my parlay today” for your audience. Do you think there’s any value in that? I mean, are there people that just want the picks, or do you find your audience really want to understand why it is you’re on the side that you are?
TR: No. I think there’s always people that want to have their fast-food drive thru experience. When it comes to sports betting, they don’t want to necessarily know how the meal is made. They just hope that it tastes good. It’s, “You know, if I can get a quick pick in and three hours later, I can have more money in my account than I started with, that’s a successful endeavor.”
The challenge, continuing along that fast food parallel, is that over time, that’s not going to be a meal that sustains you or keeps you in a good spot from a nutrition standpoint. You have to be able to kind of see through the trees and get a better perspective on the forest in terms of what you’re learning.
To say that every sports bettor, even inside the audience that we’ve cultivated over the years, is looking for the exact same thing, I think would be a little bit foolish. It’s always about trying to find that balancing act, to be able to not intimidate some of the newer bettors that are there, but at the same time provide a conduit for folks that have a passing interest in sports betting that may want to take it a little bit more seriously. Who can they lean from in a space where, unfortunately, there are a lot of voices that are given a lot bigger platforms that I wouldn’t necessarily say should be trusted voices in the space?
DR: Let’s talk about the traditional broadcaster’s relationship with gambling. You were part of FOX Bet Live. Not only is the show gone now, FOX Bet is gone. ESPN shuttered its studio on the Las Vegas Strip. Barstool sort of rethought its relationship with a gambling partner. Do you think some media companies may have bet too big or bet too foolishly on gambling content initially?
TR: I wouldn’t say foolishly. Credit to ESPN. When they started working with Caesars and had an opportunity to build the set on Las Vegas Boulevard, they had a vision for what their brand was going to become. I’m not sure that they anticipated there’d be an opportunity years down the road to partner with Penn and be able to skin their own sportsbook. That’s forged some opportunities. As we’ve seen, they’re having their own challenges from a branding standpoint, playing catch up with the DraftKings and FanDuel’s of the world. At the same time, it made a lot more sense to bring their production in-house to Bristol, more so than keeping something out here on an island, especially with a competing property, rather than moving to potentially what would have been the M Resort as the Penn stronghold out here in Las Vegas.
It’s the same thing for FOX. I gave my bosses there, Charlie Dixon, Eric Shanks and everybody else, a ton of credit. They believed in this space. They were probably ahead of its time trying to be able to get sports betting in the national discourse, being able to take advantage on FOX Sports Live, even with the launch of FS1. We did our College Football Friday segments, Clay Travis, myself, Andy Roddick, and Charissa Thompson. I think given everything that’s going on at FOX, it lost its way in their ecosystem.
Who knows? If they didn’t have the major litigation with the Flutter Group, there’s a very good chance that our daily TV show would have still been doing extremely well and thriving.
DR: When that show launched, Clay was beginning his, hard lean into politics, and Cousin Sal was better known as a comedian. Both of those guys were well-educated gamblers, but I wonder what sort of responsibility you had or was conveyed to you in terms of being the gambling gravitas on the show.
TR: You know, that was the big thing. And I think that was a major selling point for me when they pitched me the concept. It was described from Charlie Dixon’s standpoint, that he more or less wanted to create a panel on that show that felt like a blackjack table. He could bring people in with very different perspectives. They could have a healthy dialogue, and everybody was more or less typecast in a particular role.
So you had me on one end of the spectrum, who had come up through the ranks as an oddsmaker, and learned how things work in a casino with a professional perspective on things. You had Clay on the opposite end of the spectrum. We used to joke with him all the time. “Clay, did you even look at the rundown more than three minutes before you came on air or spend more than 37 seconds making your picks?” And he was able to fill that kind of heel role. Then in the middle, you had Sal that was kind of a combination of both, that took the perspective of a more recreational better, but was still someone who was in this space day in and day out. Then it was throwing us all, more or less, in a blender.
I couldn’t have been more excited to continue working with Clay, who I’d known for years before, and to create chemistry not just with Sal, but also Rachel [Bonetta] as a tremendous host. She could take it, dish it out, and wear it as well as anybody that I could have imagined in that particular role, trying to corral two rather large personalities.
DR: As younger generations reshape the way we consume content, could you see those bigger networks in the sports space, FS1, the ESPN channels, lean more into gambling and carrying international games in the middle of the day, as opposed to studio shows?
TR: 100%. And I think you’ve seen a number of companies, whether it’s FOX, when we did way back when I want to say it was the Florida State/Auburn national championship, more on a second screen viewing. It was a lot more of the college football personalities they had there. I tried to add a little bit of gambling perspective, but it was in and out. You look at ESPN and the way they’ve gone into betcasts, even Turner, right now, is trying to foray into that. And I think everybody is trying to find that perfect sauce and recipe to be able to maximize some of those live events, like you mentioned, and take advantage of an audience that you know may want to watch as a casual fan or may want to watch with an investment interest. How can you kind of weave those experiences together seamlessly?
In my opinion, I think it’s easier said than done, because you don’t want to try and be too pedantic and talk down to the audience, but at the same time, you want people to feel like they’re getting a different perspective and value added than they’d be getting from a more traditional viewing of whatever the sporting event may be, should it be international soccer, tennis, or anything else taking place on foreign shores, especially during the day.
DR: What sport do the ratings or other metrics not do a great job of reflecting how popular it is with gamblers?
TR: That’s a great question. When you look at the way things have gone, we know that age old thought processes, the church is more or less built for Easter Sunday, which is the NFL. It will always be the primary driver.
I’ve sat in meetings countless times with executives that wanted to try and take away some of our sportsbook space. And I guess they’ve done that at Caesars over the years saying, “look, you guys only fill this thing up for 20 Sundays a year” and we go, “yeah, that’s exactly where the energy comes from.” So those 20 Sundays a year, no one is surrounding a blackjack table.
When you look at what’s growing, to your point, hitting on international sports has been huge because of those opportunities and the void that international soccer can fill, throughout the course of a sporting day. It doesn’t just start at 7 ET like the more traditional stick and ball sports here. So having access to watch La Liga Serie A, and the English Premier League on various streaming platforms, I think soccer continues to be that rising star.
It’s just a question of which books will feel more comfortable, and how they’ll gradually ramp up and increase those betting venues? I don’t want to speak for every book, and I don’t have numbers in front of me, but a lot of the operators from the more traditional side have said that typically you’ll get more of a parlay driven audience that wants to bet the biggest brands in that sport more so than some of the single game betting. I think on that level, anytime you can create those household names, international superstars that are playing at 11:55 in the middle of a Tuesday afternoon in November, it’s going to always be an attractive proposition for network partners and for the sports books as well.
DR: I think you have a really interesting perspective. You’ve been a college athlete. Now that you’re in the gambling space, I wonder if anyone has asked for your guidance or your thoughts on how you handle Charlie Baker talking about wanting to limit props on NCAA athletes.
TR: You know, they haven’t, and it’s an opportunity, quite honestly, that I would be more than happy to embrace and talk to the powers that be if they wanted someone that they could lean on. You know, I have a particular perspective, having been an athlete and knowing some of the trials and tribulations that an athlete can go through if they’re not properly educated on exactly what can transpire in the sports betting space, but to try and figure out the perfect solution for all parties involved from these sportsbook operators to protect their assets, to protect the students, and to protect the universities.
I think oftentimes when we look at the NCAA, they kind of want to say that everything is done in black and white. There are so many shades of gray that pertain to this particular aspect. When you see more and more players, not just at the collegiate level, but also at the professional level, that are engaging in sports betting in various capacity, the biggest question that I have is are the players associations or university educating the teams accordingly?
I can tell you flat out, when I was a college athlete, Division III and there were never numbers set on our games, one of the first team meetings we had, you had to sign a waiver that said you weren’t going to bet. As a Division III athlete, you look at it and go, no one’s coming to us. I mean, they’re not setting the lines on NESCAC football or hockey games where people want information from me, but it’s a very different discussion to be having with these power conferences, especially on the football side.
If you happen to be in and around a college campus and you’re getting information, there are things that are a bit different. It’s one of the areas that I’ve pushed for, at least in my circles. I think you need a much more uniform injury report across collegiate sports and for the institutions and coaches that are hiding behind HIPAA. It’s great in theory to sit in your ivory tower and talk about athlete privacy, but in reality, if you make that information transparent, like it is in the NFL, it keeps the wrong people from nosing around campuses, and spending time on social media feeds of 17 and 18 year old’s trying to glean an edge.
Sports bettors are going to do everything they possibly can to get an edge. More often than not, there’s nothing wrong with it. But if you make that information readily available, it can take one potential element out of the equation entirely.
DR I don’t know that I agree with you that people are not waiting with bated breath to find out the lines on Trinity Bantams hockey games, but I understand where you’re going.
TR: [laughing] Hey, look, it was funny. I talked to one of the broadcasting crews back then, and one of the guys kind of joking, not knowing my background at all, asked “what would you think that a number would be on this kind of game?” And I go, “Look, you can’t figure out what’s going on with some of these games.” But yeah, that Trinity Bantams at Wesleyan as a travel partner game on a Tuesday night in Hartford, was not drawing a ton of money on the side or total at any particular juncture, other than, us betting a couple of beers on Wesleyan.
It’s definitely wild, honestly, to see the evolution of the sports betting space over the years and how much has changed. We’d just like to see some of the decision makers be more open to comprehensive dialog and discussion to bring on independent parties and to get some perspective on how some of these things work, rather than pretending that they have all the answers when it’s still very much in the infancy of its development.
To learn more about Point-To-Point Marketing’s Podcast and Broadcast Audience Development Marketing strategies, contact Tim Bronsil at tim@ptpmarketing.com or 513-702-5072.
