Let's Talk UNLV

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Welcome to another segment of Let's Talk UNRV on KUNV. You with co-hosts Keith and Renee. Renee, what's up? It's been a minute since we were in the studio at the same time.

0:00:18
I know. We've been doing this solo thing, but Danielle's been holding it down for us. She's been representing Danielle Cathy. So, yeah, so what's been going on with you? You know this past you

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know I've just been absorbed with football and football and football I'm a big Rams fan going back and going back into the 80s and I can't tell you how excited I am for Super Bowl weekend coming up and my Rams persevere we spent all of our money we gave away our future and hopefully it'll be worth it in the

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end right? So you know it's very rare when we're in agreements but I'm from Los Angeles. So, yes, we're doing it.

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Yes.

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I'm excited. So it's going to be a good game, right?

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I hope it's not a good game. I just want to just blow them out and be done. I don't want to be stressed out. You know, I was at the hotel last weekend or two weeks ago watching them play against the 49ers, and I was just losing it, you know,

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down 10 points going into the fourth quarter, and I was a nervous wreck. And I was in the city when they were playing and just the energy I mean just it was it just blew up and just to know that that is just what a couple days away that we could take it all. Yeah and my

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two boys are all in my pocket like that we need some new shirts and we need a Super Bowl this and a Super Bowl that and a Cooper Cup that I'm like dude pop pump the brakes just hold on. Good times. Yes but hey I'm excited. You know, related to football and gaming and sportsbook, you know, our guest is primed to sort of let us know how to manage ourselves in this betting season. We have with us Dr. Brett Barbanel, who is two roles, is serving as the director of research UNLV International Gaming Institute, as well as faculty in Hospitality College. Brett, welcome to the show.

0:02:06
Thanks so much for having me. It's great to be here.

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And could you just maybe kick us off with just maybe telling us a little bit about yourself or your background or how you came to UNLV and in the role that you're in?

0:02:17
Sure. So I grew up in San Diego. So I am so thrilled to hear that you are an LA Rams fan because you better believe that when the Chargers left town I shut the door behind them and now I'm waiting for them. The Rams on the other hand, so in. I'm so excited.

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Now my wife and I, we used to go to the Chargers games all the time before the St. Louis Rams returned back to LA.

0:02:43
Well when they were the San Diego Chargers, right, it was such a joy. We loved having them when they were terrible. And then when they finally did it, that was also exciting. I remember when I was in high school, and they went 0-11 before winning a game, and one of the local radio stations organized a parade downtown where they marched around going, we're number one and 11, we're number one and 11. And it was so great. And now the Raiders aren't bad enough that we can have that kind of energy, but they're also not good enough to be in the Super Bowl like the Rams, apparently. That's right.

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That's right.

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But of course, I digress. You asked about me and Warfare. Well, digresses are good sometimes.

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Yes, yes.

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Yeah, certainly relevant to what we've been doing. I actually, I went off to school and ended up majoring in statistics. And when I was doing a statistics major, I had a friend who was really interested in poker. It was the middle of a big poker boom, it was the early 2000s. And they said, oh, you're majoring statistics. I have a game for you to come play with me. And I started playing poker and I had a lot of fun doing it and I thought it was just this really interesting place where people were playing games and there was risk involved and money involved and I was just fascinated by this phenomena. So I ended up moving to Las Vegas after I finished school and working at IGI as a graduate student where I ended up

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getting my master's and my PhD in the

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Wow.

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That is an impressive career. We're glad to have you back. And talk to me about your students. What kind of classes do you teach? What does the syllabus look like? What do projects look like? I'm just fascinated. I majored in African-American studies, so this is completely an education, so completely out of my wheelhouse. So I'm curious, what

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does the syllabus look like for Dr. Brett? I love that because that isn't just the spirit of the university, right? That we have all these really cool and different classes and labs and institutes where people can some gambling and gaming classes at the Hospitality College. So this is everything from the gambling and casinos major that's part of the hospitality undergraduate courses, as well as different gambling related classes that are in the master's and PhD programs. And those really vary. There's some that are on financial analysis, some on operations. We have classes on problem gambling that also work through our other departments like psychology as well as classes on things like innovation, which also ties into some of the centers that we have at IGI. And then as director of research, I work with different students who come over from departments all over campus to study again, the phenomena of gambling

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and all the different ways it exists in our world. So when you do this research, I mean, are they introducing all kinds of simulations, so all kinds of things that can happen in a casino setting, in a game setting, from the joy of winning to the lows of losing to all the other riffraff that we often hear about that happens in these settings, or is it purely just the aspects that you mentioned?

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It really runs the gamut. We study everything that might fall underneath the gambling umbrella. So this includes everything from problem gambling and addiction. IGI has run the Nevada Problem Gambling Project for the state for about, oh my gosh, I think it's been about 15 years now. Wow, that's exciting and makes one feel a little old. All the way up to, again, these sorts of macroeconomic phenomena. What does gambling look like, for example, if we're gonna bring it into a new jurisdiction? So we've worked with different countries and states and organizations all over the world to look at how gambling exists wherever it is. Is there an economic impact? If so, what is it? Is there a social impact? If so, what is it? And then how does that change based on where you are? Different cultures have different relationships with gambling, for example. So we get to do these, in some ways, same studies just in different ways wherever we go.

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Could you maybe peel that back just a little bit? I know Renee's eyes are so big and mine are big in the studio. We're both trying to, we sort of wrestling with, no, no, I got the next question. I got the next question. So I wanted to peel back a little bit when you talk about sort of researching the economics of bringing gaming to a particular city. And I know that there was a lot of conversation around bringing professional sports to Las Vegas because of the gaming. Could you maybe speak a little bit about some of the factors that were taken into consideration to sort of approve for professional sports to come to Las Vegas, and then maybe some of the cautions that exist when sort of blending professional sports and the perception of a gaming town?

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Yes.

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Now, you've both been very clear with me, and I'm sure you work with a lot of academics who know that we'll talk until told to stop. I'm going to try and sit really several hours worth of lecture into about a minute here. You can do it. Fun fact associated with this, IGI was a part of bringing the Raiders to Las Vegas which is a really cool thing and I would love to take credit for this but was at UCLA before I came back to UNLV. But I did work on this report that was brought to the NFL and brought before the powers that be to try and convince them that yes, Las Vegas is a place that can have professional sports. And when we put together this report, which is available on our website, and I can make that link available to everybody. We looked at all these different areas that sports is a business or is a wonderful cultural element for a city. So things like the actual sports business, the different laws and regulations that might exist. When we look at things like economics, you know, are there different costs, risks, benefits that go through the idea of having a team in a place like Las Vegas, which often carried with it the stigma of potential threats for things like match fixing due to having such a huge bookmaking business in town. Or when I say bookmaking, I'm talking about the sports book. The idea of psychology and public health. How is it that when we're exposed to this sort of thing, if you bring a new team here, or suddenly they and their fans exposed to something new, how do people in populations adapt to gambling exposure? What's interesting is that actually tends to be really similar to how people adapt to exposure of other phenomena, like as soon as something new comes in, you get very, very excited about it. And it's the type of thing where there's a novelty factor. It's really interesting because it's new. And then as we get used to it, it becomes more prevalent in our lives and it's normalized. The idea of sociology, are we changing the community by bringing a team here or is the community itself changing what it is to be a team? A chronology, are there different ways that our police department might be able to learn from other parts of the U.S. where there have been teams before to think about things like event management. Las Vegas is a place with huge tourism and convention status, right? So we're familiar with some of these event management and people management tools. So it's really interesting to see how all of these types of things come together to talk about Las Vegas as a place that has a lot of pros and certainly some cons, just like any city in the world. And the very, you know, how do we avoid the very kinds of problems that our home is often assumed to generate?

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So I'm curious, because you mentioned exposure. So when it comes to exposure, is that exposure different from the vacationer, the traveler, versus the local resident? I mean are the impacts the same or are they more harmful or long-term? Because I'm sure there are a lot of travelers that come to Vegas to participate in gambling and gaming for the first time, right? And they're open to a whole new world of that phenomenon that you described. But then also as a local resident, it's everywhere too. You don't have to go to the strip to partake in that. I mean I can just go to my Smith's. I go to Smith's. I also wonder about that Dr. Brett. Why do we talk about that? The individual who went and got their milk and got a carton of eggs and are just sitting there still, just pushing the lever and just pushing the buttons. And I wonder, like your milk is gonna go sour or something. What is happening there right in my own neighborhood? But I mean, yeah, so the exposure, talk to us, what does the research tell us about that exposure from travelers versus the local residents?

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Oh, that is such a good question. It's one that's talked about all the time in our field, and you have nailed it. So this is the type of thing where generally we know that people who live in an area with more gambling, we tend to see a little bit higher prevalence rate of problem gambling. And this can be in a number of different ways. Sometimes it's just access. Sometimes it's the fact that someone who is seeking out risky behavior will go to a place where that risky behavior is particularly prevalent. The idea of gambling addiction is not this linear thing. There's all sorts of different elements of exposure that exist. And so what we try to do as we look at this is figure out the best way to make sure that if there is higher exposure and if there's higher prevalence of problem gambling, are we making sure that the resources for help are available? And that's also something that becomes particularly important too, because if you're sitting in, like you mentioned, you go to Smith's, you go pick up your groceries, and then they have the section for gambling there. Are the resources being not just made available, but are people aware of them? So why is that? Why would Smith's or any like grocery store have a you know gambling site or area there? I mean I can just like the gaming spirits places things like that but why would that be a target place to have as a place for gaming? A grocery store? Yeah I mean that's a great question. And sometimes it's just a matter of if it's available, it's something that they want to offer and they're able to get licenses. And so that's something that they've put into place.

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Now, Brett, I need your professional opinion.

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Okay.

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Now, Renee mentioned about all the gaming activity at the grocery stores. And you talked about, you know, just high exposure and engaging in risky behavior, gambling behavior. So can I leverage that to not have to go to the grocery store with my wife? So if she sends me to the store, I can sort of use this as a legitimate response to say, I don't think I should be I'm in a position mentally to be able to go.

0:15:10
Right. And because Brett said it, Dr. Brett said it.

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As a professional, I would suggest, you know, don't abuse the excuse. But I do want to urge anyone else who might be listening for whom this is very much a concern, please, please reach out because we can connect you with those resources I mentioned.

0:15:28
Now, also, my brother, he's an avid – he likes to put in sports bets on the weekend. I wanted to help understand from your perspective, what is sort of the line in the sand between sort of healthy gambling versus,

0:15:47
I guess, problem gambling? So there's a very clinical response, and I'm gonna go with the less clinical response here, rather than walk you through, you know, the DSM-5, the Diagnostic Statistical Manual and talk about you know all these very distinct clinical identification measures and say that like many other things in our life, gambling is a problem if it's interrupting your life in some way, if it's causing you to have issues with money, if it's causing you to have issues with thinking about it all the time, even while you're doing something else? If these are the sorts of things that are part of your life because of your gambling or in tandem with your gambling, then that's the point at which you should really seek out some of these resources, or at least talk to somebody about it, because it may be either becoming or may already be a problem for you.

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Okay.

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And then could you also talk about eSports, just how that phenomenon has sort of impacted or even broadened who is engaged in gaming or gambling?

0:17:05
Yes. Well, you guys keep asking me fantastic dissertation type questions. This is really... How many podcasts do you want to cover?

0:17:14
We can have you back. We can have you back for sure.

0:17:18
Wonderful, yeah. So yes, eSports, absolutely. This is something that's near and dear to my heart. I've been working in the video games and gambling eSports section, or crossover rather, for gosh, about 10 years now. And this is the kind of thing that's become a really fascinating space. We're seeing a lot of different gamified concepts. So all these things that we've learned from both video games, as well as gamifying different parts of our life being brought into the gambling world. And then we're also seeing this gamified element, right? You see gambling themes or even just chance mechanisms. So RNG or random number generator is a term that's often used in the games and especially in the digital game space. These are starting to become more prevalent in video games as well. When we look at eSports, we're starting to see more of the betting. So for a long time, there was a discussion on whether or not eSports was sports. This is its own type of discussion, but however that then ended up coming out, eSports is starting to get tied in with sports with regard to betting products. So you might see eSports offered at a sports book, especially online, where previously you wouldn't necessarily see that kind of match. And that was just accelerated during COVID, especially at the beginning when we didn't have sports. Remember, we had that several months where nothing was really going on, and there was a huge source of sports, you know, all of us, especially the football fans, right? We're all sad, hockey, we were sad, all these things. And e-sports was sort of what filled that gap. These digital competitions became incredibly important to both entertainment consumption and then in parallel there, gambling consumption too.

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Well, I'm really blown away by this conversation. And so I wonder the name, you know, Las Vegas being like Sin City. I mean, would it be that would that be the case if gambling wasn't a part of this city or does it, you know, kind of that's what's infamously known for, you know, I think about, you know, Hawaii, right? I think about, you know, in that part of the country. I just feel like it's a place filled with love. So you kind of wonder, is the name really associated because of this, you know, I guess, phenomenon with gaming? What do you think, Dr. Brown?

0:20:00
So we're going to do a history lesson now in response to this one. You just keep opening up all these great, you know, this is like a fun, all my fun cocktail party facts, you're coming out for this. But this goes back really to when gambling was kind of put into a legalized state in the different parts around the U.S. And Nevada was one of the few places where once gambling was legalized and it started developing into a core part of tourism, it was the place for that. We started seeing more and more throughout some of these other states, but we really had several decades worth of being the place to go for gambling and entertainment. I mean, you think back to the 1940s and when some of these casinos really just first started cropping up along Las Vegas Boulevard. That's the type of thing where it became that destination and it has carried very much that reputation since then. And so in many ways, even though gambling is no longer the biggest part of the Las Vegas market, so gambling revenues actually haven't been the biggest part of these resort revenues, biggest proportion of resort revenues for almost a decade now, maybe in a little longer, that it's still very much kind of how that's thought of, right? This is the idea that you go here, it's Sin City, what happens here stays here, though I know they've updated that recently, and that's all part of that. It's building into sin, where a part now of the sin is more than just that. It's a destination to go and let loose.

0:21:44
And then, Brett, could you talk a little bit about sort of how you got into studying eSports and maybe a little bit about the Nevada eSports Alliance?

0:21:54
I really got into eSports because I started playing video games, and eSports, of course, was talking about the spectatorship of video games. And I thought, well, I'm enjoying playing some of these. Why don't I watch other people who are way better than I am to play these games? So that goes back, gosh, 10, 15 years or so. And I actually didn't really play games that much as a kid. I was a total outdoor kid. And then I became like an indoor 20 year old as I moved from there. But it was really just an interesting space. This is, it's cool, right? It's the spectatorship of competition and it carries with it all these same high and low emotions as the sports. We're talking about, you know, the rooting for the Rams and the Super Bowl and all of this then comes together in kind of a similar fashion of entertainment. And I just found this so interesting, especially when there were games that I was playing that I was seeing professionals compete in. And so that just kind of became an easy thing for me to say, Oh, you know what? I am really interested in this. I'm going to make this my area of study. And that's the joy of being a professor, right? Is that you can speak out these interesting subjects. And as part of that, I was doing a lot of outreach and talking to people who worked in this space. And in Las Vegas, one of the people who really was one of the first to try and bring eSports into this casino resort setting is a guy named Seth Shore. He is the chairman of the Downtown Grand. He also now, we've brought him in as an advisor at UNLV for the new Howard Hughes Incubator that just opened a few months ago. And we sat down with a couple other people and talked about what can eSports be for Las Vegas? Las Vegas has this incredible infrastructure for tourism, when we talk about bringing sport here, and this big longstanding regulatory infrastructure for gambling. So can we talk about a way to make Las Vegas one of the major global hubs for eSports? And we realized, of course, Las Vegas is just one city in all of Nevada. Why not make this a whole state thing? And so that's really where the Nevada Esports Alliance was born, was this idea that how do we bring people together into the room so that, you know, all these people doing interesting things might not necessarily know what others are doing. We want to get them all together so that they can talk about this and figure out neat ways to bring the best of entertainment to a city like ours.

0:24:29
Aminah, and we'll get you out of here on this last question. Is there anything you would like to share with our listeners that we may not have asked that you wish we had asked?

0:24:39
Yes. Can I brag about IDI and some of the programs that we have?

0:24:43
Absolutely.

0:24:44
I'm going to talk about what I think is the coolest program that IDI has. It's been around now a couple years and it is our YES program. So YES stands for Young Executive Scholars. It's a program that we do, it's this summer class for high school students. So each summer, we work with CCSD and the CORE Academy to recruit students from under-resourced high schools around the Las Vegas Valley to learn about the different managerial and executive level career opportunities that are available in their own backyard. Often these students, you know, they see the strips in the far and the lakes that go up, but they don't necessarily know what's going on in all of these. And so we bring them in, it's in a UNLV classroom, and we also have speakers from all over the industry come in. They go on tours of these different properties. They get to do like behind the scenes tours of things like the cost stage for Cirque du Soleil. I love working with them. And I also selfishly, I love volunteering to be a chaperone for some of these field trips because they get to go places that I've never been. I mean, they're doing these behind the scenes tours of like the Wynn. Did you know the Wynn has a room specifically for lobsters? For the lobsters they serve in their restaurant. I had no idea. It sounds crazy, right? But it exists. So those are the things. But this, you know, this allows them to really learn more about all the different parts of the integrated resort industry that exists here in town. So things like entertainment, food and beverage, finance, architecture. Every year, I feel like we have an architecture student who loves to design these huge structures where people can go for entertainment. And we bring in, again, these guest speakers come from all over town. It's like a who's who of CEOs and political leadership and nonprofit organizations. It's fantastic. People get so excited about this. And we love having them here. It's really the coolest thing we do. We've now set up that they can get a UNLV credit. So if they matriculate to UNLV, they have course credit already there. And we also now have the setup that we've created other programs as well that come from it. So for example, Battle Born Heroes Innovate. So this is something that's focused on STEAM careers, so science, technology, engineering, arts, and math. I think that's all the five letters. And it provides this outlet for them to, again, engage with different community leaders and particular focus on things like tech companies and game development, innovation. And again, that's another partnership with CCSD. So it's really neat that we've really been able to connect with our local community and not just be, you know, some silo at the corner of Flamingo and Swenson on campus.

0:27:45
Well, you're definitely talking about programing. It's in my wheelhouse. So I'll certainly follow up with you outside. It's talk about how we can get some of our students connected to some of these opportunities you just described. This was phenomenal, Renee. And then so Renee, what were some of your takeaways from today's segment?

0:28:07
This is really research intensive. And I'm just so impressed with all of the different ways that we are dissecting how gaming culture is impacting, you know, not only Las Vegas, but, you know, really the world, because this is the entertainment capital of the world. And so we're better than to kind of understand this phenomenon. And I'm just so elated to hear from Dr. Brett about this YES program. I'm glad that you're going to follow up because I know working with underprivileged youth in the Clark County School District is in your wheelhouse and I'm just so glad that Dr. Brett came back to UNLV and we have such talent on our campus. I definitely want to invite her back because the thing we didn't get to is how does gaming phenomenon impact communities of color?

0:28:54
And particularly because we're a minority serving institution, I think that'd be a worthy question to ask and to see what she knows about that.

0:29:01
What about you? And I think related to that, Renee, I think it would be interesting to see where where's the overlap or the relationship between gaming and, you know, in education. A lot of strategies are incorporating gaming experiences into learning.

0:29:14
Yeah, especially eSports.

0:29:15
I mean, we have scholarships now, we have venues, we have teams that are being formed and cohorts of students that are coming in through eSports, so it's even impacting the college campus and some of the curriculum that we're offering to students.

0:29:29
And the approach to teaching.

0:29:30
Absolutely.

0:29:31
And having students engaged outside the classroom. That would certainly be interesting. But, you know, some things that my takeaways in addition to what you shared was just, you know, really understanding the clinical part about the differences between healthy and unhealthy gambling and how it changes your behavior or patterns or experience in life. And then just, you know, learning the interesting history of how gaming sort of emerged and grew into what it is today.

0:29:57
So thank you, Dr. Brett. For more Let's Talk UNLV, be sure to follow us on social media where you can get the latest updates on the show plus great behind the scenes content. We're on Facebook at Let's Talk UNLV Podcast, Twitter at Let's Talk UNLV, and Instagram at Let's Talk UNLV Pod. Thank you for tuning in to this week's episode of KUNV Let's Talk UNLV. For my co-host Keith, I'm Renee. For my co-host Keith, I'm Renee. Tune in next week, Wednesday at 12, on KUNV 91.5 Jazz and More. That's a wrap.

Transcribed with Cockatoo