It's a gambling app that skirts the already virtually non-existent anti-gambling laws by calling itself a "Futures Market." A gambling app that sells itself with stupid commercials designed to befuddle and flummox and and cause the viewer to chuckle and think about pretty much anything EXCEPT the fact that it's selling a life-ruining addiction as "fun."
Yes, I know what Kalshi is. And yes, in 2026 it really is Totally Normal. More's the pity.
And there's nothing sadder than a guy dealing with a broken date with a night of staring at his phone screen and tapping to earn "coins" of whose worth, I am proud to say, I have absolutely no concept.
Maybe this guy's girlfriend was able to get her boyfriend's intense ugliness, but not his sad addiction to playing stupid gambling-adjacent games on his phone? Well, at least when she turns him down, he won't have to hock that ring behind her back.
Yeah, I have no mercy for the actors who are willing to appear in ads pitching this garbage. And - Ryan Secord? He's still a thing? Well, considering that he's in ads for Chumba Casino, I guess the answer is "No?"
It's not funny enough that the woman in this ad is listing suggestions of all the things one could do if they were suddenly handed $10,000. I think we were aware already. She has to include "pay down that payday loan" as one of the options. Yeah- pay down that payday loan with....another payday loan.
And if you got that quick $10,000 loan from Western Sky, you'd pay back $743.49 for eighty-four months, a total of just over $62,000. There's credit card expensive, pawn shop expensive, payday loan expensive, loan shark expensive....and Western Sky expensive. Which means that the people who applied for money from Western Sky had either burned through all of those other options, or actually thought that Western Sky was a better deal. Neither is a good sign.
So...how did things work out for these customers before Western Sky was shut down in 2013 under an avalanche of lawsuits and government investigations for violations of usury laws?
The word of the year is Affordability. The phrase of the year is Affordability Crisis. The mood of the year is Exhausted if it isn't Just Plain Scared.
None of this is going to stop Capital One from giving us another year of Jennifer Garner and her friends zipping around the world seeing Amazing Things in between drinking white wine from comfy chairs in exclusive Capital One airport lounges, putting everything on Capital One cards which earn Big Big Points Rewards for people who spend as much money on them as, say, Jennifer Garner.
This is almost as tone-deaf as the Lexus December to Remember Ads which will start showing up between Halloween and Thanksgiving. Almost.
I don't know how much that first woman loves coffee. Her refrigerator is filled with Coffee Mate and nothing but Coffee Mate, like she experienced a supply line trauma during COVID and will never, EVER let that happen again. So she either has a separate fridge JUST for Coffee Mate or it is the only thing she consumes in her own home. Judging from her girth, I have to assume it's the former.
I also don't know why the guy reading the ad is getting so fake-exasperated with his inability to read the script without being interrupted. Dude, it's not funny. We get the point of this ad ten seconds in, yet it goes on. And on. And on. Has to be a Superbowl ad. Only a Superbowl ad is this over-produced.
In the end, I don't see anyone actually enjoying coffee- not that first woman, not the abominable snowman/bigfoot hybrid at the end. I see a lot of people obsessed with fatty sweat creamer. Coffee seems to be the thing they use to add a little dash of caffeine to their glass or mug of fatty sweat creamer. That's fine- I mean, it's your life- but this has nothing to do with "enjoying coffee" in my book.
We start off with David being annoyed that he has to ask his dumb, expensive toy to turn the lights on TWICE. Because David is ridiculous, and because nobody told David that he didn't need to buy that stupid expensive toy and could have turned the lights on by flipping a freaking switch. But David wants to be cutting edge and he wants to bitch about it, so here we are.
I guess David can't tell his coffee maker to operate- maybe he just wasn't willing to risk having to ask twice- so he walked down the street and tried to buy coffee at the shop. Because we are forever jousting with straw men here, David goes to the only cafe in the world where a robot actually creates your coffee for you and is again disappointed by technology. Hey David, how many coffee shops run by actual humans did you walk past so you could make that cross you're carrying a little heavier?
David finally arrives at Chase, and he's there for all of three seconds before an attractive young woman walks up to greet him and guide him into an office to talk about David's Money. He must be a new client. She sits with him at a desk featuring a big computer display reading David's Goals in huge letters because everyone in this commercial is five years old. And BECAUSE David is five years old, he has exactly two goals- a new car, and a vacation.
David is a dunce who already is carrying around an Attitude concerning the minor burdens he's given himself to carry, and now he's told Chase that his real problem is that he doesn't have any actual plans for navigating the future, he just wants Christmas to come early. Personally, I'd be ashamed to tell my broker that my "goals" are to go on a vacation and buy a new car. Hey David, how about planning for retirement?
What we don't see is the broker telling David that the best way to plan for his stupid spending goals is to cut back on the purchase of dumb, showy electronics and $8 coffees and to learn how to turn on his own damn lights and make his own damn coffee. What a knob you are, David.
1. The reason why Sports Gambling "is now available in all fifty states" is because the Supreme Court struck down an attempt to pass an online gambling ban in 2018 and the states then realized that taking a stand against online gambling was not worth it when weighing it against the lost revenue as their own residents simply crossed state lines to gamble.
2. Know how the AI "associate" connected to your DraftKings account always reacts when you lose a lot of money? It sends you condolences- and free money to gamble with. Say you lose $500 betting on the NFL one Sunday. The next morning, as you get up to spend another week at the job that more and more only exists to feed your addiction and maybe are reflecting on how maybe-just maybe- you should just delete that app from your phone that is robbing you of your financial security, you get a notification on your phone from an AI saying something like "looks like we* had a rough week- these things happen! Here's $100 in credits to show we care!**" Your connection is your friend, y'all!
*"We" didn't have a rough weekend. The gambler did. DraftKings had a GREAT weekend, because a GREAT weekend for DraftKings REQUIRES a bad weekend for a majority of its customers.
**DraftKings understands that there are people out there who really do consider getting professional help to stop gambling after suffering a heavy loss. They really DO care about these people, and want to cut that idea of getting Woke Soft Liberal Counseling out of the thoughts of their customers FAST. A quick $100 or so in free "money" to gamble with is worth it to keep the addict addicted.
Enjoy the games today, brought to us by Every Online Gambling App Out There.
