Ben Affleck Reveals Son Samuel's Shocking Betting Request: 'What?!'

Ben Affleck shared a candid moment about his son Samuel Affleck’s budding interest in sports betting during a recent appearance on Jimmy Kimmel Live!

The actor revealed that Samuel recently approached him with a rather surprising request.

“My son asked me like a month ago, [he] was like, ‘Hey, um, can I get like 100 bucks to bet on sports?’” Ben recounted, highlighting the casual nature of the conversation.

He added, “It’s like, what? [He’s like,] ‘My friends get $100, but if they lose it, then that’s it.’ I’m like, ‘Oh, that’s a real standard, what discipline! Like, so that you don’t come twitching back going, ‘I know that Green Bay is going to cover the over in the second half.’”

The Gone Girl alum, who shares children Violet, 20, Seraphina, 17, and Samuel, 13, with ex-wife Jennifer Garner, emphasized that sports betting runs in the family’s veins. He reminisced about his father, who reportedly earned extra cash on the side as a bookie, a person who takes bets on sporting events.

“My father worked at a bar but mostly made his money sort of being a small-time bookie,” Ben said.

He recalled fond memories when his father would return home with gifts made possible by the betting world.

“I remember our first washing machine, our first VCR, in fact, Dad coming home like, ‘You can thank Steve Grogan for this,’ the quarterback of the Patriots. ‘Everybody keeps betting [on] the Patriots to beat the spread.’ And so I really was grateful that the Patriots were terrible; just thank Steve Grogan’s knees for our VCR,” he added.

The conversation took a playful turn when the Batman star acknowledged the stigma surrounding sports betting in his childhood.

“At the time it was, like, shameful and kind of illegal. I mean, the statute of limitations has run out. Sorry, Dad,” he joked.

Host Jimmy Kimmel chimed in, reminding viewers, “It wasn’t kind of illegal back then, it was flat-out illegal. It was very illegal. Everybody did it, but it was illegal.”

Ben quickly agreed, clarifying, “It was straight up illegal. It was criminal. But it was like a thing that you had to be worried about, yeah.”

While discussing betting habits, Jimmy remarked that fans still risk cash on local teams like the New England Patriots, Boston Red Sox and Boston Celtics.

The actor quipped, “No matter what … We never learn, apparently. We will bet on the home team, and they never beat the spread, and the bookies made a lot of money. I think these were like $10, $20 bets.”

Jimmy humorously pointed out that Ben’s father still made enough to purchase a VCR, a luxury back in the day.

He fondly recalled how having a VCR allowed him to capture his favorite shows, saying, “It was the coolest thing in the world because you could tape live shows.”

He reminisced about eagerly waiting to tape his Burger King commercial, recalling, “When I started acting, I did a Burger King commercial and so then I was constantly waiting to tape it if it came on… I would just sit there through the commercial breaks like, ‘Nope, not my Burger King commercial,’ and then as soon as it did come on, I had to press record.”