Ben Affleck Reveals Son Samuel Asked Him for Sports Betting Money, Opens Up About Father’s Bookie Past

Ben Affleck opened up about his son Samuel’s interest in sports betting and how the activity runs in the family’s DNA.

“My son asked me like a month ago, [he] was like, ‘Hey, um, can I get like 100 bucks to bet on sports?’” Affleck shared during a Monday, January 5, appearance on Jimmy Kimmel Live! “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 admission came after the Batman actor, who shares kids Violet, 20, Seraphina, 17, and Samuel, 13, with ex-wife Jennifer Garner, revealed his father was formerly a bookie.

“My father worked at a bar but mostly made his money sort of being a small-time bookie,” Affleck, whose family moved to Massachusetts when he was 3, explained. “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.”

“At the time it was, like, shameful and kind of illegal. I mean, the statute of limitations has run out. Sorry, Dad,” Affleck continued of sports betting, to which host Jimmy Kimmel responded, “It wasn’t kind of illegal back then, it was flat-out illegal. It was very illegal. Everybody did it, but it was illegal.”

Affleck then clarified his comments, agreeing, “It was straight up illegal. It was criminal. But it was like a thing that you had to be worried about, yeah.”

Kimmel, 58, said that everybody still bets on the New England Patriots, the Boston Red Sox or the Boston Celtics.

“No matter what … We never learn, apparently,” Affleck added. “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.”

Kimmel joked that Affleck’s dad still made “enough” money to buy him a VCR, and “those were expensive in those days.”

For Affleck, having a VCR was “the coolest thing in the world because you could tape live shows.” Some of his favorites to watch were Magnum, P.I. and Simon & Simon, but Affleck also zeroed in on recording his own TV commercials on his VCR.

“When I started acting, I did a Burger King commercial and so then I was constantly waiting to tape it if it came on, but I didn’t know when it was going to come on, so you had to press pause and record at the same time so it would be ready,” he recalled. “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.”

Of course, Burger King commercials were only just the beginning for this two-time Academy Award winner and three-time Golden Globe recipient. Fans can next see Affleck in the action thriller The Rip with longtime pal Matt Damon later this month.

“A group of Miami cops discovers a stash of millions in cash, leading to distrust as outsiders learn about the huge seizure, making them question who to rely on,” per the film’s official synopsis.

The Rip will be available to stream on Netflix Friday, January 16.