EPISODE 206 | LSR Podcast

Can You Spot An Illegal Sportsbook? | Sports Betting News

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33 min
Video preview

Can You Spot An Illegal Sportsbook? | Sports Betting News | LSR Podcast 206

As the NFL season starts, the crew highlights how the lines between legal, regulated sportsbooks and offshore competitors become blurrier for the media. Also, UFC takes a step to prevent future betting scandals, and the guys talk expectations for handle and revenue during the prime time of the sports calendar.

Full transcript

Matt Brown (00:13):

Hello and welcome to episode number 206 of the LSR Podcast. My name is Matt Brown, joined each and every week by the brightest minds in all of the gaming industry. With me, I have two of them, Dustin Gouker, Adam Candee. You can follow them on the Twitter machine. It’s absolutely free, @DustinGouker, @AdamCandee, two E’s, no Y, and if you hate yourself, you can follow me @MattBrownM2. Remember, everything we do, absolutely free. So, go in, subscribe, rate, review. If you’re on the YouTube side of things, go ahead, hit that subscribe button, as well, a thumbs up action. We do appreciate each and every one of you for the support.

(00:44):

All right, Adam, if anybody’s watching on the video side of things, you can see Adam is a different shade for this podcast than he was in the last one. Looking pretty good. Went down, got some R & R before we’re heading into this football season that we think is going to be wild and wacky. And Dustin, you on the other hand, didn’t take any time off and this is where we’ll start the podcast here, where we’re going to head over and if people want to go to your Twitter thread. I’m not going to call it a rant, I’m just going to call it a thread. @DustinGouker. People can take a look and see. One of the things that you have really started to talk about on a weekly basis. It’s just the fact that, listen, there are sites out there that are almost masquerading as sites that are trying to do the right thing, when really, if you dig a little bit deeper, that’s not necessarily the case.

Dustin Gouker (01:34):

Yeah, I just take up pet projects and rants whenever I feel like it now because kind of a free agent; I do the podcast and take care of my daughter, but not a whole lot else. So, I rant when I want to rant more often than usual. And yeah, right here is NFL starts and there’s a lot of focus on betting and Kentucky launch and all this. There’s a lot of news, there’s a lot of press releases coming out. There’s just a lot of focus on this, and people are not always very discerning even this far into it about what sources they’re sharing. Obviously, share Legal Sports Report, share some of our competitors. By all means, do all of that. But take a quicker look at what’s going out there and what you’re sharing because there’s a lot of companies and a lot of websites out there that are pretending to care about the regulated market and are just here to send you to offshore.

(02:23):

They’ll do dozens of news stories a month about, “Oh, legal sports betting is coming to Kentucky.” You know where they’re sending you? They’re still sending you to Bovada and BetOnline and MyBookie, because they don’t give two s’s about what’s going on in the regulated market. They only want to tell you that because it gives them authority and legitimacy that they frankly don’t deserve. They’re just trying to pretend to be, they’re cosplaying at being a good actor when all they’re trying to do is send you offshore. And this is maybe a little less than it used to be, but it’s still pretty pervasive. And I saw a couple of sites that in the last week or two, where people were sharing them and I’m like, “That’s an offshore affiliate who’s working on, again, sending people to offshore sportsbooks but pretending that this is somehow connected.”

(03:10):

Legal betting has nothing to do with offshore betting, but people are using those tailwinds from a launch in Kentucky to say, “Oh, you know what? It’s legal to bet in Kentucky. Here, go bet at these sites that have nothing to do with the regulated market.” So I don’t know, it’s disingenuous at best. I’ll stop at saying it’s illegal, but at some places, it probably violates some regulations about how you’re supposed to act as a regulated media entity in any state. So there’s a lot to all this. But the bottom line, I’m just asking anybody, listeners, readers, people who follow us on Twitter, take a look at what you’re sharing. If you’re not exactly sure what you’re sharing, please take a closer look. It’s very easy usually to say, look at the homepage. Is this an offshore site? Are they sending you to Bovada or somewhere else? And if they are, please don’t give them an interview. Please don’t retweet them. Please don’t share their content. Share content from sites like LSR that actually care and are critical of sometimes the regulated market.

(04:08):

And that’s why I started, why I got involved because we think we’re doing good work in this space and please don’t feed these sites that don’t deserve it.

Matt Brown (04:20):

Adam, a lot of gaming the Google out there as we’re talking about anything that is trendy, you can make a story and headline, and as long as you rate, then you get people to the site. And then that’s just the ultimate goal here. This kind of goes back to something that we’ve talked about a few different times, and as we head into NFL season, maybe it’s a good reminder actually for everyone again, is you are about to get, here’s what people are betting, here’s whatever easily shareable information, but it’s going to be coming from either PR people and/or straight from these offshore sites and listen, hats off to them, right? They’ve done a great job of doing this. They have found the beat writers who do not care. They have found the beat writers who share anything that they give them, and look, it works. They say, “Hey, by the way, Broncos beat writer or Jaguars beat writer, here’s the percentage of people betting whatever this week and here’s whatever.”

(05:13):

And then they just go in and boom, and they get the free promotion and the free advertising. So probably, as we head into NFL, just a good reminder about that, as well.

Adam Candee (05:22):

I’ve been thinking a lot about this lately with the beginning of NFL season and with consuming a lot of content from creators who I think have a place in the legal market and have more of a legacy place in the offshore market. And it often gets tossed at people like Dustin and people like me that, well, you’re just shills for the regulated market because you do business with some of these places. And I understand where the perception comes from. However, it’s just simply not true. The idea that that is why we say the things we do is straight-up false. And when we talk about a launch in Kentucky or a launch in any state in particular, we’re talking about a group of people who have not previously been exposed to legal sports betting, who now have the opportunity to be involved in a regulated market that gives them consumer protections, that lets them wager with funds that are not crypto, are not at risk of being run away with by someone.

(06:24):

And the criticisms often come from those who have been in this game for a long time, for those who probably have worked in offshore at some point, for those who have outs in offshore as professional bettors or semi-professional bettors or whatever the case might be. And I understand where that comes from, and to those people, I would say you can have yours and there can be a regulated market and both can exist, both can be just fine in what they are. And I understand where the idea is that you say, “Well, I’m getting a better price offshore or I have better limits offshore. I don’t have…” Yeah, well, we’ve talked about it a hundred times about the regulatory and financial concerns that offshores do not have that the legal market does. And that’s why they can offer this, and that’s why they’re using the tailwinds of those who are participating in the regulated legal market, who are paying the cost, who are going through the regulatory hoops to try to build their business.

(07:25):

And that’s where the problem is. That is where we call out and say, “This isn’t right. This shouldn’t be this way. You shouldn’t be able to be a Bovada, MyBookie, or anybody else in that area and be able to take advantage of what is going on in the legal market to promote your business.” We’re not saying that the offshore business doesn’t have a place for certain people. It’s not ours to say whether it does or doesn’t. However, when we talk about the growth of legal and regulated sports betting, we are talking about people writ large. We are talking about the greater American people, who are watching sports broadcasts, who don’t know anything about this, who are getting involved for the first time, and for that average consumer, for the 90, 95% of people out there who are going to be doing this, there are protections involved in the regulated market. There are ways of being part of this that do not carry nearly the risk that the offshore market does. And that’s what we’ve been talking about for five-plus years on this podcast and a long time before that, as well.

Matt Brown (08:26):

So, I think a good rule of thumb here, Adam and Dustin, if whatever site you’re going to doesn’t end in .com …

Dustin Gouker (08:34):

See little spinning dots.

Matt Brown (08:35):

That’s the first thing you should be a little skeptical. If it’s like a dot and then a couple of letters or a dot, maybe I’m heading to some sort of weird sight out there. And then also, it doesn’t matter if it’s actually called BetUS or it could be All-American Sports Regulatory or it could be whatever, anything like that. I could name, Adam could name, Dustin could name our sportsbook anything we wanted to. It does not mean that it is actually US-based or that it is actually legal. So, another thing that you can look at whenever you’re going through all of this is maybe do just even the smallest bit of research for stuff like that, as well. Of course, that’s one of the things that we see a ton.

(09:11):

I mean, guys, we’re in this market, and I know we’re hypersensitive to this, and I am fully aware that I’m so immersed in the bubble that when I do see a beat writer from an NFL team say, “Hey, guess what, 68% of the people are betting on our opponent, blah, blah, blah.” And then it’s like, “According to,” and then I’m like, “Oh God, here it is.” And it’s according to whatever it is. And so that being said, that information is available for any of the legal books out there, as well. Certainly, you could get into … One, they should probably do a better outreach with all of that stuff, but certainly, you can find out that information in two seconds without having to go and use one of these other books that are out there.

(09:56):

And so, I’m going to hope that Dustin now that this is kind of a crusade and a mission for you. When you see these beat writers out there that are in fact using all of this other stuff, maybe you’ll call them out. I mean, listen, you got a little bit more free rein over there now, that it’s the X, right? I mean now that it’s the X. You can do whatever you want to over there.

Dustin Gouker (10:16):

Yeah, sometimes I try to reach out to these people on Twitter or email or what have you. I know the American Gaming Association actually tries to work with folks as well, to try to educate them that, yeah, you don’t have to do this. Yes, they’re in your inbox, but there are plenty of sources for this information from PR people at regulated sportsbooks, us, people who are in the content industry. We’ll help you out. You don’t have to just rely on this Bovada or BetOnline person that’s been in your inbox for 20 years, and you should be doing more to interrogate this information that you’re getting about betting. Just a few more footnotes to all of this. Another thing that I’m on about now is there’s some mainstream media sites outside of the gambling industry that are promoting offshore casinos in major markets across the country.

(11:00):

Dallas Morning News, Albany Times Union, the capital of New York. These papers are also doing it, as well. I look at it and I’m like, it kind of makes me sad for, again, Adam and I are newspaper guys, too. We’ve done this stuff, and I couldn’t imagine this stuff happening when I was actually at a newspaper. And now, to see offshore, “Here’s the top 10 offshore casinos” or “legal casinos.” They don’t say it as offshore casinos. They do that, they just do that. And the last one is, man, right as NFL’s starting, I’m seeing so much bad betting information. I don’t know about you guys. Just this morning, I’m seeing 25-year trends that people are using to bet. Like, “Oh, here’s this Colts trend that started in 2002.”

Matt Brown (11:48):

You can ask Adam.

Adam Candee (11:50):

Hang in there, Matt.

Matt Brown (11:51):

Adam knows how much I love trends.

Adam Candee (11:52):

Hang in there, Matt.

Matt Brown (11:53):

I know. Adam knows how much I love trends. Let me tell you.

Adam Candee (11:57):

Oh God.

Matt Brown (11:59):

I am not trends guy. Oh boy, am I not trends guy.

Adam Candee (12:02):

Oh, I thought he was going to explode.

Matt Brown (12:03):

Yeah, it was happening. Blood was starting to boil. I felt the hair on my arm standing up. It was about to go down. There’s no doubt about that. But Adam, to kind of put a bow in this though, for real, this information is out there from all the sports. If you want to, you can go in. I mean, I get daily emails from DraftKings, FanDuel, whatever. They’re giving me the information. It’s sitting right there for me. I understand it’s not like already pre-written out for you. The smart thing that these offshores were doing. They were making it to where there was no work whatsoever. It was just copy and paste. They wrote the whole tweet for you, and people were so lazy that they were literally just going in, copy and pasting and putting it in there. If you do, literally 30 seconds, if you open the email 30 seconds, you can do your own work with all of this and information’s there and let’s just be better about all this.

Adam Candee (12:54):

So, I will empathize for a second with Dustin, with you, with anybody who has ever had to write about sports for a living. I understand that the demands of content get to be exponential today, with not a whole lot more pay. And hey, a lot of people are lucky to just have a full-time job doing this. And so, I understand that you’re being asked to do a lot more and it’s really easy to just take something out of a press release and pop it onto Twitter or to put it into a story. And when someone presents it in an easy way for you, then sure, I get it. We might be asking you to do what feels like an extra step, and you might be saying, “I don’t care whether it’s regulated or not, I just want to be able to do my job easily.”

(13:37):

I hear you, and I feel it, but I also feel like there’s always a better way and there’s always a better way that doesn’t require you to do 10 steps more. LSR itself has an odds tab. You can go into the odds tab on our website, and everything you see under those odds will be legal. You have these bet splits that are being put in front of you, and Matt and I could probably go off on bet splits a little bit too and how they’re not exactly the most instructive thing in the world but that it is easy content for you that’s also available through a number of sites like ours and others in our network. So I get it, you’re being asked to do something that takes you out of your routine and as a little bit more work, but it really is one of those greater good things in the end.

Matt Brown (14:25):

I know we’re getting off script a little bit here. It’s more of us just sitting around, roundtabling here for this episode. But as we do head into NFL season guys, I mean anecdotally for me, and I understand that we are still a couple of days from kickoff. I actually have not seen a ramp up in ads. I haven’t seen any of that so far. I guess we will have a much bigger sample size whenever we do this podcast next week as to what’s going on. But I’ve not gotten the big push of, “Hey, pre-sign up so that you can bet on Thursday for kickoff” and stuff like that. My TV has basically not been off for the last several days, obviously as I prep for everything and everything’s running off. I have not seen any sort of uptick. Am I just missing it or have you guys seen anything? Adam, you, anecdotally, have you seen anything?

Adam Candee (15:14):

So, I feel like I’ve seen a lot of the free-to-play kind of stuff, and that’s been a pretty big push. I can also tell you, where I was on vacation, I was getting a Canadian feed from Sportsnet, and I was getting every BetMGM possible for quite a long time. But to your point, we actually do have a story up at LSR right now talking about how ad impressions overall are up. I’m wondering if they’re more targeted. I’m wondering if they’re not coming into the markets that we are in more regularly, and maybe that has something to do with why there’s been some growth in the numbers even while we necessarily haven’t seen the same blitz.

Matt Brown (15:49):

Yeah, Dustin, I guess that’s something we don’t really think about. This stuff can be targeted. It doesn’t necessarily have to be national. It doesn’t have to be a major ad buy on any of these major networks. You could go in and these could be much more localized and maybe that’s what we’ll see this year, right? The markets, the people that the books feel like are still ripe for the picking as opposed to the ones that are a little bit more mature. Maybe it’s not national buys; maybe it’s more targeted stuff.

Dustin Gouker (16:15):

Yeah, I mean there’s a lot to this. We saw the story that Adam ran at LSR last week about targeting different audiences, right? “Friends” and syndicated shows. That’s maybe more bang for your buck in an ROI situation right now than spending to be on a football game. So there’s that part of the dynamic. Yeah, we did see MGM dropped its latest Jamie Foxx commercial for people to consume. We assume we’ll see that a fair amount over there. The other part is this: There’s no launch right now. It feels like we’ve had a lot of launches right around NFL season or trying to capture that market for the first time. We do have that dynamic with Ohio and Massachusetts going through their first NFL season. But I would say anecdotally, I’ve seen a little less. But yeah, once the actual games start, I would imagine we’re going to see a lot of this.

(17:06):

We’re going to see a lot more of MGM, FanDuel, Caesars, DraftKings, and all of them. Again, maybe it’s a little less than usual, but at this point, if you’re watching NFL games, you probably know about FanDuel and DraftKings. Is that really a good spend of the marketing dollar at this point?

Matt Brown (17:26):

Yeah, that’s what’s going to be my follow-up to you, Adam. It’s like I wonder if we’ve entered that phase, where the big national spends during the football games and stuff. It’s kind of like, at this point, few years mature. Certainly, we had all the big push during the DFS time, as well. If you’re watching Thursday Night Football or you’re watching Monday Night Football or Sunday Night Football and you are not aware of DraftKings and FanDuel, then I don’t know. It seems like about 90% of the people probably are, so maybe it’s just not the best way to spend your money at this point.

Adam Candee (18:03):

Yeah, I was actually just having a conversation offline yesterday with our friend Eric Ramsey about this and saying that with Fanatics now launching and having worked on a product from the ground for quite a while now, and with ESPN Bet about to come into the market and Penn has put together a new product, we have no idea if it’ll be any good in the end. I have some confidence with Fanatics with Matt King over there having built what he did at FanDuel. I ultimately feel like this year is going to be the first real test product. I think this is the first time we’re going to see questions when it comes to, can product help retain, if you don’t see the same kind of marketing spend or will the marketing spend be like, we saw that quick little pivot from FanDuel a couple of years ago where everything all of a sudden was about cash-out speed.

(18:51):

We heard just a little bit about that when it came to how they dealt with what was in the messaging of their advertising. So I’ll be very curious to see how a lot of that looks. Is it going to be just big splashy, here’s Jamie Foxx or Matt, for you, here’s J.B. Smoove or whoever it might be. Is it going to be all of that, just try to build a good brand? Or do we feel like at some point that the pivot is going to be like, “Hey, here’s why you should stay with us as opposed to here, here’s why you should come with us,” especially if you’re FanDuel or DraftKings.

UFC takes a step to prevent future betting scandals

Matt Brown (19:24):

So, another story we do want to hit on, and this came out this morning, my buddy Marc Raimondi over at ESPN, the UFC is going to use the program Prohibet to expand its compliance with gambling regulations by catching fighters and others around the sport trying to place bets. This was announced, so basically, it’s athletes, coaches, employees and officials, judges, things like that. Anybody that could have any sort of effect or have any sort of inside knowledge whatsoever on any of this stuff would be flagged by regulated bodies and organizations. Goes on to say, designed to safeguard sports integrity and ensure the adherence to state-specific regulations. Their cutting-edge technology provides a secure and transparent method for sports properties, both professional and collegiate, and sportsbook operators to ensure that athletes, coaches, and league, school, administrative staff, et cetera, are compliant with the intricate web of state regulations that govern sports betting activities.

(20:20):

Now this comes on, Adam, after we did see the UFC get hit with something that, look, it’s a good thing that they found it. There was a coach that had some inside information that he was using that inside information to pass along to other people. Other people were taking that information and using it to get in some advantage bets and things like that, which obviously, as we well know, is just not cool at all. In singular sports like that, it is going to be a little tougher, but I’m glad to see the UFC take at least an additional step here to try to get down on that. I mean, listen, tennis, we’ve known long …

(20:59):

One-on-one sports, guys are going to try to get to other guys. Guys are going to try to pass along information. It’s always going to be one of those things. UFC, obviously, one-on-one sport. You can talk about a guy that looked terrible in camp whatever is actually going to fight with an injury. Weight cut was terrible, whatever it might be. There’s inside information that can help as well, but I’m glad to see the UFC just stepping up and at least adding another layer here.

Adam Candee (21:22):

Yeah, Matt. And to add a little bit of background to that, Prohibet products, that’s co-founded by Matt Holt, who’s behind US Integrity. And this is a product that has been getting some push from them. They’re not the only ones in the market, but it is being more widely adopted not only by UFC, but we’ve seen a number of press releases recently, where collegiate conferences are signing up as well in the wake of the Iowa, Iowa State, and Alabama scandals as well. And I think, Matt, what I would say to you in particular is that I’m glad we’re catching the dumb people. I’m glad that we’re catching the dumb people now because it allows us to refine everything and hopefully at the point where smarter people, more sophisticated people are trying to game things that can be caught in the regulated market, that we’re able to do that in the US legal regulated market, much the same way that it used to just be Vegas sportsbooks working on these things in the past, catching point-shaving scandals when it came to college basketball and so on.

(22:25):

We’ve had the dumbest of the dumb, the Brad Bohannon situation is ridiculous, where if some guy’s showing up to a sportsbook inside a ballpark with a hundred grand trying to get down on a college baseball game. That is every red flag that you can wave in the air to a sportsbook employee. It’s like a bad training exercise to get them to recognize that something is going on. And so, a lot of these things are being caught even if after the fact and now, you’re seeing products being developed to try to refine the methods of being able to find people who do these things. And hopefully, it means that when we get down the line and these things are a little better hidden, which they’re going to be, people are going to try them, that it’s caught in a manner that is good for the regulated market.

Matt Brown (23:07):

And Dustin, one of the things I think it’s worth pointing out, I mean the sportsbooks do play a role in trying to curb and limit this stuff, as well. The smaller tennis tournaments, the super undercard fights, all the stuff like that, the limits are way, way smaller than they are on the main card fights and all that because listen, and look, it is what it is. It’s way easier to maybe get to a guy playing the first round of a super low-level tennis tournament, where he’s only going to make a few hundred bucks anyway, than it is to get to the guy who’s fighting a main event on a UFC pay-per-view. So they’ve also done pretty well trying to curb all this because the juices aren’t the squeeze. Trying to bribe a guy where you can only get a couple hundred bucks down on a fight anyway or a couple hundred bucks down on a tennis match anyway, doesn’t really make any sense.

(23:59):

And so, they’ve helped out along the way with all of this, but still any addition that we can continue and add layers to make this way harder on people and, as Adam said, to catch the dumb ones who continue to do it no matter what is OK by me.

Dustin Gouker (24:13):

And remember, at the end of the day, this is not in the best interest of sportsbooks to have their bets questioned. They want up and up. They want people who are supposed to be betting. Betting people who are not supposed to be not betting. I mean, heck, there’s regulations in some states that you’re saying you’re supposed to take some level of care to make sure that athletes aren’t betting against bylaws or what have you, right? So that’s part of it. And I also look at these and I’m wondering, why is this just now happening five years later? Again, we should be, it’s kind of wild to me that we’re just now seeing this product get adopted and yeah, I’m getting a US Integrity or Prohibet PR, it seems like daily in my inbox and it’s like, great, we’re getting adoption now.

(24:54):

And yeah, I guess I should just not yell about it, but it is wild to me that it’s just like 2023. We’re just now starting to do this. Somebody should have been outlining this product or calling for its creation as soon as the spigot got turned on for legal sports betting, but better late than never.

Matt Brown (25:13):

And Adam, let’s put a bow on this one, as we do head into the NFL season. Cooler heads did not prevail in the Jameson Williams case. He is going to enter this season with a six-game suspension, despite the fact that he didn’t bet at an actual team facility. He didn’t bet on the NFL either. He just happened to be in a hotel, which the NFL has said, if you’re in a hotel that’s being paid for by the team, that is then in fact a de facto team facility. So he gets the six-game suspension here. But as we head in, look, there’s going to be more guys that are going to do this over the course of the season. I implore you maybe if you are an NFL player to just not bet at all during the season.

(25:47):

It’s just like, you got other things to concentrate on with all that. But I think the message that we’ve really tried to get out too is I hope we can come to an agreement that some things are far more egregious than others. And while you should certainly punish people if they break the rules, because rules are rules are rules and I get that and I’m not going to say that you should have carte blanche to do whatever you want to. But again, not betting on your sport in a hotel out of town is not the same as betting on your team or against your team or something else in your sport and all that. We have to be able to decipher between these things. And as we head in NFL season, we’re only going to hear more of these things come up, more guys are going to get caught because they’re going to be stupid. And I just hope the punishment actually fits the crime as opposed to this blanket thing that we have going on right now.

Adam Candee (26:35):

Well, what I hope, Matt, is that we’re at the point now where you don’t worry so much about what the rules are because they are what they are. The NFL Competition Committee meets in the offseason to decide what rules are going to be changed for the year. And then no matter how good or bad the rules are during the year, they’re going to live out the year with the rule. And that’s kind of where we are when it comes to betting right now, right? You can either like it or not, but we’re at the point where the rule is what it is and you would hope guys are not going to affect the futures of their teams by being involved in this. And we’ve heard from what’s come out of camp that a lot of players have said that we feel like the NFL did a better job educating us this year than they have in the past.

(27:14):

Now, does that just mean they were more aware because the hammer came down on other guys and they were listening a little more intently this time? Certainly, could be that. It might not be that the NFL was deficient. It might be that they were. We don’t really know that. But what we know at this point is that our Mike Mazzeo has been asking the NFL almost on the daily, are we done with the 2022 gambling suspensions? Have we heard the last of that? And they’re not really being clear about it, but I have to think we’re at the point where the NFL wants the storyline to be about nothing but what’s going on on the field and that we’ve gotten everything from 2022 out of the way and that hopefully we are at the point where from September to January, September to February, we’re going to be OK when it comes to this kind of news in terms of real-time stuff. So, is that a hope? Yes. Is that a fact? Probably not, but we shall see.

Expectations for handle, revenue during prime time of the sports calendar

Matt Brown (28:07):

Dustin, we’re headed into NFL season. You mentioned there’s a couple of states that are getting NFL for the full season for the first time. How do you think this is going to, when we look back on all of this and well, we’ll get all the numbers by, let’s call it April, whenever we’re talking about this in April, and we’re looking back over the NFL season 2023-2024, what do you see, from an industry, either growth standpoint or do you think it slows down? Do you think handle exponentially larger? Just a tick larger? What is your predictions here?

Dustin Gouker (28:36):

Man, putting me on the spot, making me have a take that you’re going to make me be cold on later on. I don’t know. We’re not going to see tons of growth because we had this huge start in Ohio. We had a pretty good start in Massachusetts. Massachusetts may be a little different, where NFL start kicks up and they convert some people that they weren’t, but Ohio was so fast out of the gate. How is that going to grow a whole lot right now? Yeah, it’s going to grow but grow month over month. But they did so much business opening up in January and yeah, we’ll get into this probably at the end of the year. And next year, the number of states that are going to legalize this is dwindling with every passing year. I don’t know. We’re going to see … And we’ve seen, go talk to Eric about the numbers, but we’ve seen some maturing of markets for real this time.

(29:26):

I think we’ve seen some plateauing. Some of these states that are still only a year or two in, they have some growth to be done. And the dynamic is, does ESPN and Fanatics, do they create new bettors that didn’t exist before? That’s how we’re going to grow the market right now, I think as opposed to new state launches. So, Fanatics taps into that, or ESPN is able to tap into that. I can see us growing the market beyond what it has, but I guess I’m not bullish on just huge growth in the next year or two.

Matt Brown (29:59):

Adam, we know that everything is going to go down drastically because RIP MaximBet and so we know the numbers, everything is just going to go down because we don’t have MaximBet in the market.

Adam Candee (30:10):

Well, everything has gone a bit fubar, not Fubo, because it can’t go Fubo. That’s also not here anymore. Speaking of, mild, mild piece of news: Bally Bet 3.0 has relaunched in Ohio and some other places as Bally Bet had kind of shut down in a lot of places where this is probably be the last time that we see PointsBet for a full season as Fanatics will operate dual brands in a couple of places. That news came out earlier this week, as well. So, the consolidation certainly has begun. I think the biggest thing when it comes to handle and revenue this season, especially when it comes to revenue, is going to be, are we going to continue to see the growth of the lottery ticket, the same-game parlay, whether it’s the three-leg, four-leg, prepackaged, all of these things that are generating 11-12% hold for sportsbooks or even bigger in some cases.

(31:08):

Is that what the consumer really wants or is that just what they’re being pushed. As we begin to churn a little bit here, as we’re not bringing as many new customers in, are the ones who are being brought in for those lottery tickets, is that really what they want? We’re going to find out more about that as this season goes on. We just saw the launch of a product from Simplebet that’s going to be same-drive parlays for football. So you can get down to this on the micro level if you want. The question is going to be, are people who are not having consistent success on these same-game parlays, because nobody is, going to continue to show up at the door for the lottery ticket? And so far, through five plus years, the answer has been it seems like they might.

Matt Brown (31:48):

Guys, everything we do, absolutely free. So, do appreciate all that support, a little five-star rating, little review certainly helps. And if you’re on the YouTube side, subscribing to the channel helps us grow, as well. You can follow both of those guys on the Twitter machine for free at @DustinGouker, @AdamCandee, two E’s, no Y, and of course everything over at legalsportsreport.com for your eyes and taking in all that great work that Adam and company is doing over there. For Adam, for Dustin, I’m Matt, talk to you guys next week.

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