EPISODE 213 | LSR Podcast

When NFL Injury Reports Go Wrong | Sports Betting News

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31 min
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When NFL Injury Reports Go Wrong | Sports Betting News | LSR Podcast 213

Controversy is swirling among bettors and fantasy players after a key injury went undisclosed last Sunday. The crew discusses how to fix the problem, as well as the latest state to ban DFS pick’em games, a major trend reversing in New Jersey, and Mississippi’s latest moves on mobile wagering.

Full transcript

Matt Brown (00:09):

Hello and welcome to episode number 213 of the LSR podcast. My name is Matt Brown, joined each and every week by the brightest minds in all the gaming industry.

(00:17):

With me, I have Adam Candee. You can follow him over on the Twitter machine, Adam Candee, two E’s, no Y. If you hate yourself, you can follow me @MattBrownM2. Everything we do, absolutely free. So, go ahead, hit that subscribe button, and follow along on this crazy ride we got going on here.

(00:32):

We will talk a tiny bit of news out of Mississippi, what’s going on over in New Jersey, and more of the DFS plus stuff that is going on out there and what is the fallout from that. But, Adam, let’s start with just some interesting stuff that has made it into the news, and it’s a real thing. And you and I have been talking about this for years because you and I have been bettors and we were always talking about, “Listen, the reason injury reports in the NFL exist in the first place, it has nothing to do with more than gambling and fantasy football.” And at least the NFL was smart enough to realize that back in the day, that, “Hey, listen. Between the fantasy players, between the sports bettors, this is why we’re getting all this viewership. That’s why all this stuff is skyrocketing. We need to make sure to keep these guys happy. And, in order to do that, we need to let them know who’s playing, or at least give them an idea who may or may not play throughout the course of a week.”

(01:24):

And then, this past week, fantasy players, maybe this one right here, who had a Bijan Robinson or a bettor who maybe had some sort of Bijan Robinson props and whatnot, found a guy that they knew pregame was not feeling all that well, we’re feeling under the weather, but they didn’t let anybody know. And as you well know, because you and I watched this and covered this pretty extensively, was nowhere to be found and everyone was wondering why.

Adam Candee (01:55):

Accurate information all around, Matt. Cannot argue with a word you just said. And, there is a reason, first of all. If we go back in what you were saying, that the NFL plays on Sundays in the first place because the sportsbooks, way, way, way back, needed something for people to bet on Sundays. And that’s how the NFL ultimately made its way to playing on Sundays. And so, to say that is to say, it’s a gambling product. It’s always been a gambling product, and everything that it does needs to be viewed through the lens of the NFL being largely intended for gambling. I know that sounds weird to those who love the John Facenda NFL Films purity of the game, but that’s the truth. And, when you look at what happened with Bijan Robinson, that goes against everything that we know when it comes to injury reporting and why it’s set up the way that it is in the first place.

(02:49):

Now, understand that the way the NFL does it now is that you get a report on Wednesday, you get a report on Thursday, you get a report on Friday, and then, the injury designation comes out of whatever you have on Friday.

(03:01):

So, Bijan Robinson was beyond the point where it falls into that standard part of the NFL injury reporting protocol. However, you have something going on here with a team who knew very well that one of its star players was not going to be available and they, I’m going to say, leaned into the loophole to be able to say, “Well, we didn’t have to.” Now, the NFL is going to be the one who ultimately determines, “Did we have to say anything,” but the teams and the head coaches are always going to be happy to lean into not saying anything that they don’t have to say.

(03:36):

And, if you saw Arthur Smith’s press conference today, he was kind of a jackass about it. He made it sound to everybody like, “Oh, of course we weren’t doing anything. Oh, you can make something sensational about everything.” And he asks a reporter his opinion about climate change. Just take it seriously, OK? If you don’t like it, that’s fine, but you get paid millions on millions to be the head coach of an NFL team in a league that has not only a history with gambling but now has leaned hard into gambling. And Bijan Robinson, whether it’s fantasy or props, is a marquee player who is going to be on the tongues of a lot of folks who are watching your games on Sunday.

Matt Brown (04:15):

Rookie of the year markets, whatever. Literally, this is a trickle-down effect through all kinds of stuff with all this. And, here’s the deal. So, yeah, 90 minutes before kickoff is the final injury designation for everybody out there. And so, technically, he was not inactive. He did see seven snaps. So, there is that. However, they knew well before that they were not going to be able to play him a full complement of snaps.

(04:40):

And so, Adam, I think what we need out of this, and this is actually, I’m glad this happened, because I think this is going to somehow make some sort of change where, even if it’s after the 90-minute final designation, if something were to come up, look, they are in bed with all these networks for billions of dollars that they have partnerships with. You call the sideline reporter over. It’s as simple as that, right?

(05:05):

It’s like, “Hey, listen, whatever, blah, blah.” Even if it’s 30 minutes before kickoff, Bijan’s got a migraine, doesn’t look like he’s going to play very much, just whatever. This is very easy. It doesn’t have to be by the head coach, it could be by a PR person, it could be … Whatever it is, however the message is delivered. But, somewhere along the way, there has to be a chain of events that happens when a star player, like you’re saying, is going to play … Literally, the guy’s playing 85% of snaps, and then goes down to playing seven snaps in the entire game and is nowhere to be found on scoring situations early on in the game. Inside the 10 yard line, Cordarrelle Patterson was getting carried and not Bijan Robinson early on in that game.

(05:44):

And so, I don’t know exactly what the right solution is here, but like I said, I’m glad this happened because they’re going to come to some sort of solution because this is just too important again for their primary product that they will never tell you is their primary product.

Adam Candee (06:00):

So, the idea of what happened with Bijan Robinson, from the perspective of the Atlanta Falcons, is something that I think we need to consider. But then, I think I can debunk the main myth around this pretty quickly.

(06:12):

The idea that you don’t want the opponent to know. You don’t want the Tampa Bay Buccaneers to know that Bijan Robinson isn’t going to play. And, because the rules don’t explicitly say that you have to say something about it, because he did play, then you chose not to say anything. And, I think we all know the NFL well enough to know that it’s not like Todd Bowles was going to be able to completely revamp his game plan 90 minutes before the game when he finds out that Bijan Robinson … “Oh my God, hey, hold on guys, can we push kickoff back 15 minutes? I need to redo our run fits because Bijan Robinson isn’t playing today.”

(06:49):

It’s kind of silly to think that there would be any advantage gained by Tampa Bay at that point that they wouldn’t have any opportunity to prepare for it. So, Atlanta didn’t really gain much of anything, nor did Tampa Bay lose much of anything if you say something about it, and when you understand that it would be as easy as what you’re discussing.

(07:10):

It should be through an official channel. Let’s be clear about that. It should be something that the NFL releases officially. If this were a situation where every single general manager or assistant GM who has Adam Schefter, Ian Rapoport on speed dial sends a text and it goes out. Sources say, and we all know exactly what it is because they’re information brokers, not reporters. We’ll understand exactly what’s happening if that’s what it is. But, this is part of the argument for the regulated market in the first place, to bring it back to what we talk about day to day. The regulated market is supposed to function in a way in which you feel like everything is happening on the up and up. And if the NFL is going to be in a situation where it is making millions upon millions of dollars from its relationships with a number of partners, seven of them, in fact, then the NFL needs to be as transparent as humanly possible, and this failed that standard.

Matt Brown (08:05):

I am of the mindset where I think we can hold two thoughts in our head at the same time and both be true, which is, you hear players and coaches say all the time, “I don’t give a damn about your fantasy team. I don’t care about your parlay. I’m out here to win games.” That can be true, and I do believe that, while also holding the same thought in my head of, “But you should be cognizant of it because if fantasy goes away, if people don’t want to play as much fantasy and people don’t want to bet as much and all that, then your ratings go down, and then the rights fees go down and then, in turn, your salaries go down and the popularity of the sport goes down and it’s a trickle-down effect from there.”

(08:40):

And so, I think both things can be true. Yes, do I believe that they don’t give a damn about my bet and my fantasy team? I do believe that. Do I also believe that they should at least be cognizant of the fact of, that that is a major, major part and the reason that they’re making the money they’re making and they are in the situation they’re in, they should also be aware of that, as well.

(08:57):

And so, like you said, the NFL, they’re never going to do it on their own. The NFL now is going to have to step in and put in some sort of protocol. And like I said, I’m actually kind of glad this happened, because I think this is something … I don’t want to jump the shark here. I don’t want to speak in hyperbole. What I do want to say though, Adam, this is not way removed from inside information and someone having inside information and whatever, because there might be someone in this realm, in this world that knew Bijan Robinson wasn’t going to play but a handful of snaps in this game and all the things like that, and there probably is a handful of people who maybe that got disseminated to. I’m not a conspiracy theorist; I do not want to go there. I’m just saying, it is a slippery slope, and as they say, and that slope can get really, really, really slippery, really fast.

Adam Candee (09:46):

Matt, where was the late steam on Sunday morning?

Matt Brown (09:48):

Yeah.

Adam Candee (09:50):

The late steam was all Tampa on Sunday morning. Right? And there are folks who do this regularly who are professional bettors or semi-professional bettors who put out content who don’t make this conspiracy theory material. They will say very clearly, if they’re someone the level of a Bijan Robinson or a quarterback who’s not going to play, someone in their world knows before it is reported, right? We saw it with Trevor Lawrence, we saw the steam on Thursday night. I mean, starting on the Sunday before, it was moving all over the place based on what we kind of knew about Trevor Lawrence and what we thought we knew about Trevor Lawrence, and then we ultimately knew about Trevor Lawrence. And these are the sorts of things that just erode at the public trust over the course of time.

(10:35):

For those who listened to this podcast, I know, you’ve probably heard us talk about these things and thought, it’s Chicken Little over and over and over again. But the thing is, it doesn’t happen with one specific incident that takes you over that point where you jump the shark. It happens over the course of time where eventually, there’s one straw that breaks the camel’s back and you’re upset with yourself for not having dealt with the other little things along the road sooner.

Michigan Man?

Matt Brown (11:00):

And another kind of real-world thing going on here, Michigan football are being investigated as well.

Adam Candee (11:07):

So, this popped into the news in the past week, where the Michigan football team is, if you haven’t been paying attention to this, under investigation for a sign stealing scandal in which a staffer for Michigan is reported to have gone to other Big 10 opponents, non-conference opponents and done something against the rules, which is to live scout those games. It’s apparently OK by the rules if you want to watch a TV broadcast and try to interpret signs from there. So, in case you’re someone who’s been watching college football and you wonder why you see right behind the head coach or the offensive coordinator, you see those giant banners right before the snap that are popping up behind somebody. It’s to make sure that no one on TV gets a look at the signs and so that they can’t scout.

(11:55):

And so, the idea of not being able to live scout is to create a level playing field for everyone in the NCAA. So, when it’s not somebody with the budget of Michigan who can afford to send a staffer all over the place, then you have a situation where it’s theoretically more even for everybody. So, this morning, and we are recording this on Wednesday, a national radio host who I’m going to say, the credibility is dubious here, so I’m not jumping to go on board, but said that he had heard from a source that there was consideration to taking Michigan football off the board in certain places because of questions about the integrity of its games. I don’t necessarily believe that for what it is. And, our Mike Mazzeo already contacted regulators in New Jersey, said there are no plans to do anything like that right now. So, I think that might be a bit of an overreaction.

(12:47):

However, we already know from the reporting that ESPN has done that US Integrity, the firm that has been partnering with sportsbooks, with colleges, with conferences, is involved in the investigation here. They are at least taking a look at whether or not the fact that Michigan was potentially able to get signs in advance is something that could have affected how these games played out, how point spreads moved, whether anybody else knew about this.

(13:13):

We have to view everything that happens right now when it comes to the potential questions of integrity, whether it’s NFL or college football, it all has to be put through the lens of legalized gambling, because the money that is involved here and the access that is involved here, whether or not there’s a real influence, it’s all about perception and it’s all about whether or not these incidents will ultimately be used to crack down on gambling within the regulated market on sports that is, shall we say, conflated with reality and perception, right? Whether it’s a matter of things that actually happened that our integrity concerns were dealt with, or things that were perceived to be integrity concerns were overreacted to.

Matt Brown (13:57):

I’m going to go out on a limb and say, whether you could just eliminate this by just letting them use headsets in the helmets, and so just, “Hey, NCAA, maybe just get with the times here.”

(14:11):

And their argument is that every school wouldn’t be able to afford it and whatever else. So, OK, 90% of the programs would be able to afford it. The 10% that can’t, maybe you step in and you help them out or something. Whatever, but let’s be for real. Let’s quit all the archaic stuff and whatever and just get with the times.

Adam Candee (14:30):

My favorite part of this whole thing is that, now, what’s come out in the investigation is that almost all of the other Big 10 schools have a record of this staffer buying tickets to their games. How dumb can you be? It’s a rule and you buy the ticket in your own name. Are you kidding?

Matt Brown (14:49):

Go scalp a ticket outside the stadium, man. What you doing? Go scalp a ticket outside the stadium, cash transaction. Like what’s going on?

Adam Candee (14:58):

Yep.

Matt Brown (14:59):

Oh boy. In the digital age, it never ceases to amaze what people don’t know can be recorded and tracked.

The latest state to ban DFS pick’em games

(15:06):

All right, Adam, and this is not us just continuing to hit on the same topic over and over and over and over again. It is constant news coming out on the same topic. And so, I know it feels like we continue to go bang, bang, bang, bang, bang. But really, this is just more news, each and every week, as it comes to the DFS plus products that are available out there right now.

Adam Candee (15:26):

Yeah, and please understand, we use that plus with our tongues firmly planted in our cheeks because there’s DFS and there’s sports betting and the idea of a plus is intended by those who have a stake in this to try to make a different category that ultimately can be dealt with in between.

(15:44):

So, when we look at what happened this particular week, it is the state of Maine not only banning the pick’em games offered by daily fantasy sports companies, but, specifically, to Underdog, they sent a cease and desist, and there was a fine of nearly $400,000 given to Underdog. Milt Champion, the executive director of gaming control up in Maine, went with $50 per violation to come up with this number of just under $400,000. Frankly, he has leeway within the rules to go up to $1,000 per violation, but settled on this as what he thought was a reasonable fine for every instance of someone betting through underdog on one of these pick’em products.

(16:27):

Now, a couple of interesting things that came out of this. First, and I think this is the single most interesting thing, Underdog at least temporarily pulled the product in Maine, and that is a big difference from what we’ve seen in other states, in New York, in Florida, in Wyoming, in Michigan, and those are just the states over the last few months that have either banded in the rules or ordered to cease and desist via letter. So, notable they did that in Maine.

(16:54):

Now, there’s clearly a reasonable question as to how large the market of Maine is and how much money they have involved there. That is part of the discussion, reasonably. But, the other piece of the equation here is that, this is now five of 50 states over the past, what, four months or so who have ordered cease and desists for Underdog, PrizePicks, Betr, any other company that is offering these pick’em products that mirror parlay prop betting, and yeah, you said “Bang, bang, bang.” Bang, bang, bang goes the trolley, because the trolley continues to roll downhill, and it is a matter of, if you feel like this is just a slow trickle that is coming out, it’s a matter of regulators in various states finding out about this, essentially becoming aware of it, understanding that, “Yes, we licensed certain companies under fantasy sports,” and then it was pointed out to them, questioned by whom, that we are continually investigating, to say, “Yeah, look at this product. It’s probably more like sports betting than it is like DFS.”

(18:02):

And so, that brings us to the second point about this, is that Milt Champion specifically called out player-versus-house contests. And, that is, again, back to the roots of DFS. Is it peer-to-peer or is it player versus house? And you’ve heard some out there right now trying to argue that there are legal ways around player versus house, that it’s not really clear. Yeah, it’s clear. It’s been clear for a long time, and now you have regulators calling it out as well.

Matt Brown (18:28):

Yeah, you say five of 50, they were only in 32 states to begin with. And so, now, you start ticking off and ticking off and ticking off and you look, and again, I don’t want to sit here, and we don’t want to just beat a dead horse here, but it’s just, you can even go to the rules and regulations pages, and what you can do in some states, you can’t do in other states, and things like that. That’s not how it works with DraftKings and FanDuel if you’re playing DFS. The rules are the rules, right, because that’s the way it is. The rules are the rules. You pick your six players for football or whatever, you pick your six golfers, you pick your whatever, and then everyone plays against each other.

(19:07):

But there’s different rules for Colorado and Illinois and then for Massachusetts and Alabama and all that. So, again, it is what it is. We got 32 states, all the Canadian provinces except for Ontario is where they are right now. But, as you mentioned, Adam, those are getting ticked off here and there, and we’ve already seen one of the major operators decide that it’s not worth messing around in New York.

Adam Candee (19:33):

Yeah. And just to put the bow on that point, if you’re going to say the provinces, with the exception of Ontario, we all know what the big difference is with Ontario. It is a regulated market as opposed to the others.

(19:43):

So, Sleeper, a company that we have not paid as much attention to, but that had been pretty popular during this football season for DFS as one of the companies in New York that ultimately decided, “You know what? We are not going to continue offering the game right now. It’s not worth it for us, legally.”

(20:00):

As soon as the rules went into effect, they pulled out, and there was a lot of outcry on social media from players who had been using the app to say, “Wait a minute, where’d you go?” And they decided to back out and we talked to Underdog and PrizePicks about it. They basically said, “We continue to work with regulators.”

(20:17):

The rules are clear, and it definitely feels like, short of a court order or threats of a serious fine, that we’re going to continue to deal with a similar situation in any state where there’s been a cease and desist order with the exception of what we saw in Maine. And, even in Maine, Underdog provided a statement to us that said, “This is an initial step, and we continue to work with regulators in Maine, and we hope that they come to see the law the way we see the law.”

Major trend reversing in New Jersey

Matt Brown (20:45):

We used to talk a ton of numbers here on the podcast, but as the expansion happened, it was almost impossible for us to just continue to talk numbers all the time, every single state, and there wasn’t a uniform release from all the states. And so, who knows, we would be giving you updates from one state that was only a month old and another one would be two or three or four, so, just, we decided probably best to only stick to when there’s an outlier or something we really want to hit on here. And I think this fits the bill.

Adam Candee (21:12):

Yeah, this is definitely an outlier. It’s something that is clearly worth discussing because it goes against the narrative that we have seen for quite a while, more than $1.25 billion wagered in New Jersey in September, and that is the highest single month of handle that we’ve seen in New Jersey. And Matt, you know as well as I do, notable because of the fact that this time last year, we were talking all about declining handle in New Jersey and the fact that it was New York’s first NFL launch with online sports betting and saying, “Oh, yeah, we knew this was going to happen. Eventually everybody who was coming over from New York is going to stop playing in New Jersey where they’ve been making the trip over the bridge.” Well, New York’s handle has not fallen, and New Jersey’s handle has gone up.

(22:05):

So, it’s very, very interesting. We’re just starting to dig into those numbers, but worth noting because the narrative that I think we at least at some level bought into about the expected effect of New York on New Jersey, we have at least one month of saying that, maybe, that is not the case.

Matt Brown (22:25):

Yeah, I will be the first to say, growing up in the South and then moving out to the West Coast, and never having lived in the Northeastern thing, I was very unaware that New Jersey had the population that it had. It’s like, you always just think of Jersey as the … guys, don’t hate tweet me. I’m talking about what I was brought up thinking, that New Jersey was like New York’s little stepchild, or so, whatever, and that’s how I viewed it. Little did I know, until we started dealing with all this gambling stuff, that it ticks back and forth between the 10th and 11th most populous state in the entire country. And so, it’s not like we’re talking about a little market whenever we talk about Jersey in and of itself.

(23:09):

Now, yes. Is it way smaller than New York? Yeah, about half the size of New York as far as population goes. But, man, it was interesting to me, to see that it continues to strive and thrive in all of this, Adam. It does lead me to believe that one, I think that just the culture growing up, I think, in and around that area, I think that gambling was probably always at least a little bit more accepted as it was anyway, and that there’s probably more people willing to not only do it, but are maybe even a little bit better at it because they’ve been doing it for a longer period of time, and the churn isn’t what we see from some of this other stuff. So, yeah, it’s just a very interesting case study with it all, with the people over there in Jersey.

Adam Candee (23:52):

And I think it goes back to something else that we speclulatively discussed a while ago. I just said speclulatively. I can’t get the words out this morning.

Matt Brown (24:03):

I like it.

Adam Candee (24:03):

Speculatively. Yes, there it is. All right, I’m back on the horse.

Matt Brown (24:07):

Special actually-ly-ly. Yes.

Adam Candee (24:09):

Oh, sure. If you say so. Your words, not mine. So, we discussed the fact that the New York tax rate is 51%, the New Jersey tax rate is more like 13%. And we wondered how long companies would be willing to push hard in New York for people to wager there based upon that tax rate. And, let’s just say, as a thought exercise, that in 2018, VIP services folks for a DraftKings or a FanDuel, had someone who lived in New York and wanted to bring them over to New Jersey in the regulated market, wanted to develop that player there for both sports betting, for iGaming.

(24:50):

Let’s say that person, when New York started, said, “I don’t really want to have to make the trip over to New Jersey to be able to do this anymore. I want to do this from home.” Could there potentially be some inducements given to someone of that size of a player to come back to New Jersey to say, “Listen, we’ll send you the car, we’ll give you better odds, we’ll take a higher limit on something for you to come and play in New Jersey,” because it’s ultimately more profitable for these companies to be able to have that player in New Jersey than it is in New York.

(25:23):

So, I think there could be multiple explanations here for what we see in New Jersey this month, but it’s something we will clearly be tracking as we move forward, because we know, in New York, the promos have pulled back in a significant way, and in New Jersey, maybe it makes more sense for them to still be there.

Matt Brown (25:39):

And the one last little theory, on my end, as well, is, you mentioned iGaming and there is still the cross-sell that is involved, right, in iGaming, and we always think about the cross-sell from sports betting to iGaming, but it works in reverse. There is the reverse, and you could have someone that is a slot player year-round, and then, they’re not really interested all that much, but, “Hey, they like football a little bit.” A bonus pops up, and you might be able to acquire customers that way, and you might be able to even just retain customers that way, too, where it’s like, they’re really a casino player, but you get them to make some bets here and there with different promos that you throw their way. And so, I think there’s at least some of that as well, from my standpoint anyway. Oh gosh, you guys will be able to kind of prove me right or wrong somewhere along the way.

Adam Candee (26:28):

Yeah. Keep in mind, when you see, “$300,000 bet by a bettor in New Jersey, $500,000 bet by a bettor in New Jersey.” That’s not the sharpest player they have.

Matt Brown (26:39):

Mm-hmm. Yeah. No doubt about that.

Mississippi’s latest moves on mobile wagering

(26:41):

All right, Adam, let’s put a bow on this. And, we haven’t talked about Mississippi in a very, very long time, and the reason is because it was one of the very first states to legalize sports betting, but if you have not been with us for the long haul here, what you might not have realized is that Mississippi is, for all intents and purposes, all over the counter. There was a technical Mississippi technicality in there with the Mississippi mobile thing, but that never even really played out with everything. And so, we’re getting some movement, at least a little bit, or they’re trying to, Adam, over there in Mississippi, to join the rest of the country here.

Adam Candee (27:14):

Mississippi, every year, was like Lucy and Charlie Brown with the football, when it came to mobile. After they launched, in 2018, and remember that, when they launched in 2018, it was one of the first states to go live with some form of sports betting, they didn’t have to pass a new law because sports betting had been tucked into the DFS law that allowed them to be able to launch once it started. But mobile was geofenced to on-property, and I believe we only saw one casino that even tried to do this during the first few years.

Matt Brown (27:44):

Most of them didn’t even bother with it because it was never going to-

Adam Candee (27:49):

What’s the point?

Matt Brown (27:49):

… It was so much work for absolutely no payoff.

Adam Candee (27:53):

Right. Anyway, you could have had a situation, we heard about this in Mississippi, where you can bet from your room but you can’t bet from the parking garage. No one’s going to put the effort into this to do that.

(28:02):

So what we see now, and over the past few years, is that, every year, Lucy sets that football up. Someone introduces a bill to be able to legalize online in Mississippi, and then every year, she pulls it, and it doesn’t get out of committee, until now. We actually passed in the legislature in 2023. There was a study bill passed about mobile, and I think everyone in Mississippi can look at the numbers, in Louisiana and elsewhere, and say, “Maybe we need to think about whether we should be doing this.”

(28:34):

And so we’ve had the first hearing of that study committee yesterday, and the most notable thing that came out of it is that you have a representative in Mississippi who is saying, “Hey, I’m introducing this bill again this year.” It’s going to come. And now, we want to get more information about it and try to get legislators more comfortable with the idea of this, because we want to make a serious push at being able to get Mississippi into the mobile world of the rest of the United States.

(29:03):

Opinions on both sides. I think there’s some reticence from certain casinos, those maybe who don’t have a big brand affiliation, who are worried the usual, that people are going to stop coming to their casino and they’re not going to want to use the overall facilities because they can bet on sports from home. We’ve seen, in general, that does not play out, but that is a concern that has been expressed in a number of places in the first five and a half years of legal sports betting. So there are going to be continued meetings about this. They’re going to continue to discuss it in Mississippi, but it is interesting that we thought there would be states that either did in-person registration or did over the counter only, who went back and looked at it. I just didn’t think it would take Mississippi this long, but here they are.

Matt Brown (29:46):

Me neither. I thought, pretty much as soon as Louisiana passed, not even went live, as soon as Louisiana passed anything, I thought everyone would get together and be like, “Okay, guys, they’re about to do it. We need to do this. What’s going on here?” And, of course, we know that that has just not been the case, and we’ll continue to monitor that, as well, over at legalsportsreport.com, where you can find all of the stuff that we talk about here on the podcast, absolutely free. So, go in, take in all the great words that Adam and team are doing over there.

(30:12):

If you have not already, hit that subscribe button. Do appreciate the support here on this very podcast. For Adam. I’m Matt. Talk to you guys next week.

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