G2E 2024 Notes From The Floor | Sports Betting News
Matt and Adam meet up for the annual gaming convention in Las Vegas and report back with their notes on the hottest discussion topics: will more sports betting brands ever launch in Florida, what’s the next big thing for sportsbooks after same-game parlays, the issue that popped up the most at the show, and an update on the timeline for sports betting in California.
Full transcript
Matt Brown (00:10):
Hello and welcome to episode number 252 with LSR Podcast. My name’s Matt Brown, joined each and every week by the brightest minds in all of the gaming industry. With me, I have Adam Candee, your friend and mine. You can find him over on the Twitter machine absolutely free @AdamCandee. That’s two E’s, no Y. And if hate yourself, you can follow me @MattBrownM2. This is the G2E edition, of course, the Global Gaming Expo going down in Las Vegas this week. And everybody who’s anyone who’s ever been anybody was in town to go through and talk to everybody. Adam, of course, everything we do, free here. So guys, hit that subscribe button. You’ll get more conversations like this in your ear holes.
(00:52):
But let’s kick things off here with something that was fairly interesting and certainly made the rounds on the social, which was the fact that you got Florida, one of the big prize states out there when it comes down to sports betting. Of course, we still have California and Texas that are lingering, but Florida is one of the ones that we talk about a lot on here. Adam, but it is a monopoly down there currently and something that came out of G2E was something that opened a lot of eyebrows, opened a lot of eyes out there.
Adam Candee (01:22):
Is it possible to open eyebrows? I feel like that’d be scary.
Matt Brown (01:25):
Raise your eyebrows, open your eyes, and if you open your eyes, you probably raise your eyebrows. And so I don’t even know why we have that-
Adam Candee (01:33):
I’m testing this right now. OK, OK. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Matt Brown (01:37):
I think they’re opening and closing.
Adam Candee (01:39):
Almost impossible, yeah. If anybody watched us, that would be a GIF almost immediately, right?
Matt Brown (01:44):
Yeah, there it is.
Adam Candee (01:44):
That thing would’ve been flipped about my wacky eye movement.
Matt Brown (01:46):
We just did that for you, yeah.
Adam Candee (01:48):
Yeah. So if I split my eyebrows, I think it would look really strange if I tried to open them up, but seeing that I cannot do that, I guess I’ll move on to talk about something that might matter a little bit more than my eyebrows. And that is, I’m going to say that we reignited a discussion that frankly, our Mike Mazzeo had opened up a few months ago – former reporter Mike Mazzeo has moved on to Sports Business Journal.
(02:14):
Mike Mazzeo talked to Jim Allen, the chairman of Hard Rock International, a few months back, and the question was posed, what do you think about ever doing any sort of revenue-sharing arrangement in Florida? As we know, the market is Hard Rock Bet; it is the only option legally in Florida. It operates through the Seminole Tribe. We went through two years of court challenges to this, and it seems that they are at least stalled at the moment, if not dead entirely, based on what we’ve seen so far. And Contessa Brewer was doing an interview on CNBC with Jim Allen at G2E this week at the Venetian in Las Vegas, and the topic once again came up. And the answer wasn’t any different from Jim Allen, but I’ll go behind the curtain a little bit here and say, Mike texted me as this was going around and was like, “Hey, it’s interesting to see the people are picking up on this story that we reported a few months back now,” and it just was on a little more prominent channel.
(03:16):
And what Jim Allen said was, “Look, we’ve always been open to the idea of doing revenue share agreements with the major brands.” And I think the more interesting part of the quote comes from what he said about willingness. He said, quote, “We do recognize that long-term, some type of strategic relationship with some of the brands that really have marquee value could be helpful to both of us. And we are receptive to those conversations.” And that’s more, I think, than just going out and saying, “Sure, there’s this provision within our gaming compact in which 60% of revenue in a rev share agreement would go to the sportsbook and 40% would go to the Seminole Tribe. That’s the cost of doing business in Florida.” And there’s more than that, we’ve talked about this before. On some level, you probably have to open up your business plan. Maybe that’s not the right word. You do have to open up your technology in some way if it’s going to run through Hard Rock. And so there are other considerations I think, that you have to put into that algebra, Matt.
(04:24):
But I did think it was interesting that Jim Allen kind of took a step beyond what the previous quotes were and talked about how, “Yeah, you know what? In the long term, there might be value for us in doing this.” I mean, look, from the Seminole perspective, yes, you’re going to get 40% for not really doing a whole lot. Now, is that going to significantly impact what Hard Rock does in terms of business, if you have DraftKings, FanDuel, etc., come down and begin offering sports betting there? Certainly a possibility, and I’m sure that there are a lot of market analysts crunching a lot of spreadsheets to figure out what’s best in terms of that. But Matt, you and I both know just how lucrative that Florida market ultimately is, and if Hard Rock decides to open it up to other brands, there’s certainly no lack of demand and available players in Florida.
Will more sports betting brands ever launch in Florida?
Matt Brown (05:16):
No, absolutely. There’s, one of the things that came to mind too is, as well, Adam, not just the fact that you get access to all the people in Florida, but it’s one of the reasons why we saw MGM and Caesars make such a concerted effort, specifically in Nevada, to get the rest-of-country apps. Then also to go to the one walet thing, is because it’s a popular tourist destination and you don’t want people to be traveling and have the option or have to go elsewhere and do something else. And then, who knows, maybe they never come back. Maybe they love what they did elsewhere with that.
(05:49):
And so Florida of course, a very, very popular tourist destination, as well as having a ton of people within the state. And so everyone heading to Miami and Orlando and all the various places in the panhandle and whatnot that are going for vacations for weeks. And some people that snowbird even, as you well know Adam, that live elsewhere and might live in a state that has legal sports betting that does have a DraftKings or a FanDuel or an MGM account or whatever it might be. And when they go and they live in Florida for the three and four and five months out of the year, then have to open up new accounts and all of that. And so not only just the people that live in Florida, but the people who are going through Florida, I think it’s a big market for everybody else as well. Especially then everybody’s moved to the one wallet thing now, where you don’t have to open up a new account every single time you go to a new state.
Adam Candee (06:39):
Right, you let somebody outside of your ecosystem, there’s absolutely no guarantee that they’re coming back. When I used to work at Mandalay Bay way back in the day, we knew that physically we were located at the very south end of the strip. And if you’ve ever wondered, why does Mandalay Bay have House of Blues? Why does it have a wave pool? Why does it have all of the things that it has, the shark reef for the kids? It has all of those things because our concept was, we don’t want people going to the middle of the strip during the day. We want them staying on property because if they leave, they’re not coming back during the day. It’s a lot farther away than they realize that it is, and they’re not just going to walk right back over.
(07:23):
And might not be an apples to apples, but the concept is similar in that if you can keep people right where they are, then keep people right where they are. I mean, it certainly makes sense in that regard. And also keep in mind that from Hard Rock’s perspective, they are available in other states, right? It’s not just Florida, as we work the inverse to this. They are available in a handful of other states and are hoping to expand, as well.
(07:47):
So at the moment, just an interesting discussion coming out of G2E, no real concrete to it, but I thought it was interesting that given the opportunity to talk about this, Jim Allen, who again was part of being one of the chorus of louder voices against the DFS+ and flex operators in Florida, certainly stepped forward and opened the door to the regulated sportsbook operators within the bounds of the compact.
Next big thing for sportsbooks after same-game parlays
Matt Brown (08:17):
One of the things that was making the rounds around Twitter as well, we kick off G2E on Tuesday, and FanDuel was able to pull numbers from the previous night’s Monday Night Football in which they came out and let everybody know that 50% of the revenue off of the Monday Night Football game the night before had come from same-game parlays.
(08:35):
And this isn’t anything, Adam, that you and I find crazy, but I think a lot of people seeing it, we’re just kind of blown away. And this is something that we’ve, I think we’ve been pretty fair on in beating the drum here on this podcast, certainly in any other content I do outside of the business side of things, whenever I’m doing just the actual sports betting content as well, that I’m really, really fair on. And I think that people just have to kind of live with it and get with it is that not everybody, and when I say not everybody, the vast majority of people are not betting with the hopes that they are going to grind out a profit betting 110s on each side, and it’s just not the way that it goes, and people want to go in and have a little bit of a sweat, but with the lottery mentality.
(09:19):
Adam, you go in and dude, at the end of the day, if I can turn my five into 50, if I can turn my 20 into 130 or whatever it might, people want to do that. It’s just what they want to do, and I don’t think that we need to turn our nose up at that. I think we just need to understand that this is what the consumer wants. And so instead of hounding on the fact, and it depends unless the practice gets out of hand, and of course there’s a line to be drawn, and we will certainly monitor that along the way. But the fact that these books advertise same-game parlays, whatever, it’s like, well, it would be like McDonald’s not advertising the Big Mac to people or something because it’s the fattiest burger on the menu. But it’s like, yeah, but that’s what everybody wants, right? I mean, that’s the one that everyone’s going to go get, so why would you not advertise the Big Mac?
(10:05):
It’s kind the same thing with same-game parlays. Yeah, it’s not the greatest odds in the world, but it’s what everybody wants. That’s what they want to play. And so I think we just need to understand that this is the way the world is. It’s just going to be the way that sports betting is here in the United States moving forward.
Adam Candee (10:19):
Can we talk Big Mac for a second? That bun in the middle, I don’t think I gave it enough consideration growing up about, why is there a bun in the middle of this super popular burger? Because I enjoyed every other part of it growing up, and I was always just kind of like, who was asking for more bread? Who out there was like, you know what this burger doesn’t have enough of? White bread. Am I missing something here or are you a big fan of the Big Mac and I don’t know about this?
Matt Brown (10:47):
No, no, see, you well know me. And one of the ingredients, unfortunately there is the two all-beef patties, special sauce, but then it’s the lettuce part, and then they also, pickles, cheese, onions as well. So onions, lettuce, no-go for me. I think what they’ve done though is basically turned, instead of just having a double decker burger, they basically made it where you’re eating just two burgers in one. As we’re fat Americans and so you get two burgers in one, and that’s just like, you’re like, this is value right here, man. This is value, this is two burgers in one hand.
Adam Candee (11:24):
I just, I don’t get it because I go other places, if I go to a Burger King — and I don’t do it as often as I used to — but if I go to a Burger King, I want the double cheeseburger. That’s what I like at Burger King because I like tasting the two pieces of meat with the cheese right next to each other without this interloper of white bread in the middle of my sandwich. So maybe I’m different that way, much the same way as you are a -110 sides better. Maybe everybody else out there likes the same-game parlay. That’s fine.
(12:00):
And credit to FanDuel and Flutter and Paddy Power and Betfair and everybody who was involved in this. Back in 2018, you can go back to the beginning of the legal US sports betting era and see that same-game parlay was a FanDuel — I’m not going to say invention as though no one had ever thought of the concept before — but they certainly popularized it inside the United States. And we did in some ways, I’m not going to say turn our nose up at it at the beginning, but I think we doubted the sustainability of it from the start. I think we were looking at it not just in terms of the profit, but in terms of, are people willing to just keep losing over and over again, right? And I think there’s a difference there, right? There’s a difference between, I go into this with the intent of making money, versus I never win anything. Right?
(12:50):
And when you play parlays, if you’re playing longer parlays, three, four, five, six legs, you’re going to lose most of them. That’s just the way that it goes. But you mentioned the lottery mentality, and definitely stay tuned to LegalSportsReport.com. Our Sam McQuillan is on the floor at G2E and has been all week. He had a conversation with Amy Howe, the CEO of FanDuel, as well as a chat with Peter Jackson, the CEO of Flutter, and we get into a little bit of the discussion of the same-game parlay and the future of it with them. We’ll have more stories on that to come.
(13:25):
But Matt, yes, I think that there’s a lot to be said for the idea that sports betting as entertainment, sports betting as just for the sweat, firing $10 and $20 parlays so that I give myself a little bit more enjoyment for watching a game or perhaps watching a game that I would not have watched otherwise, or watching some portion of a game that I wouldn’t watch otherwise. And now as we begin to talk about live same-game parlays, it’s a whole other thing as well, right? When we talk about live same-game parlays, now you have the opportunity not only to see a little bit of what’s happening, but if you got home from work in the middle of the second quarter and you didn’t have a chance to get whatever you wanted down before the game, now you can see a little bit of what’s going on and maybe if you’re not watching the whole game, give yourself a reason to watch the second half. So, everyone has gone with some version of this product chasing what FanDuel has done.
(14:21):
The question, I think, Matt, is now going to be, what is the next big iteration of what keeps people around? I mean, look, we’ve heard the predictions of live betting for God only knows how long now. And yes, we’ve certainly seen more of betting move toward live betting. Is it going to be micro betting? Is it going to be next pitch kind of stuff? I think there’s probably a ceiling for that. As long as TV has gone online, TV has gone to YouTube TV and DirecTV Stream, and if you’re going to have that level of lag in the delivery of your product, it’s going to be really hard to keep betting micro markets beyond a certain level. Right? Not to say it doesn’t have a place; it obviously has a huge place. DraftKings just bought Simplebet, we understand that. But will that be the next big thing? I don’t know. I’m curious your perspective.
Matt Brown (15:15):
I don’t know if … I’ll admit, I am very, very bearish on the in-game stuff now, way more than I was a couple of years ago, way more than I was a few years ago. For everything that you just mentioned, I mean, I can tell you because I do programming while games are on, and I can tell you what’s going to happen in the game by just watching the lines move before the plays happen on television. So that lets me know right there where the ceiling is in all of this, because you’re never going to be able to get in “fairly” because the books already know play to play however long in advance of what’s going on out there.
(15:59):
And so, until we get to a point where latency is near zero, until we get to a point where there is widespread … I think people who live like a very nice lifestyle, Adam, don’t really realize that there’s still the vast majority of the country doesn’t have super fast internet, like that there’s, like AOL still exists, by the way. People don’t even know this. There are people, lot of people-
Adam Candee (16:22):
You’ve got mail.
Matt Brown (16:23):
Yeah, a lot of people who still have crazy slow internet and all of that. So anything doing live bet isn’t even a remote option for those people. And I’m pretty bearish on it as we sit right now as a country, because of where we sit from the broadcast standpoint of everything. Now, could we move towards again, less latency? Could we move towards having broadband, fast internet everywhere? Can we move towards sportsbooks being a little more lenient with what they will and won’t accept from you as well in game, because that is also an issue? Who out there has gotten the spinney wheel? Raise your hand, of course everybody has. And so there are a lot of things, a lot of issues for me.
(17:05):
And so it’s crazy, as bullish as I am on the market in general, very bearish on in-game right now, specifically the micro betting stuff, because I just don’t know how you get relevant markets posted in time for people to not feel like they are just … Because, let’s be honest with that. You’re probably getting a more sophisticated bettor than you are just the casual guy. A lot of people want to put their same-game parlays in, and like you said, going on about their life. And yeah, they might catch part of the game or whatever, but they’re not married to the couch with their phone open and doing all the stuff like that. I think this probably takes it up to a little bit more of a sophisticated bettor. And at some point, if you realize you are destined to be behind what’s going on all the time, I just don’t know the desire and the appetite for that.
Adam Candee (17:53):
I have to fight myself so hard when you say married to the couch, I’m just going to move along. So yeah, I do believe there is some level of sophistication to what they’re dealing with at the sportsbook level, with the person who’s betting in game because you have to deal with the fact that you are getting people who have, let’s say capabilities beyond the average bettor who are getting information from the arena almost as fast as you are, in terms of being able to bet live. Did you think we’d be talking about official league data in 2024? Well here we are because that was all about the speed of the data coming from the arena into the sportsbook. So in any case, it’ll be interesting to watch.
(18:39):
Matt, to the G2E angle, I don’t know that this was a major topic of discussion for the most part, beyond you mentioned that data that FanDuel put out, about the amount of betting that was done as the same-game parlay, but in terms of live, the micro bets, so on, not as big a topic this year at G2E.
Matt Brown (19:00):
Yeah, and that was, if you remember, you and I met out there three years ago, four years ago or something like that, and that was all the rage, right? All the demos we were getting, everything we were getting was all about this, oh, this is the future, this is it, this is what’s happening next. And like you said, that’s kind of subsided a lot, and I think a lot of it has to do with the fact that the reality, that the idea of it all is way better than the execution of it all.
Adam Candee (19:27):
Rest in peace, Fubo Sportsbook, who tried to put the broadcast and the sportsbook together, right? They thought they were going to be able to do single screen, and they found out along the way it’s just not that simple.
Matt Brown (19:40):
How else did you leave G2E? Was there something else that, another nugget that you took with you?
Adam Candee (19:48):
Multiple nuggets I think at G2E that are worth discussing. Attendance was robust at G2E. I was trying to get onto the floor right when the expo hall opened at 10 a.m. on Tuesday, and let me tell you, if ever there had been a lag from the pandemic in terms of people coming to Las Vegas and attending that conference, it was not evident in 2024. The show was extremely well-attended, at least in the day that I was there on Tuesday.
(20:17):
A lot of the floor is what you expect it to be. It’s a lot of innovation in slots, it’s a lot of payment processing, it’s a lot of things that don’t necessarily apply to sports betting. I mean, the major operators don’t even have a presence on the floor in the G2E show. So that to me is kind of where we are with sports betting at this point, in a bit of an, is what it is situation. Most of the discussion for that comes from the panels. And when you talk about the panel discussions and sort of the chatter among people around there, it’s kind of impossible not to hear talk of sweepstakes, whether that is sweepstakes for sportsbooks, whether that is sweepstakes for social casino. It’s a major, major topic of discussion in a number of different arenas. And also, we’re still talking about the next generation of daily fantasy sports and what comes next in those areas. I definitely think sweepstakes has overtaken it, in terms of the level of discussion that I heard.
(21:21):
I think there was in some corners of the DFS+ space, a little bit of relief that it’s not as volatile of a landscape as it was last year. I mean, you went through it, right? You had a number of state regulators issue cease and desists, and I think you’ve kind of reached a point now where I think the Underdog/PrizePicks of the world, I think they have a little better sense of where they stand. And they’ve already said that they’re going to be going to state legislatures in 2025 and trying to get things codified. Matt, in a lot of ways it’ll be what we’ve talked about from 2015 with what DraftKings and FanDuel were doing with the first iteration of daily fantasy sports. But obviously, the sweepstakes model generating a lot of discussion, a lot of folks talking about what their new opportunities are in that arena. So that was one thing that I took away.
(22:13):
I noticed also of course, that when we get into the tribal gaming discussion, that the tribes in California seem to be solidifying the idea that there is going to be a sports betting initiative coming in the next few years. Now, 2026 might be a bit ambitious, that’s coming straight from the tribes themselves this week, but 2028 seems not only likely-er, but getting closer to a certainty that there will be some sort of sports betting on the ballot in California. Now, before you go rush to bring the tribes your pitch decks about online sports betting, no. Or iGaming? No. This is more than likely to be something that has to do with in-person sports betting first. We know that the tribes have said in California it’s going to be a measured approach to sports betting when they ultimately begin.
(23:09):
However, what we’ve seen not only in California but elsewhere across the country is that the sweepstakes model is growing at such velocity that I do think there is at least some, I’m not going to say urgency from places that do not have any form of gaming legalized yet, but places that really haven’t gotten into the online space, I think can see that there is going to be a place for a regulated market in some of those states in the next few years.
An update on the timeline for sports betting in California
Matt Brown (23:41):
I imagine too, Adam, you’re probably going to hear kind of what we saw in some of the other states as well, though maybe there’s at least a little bit of legitimacy to it from the California side of things, where it comes down to people making a case and making a push for maybe needing some of the money, right? I mean, we do know there are companies that have left California due to tax implications. There are a lot of rich millennials that are leaving California because they can go and buy homes elsewhere and things like that.
(24:13):
And so I don’t know what we look like in 2028, and maybe that reverses and maybe things change completely, or people want to move to states that don’t have super high state income tax and stuff. And so who knows? Maybe there is a push in 2028 of like, hey, this could generate X amount of money. We have lost X amount of money over the last four or five, six years, whatever it might be. It is the size of Canada as you well know. So I mean, it’s not like a non-zero type starting issue I think, when it comes to the money that could be generated, depending on how they go about it. What the fee might be to get a license, what the tax rates might be, etc., etc.
Adam Candee (24:51):
Well, and keep in mind, if there is any form of online sports betting eventually in California, it’s probably going to look a lot like Florida where you’re going to be talking about having to work your way through the tribes. An open market is, let’s just say highly, highly unlikely to ever happen in the state of California. So that argument might also be about helping tribal communities in the state of California, and what more money could be generated through the compacts that they have with the state. Right?
(25:22):
The failed effort a couple of years ago to legalize sports betting in California tried to cloak the whole thing in homelessness and helping that out. And we know that that measure gained less than 20% support, so that argument didn’t really fly with anybody a few years back.
(25:40):
But California remains, along with Texas, the two markets where everyone will be watching for any form of anything. And when I say any form of anything, I mean in Texas we did see some noise around Las Vegas Sands this week and the idea of, will there be resort-style gaming in the state of Texas? We know that they’ve been positioning themselves for that push. And really in Texas, I do believe that we’re looking at a situation where if anything happens in Texas, if you start that ball rolling in some way, shape, or form, I do think it will have a trickle-down effect somewhere down the line for forms of online gaming. I don’t think it’ll be fast. I do think that there are going to be the same opponents that have been dealt with over the last few years, but I do think it’s a situation where if you begin something in Texas, it will eventually lead to more.
Matt Brown (26:41):
And Adam, to put a bow on everything, shout out to Yardbird fried chicken. It was very, very good. We were able to sit down and have a nice lunch together. It was filled obviously to the brim with G2E people in there, everybody wearing a badge. But we were able to sit down and have a nice meal together, get a good little face-to-face catch up, and let me tell you everybody, if you’re in town, that’s some good chicken.
Adam Candee (27:05):
We sat down to lunch at about 11:30 Pacific time, and I didn’t eat a meal the rest of the day. I ordered the fried chicken, and that fried chicken occupied the rest of my stomach for the remainder of the day, and I say that happily. I say that with love because that was absolutely outstanding. So good on you, Yardbird.
Matt Brown (27:29):
And the low-key star of the show, the skillet cornbread. Skillet cornbread.
Adam Candee (27:33):
The bacon in the cornbread, I’ve never had bacon inside cornbread before.
Matt Brown (27:35):
Got to get it, guys.
Adam Candee (27:36):
That was a brand new, brand new thing for me. But yeah, yeah. Matt and I ate well among the conventioneers.
Matt Brown (27:44):
Low-key star of the show, be sure that you get the skillet cornbread as well.
(27:48):
Guys, everything we talk about here, you can find over at Legal Sports Report. As Adam talked about during the podcast, going to have a lot of stuff coming out of G2E, so be sure to frequent the site over the next couple of weeks as we roll out all of that over there. A lot of hard work, a lot of time, a lot of talking to people, again so you don’t have to. We know you don’t like schmoozing, but guess what? We got people who will go do it for you and summarize all of that over at LegalSportsReport.com. For Adam, I’m Matt. Talk to you guys next week.