10 Billion, with A B | LSR 156
Welcome back to the Legal Sports Report Podcast, Ep. #156! A billion here, a billion there, and soon you’re talking real money. The US sports betting industry has now generated $10 billion in revenue after numbers that came out this week. (1:30) We also break down comments from the MLB Players Association on gambling (17:54) and the worst piece of sports betting content ever created, according to one of the LSR crew (21:45).
Full transcript
Dustin Gouker (00:10):
Welcome to the Legal Sports Report Podcast, number 156, where we talk about the goings on in the sports betting industry, regulation, legalization, what’s going on just with the operators and sportsbooks themselves. If you came here expecting the A-team, I’m sorry, you got the B-team. The dulcet voices of Adam Candee and Matt Brown are not here this week. You’re plum out of luck. You got stuck with me. I helped start the site about seven years ago, and I’m still kicking around. And with me, Pat Evans, one of our intrepid writers at LSR, sorry, you got the B-team with me. Pat is great. Pat is lovely to listen to and to read his work at LSR. We just met for the first time recently, just, well, a couple times recently at conferences after years of knowing each other professionally, and we were just at SBC together, the sports betting summit in New Jersey. Good to see you there and hope you learned something at the conference.
Pat Evans (01:03):
I learned all sorts of things, first in Boston and then in New York, just a week loaded full of informative meetings and great to meet so many people, including yourself, in person.
Dustin Gouker (01:17):
Very good. As always, if you’re listening, please subscribe wherever you’re listening. Please review us. I’m not going to tell you where that is. You hopefully know where you’re listening to us or watching us, if it’s on the YouTube.
NY helps US sports betting top $10 Billion revenue, $1.5B taxes post-PASPA
(01:29):
We’re going to talk about two things that I heard or read that made me mad, because that’s my favorite thing to do, is become angry and talk about it. And I think that’s what the people want. But we’re going to start off this week with some big numbers that our writer, Matt Waters, recently reported on. This is when most of the big states report their numbers. So we crossed some milestones this week, Pat, with everybody reporting we have, four years into this, basically $10 billion in revenue from sports betting … $1.5 billion in taxes. Now this is all the activity that we are able to track since the fall of the federal sports betting ban, PASPA, circa 2018. June is when things started getting kicked off. Of course, we had sports betting revenue in Nevada and some limited things elsewhere, but we tracked this since basically the fall of PASPA.
(02:21):
And these are, I mean, I don’t know, we usually talk about handle, but now we’re getting into revenue, and these are some pretty big numbers. I’m pretty sure I would’ve bet the under on $10 billion in revenue if we talked about this four years ago. But you cover some of what we do in the space in terms of covering revenue and handle, what were your thoughts on this milestone for us?
Pat Evans (02:45):
I mean I’m much newer to the industry than you. So you’re probably better to handicap that, but I guess maybe not because you would’ve gone over. But I came on, started reporting on this industry as it was rocket ship, mid pandemic, as it just started exploding. So I figured, “Oh maybe this timeline made sense.” New York probably helped, especially with the tax revenue there, but at the same time, even covering some of the legislative stuff I’ve covered so far and seen states that maybe we thought would pass, I know a lot more … we’re at 35 legal states, probably a lot quicker than most people would’ve said, but even now we’ve seen states not pass, North Carolina and Missouri, that this year thought, “Well, maybe it would’ve happened.” So yeah, I don’t know. Maybe it was quicker than it could have been, but it also maybe was slower than it could have been.
Dustin Gouker (03:46):
Yeah. I mean that’s why I like going back in time. I was always going to be bearish on how things developed and I was … many cold takes of mine over the years from offering my takes on this podcast and elsewhere. But I thought this whole thing was going to be much slower, that’s why I would’ve gone under $10 billion in revenue in basically four years. I thought we’d be at far fewer states having legalized. I thought the adoption of online betting would be much slower. When we start every year doing the podcast, I’m pretty sure we handicap how many states we think are going to legalize. And this is probably the first year where it’s going to be slower. It’s going to be under on the number that Adam and I spitballed, how many states we think are going to go live. Part of that is the shrinking map because we saw so many states legalized in basically the first three years.
(04:32):
So that pace is what I always come back to; I never thought we’d see the pace of legalization. And for whatever reason, sports betting gets this pass in our general consciousness. I think that it’s part of what we do. You go to Vegas, you bet on sports. For some reason, and we’re going to get into this later on too, sports betting is seen as harmless. It’s obviously not. It can be very addictive. It can be an addictive product for people who have problems, but the adoption and getting it into the mainstream consciousness was absolutely faster than I thought would ever happen. And I think a lot of people honestly think that same way.
Pat Evans (05:08):
No, it does seem a lot quicker. But to your point, I mean again, watching legislative stuff this year, we’ve seen people compare it to murder, sex trafficking, a couple other things. So that adoption is still going uphill a little bit. And to your point, I think this revenue and tax milestone could have been sooner if mobile was quicker adopted. In some states, South Dakota, you still have to be in person at a casino in Deadwood. And so I think if mobile was there quicker, that timeline would’ve been expedited too. So yeah, I think the adoption of it. And like you said, we’re going to be talking about some pretty fun things here in a minute, but in regards to that.
(05:55):
But I think some of the states are maturing pretty quick. I mean, I just wrote up an Indiana one for June and 4% year-on-year growth for June, for handle. So I guess operators can figure out how to make more revenue, more parlays or what have you, but we’ll see.
Dustin Gouker (06:15):
Yeah. I mean, this is kind of universal, I think in almost all the numbers we’re seeing come out. Now this is May, June, July and then August. These are, let’s make sure we say this every year, these are the slowest months for sports betting. Today is literally the deadest day for sports gambling in the United States. Because there is no baseball the day after the All-Star Game. I don’t know what you’re betting on, but there’s not much to bet on out there. So this comes with a caveat. It’s hard to pull a lot of takeaways out of this. But, year on year, we’re seeing either plateauing, a little bit of pullback for May and June for a lot of states. So does this mean we’re kind of done growing? I wouldn’t say so. I think the NFL season is probably going to be our litmus test to see where things are going and growing.
(07:04):
Obviously, we’re going to see in New York, its first NFL season. That should be pretty huge, one would think. We’ll see an influx of new bettors, I’m sure. But some of these older states, it starts making us wonder if this three-year timeline or even shorter than that in some ways, without other factors influencing it, have we kind of hit a plateau? I don’t know. When we first started doing this, three, four, five years is maybe kind of reaching maturity for sports betting. Now it’s different in every state, and it’s hard. So these are hard things to wrap your head around, but we do have the first inkling that with these year-over-year numbers in May and June, that we could be seeing kind of a little bit of a pullback now. Legalize online casino in any of these states, that could change the dynamic because then you have cross-sell and a lot of things going on.
(07:54):
The other interesting thing I think I saw is Illinois, and Illinois we often curse because it’s two months behind, something like that, in reporting, we just got the May numbers this week. And it was interesting to me that Illinois was basically just behind New Jersey for May numbers. Again, we’re a month behind on that if everybody else is reporting June. But see Illinois, which is a market that had been throttled by, we’ve talked about this many times, the in-person registration requirement was on then off then on again. And then the market basically started opening up to … If you haven’t listened to this podcast, I apologize, but you’ve heard this before. You had to actually go to a casino to sign up for online sports betting in Illinois.
(08:41):
And this is obviously one of the dumbest policies you could possibly create. It was meant to get people into the casinos. Who cares? That’s dumb. But it’s interesting because Illinois has had to start and stop. It launched during the pandemic. But, it has overcome all of that. It’s a big state, lots of sports fans. You got Chicago, not a whole lot of drive-in from other places at this point, because Indiana has legalized it as well. But it’s fascinating. Illinois has kind of grown this quickly and I’m not sure I’m going to say it’s going to be number two in the NFL season, ahead of New Jersey and behind New York, but that’s a possibility we’re looking at. And Illinois has kind of been an also ran for us. And you look at these numbers month in, month out, and Illinois looks like it’s going to be one of the most important markets or is already one of the most important markets in the United States.
Pat Evans (09:29):
Yeah, no it was, I think, $2 million behind in May to New Jersey for number two, which is astounding after seeing New Jersey just before New York just kind of dominate in that handle race, if you want to call it that, which is silly. But then you go back to the same … And I guess you could put some of Indiana’s slow growth year over year on this exact thing is maybe Illinoisans, what’s their …
(09:59):
Is it Illinoisans? Not going to in-person registration, but they’re up 50% year over year in May. So it’s like, they’re growing crazy with the in-person registration requirement expired in March, and it’s going bonkers. They’ve had a new … BetMGM’s new in the state. So you had some new blood coming in, as well. But yeah, I mean you’ve got, going back to football season and seeing what kind of growth it’ll be … Illinois had the in-person suspension, I guess for a little bit too, but they’ll be big in football season. Maybe not New Jersey big, like you mentioned, but Arizona’s got its second football season there. It’s a big state, big market that we’ve seen, I don’t want to say come out of nowhere, but much bigger than maybe a lot of people thought it would be. And then Louisiana started mostly after football season. They’ll be interesting this fall. Yeah. It’s just going to, it’ll be a fun kind of summer, fall, summer, fall to watch.
Dustin Gouker (11:06):
Yeah. It’s fascinating to me just that every state is different. The micro of what a state did to legalize and the people who live there and there’s just so many factors that go into this. It is generally aligned to total addressable market, the adult population of the state. But some states, Michigan for me stands out as — where you’re from — it seems low. When you look at the numbers every month, why is Michigan lower? It also has online casino. So it should be this holistic…
(11:38):
It should kind of play off each other and turn into a bigger market. But Michigan’s like, I look at the handle numbers every month and I’m scratching my head and it seems like it’s a little low based on the population, the adoption, how many operators are there, things like that.
(11:50):
So it is just super interesting as all this happens, the micro of how every state is almost a country, and you can’t just draw a line and say, “Well, this is the biggest state, it gets the most.” New York, obviously an exception. It’s the biggest state. People are paying the insane 51% tax rate, paying at all costs to acquire customers, and it’s different.
(12:11):
So the last of the … We’ll finish up. This is one of those micro differences is Virginia basically is ending unlimited promo deductions. And this is a trend that’s bad for sportsbooks. Here’s a dirty little secret about the sports betting legislative industry is that most of these bills were crafted by people who liked the sportsbooks. These are — the lobbying went in, created, here’s some legislation that’s pretty good. It gets tweaked in every state. Sometimes it ends up worse. Sometimes it ends up better. But these promo deductions are something that the operators absolutely wanted. And this is the second instance where we saw this cut-off. We’re seeing this cut-off.
(12:49):
So Colorado already did this. Virginia, if you’ve been live for a year now, you can’t deduct promos against revenue and you have to pay revenue on promo dollars that you’re sending off to users that you can still net losses and things like that. There are ways to still get benefit out of the way the law is crafted. But I’d argue that sportsbooks don’t really want this to be adopted everywhere because it means less money for the states, more money for the operators, and states are like, some of them are expecting real money out of this. And Virginia, it’s not a ton of money. So Virginia’s only made $33 million in taxes from launch to May of this year. And if you took away the deductions, would be up to $70 million. So, I mean, that’s a decent amount of money. It’s not change-the-budget kind of money. But when you think about that, it’s a trend that I think the operators probably would like to see stop and not get adopted, especially in new states as we look at California, Texas. They hope this model is not copied.
Pat Evans (13:54):
Yeah. Well you talk, again, the microcosm of different states. Louisiana has a $5 million deduction cap that states ran through in the first weekend, which was the weekend before the Super Bowl; I guess it was the conference championship weekend. And they’ve run through it. And there’s 40 potential mobile slots in Louisiana. And there’s seven operators right now. And you have to wonder if that might be part of it as well. You don’t have that deduction so maybe it’s not a rush there. Who knows? But just kind of looking at it that way too, of everybody kind of thinks when you cease, I know Maryland, we’re talking about 60 open slots, and people say, “Well, there’s no way you can fill it.” Because what’s the most Colorado has? What is it? Twenty-six, something like that? Seven with 40 open slots. That’s something … Also, again, total addressable market in Louisiana, it’s not huge, but yeah. Promos are an interesting topic for sure.
Dustin Gouker (15:00):
All right. Boring numbers over. I’m sorry, but numbers are really exciting. I love talking about numbers. I honestly get asked more about numbers and what they mean than just about anything. But we’re getting into the Dustin-gets-angry part of the podcast, and I’m almost sad that Adam and Matt aren’t here because this would’ve been like an hour, probably would’ve had an hour podcast. You being here gets us both a little bit of our time back. Because we would’ve been talking about this forever.
Pat Evans (15:27):
I feel like they probably would’ve egged you on a little bit more than I’m going to. I feel like I’ll try to calm you down, which is probably a mistake, but.
MLB Association head Tony Clark on whether he is getting concerned with gambling relationships
Dustin Gouker (15:37):
It’s better when I read the things that make me angry right before the podcast because then I yell and I almost, I want to drop swear words. I try not to do that on the old podcast. So a couple things. One, again talking about the All-Star Break. And we had Major League Baseball Player Association head Tony Clark asked about gambling at the All-Star Game and whether he was getting concerned with gambling relationships. Now this was kind of widely out there on Twitter, is getting shared around a lot. And here is his response to the Baseball Writers Association of America with getting concerned with gambling relationships. “Getting? No. Is? Yeah. Has been? Sure. We’re entering a very delicate and, dare I say, dangerous world here. We hope that it is truly beneficial for our game moving forward and everyone who’s involved benefits from it in one fashion or another. But when you have players suggest that no sooner was PASPA repealed, that they started to have book houses following them on social media, that gets you a little twitchy pretty quick.” And he talks a little bit more. I’m not going to say all of it.
(16:35):
But suffice it to say when I saw this, I wanted to punch my monitor when I read this on Twitter for the first time. I think it was on my monitor, not my phone. But there are lots of problems here. One, again, I’m rereading this. He calls them “book houses.” I don’t know what a “book house” is. I guess he means sportsbook. But, “book houses.” Great. All right. That’s not the part that makes me mad. The part like, OK, let’s start with that part though.
(17:03):
People started following players on Twitter. News flash, that’s not new. I’m pretty sure all the offshore sites were following major players and retweeting them, blah, blah, bet online, whatever. This is not some new thing that happened four years ago. That’s what always makes me angry is we act like sports betting started four years ago. It did not start four years ago. It has been going on in Nevada for decades. It has been going on offshore, not as long, but a pretty long time. Your local bookie, whatever. This part of it is not new. Of the list of things that you need to be concerned about, sportsbooks following players on Twitter is very low down the list. There are lots of things on social media that are bad about sports betting. That is just a thing that happens. Social media in general around sports betting as you know our opinions on that is awful, Pat.
(17:54):
But that’s where I start with all of this. And let’s also point out that Tony Clark is making these comments literally last week. The MLBPA struck a deal with MGM Resorts. Now, yes, not BetMGM quote unquote, the sportsbook and online casino app, but MGM Resorts. But MGM Resorts, last time I checked, runs BetMGM, has its name on it. Is a big part of the sports betting industry. If you’re really that concerned about it, maybe don’t do a deal with a casino company that’s in gambling. It’s like he said these things and didn’t even realize that the MLBPA just did this. I presume he knew that. So I don’t know. Again, I was more fired up yesterday. I’m still fired up. But when you listened to Tony talk about these comments, what did you hear out of it?
Pat Evans (18:44):
I think number one was timing for me was, again, the MGM thing. OK, that just happened. Why are you doing this now? Sports betting has been legal now for four years. But like you said, it’s been around much longer. Baseball’s had plenty of issues with it. So why now? That’s, I think, just a curious question at that point. We’ve had, was it Charlie Blackmon who had a partnership with MaximBet? Why not then, if you were worried about it? It’s just weird. And wouldn’t you rather it be regulated than not? Like you said, all these offshore book houses, I’ll call them book houses for him, are around. Las Vegas was around, but everywhere else, wouldn’t you want it to be regulated so these players are … Somebody can watch them maybe? Versus doing whatever they want around the corner?
Dustin Gouker (19:47):
And to be fair to Clark, I don’t know if he had scripted questions or he wanted to talk about gambling, but he is asking maybe answering a question here off the cuff and who knows? But yeah, we’re entering a very delicate and, dare I say, dangerous world here. We’re not entering diddly poo. This has been here. You want to be ahead of this, great. It’s just weird off-cuff comments like, “Hey, yeah, we make some money off of sports betting. Player salaries are now subsidized by those advertising dollars that are coming in.” And, again, on the list of things that are of concern, it’s like … Yeah, I mean, I’m not going to sit here. We still talk about this on the podcast and I talk about it on Twitter all the time. It’s aggressive out there. No doubt about it. The sports betting advertising is aggressive.
(20:28):
Again, I repeat myself on this podcast, I’m sure. But you can’t watch a game, especially a baseball game, I feel like it’s the worst. Or listen to —
Dustin Gouker (20:39):
I listen to Phillies’ games, and it’s like DraftKings’ betting trivia or odds pop up. PointsBet pops up. A live read, something in the batter’s eye or in the right field corner. These things, it is part of the experience of watching a baseball game anywhere where sports betting is legal or close to legal or legal around where the baseball team is. It is real, it’s aggressive. And that’s a fair criticism, I’d say. But this just didn’t get turned on yesterday. You have concerns about it and you actually think this is a bad thing, maybe push back on baseball.
(21:22):
But the players are profiting on this. Again, they got this MGM Resorts deal. Again, doesn’t mention BetMGM specifically in that press release when they announced it. But again, we listen to MGM earnings calls and guess what. Sports betting, big part of what MGM talks about. Even if it’s not a huge part of their bottom line, as we sit here, it is a part of their ethos and how they grow and connect with customers.
The worst piece of content Dustin has ever read
(21:45):
So, I don’t know. It feels like very tone-deaf, old man shouting at clouds. And yeah. There’s plenty of room to have conversations about what’s too much. These comments for me just struck the wrong note. Which does lead us into, I teased this on Twitter. I’ve never done this before, and I didn’t even start this doing this. I said, I read the worst piece of content. I don’t know what the exact word is. The worst piece of content I’ve ever read since I’ve been in sports betting.
(22:15):
Maybe an exaggeration, maybe not, but here it is. It is a piece by Gregg Doyel from the Indianapolis Star. Which, Gregg, I know I’ve read his stuff before. I know he’s a fine columnist. This comes with that caveat. But we’ll start with the headline first, and then we’ll just get into one particular part. Sometimes we write our own headlines, but usually writers at big papers, I’m sure he didn’t write this headline. “Sports gambling is our next crisis, but until then live it up, dudes” might be the worst headline I’ve ever read on top of being the worst piece of content I’ve ever read about sports betting. Definitely putting “dudes” on the end. Come on. If you’re the copy editor who wrote this, I apologize. I’ve been a copy editor. I’ve written headlines, I’ve been in newspapers. You don’t hit a home run with every one, but this is a bad headline. At least get rid of the “dudes,” pretty please.
(23:14):
So this teases to what his thesis is, which is sports gambling is our next crisis. Now, again, I’m in the sports betting industry. We make money from sports gambling, but I don’t see it as our next crisis. There are certainly concerns, responsible gambling concerns. I am as aggressive in our industry I think in talking about responsible gambling. If you ever see the clever tweets from Adam, from the LSPReport Twitter account, saying call the NCPG, National Council on Problem Gambling, if you have a problem. When we see this awful sports betting content, we aren’t the problem. I don’t think.
(23:52):
So, sports gambling is our next crisis. And goes on and on. Again, you can agree or disagree. I’ll let you have your take on what Gregg wrote, but here’s the part that really, this is where I, again, wanted to punch a monitor, and this is more fresh. I’m even angrier about this one. “It’s like cigarettes. With that warning from the surgeon general on every pack that cigarette smoking is dangerous to your health. But since you hear, ‘Hell, buy a pack. Your best deal is a carton, though.’ This is how addictive, how dangerous tobacco could be. In 1970 President Richard Nixon signed legislation banning cigarette ads on TV and radio.”
(24:22):
Now let’s start here. Sports betting isn’t an actual health risk that can give you cancer or emphysema or anything like that. Not to say that there’s not dangers with sports gambling and the real problems that can emerge from problem gambling.
(24:37):
But to sit here with an actual medical thing. Again, we know for a fact, cigarettes cause cancer or emphysema. They can kill people. Again, I don’t get too personal on the podcast, but my mom and dad were both habitual smokers. My dad had a stroke, had just problems getting around and breathing for much of his life because he started smoking when he was a teenager and never stopped and smoked a lot.
(25:09):
And to hear us lump in sports betting with an actual public health crisis, not crisis, but something that actually we know hurts people. And it’s proven, and this is not a doubt. It’s just aggravating as all get out. Again, gambling and taking gambling seriously from a problem gambling standpoint. Absolutely we should be doing this. But to compare this to things that actually can kill us, from physically hurt us, not in the meta, it makes me angry. Now I know you have a little bit of a different take. I know we are aligned on the content here, but Gregg at least does, as you point out, is not being a hypocrite. Let’s put it that way.
Pat Evans (25:54):
No, he’s taken a stand. And he mentions in the column that he was going to do a podcast and then there was a take-it-or-leave-it sponsorship by a sportsbook. And he said, no. So he’s taken a stand. He said he doesn’t want to be a hypocrite. He’s doing that. So I respect that. He’s done a lot of stuff in the past that I’ve liked. I don’t like that, I think he’s a Purdue homer, kind of. And as a Michigan State grad, I’m not a big fan of that. So there’s some things he doesn’t do. And this column does have a lot of questionable comparisons in there. As you mentioned, lots of “why?” Why write this right now? Again, it’s the timing thing I think with the Tony Clark thing. It’s tough to put into words the why, where to go first.
(26:52):
I think my thing is, if you’re going to compare smoking, I was just watching old clips from the NBA and there’s Winston ads on the hoop pad. Those aren’t there anymore. So he kind of brushed it aside and said, “Nobody’s done anything about smoking.” But they have. Smoking’s gone down a lot in the past 20 years, I would assume. I don’t know the stats, but anecdotally going around places and seeing people smoking, it’s less.
(27:21):
I think if you’re going to be concerned about gaming responsibly, and yes, there’s tons of issues there. I think a lot of SBC talk was about college-age and high school-age responsibility to make sure that responsible gaming is almost “taught” early. And I think that’s good. But there’s casinos around Michigan where retirement homes bus people in. That might not be a great idea if you’re going to take that. But I take it personally, and I know you’re a beer fan, as well. I’ve written, before sports betting, I was concentrating on the craft beer and spirits industry. And I think drinking’s a much bigger issue in America than sports betting. And I think that the addiction statistics there are a lot worse, and the health risks I think are quite a bit worse. Obviously not, but yeah, it’s tough and certainly not apples to apples, but craft beer is kind of a hide for some people for alcoholism. So, yeah. It’s weird comparison probably. But.
Dustin Gouker (28:38):
Yeah, when I hear my words, I feel like I’m coming off as like, “Oh, there’s no danger in sports betting.”
Pat Evans (28:43):
There’s definitely danger.
Dustin Gouker (28:45):
Yeah. I mean, people get in trouble. They bet too much. Their families are put in danger. Again, problem gambling will put people in thinking about suicide or commit suicide. Absolutely. These things are all true. I also take it like this. I don’t know, this NFL, we’re not going to get too much more into the details of the story, but kind of puts the NFL and the National Council on Problem Gambling in a bit of a spotlight, too. They care, but they don’t care. I don’t know. I see the NFL at least trying to do something on this front. They put their money where their mouth is. They put a bunch of money. They put commercials on games about problem gambling as you well know, I’m sure. It just feels like, again, old man shouts to clouds, it feels like a lot like that. Again, it’s our next crisis.
(29:38):
Again, we’ve been in this for four years. We talked about this. Problem gambling numbers are up. Some of that is yes, expanded availability of sports betting. That it is in our face that you can go find, you can bet mobilely. These are things that are easier. Again, tons of people doing it before. I’d argue that there’s also upside. When we see problem gambling numbers are up, is that, in some ways, because we are providing them with resources that people didn’t even know? You go to the offshore book, they ain’t trying to help you if you have a problem with gambling. Certainly your local bookie ain’t. Some of it is just, you get like, and we can make fun of the social media, but sportsbooks do try. They put stuff out on social media. It is there on the app. You can get warnings if you’ve been on too long.
(30:27):
At least people can be made to think about it in a legal and regulated environment. We could always do more. The responsible gambling people who follow me will know. I’ve always, I’ve advocated throughout that we should be putting more money to responsible gambling and making sure that this doesn’t get out of control because we’ve created this world where sports betting is not, the morality police isn’t out for sports betting, but we kind of also downplayed it, I think from an RG perspective. So, I don’t know. Could I be cold-taked again in a year or two and this is our next crisis? Maybe. But again, people go to Vegas all the time and bet on sports, and the world never collapsed.
(31:07):
People have been able to bet on offshore sportsbooks for the better part of two decades online. And that has not been the end of the world. Again, maybe I’m wrong because of the critical mass of advertising and availability. Yes, there could be more problems. I don’t think it’s the crisis level of to which Mr. Doyel posts this.
(31:28):
But, there you go. There’s the worst piece of content in sports betting I’ve ever read. Like Pat says, at least he took a stand. He’s put his money where his mouth is. Although you could argue, USA Today, all you get is Tipico odds, which Tipico, not in a whole lot of states. So it’s kind of weird where you read USA Today and the Gannett world, and all you get is Tipico odds. There’s a lot to unpack. I’m not going to share this on Twitter, because I’m going to make you listen to the podcast. So hopefully listen to the podcast, and you found out the worst piece of content ever. Pat, do you agree with my take, this is the worst piece of … I’m sure this in the moment, I feel like it’s the worst. I’m sure there’s worse ones.
Pat Evans (32:12):
I feel like there’s been plenty of worst ones, but yeah, the general take of it is pretty not great. But yeah, I don’t know. Overall, I think he’s taking a little bit of an exaggeration take.
Dustin Gouker (32:26):
Which is also what columnists do. They go out on limbs to elicit reactions and sometimes we listen to them; sometimes we ignore them. Anyway, that’s the “Dustin gets mad” episode of the LSR podcast. Again, subscribe, rate, review, wherever you listen to us on the interwebs. Adam and Matt will hopefully be back next week. Pat, thank you for sitting in and listening to us. I’m on the Twitter machine. DustinGouker, G O U K E R. Legal Sports Report is LSPreport on Twitter. Pat, you don’t have the coveted PatEvans, no underscore, right? Is that right?
Pat Evans (32:26):
I do.
Dustin Gouker (33:03):
That’s crazy. That’s crazy. Who did you pay for that?
Pat Evans (33:05):
No one. I was just an early mover, and then I do nothing with it. I’m not very good at Twitter. I need to be better.
Dustin Gouker (33:12):
And nobody in the world’s named Dustin Gouker. So unless somebody decided they wanted it, anyway. That is it for us. We’ll talk to you next week. Thanks everyone.