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Speaker 1: Gamble On, Fellas gamble On, Welcome again to gamble On weekly gambling podcast presented by us bets dot Com. I'm Eric Graskin, us bets Managing editor and media director, and I'm joined by our senior analyst, Pulitzer Prize finalist John Brennan, and I owe you a thank you.
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Speaker 2: John.
00:00:38
Speaker 1: A few weeks ago, you bet twenty of our bankroll dollars on the Phillies to win the World Series, and almost immediately they started falling over. They lost their next five games. They went from a near lock to make the playoffs to looking like they'd missed the postseason with five games to go. And I privately accused you of jinxing my team, but they made it in and they've been on fire for the most part. So if I believe in jinx is I also have to believe in lucky charms, I guess, and maybe your bold wager on a team you consider arrival is proving to be a lucky charm. So thank you. But to avoid messing with the mojo, can I get you to promise you won't bet either on or against the Phillies from here on out.
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Speaker 3: You know I already won ten bucks of them in game one and they won anyway, Eric and I gave the ten bucks back back by the way in that game two with a plus seven hundred odds boost parlay of Nola's six k's which he got on his less better plus a schwarberhomer that didn't quite pan out. So I'm not sure this has to be my favorite wager for a time that hasn't even worked out yet. I mean, it was a good idea. I noticed that the Guardians, for instance, have so many holes in their lineup where they couldn't quite keep up with the Yankees. I felt like will Rinola or Studs mostly, and the Phillies have bats. They have a lot of bats. And I didn't bet the team. I bet the number those thirty to one odds is jumped off the page of me. So do you need me to stop betting other games now or doesn't that matter?
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Speaker 1: I guess? I mean, I'm not sure. I mean, I did ask you to promise not to bet on or against them or whatever, but the ultimately, logically, stepping outside myself, it certainly does not matter. You know, we as humans have massive egos, thinking that what we do or like where we sit on the couch could possibly impact the game. Actually, just yesterday I had to run out during the fifth inning of the Phillies game to pick up my daughter real quick. I'm listening on the radio in the car. They're up for two and then they start giving up runs that inning, and my son back home is texting me, come home.
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Speaker 2: You not watching his bad one?
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Speaker 1: So really, yeah, do what you want, bet on or against who you want. Obviously, none of it really matters. I'm not sure if you read my seventy six or season preview article on ten bets this week, but I mentioned the bet boost Fox Bet had in Pennsylvania last week. They posted this when the Phillies were up one game to none on the Braves. They offered one thousand to one on the Phillies, Eagles, and Sixers all to win their respective championships, allegedly boosted from seven to fifty to one. You can now make that bet at about four hundred to one. I did put two bucks on it to win two thousand, So if ever a bet by me was going to jinx my teams, that would be it. But the Phillies won that series with the Braves. The Eagles beat Dallas on Sunday night. It should be all the proof I need that my sports bets or your bank roll bets or any of it, none of it impacts real outcomes.
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Speaker 2: Yeah, that's that's a fun one. Definitely. That's again that's one of those.
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Speaker 3: Where you know, you if you can get like a like an in person ticket or whatever you can, you can give it to somebody for a gift. You know, here it is, Oh yeah, stick it on the fridge, forget about it, and then you know, next next spring, late spring. Hey, by the way, remember that thing, well, you don't throw it out. It's who knows, it might still be alive.
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Speaker 1: Right, and obviously irl the bet winning aside, I'll be happy if one leg of that parlay coming.
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Speaker 2: Yeah, of course, absolutely all right.
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Speaker 1: Thank you to everyone for joining us for episode number two hundred and fourteen of Gamba. If you missed any of our previous two hundred and thirteen episodes, they're all available on Megaphone, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and all other podcast apps. Please take a few minutes to write a nice review and give us a five star rating. Just don't spike your smartphone Reese Hoskins style when you're done. H.
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Speaker 2: I got that reference. Very nice.
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Speaker 3: Coming up a little later, the show can be joined by our colleague Chris Altruda. He was in Las Vegas last week with the g two week Global Gaming Expo Conference, and we'll fill us in on all the highlights. But first has been I would say, a typically busy week in the world of gambling, So let's get to it.
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Speaker 4: Here's your gamble on news of the week and inside look at the biggest stories in the world of gambling.
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Speaker 1: It's been a little while since we've led the news segment with a sports betting revenue discussion, but it's worth having one now because A the big September numbers have started coming in and B history was made this week with some late arriving August numbers. We'll start with that New Jersey was number one in handle for three years or so, then it predictably slipped to number two when New York launched mobile betting. But now for the first time, the Garden State is number three, as Illinois finally surpassed Jersey and betting handle.
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Speaker 2: In August.
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Speaker 1: Illinois, which lags several weeks behind most states in reporting, drew five hundred and sixty four point eight million dollars in August, handle, beating New Jersey by about eighteen million bucks. New Jersey is still way ahead per capita, however, with about nine point three million citizens to Illinois's twelve point seven million. In states not named Illinois. September numbers have been rolling in over the past several days, and the big story there is that a handle is way up over the summer months. Predictably, b handle compared to September twenty one is either a little up or a little down depending on the state, and see revenue is setting records nearly everywhere, with the national hold at twelve point three percent based on the states that have reported so far, which would be a new record, blowing past the eleven point seven percent set in September twenty eighteen when there were only five states taking bets. John, your thoughts on your home state of New Jersey slipping to number three and any guesses why the sportsbooks beat the crap out of betters so severely in September.
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Speaker 3: Well, I'm going to predict that New Jersey might pass Illinois another month or two in this fall season, although it won't continue forever, but you think about it. The Eagles, the Giants, and the Jets are thrilling their fan bases, and that takes up most of the football fans in New Jersey, so and the Bears are not thrilling anybody.
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Speaker 2: So I think there could be a pretty big spike.
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Speaker 3: In handle on those games, enough where it might even put New Jersey past Illinois. But that's that's a perfect storm to get there. Obviously, Illinois with the population base, is going to win in the end, but I think there's a chance they get back to number two at least for a little bit. Now, as far as the beating the crap out of betters, you know you're never out of it with the over was the mantra of the degenerate gambler on my block, as he always told me that when we were teenagers, he only bet overs, never bet anything else. Well, if you've been betting all NFL overs this year, you've lost more than sixty percent of the time. So in some states where this is the first full season football betting and irrational exuberance seems to be.
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Speaker 2: In play, you know that's part of it.
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Speaker 3: I think Also the worst gamblers noticed noticeably are in states like Delaware. In Mississippi, where you can only bet at casinos or rasinos, and the best meaning they lost elite the least percentage wise, although they lost double digits are in New York and New Jersey, which is where so many experts actually play the odds, so that was particularly noteworthy. There's got to be other reasons, but overunder surely is part of it.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, that's a good point. I'll get to my theories on that in one sec. But first I'll just note that, if anything, we should be impressed held on to number one and then to number two for as long as it did. But you know, the combination of losing betters to New York, even if not as many as some expected, it still had to be a decent chunk. That, combined with Illinois becoming a more mature market with full remote registration, now it was inevitable. But there is still a pretty big gap between New Jersey and almost everyone below them. You know, Pennsylvania Nevada are the only states that are even halfway to Jersey in terms of monthly handles. So you should be able to hang on to number three slash number two, as you said, for a while longer, and certainly you don't have to worry about slipping out of the top five until a California or a Florida legalizes. As for the massive September holds, I think the over under is a great point that that's part of it. I think parlays are the number one factor. You know. All it takes is one or two major upsets a week in the NFL to bust up nearly all the parts, and we've been getting those. There hasn't been a clean week yet where three or four big public favorite type teams all won and covered. I expect October hold won't be too different from September for that reason. Look at some of these September parlay hold percentages. In New Jersey it's twenty two point seven percent, Mississippi thirty point six percent. Here's a crazy stat that our upcoming guest, Chris Altruda, shared on Twitter. One sports book in one state, FanDuel in Illinois has generated one hundred nineteen million dollars in parlay revenue through the first eight months of twenty twenty two. Over that same timeframe, total revenue in Iowa from all operational sports books combined on all sports has been one hundred nineteen point nine million dollars, basically the exact same amount. That tells you how big parlay revenue is and how FanDuel specifically took control of that market before anyone else and more effectively and anyone else. I think that's why they're number one over DraftKings overall nationally. I think that's the differentiator. That they've promoted parlays more aggressively. They have the best interface for building parlays. They've been first with every innovation. You know, the same game parlay, they did it first, the same game parlay plus DraftKings is number one in dfs because they do a better job with player pricing and making the games more strategically compelling. But FanDuel's number one in sports betting in a majority of states, and I think it's mostly because they've driven the parlay wave. And I should note to the detriment of customers who presumably have been running their FanDuel bank rolls down and reloading.
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Speaker 3: Yeah, and even you know, I'm on the record here many many times over the years of being so much against parlays, and even I fell for one yesterday from DraftKings. You know, odds boost plus seven hundred and seven to one. Now I knew Nolan was going to get six k's. You had a terrible game and it took him to his last battery before he left to get the sixth k but he got it. And so I was like, now, score is probably not gonna get a home run. But I mean, if he does seven to one, hey, why not. You know, it's a loser. And it was the same kind of thing that happens probably a lot of these better. I had just won ten bucks, so you know, I'll risk it and try and get rich. And of course I lost because parlays are really stupid. But yeah, it's amazing and that, but you make that The point you make is really interesting too, because parlays are so brutal that the customers lose so much money. That's not always ideal.
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Speaker 2: You know.
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Speaker 3: I've talked to the horsemen who at times, you know, there's a big you know, underdog or whatever wins or something happened, and they're like, oh, it's okay. A lot of people get money and then they're gonna give it back anyway. So you want people to win sometimes. And with to your point about NFL parlayshere there's so many upsets, you know, the lock that you have to go and you throw, you know, a gamble here and there, your lock doesn't even win, so you can't You're not even close. And so there's probably a tipping point where the books are crushing it so so aggressively, people run out of money, you know, and then either they stop betting, which they should, or they don't, which is terrible. Also, So you know, I wonder if they ever have to cut back on parlay advertising just because they don't want to bleed their customers too quickly, right, I mean they want to get the thousand bucks in six months or a year, not in two weeks. And I wonder if we get to that zippig point.
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Speaker 1: Ever, Yeah, it's an interesting thing to watch whether the strategy changes it all on that. For that reason, our second story this week comes with a warning. It involves people losing their minds on social media, so skip ahead five minutes if you don't want to venture into that cesspool anyway. For the Monday night football game pitting the Chargers against the Broncos, DraftKings offered a megaboost trying to give away a little easy money by boosting justin Herbert to throw at least one touchdown pass from eight hundred to even money plus one hundred. The limits were smaller depending on what state you're in and or what your betting history is. You were most likely able to get down either ten dollars or twenty five dollars on this. Herbert had thrown at least one touchdown pass in thirty six of his thirty seven career games, so it couldn't possibly fail. You can probably see the plot twist coming. It failed. He didn't throw for a single touchdown, and people lost their minds on Twitter. I made the bet, although fortunately for me, I was capped at ten bucks and I forgot I even made it, so I didn't know I'd even lost till the next morning. But in the moment, people on Twitter said it was rigged. They accused the NFL of fixing the game to make DraftKings money. I think some of it was tongue in cheek, but not all of it was. Had people lost big money on this, i'd get it. But if it cost you ten dollars or even twenty five dollars and you needed to vent on Twitter, maybe sports betting isn't for you. Did DraftKings tried to help everyone win their money back two days later with a boost on Kevin Durant to score twenty points Wednesday night against the Pelicans, which he did by halftime. So everyone should at least be back to even now, John, My first question, the important one are Roger Goodell and Jason Robbins conspiring. Do we need a federal probe to be launched? And what are your serious thoughts on the odds boost the result and people melting down on Twitter?
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Speaker 2: Yeah?
00:14:26
Speaker 3: Well, I flashed back to twenty nineteen, and I only know that was the year because of the makeup call I'll get to in a second by a major sports book. It might have been Draftings, but I'm not sure, so I won't.
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Speaker 2: Say that it is.
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Speaker 3: But it was the October twenty first Jets game where the offer was you win if the Jets score a point.
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Speaker 2: Well, let me come on, they're not going to shut out.
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Speaker 3: So seemingly even easier than this one, right, I mean, although a quarterback did set the record for most passing attempts ever without a touchdown pass in a game where his team wons, that's kind of cool that happened there, So of course, the Patriots won thirty three nothing to drop the Jets to one in five that year, and the makeup two days later was Nick's rookie RJ. Barrett would score a point in his NBA debut. Yeah, it's a little easier, I think, Yes, yes he did. He fact, he scored twenty one. Now, there was little if any Twitter buzz about the first result of the Jets there, probably because it was an issue in just one state. I prefer to think of it though, as New Jersey is not being as whiny as the rest of the country, which, to be.
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Speaker 2: Fair, is pretty debatable.
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Speaker 3: But now I like the idea of hoping that these people should never make a bet again, because if this is how they act with a ten dollars bet or a twenty five dollar bet, well they do and it lose one hundred.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, it's weird to me how people don't get that the goal behind these is to make customers happy and loyal to DraftKings, that DraftKings wants to lose these bets, otherwise they wouldn't offer them. They're happy to give you basically free ten dollars or twenty five dollars, knowing that ninety eight percent of customers will eventually give that money back, and believing that the bulk of the betters will come away with a positive feeling about DraftKings and want to keep an it count going there, or even use these boosts to tell their friends, Hey, sign up for DraftKings. This bet is amazing value. You got to try this. I guess they could have made it easier and done Herbert to throw for at least one yard instead of one touchdown. But you know, they thought that they had made it a near lock and it wasn't. So they tried again, and the second time it worked. And you know they would have tried a third time if Durant hadn't reached twenty points. But just think about where your mind has to go to get all the way to the conspiracy idea.
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Speaker 2: You know, the.
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Speaker 1: NFL Chargers coach Brandon Staley, justin Herbert, they're all on the tape to underperform and risk losing a crucial division game so the DraftKings can make a few million dollars, you know, until we're talking about a few billion dollars, I think it's an absolute non starter. I do think the majority of the people throwing conspiracy theories out there on Twitter. We're being sarcastic, but again, not all of them were. Some people are convinced that everything in life is rigged and fixed if it doesn't go their way. But anyway, all's well, that ends well, And so ending this conversation on a light note, This was a funny tweet I saw last night from at Sports Underscore fan two two two two about the Durant boost. He wrote, nice, try DraftKings, you really think I'm going to fall for your collusion after the Justin Herbert stunk you'll hold last night? I just put my son's entire college fund on Kevin Durant to score less than twenty points and plus two thousand. My wife's going to be so happy when I tell her.
00:17:37
Speaker 2: That is amusing.
00:17:38
Speaker 3: It is kind of telling, though, that, you know, in three years, we've gone from a rookie first round pick scores his first point and you win, or Kevin Durant injured constantly we'll score twenty. I mean, yeah, obviously, if he's healthy and he's playing decent game, he's going to get it. But that is not a lock by any means. So the these books have wised up a little bit they do want you to win. But then again, you know, I'm wondering what the third one would have been if Durant went under two, because maybe they're just like, you don't know, what the hell with these people?
00:18:10
Speaker 2: They got their money, right, Yeah, you could be right.
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Speaker 1: There is a certain point at which they probably stop offering these and say, oh, well it's cursed. We've got some of your money, and that's that. But you know, you're absolutely right that they claim the real odds on the Durant boost were minus a thousand.
00:18:29
Speaker 2: They were boosting. It's even that's a.
00:18:30
Speaker 1: Terrible bet at minus a thousand. I mean, he can go under twenty sometimes. So yeah, but it did work out. So our third story is a more serious one. A mobile sports book a minor one, but a mobile sports book just the same is leaving the US market. Fubo sports Books, launched by Fubo TV in Iowa in November twenty twenty one, Arizona in December twenty twenty one, and New Jersey just last month, is ceasing operations effective immediately because, in short, it wasn't seeing a path to profitability, said Fubo in a press release. While multiple parties expressed interest in partnering with them. None of these opportunities would have allowed Fubo to lower its funding requirements and generate sufficient returns to shareholders. Therefore, we have made the difficult decision to exit the online sports wagering business, effective immediately. In twenty twenty two.
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Speaker 2: So far, Fubo Sportsbook had.
00:19:22
Speaker 1: Generated one hundred and seventeen thousand dollars of revenue in Iowa before taxes, and about double that in Arizona. So weren't making big money. The exodus of the also rams continues. Churchill downs packed it in the score, handed its brand over in the US and became Canada Only. John, was there anything specific about Fubo's approach that you think doomed it? Did they get in too late or just at the wrong time in terms of the economy? And any guess is where the closing mobile sports books trend is headed?
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Speaker 3: I mean in aw Jersey Horras Now that's one of three Atlantic city casinos owned by Caesar's Entertainment. As you know, they just took on Fubo and by the way, profit betting exchanged last month also and Harra's reported a loss of about ninety thousand overall and sports betting in a month with the state's sportsbooks cashed almost one hundred million collectively. In other words, fubo in state wise was zero for three, or should I say foo bar, which in part is an acronym for up beyond all recognition.
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Speaker 2: You can look that one up now.
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Speaker 3: Fubo tried to get in both late and in competitive sportsbook states, and it clearly didn't work. I can't say for sure idle speculation alert, but it feels like maybe the play was just to get licensed and then a bigger fish comes along and they cash out. Well, there aren't many new fish left probably, and there are tasier items on the menu. I would say, I think that's why they got nowhere. The trend is hading in only one direction, and that's downward in terms of the number of sports of operators. It's inevitable.
00:20:50
Speaker 2: I think.
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Speaker 3: You know, unlike casinos, where the real money is but only a half dozen states have it. You know, that's where I'd be sniffing around if I was so inclined and rich figure out which states are ex roun. Like casino, you've prepared to strike immediately when that opportunity arises. Then you might have something. The margins on sportsbooks are so low anyway, and the competitors are massive. You know, you had obviously the two DFS giants, but also several casino empires.
00:21:18
Speaker 2: There's just they're too big.
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Speaker 3: And you know, while we have noted that four or five, six, seven, you know, operators certainly can be successful enough in Ain' twenty twenty five, that's not.
00:21:30
Speaker 2: Going to happen.
00:21:30
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's all good analysis. One very problematic note worth mentioning. Our colleague Sam McQuillan over at Action Network reported this that customers have been unable to withdraw their money from the Fubo sports Book accounts. Fubo says this is just for a quote brief period while they're disabling the ability to place bets, and I tend to take them at their word on that that it'll be up and running and you'll be able to withdraw soon. But as someone who remembers what happened with Full Tilt Poker on Black Friday, where they misappropriated player funds and weren't able to cash players out, I'm a tiny bit wary about Fubo Sportsbook indeed having all the money on hand until this gets taken care of So I hope that that story becomes a non story very soon. Yeah, I mean in terms of what went wrong for Fubo. Unfortunately, they weren't around long enough for us to really gauge much about their approach. You know, they had this tagline watch Wager Win where they were trying to combine watching sports through their app with betting on sports. I can't jump to any conclusions about whether and app combining watching live sports with betting will find an audience. They just didn't have enough rope to make it work, or to or to find out whether it was going to work. And I think a lot of it is the economy right now. You know, it's not friendly to verticals that aren't making money. You're not giving given that opportunity to lose money for a while before becoming profitable. So you know, someone at Fubo got out in front of it and sided the future upside isn't worth it. We need to just cut this cost right now. So I would say their failure is about timing more than anything else, But there's certainly more to comment. As you said, I'd say over the next twelve months, the over under for mobile sports books that exit the US market. The lines probably I'd say one and a half, you know, not counting consolidation, just giving up and leaving. I'd put the line at one and a half over the next twelve months.
00:23:27
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm not too worried about the better's getting their money back either, but I will say that the Jersey Division of Gaming en force with people.
00:23:35
Speaker 2: If somebody tried.
00:23:36
Speaker 3: To wriggle out of that, oh man, you don't want them bearing their fangs. You know, if you want to ride the ride, here you go, I mean forget it. That's good news for gamblers in all three states because there's no way that they would let that happen even a little bit.
00:23:50
Speaker 2: I mean, they would come down on them.
00:23:52
Speaker 3: There's all kinds of not only regulations, but enforcement opportunities available, and DG's not afraid to take them, so people will get their money back.
00:24:02
Speaker 4: It's time to welcome a special guest from the world of gambling. Let's get to the gamble on Interview.
00:24:16
Speaker 1: The twenty twenty two Global Gaming Expo is in the rear view mirror, but we didn't really talk about it on last week's pod since neither John nor I were in attendance. This year, But joining us now is a man who was our colleague, Chris Altruda is the master of the sports betting handle and revenue spreadsheets. He is also presumably a very happy New York Jets fan, and he was in Vegas last week for G TWOE, So he's going to fill us in now on what we missed. Chris, Welcome back to the podcast.
00:24:43
Speaker 5: Hey, Eric John, thanks for having me on again.
00:24:45
Speaker 2: Appreciate it.
00:24:45
Speaker 1: Yeah, thanks for joining us.
00:24:47
Speaker 3: So.
00:24:47
Speaker 1: G TWOE is an event that spans the whole gambling industry. It's not a sports betting specific convention. It takes place at a casino. There are always a lot of casino products on display. I'm curious if you saw the ace shifting at all this year. You know, sports betting has been at the center of nearly every gambling conversation since twenty eighteen, But is that starting to recede at all? Or is sports betting still what everyone was talking about at G two A.
00:25:14
Speaker 5: It's hard to talk to discuss like at a level of conversation. I noticed the big thing actually was spending more time off the floor because more people were there this year versus twenty twenty one due to the pandemic, you had the foreign contingent there as well, but also the fact that it seemed to be what I would call max capacity of twenty five thousand people, that you had more opportunities to network, and I think more people took advantage of that to do one on ones. I mean, I was no different talking to various people from Aristocratic Gaming about their NFL deal with the slam machines and sports wagering in other places, and also going to the educational sessions. So I don't know if the percentage of conversation tilted at all. I think there were just early more conversations being had on a one on one and smaller, smaller intimate level than say group levels.
00:26:08
Speaker 1: Okay, And as far as the conversations that were happening regarding sports betting, I'm curious whether the tone felt any different this year, Like it is there more apprehension than in years past about sports betting as a profitable enterprise. Was that they're more of that sort of questioning the direction that it's heading in than than the enthusiasm of years past.
00:26:29
Speaker 5: I think there was some to it. I you know, I think one of the things was sometimes you get the keynote speakers who who can excel at the art of saying everything without saying anything right. And I think you had that to a degree with Jason Robbins and Amy how FanDuel has already you know, gotten to that point where they are profital. DraftKings is trying to get closer to that mark. And I had never heard Jason Robbins speak publicly before, so the nasal twang was, you know, something to get used to on top of it, but it just it just felt ordinary, if that makes sense. It was, you know, we're here, we're doing this. You know, we're doing the things we need to do to maintain our space and get to that road to profitability. We're not promising anything. We're not talking about the proposed the rumored merger with the ESPN. We're on this path, we want to stay on this path, and we want to get there. I think that was the biggest takeaway from his speech. I thought the first panel.
00:27:28
Speaker 6: With Derek Steevens from Circa and the win executive whose name escapes me, I thought that one was actually more insightful because when offered a little bit more about its overall strategy in the gaming space.
00:27:42
Speaker 5: So to that reg it's interesting, but I don't think the enthusiasm is it is a hard word to gauge it, especially when it comes to profitability, because I mean that's more urgency than enthusiasm. So I don't know if you can place it as enthusiastic. I mean, people, we still want to market the product. People still want California to be legalized at virtually any at all costs. So finding those paths, I think is where the enthusiasm lies, getting that market open, getting Texas open, getting Florida open. People still want to see the Holy Grail States come to life, right.
00:28:18
Speaker 3: Yeah, Chris, As you mentioned, is about twenty five thousand people from around the world there in their number of times. And one thing I noticed is in kind of the great Hall where the all the booths are, it's a little bit.
00:28:27
Speaker 2: Like a carnival.
00:28:28
Speaker 3: I mean, there's a couple of hundred games you can play, you might say, in this case being the booths where they're really established, huge companies that you know, you got to have a booth because everybody has a booth.
00:28:38
Speaker 2: So we have one. We staff it.
00:28:39
Speaker 3: But whatever, people show up and talk to us, so they don't we don't care. Others are a lot more engaged. Then you got startups where this may be make or break. You know, they're in there. They spent a lot of money, they have to get they have to draw attention, and you know through that there's a lot of offbeat games and even some celebrity appearances. I was struck in twenty eighteen. You know, Chubby Checker used my line Google it kids. There was a person named Chubby Checker and he's there signing autographs. Was kind of bizarre, and I'm wondering, you know how much time you got in the hall anyway, but did you see any celebrity sidings, and also were there any unusual games or contests or attractions that kind of lured more people to one boot than another.
00:29:23
Speaker 5: I didn't see any celebrities. That doesn't mean, of course none of them were were stalking around the hallways and byways. I mean the biggest thing, the biggest takeaway for me was just the fact that it was a full on expo hall, as opposed to twenty twenty one, where there might have been some empty spaces. This time, Aristocat had what seemed to be the entire length of the wall, wow on on like the left side of the expo as you first walk in, and there's like the two story a is there this tunnel where they have where they're they're really promoting this NFL deal, which I completely understand, where you can like take a picture in this little tunnel with your favorite NFL helmets and things of that nature. IGT had a notable presence, and the slot games are just everywhere, and I don't recall all the theme names, but at the same time, all the popular ones were there in big shiny HD everywhere you turned, so there's definitely presence there. Some of it is offbeat. I also think some of it, you know, kind of a goofy thing. I always liked the fact there's casino furniture salespeople there, people selling stools, people selling tables, people like different kinds of tables, the electronic craps table, which I still admittedly still kind of like fawn over the first time I saw it in Michigan a few years ago, and things like that. But in terms of celebrities, I didn't see anything. But it's when it's bigger like this one was, and last year was my only other point of reference. It was a lot harder to like kind of narrow things down because you're going to certain places to talk to certain people at certain times, and as a result, you don't allow yourself time, especially this year when you wanted to book more people to talk to. So it was a little harder for me to focus, which comes hard naturally because I have such a sort of tension span, but you know, that's what it was for me this year.
00:31:21
Speaker 2: Yeah.
00:31:22
Speaker 3: I always like the data they have on the furniture because it does seem like, you know, what differences to make really one chair or the other, and they sort of dissect humans down to objects in a sense of you know, in this chair that we have set up, people stay an average of twenty two minutes the slot machine, right, and in this one they stay at average twenty nine minutes.
00:31:41
Speaker 2: That's an enormous profit difference.
00:31:43
Speaker 3: And so even though that's a lot much more expensive chair, you can do the math fairly easily and figure out, you know what, if that's what happens, and then of course the casinos can figure this out for themselves too. But so I that's one thing where yeah, at a face value, I think, who cares what kind of chair you have machine and an actuality. That's money because human beings being what they are, the more comfortable they are, the longer they tend to stay. And you know, we don't normally think about it, but it's kind of a unveiling of our own conscious selves when you go to an event like that and like this is hardcore. Hey, look, it's business where you got to keep the customers asking the chair for.
00:32:19
Speaker 2: As long as possible.
00:32:20
Speaker 3: And we've got the chair that asks is love and so therefore you're going to stay exactly.
00:32:26
Speaker 1: Well, one type of chair is a barstool.
00:32:29
Speaker 2: See what I did there.
00:32:30
Speaker 1: This is one of the greatest segues I've ever pulled off. So, Chris, you wrote an in depth piece about Erica Nardini's keynote session, and so for anyone who doesn't know she's the CEO of Barstool Sports, she talked a lot about Barstool as a media entity. But I didn't see much in your piece about how Barstool Sports Book specifically is going Any guesses whether they're happy or not right now with their standing as roughly the fifth place mobile sports book. Did she have anything to say subject or did she seem to be going out of her way to talk about the media side rather than the sportsbook operator side.
00:33:06
Speaker 5: I don't think she went out of her way to not talk about the sports book side. She did mention Kelly and Vegas as arguably their best handicapper as opposed to every guy they seemed to throw out on a screen, which I thought was kind of funny. I think the thing with Barstool is that they actually should be content with where they are in this space. I think they are pushing the ceiling or floor of what I would call the third tier of operators. You have FanDuel and DraftKings one and two. You know, pick a state, regardless of state, that's where they are. What I think has been underreported to a degree is that BENMGM has essentially created its own tier as the number three operator nationally in terms of handling you. I mean, you look at them in Michigan, they're they the retail space, but as you look at them going into each marketplace, they're pretty much running neck and neck with Caesar's for third in New York. They have completely flattened the fourth through seventh spots in Illinois since entering in March, and where they took the market share away from wasn't fandul or draftings in Illinois, it was bet rivers, And while there's still a ways away from catching them, they've shrunk the gap significantly. So I think BETMGM has this like second tier all to itself. Caesar's kind of has that third tier, and then you see the scramble underneath it where everyone's trying to be that fourth and fifth spot, and Barstool does probably have a more firm grip on that than say, points Bet And what keeps them in the conversation for that fourth spot is the lack of traditional ad spend that don't need to do because their social media presence is so strong, and that was something that Nardini, I think rightfully touched on it. And one of the things that I took away from that is that one, she's a very she's very media savvy as a veteran of other places she went that have other platforms, the Yahoo, the Google's, the AO, the Microsoft's, the aols. But she's also intellectually curious about how to achieve it.
00:35:22
Speaker 2: They're not, you know.
00:35:24
Speaker 5: She talked about, you know, learning the regulatory side with pen gaming, but also maintaining a distance from the actual gaming operation too, As she said, what kind of fence can I put around my people to make sure they don't run a foul and foulow Pen's product? And I think that in the long run helps Barstool be a better media company and makes PEN a better gaming company.
00:35:49
Speaker 1: Well, speaking of all these different sportsbook brands, I'm just curious. This isn't directly related to G two E, but I'm wondering. You know, you're in Illinois, a legal mobile betting state, a state where Barstool was among the many options. John and I talk often about how we choose two or three or four sports books. We don't have accounts at ten or fifteen. I'm just curious, how about you? How many accounts have you opened up since they started invading your state?
00:36:16
Speaker 5: I have all some them, Okay, I mean, I mean part of it is professional research. At the same time, I mean I'm curious. I'm like everyone else. You know, you shop lines on NFL Sundays, you shop lines on NBA Fridays. You want to see what the difference is. You want to build parlays. I think one of the things, and I don't know how many other websites have online virtual gaming. But Bett Rivers has a very Rivers has a very good free play virtual casino, and it includes a sports book, and every now and then I'll just tinker with their sports book page to build parlays, see what it looks, see what kind of value I get, and maybe comparison shop a little bit to that end. But no, I mean you, I think only having seven in the state makes it very easy to have all seven in the state right on your phone.
00:37:14
Speaker 3: So Chris, you're saying, if you're in New Jersey like me, you wouldn't have all twenty five apps.
00:37:18
Speaker 5: I mean I might actually test that theory in December when I visit my family. I would probably have the pre existing seven from Illinois, and I would probably pick or choose three of them. Maybe, you know, just you'll have a nice round number of ten.
00:37:35
Speaker 3: Yeah, all right, So I want to ask you about It's funny, Neally that esports was a panel topic, as it is at every single gaming event in the country every single year and has been for years. But a couple of panels even made a joke about, you know, this sort of next big thing question mark title of the panel. It sounds so twenty nineteen and I think I went to that panel in twenty eighteen nineteen, and you know, you have on the one hand, you know, esports is incredibly popular among young people and a lot of older people, including a lot of older casino and even sportsbook executives don't realize. It's not just that, oh, young people like to play video game. This is they want to watch tournaments. They want to watch professional experts who are are the best at their craft, and they'll and they'll spend time and energy in watching those events for a good amount of time.
00:38:23
Speaker 2: They even show up at arenas to watch them, you know.
00:38:26
Speaker 3: And so there seems to be a massive, uh, sportsbook opportunity there, and yet all we have is Nevada and New Jersey frankly, are kind of half assed on. They kind of allow it, but it's half heartedly. You mentioned in your story about Nevada is making some progress and improving that situation. New Jersey as a bill in Trenton that's kind of going nowhere that will make it easier to automatically approve a esports event, whereas now you've got to, you know, go through a lot of hoops. So you know, in five years, is the panel to be the same title, or do you have any particular expectation that this nut is finally gonna be cracked, because it seems like the revenue possibly will be there, and yet there seems to be a little interest in the industry in it.
00:39:13
Speaker 5: I think there's a few factors that play with this. I think one is that other states are waiting on Nevada and New Jersey to craft something because these are the states that always come up with the best practices that everyone follows along with. I think that's a big thing. And to that end, Nevada's pushed to create a white list of operators. A white list of leagues could go a very long way in accelerating that process. The problem is no one has applied to be on that white list, which begs the question, do these operators and do these leagues have they done the internal due diligence that is going to be scrutinized to the end degree right in a Nevada gaming control board, which, as we all know, is you know, essentially the law of the land in some respects when it comes to sports wagering. I think to that end, I think the leads themselves have to fall under a single governing body, or at the very least do it the way European Soccer does, where you have this continental this continental governing body that has a top down where you can where you go lead country continent. I think that would help. I think one of the other underrated parts of this is there's a technology aspect that for eGaming specifically that no one seems to want to address, and it was brought up kind of in passing and not really focused on. But it's the fact that a platform like Twitch has a chat box. And what doctor Brett Abrabanam was saying during that is that people who are watching the sports games on Twitch are in that chat box, They're talking to each other, they're making wagers in the chat box, and then they go to discord and you know, pay out their wagers, whether they be real or imagined or in whatever currency they are. And I think that is a is a technological elite that sportsbooks might not have the capability to take right now. They might not want to take that right now as well. I think you know, putting putting an actual event on the board is the easiest part of the whole equation. You know, it's okay, it's approved.
00:41:40
Speaker 2: Yeah, throw it up.
00:41:40
Speaker 5: Sure, fine, well you know we can, we can wager on it. But I think the technology, it's one of the few places where the technology is ahead of the sports book, and it's going to continue evolving ahead of the sports book and until there's a bridge. And it might be that chat box, it might be the platform, the the internal tech stack that creates that chat box for the sport, the mobile sports book that winds up being the forerunner to expanding the esports vertical.
00:42:11
Speaker 2: Yeah.
00:42:11
Speaker 3: I mean New Jersey only has one approved sportsbook operator, and the marketplace hasn't been very kind to them.
00:42:18
Speaker 2: They're not too impressed.
00:42:19
Speaker 3: And I think the sense is that the the creators of the games themselves don't seem to care about the gambling angle, so they're not necessarily going out of their way to talk to regulators or lawmakers and say, hey, you know, we had a great product here, we think you should should be legal gamming. I guess their businesses is strong enough. It's like, you know what, that might work, it might not. We have to put a lot of investment in, so why bother. So That's why I'm thinking, if I'm still around in twenty twenty seven, I might be attending a panlogy to with the same title.
00:42:50
Speaker 5: I think that's a very valid point as well. I think that I don't think any very few developers make wagering a priority, and to some respect that son ud standable given the constant innovations that come with Counterstrike Global Offensive, that come with League of Legends and things like that, You're always adding components to the game itself, that wagering on the game become secondary because you have to add these components to whatever list you're going to offer markets on as well. So that makes I mean that does I agree with that sentiment as well, But I really think the chat box thing is something that could be the bridge to help sport, to help mobile sportsbooks expand the vertical.
00:43:33
Speaker 1: All right, we'll see if we're having this exact same conversation with you on the podcast five years from now or now. Well, thanks so much for joining us again, Chris. I don't know how it's possible for anyone to survive caring about this industry and the details of it and not be following you on Twitter, But just in case, it's at Altruda seventy three is the handle to follow to get all the latest updates on the numbers going on in every state. Chris, thanks so much for coming on the podcast again.
00:44:01
Speaker 5: Hey, thanks for having me on. Guys appreciate it as always.
00:44:03
Speaker 2: All right, thanks Chris.
00:44:05
Speaker 4: Two men, two men, ten thousand dollars. Will they run it up for blow it all. It's time to check in on the gamble on bankroll.
00:44:21
Speaker 2: Wow.
00:44:23
Speaker 1: We'll get to the fast five shortly, but first let's update our betting bank roll. And it was a perfect week for US, three for three plus lots of positive movement on older futures bets. Here were are three wins. John had Tennessee plus seven and a half. They of course won outright versus Alabama, so an excellent bet there. It won US one hundred dollars. I had under forty four points. In the Bucks Steelers game, I guess the better bet would have been Pittsburgh money line, but still a fine win on a twenty to eighteen final score. Another one hundred dollars profit for US. And lastly, the Shields Marshall boxing match did indeed go the ten round distance easy money. We won fifty six dollars on that and that means we added two hundred and fifty six dollars to our bank roll this week, putting us down twenty eight hundred and ten dollars. Overall, we have nine hundred eighty dollars on hold in futures bets, so that leaves us with six two hundred and ten dollars available to bet with this week, and you are up first job.
00:45:16
Speaker 2: Yeah.
00:45:17
Speaker 3: I never thought it'd be so pleased to be under a loss of three thousand and so hopeful that the Phillies got us even closer to I don't know, less humiliated something like that. But any rate, give me Oklahoma State plus six and a half points at home versus Texas. Now both punters can skip the game and head to a local bar and watch along with their classmates. I mean, it's a wild shootout and the Cowboys can stay in it until the end, and I think they will.
00:45:39
Speaker 1: And so that's the standard one ten to win one hundred deal.
00:45:41
Speaker 2: Yes, sorry, exactly.
00:45:43
Speaker 1: Okay, I'm going to start with two football bets, and first, sorry to take your corner here, John, but I'm going to take a shot on a CFL game. Our colleague Greg Warren wrote his weekly preview, and he's been focused a lot lately on the Edmonton Elks, who have lost sixteen straight home games. This is their final home game this season against the PC Lions. The Lions have a lot to play for seeding, home field advantage, and the Elks just stink. They've been outscored one hundred and five to twenty nine by BC in their two previous games this year. They have the worst defense in the league, and you can't make this stuff up. Their quarterback Taylor Cornelius will miss the game. He's been hospitalized with a spleen injury. Get well, Taylor Cornelius, but give me the Lions minus seven one hundred and ten dollars to win one hundred and then one quick NFL bet. I like the Seahawks money line against the Chargers. Seattle's better than anyone expected, and the Chargers are talented but have a lot of injuries and are capable of losing to anyone and don't really have a home field advantage, so I think the Seahawks are worth a shot at plus two to sixty. Let's bet fifty dollars to win one hundred and thirty.
00:46:51
Speaker 3: Quarterback from Ebonston named cornel if he's not nicknamed youkon Cornelius done. Somebody's getting it wrong, probably another Google item for a Christiness But any rate, I figured I was done picking golf for the calendar year. But I figured i'd peak at the CJ Cup odds and there's our President's Cup boy, Jordan Speth.
00:47:09
Speaker 2: He's the eighth choice and.
00:47:10
Speaker 3: Admittedly a stellar field that includes Rory McElroy, John Brahm, and Justin Thomas. But Speith has the game to play with all of them, with anybody. It's what's above his shoulders that sometimes holds him back, but he seems to be getting zact together. Speeth already has one win in South Carolina this year. This course is generous to erradic drivers. That's great for him, and it's a gift to creative wedge players.
00:47:31
Speaker 2: That's him.
00:47:32
Speaker 3: So speak twenty units at plus twenty two hundred like that, I'll be on that twenty year old Tom Kim one hundred units at minus one oh five the place in the top twenty. I likely do even better, but I'm playing it safe, I think. But I think Tom Kim is gonna be in the top twenty of every tournament plays pretty much.
00:47:49
Speaker 1: Okay, So there are no major boxing matches this week, but I'll get out ahead of one for next week, October twenty ninth, The Jake Paul Boxing side show continues.
00:47:59
Speaker 2: He's taking on and since.
00:48:00
Speaker 1: Silva AUFC all time great, who is my age forty seven, but has proven himself a competent boxer. He's still physically capable despite his age. Last year he won a boxing match over Julio Caesar Chavez Junior, who, for all his flaws, was a legit pro boxer. My friend Brian Campbell, who we had on the podcast once a couple of years ago to talk MMA. He's been saying from the start that he favors Silva over Paul, but the sportsbooks have made Paul the slight favorite. We can get Silva at plus one oh five, So forty seven year olds unite. Let's take Silva to win one hundred dollars to win one hundred and five, and we'll have to wait a week for that one to grade. But I'd rather bet it now just in case sharp money comes in on Silva and starts moving the line. And we finished the show with the fast five where for the second week in a road sean you inched ever closer to me. We agreed on two games and we went one and one on those, losing with the Jags but winning with the Seahawks. On my other three, I went one and two. The Falcons covered the rounds and Panthers did not. On your other three, John, you went two and one, hitting with the Bills and Bengals, but missing with the Ravens. So it's a second straight three and two week for you to improve to fourteen and sixteen, while my record dipped to sixteen thirteen and one off the two and three week. Collectively we are thirty twenty nine and one and not quite beating the Veig just how the books like it. We again have four teams on by in week seven, and you're up first, John, with your five picks.
00:49:26
Speaker 2: Yeah.
00:49:27
Speaker 3: So instead of starting with a bunch of three and two is and then having a slow fade like most years, I'm mixing it up this time and getting rolling a little later. So I'll try to continue this renaissance. And boy, I hope you weren't watching the less seconds of our Jaguars against the Cults. By the way, that one, that one left the mark that was that was a rough beat.
00:49:43
Speaker 2: But speaking of the Jaguars.
00:49:45
Speaker 3: They're in absurd eight and thirty five against the spread in games versus the NFC in the past decade, and at two and four they're favored by three against the Super Bowl bound five and one Giants. Give me the jag so we'll win this game by double digits. This is the sucker bet of the year.
00:49:59
Speaker 2: I suspect.
00:50:00
Speaker 3: Next, I've got Titans minus two and a half over the Colts, who admittedly are confusing team. Now they beat the Chiefs, but the Titans have more of a track record of figuring things out. And speaking of which, the Bengals minus six verst the Falcons, who yes, the Loans six and zero team against the points spread this year. Like the Titans, I think the Bengals remember I see what I did there, who they are and finally put together a solid sixty minutes. Fourth, I've got Jets plus one of the bumbling Broncos and wounded slash overrated Russell Wilson or a grim alternative quarterback the Jets on a Jersey team that is more for real. Finally, the Chiefs minus two and a half at the forty nine ers and their missing defensive line. I shorted the Chiefs last week and barely got away with it. Andy Reid against a decimated defense is a joy to behold.
00:50:45
Speaker 2: All right.
00:50:45
Speaker 1: So we have one we agree on one we're head to head on, and two others that I strongly considered going with, and we would have agreed on one and been head to head on another. And then one I was never even thinking about, and that's the Chiefs and Niners. I'm staying the way the hell away from that one. I don't know quite what to make it, but this is a week where I loved some of these opening lines, but apparently other people loved them too, and so a few of them have shifted a half point or a point in the wrong direction based on these super book lines, making it a little tougher for me. But I still have five I think are good. So here goes, starting with the one we agree on Tennessee minus two and a half at home against the Colts. We're on the right side of the hook. I still don't think the Colts are any good at all, even though they've been finding ways to pull out wins. The Titans beat them by seven in Indy already this season, so I think they can win by at least three at home now are.
00:51:31
Speaker 2: Head to head.
00:51:32
Speaker 1: At some point the falcons perfect record against the spread will become imperfect, but I don't think it's this week. They're getting those six points in Cincinnati against that Bengals team that can't protect Burrow and doesn't blow anyone out. I don't expect the Falcons to win outright. I do expect them to keep it close. Next I don't believe I've picked the Commanders yet this season, but I'm gonna do it this week because a now of the opinion that the Packers are actually legit not good after they've lost to both the Giant and San Jets back to back and be no Carson Wentz. That's a positive for Washington. I believed in Wentz longer than almost anyone. I still think he could have been great. He had the confidence knocked out of him, though, and whatever the would have could have should as he's proven over the last two years or so that he's a liability. So Washington getting five at home against a Packers team in turmoil, I'll take the points with Washington. Next up, Seahawks getting five and a half in LA against the Chargers. No explanation required really after my money line bet, I'd expect a three point or so game either way here. And lastly, I'm going to back one big favorite, the Patriots minus eight at home against Chicago. It's probably going to be a slow paced, low scoring game and you're not supposed to lay a lot of points in that situation. But with Belichick and the Pats starting to put the pieces together and the Bears being one of the worst teams in football, and the way the Pats have done against bad teams. They beat the Steelers, that one was close. The last two weeks they've smoked Detroit and Cleveland. This is another very bad team. I think New England can cover the eight points and that'll do it for this episode of Gamble On. Thanks to everybody out there for listening, and thanks again to our guest Chris Altrude. You can find me on Twitter at Eric Raskin and John at Bergen Brennan and follow us Bets at us Underscore Bets. Go to us bets dot com for all the latest news and analysis from the world of gambling, and subscribe to this podcast on megaphone, Apple Podcasts, Spotify or anywhere else. And with that, John, please take us out.
00:53:29
Speaker 3: Well, we mentioned the Alabama Tennessee game in passing earlier. I'll just say it's one of the ten best college football games I've ever watched, the best ever being Texas versus USC for.
00:53:37
Speaker 2: A national title.
00:53:39
Speaker 3: Combining that with a long, long day of terrific baseball playoff game, it was just glorious. I mean, I've mentioned in recent weeks that I've learned that betting only what you can afford to lose was a wrong premise. It's really betting only what you can lose and not.
00:53:51
Speaker 2: Get pissed off.
00:53:52
Speaker 3: And I didn't have any favorite teams in any of these games, so I just enjoyed the heck out of it, and once it ended, I remembered only then, Oh, I'd made two modus bets that day, but it had nothing to do with the you know, whether I enjoyed the product or not. So I'm adding another caveat on ideal sports watching days like that, Maybe either don't bet at all, or bet small that you can savor to competition. You don't have to need a particular outcome to make it fun. It should just be fun because it's fun. So with that observation, until next time Gamble on
Speaker 1: Gamble On, Fellas gamble On, Welcome again to gamble On weekly gambling podcast presented by us bets dot Com. I'm Eric Graskin, us bets Managing editor and media director, and I'm joined by our senior analyst, Pulitzer Prize finalist John Brennan, and I owe you a thank you.
00:00:37
Speaker 2: John.
00:00:38
Speaker 1: A few weeks ago, you bet twenty of our bankroll dollars on the Phillies to win the World Series, and almost immediately they started falling over. They lost their next five games. They went from a near lock to make the playoffs to looking like they'd missed the postseason with five games to go. And I privately accused you of jinxing my team, but they made it in and they've been on fire for the most part. So if I believe in jinx is I also have to believe in lucky charms, I guess, and maybe your bold wager on a team you consider arrival is proving to be a lucky charm. So thank you. But to avoid messing with the mojo, can I get you to promise you won't bet either on or against the Phillies from here on out.
00:01:19
Speaker 3: You know I already won ten bucks of them in game one and they won anyway, Eric and I gave the ten bucks back back by the way in that game two with a plus seven hundred odds boost parlay of Nola's six k's which he got on his less better plus a schwarberhomer that didn't quite pan out. So I'm not sure this has to be my favorite wager for a time that hasn't even worked out yet. I mean, it was a good idea. I noticed that the Guardians, for instance, have so many holes in their lineup where they couldn't quite keep up with the Yankees. I felt like will Rinola or Studs mostly, and the Phillies have bats. They have a lot of bats. And I didn't bet the team. I bet the number those thirty to one odds is jumped off the page of me. So do you need me to stop betting other games now or doesn't that matter?
00:02:02
Speaker 1: I guess? I mean, I'm not sure. I mean, I did ask you to promise not to bet on or against them or whatever, but the ultimately, logically, stepping outside myself, it certainly does not matter. You know, we as humans have massive egos, thinking that what we do or like where we sit on the couch could possibly impact the game. Actually, just yesterday I had to run out during the fifth inning of the Phillies game to pick up my daughter real quick. I'm listening on the radio in the car. They're up for two and then they start giving up runs that inning, and my son back home is texting me, come home.
00:02:35
Speaker 2: You not watching his bad one?
00:02:38
Speaker 1: So really, yeah, do what you want, bet on or against who you want. Obviously, none of it really matters. I'm not sure if you read my seventy six or season preview article on ten bets this week, but I mentioned the bet boost Fox Bet had in Pennsylvania last week. They posted this when the Phillies were up one game to none on the Braves. They offered one thousand to one on the Phillies, Eagles, and Sixers all to win their respective championships, allegedly boosted from seven to fifty to one. You can now make that bet at about four hundred to one. I did put two bucks on it to win two thousand, So if ever a bet by me was going to jinx my teams, that would be it. But the Phillies won that series with the Braves. The Eagles beat Dallas on Sunday night. It should be all the proof I need that my sports bets or your bank roll bets or any of it, none of it impacts real outcomes.
00:03:26
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's that's a fun one. Definitely. That's again that's one of those.
00:03:30
Speaker 3: Where you know, you if you can get like a like an in person ticket or whatever you can, you can give it to somebody for a gift. You know, here it is, Oh yeah, stick it on the fridge, forget about it, and then you know, next next spring, late spring. Hey, by the way, remember that thing, well, you don't throw it out. It's who knows, it might still be alive.
00:03:47
Speaker 1: Right, and obviously irl the bet winning aside, I'll be happy if one leg of that parlay coming.
00:03:53
Speaker 2: Yeah, of course, absolutely all right.
00:03:56
Speaker 1: Thank you to everyone for joining us for episode number two hundred and fourteen of Gamba. If you missed any of our previous two hundred and thirteen episodes, they're all available on Megaphone, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and all other podcast apps. Please take a few minutes to write a nice review and give us a five star rating. Just don't spike your smartphone Reese Hoskins style when you're done. H.
00:04:16
Speaker 2: I got that reference. Very nice.
00:04:18
Speaker 3: Coming up a little later, the show can be joined by our colleague Chris Altruda. He was in Las Vegas last week with the g two week Global Gaming Expo Conference, and we'll fill us in on all the highlights. But first has been I would say, a typically busy week in the world of gambling, So let's get to it.
00:04:33
Speaker 4: Here's your gamble on news of the week and inside look at the biggest stories in the world of gambling.
00:04:46
Speaker 1: It's been a little while since we've led the news segment with a sports betting revenue discussion, but it's worth having one now because A the big September numbers have started coming in and B history was made this week with some late arriving August numbers. We'll start with that New Jersey was number one in handle for three years or so, then it predictably slipped to number two when New York launched mobile betting. But now for the first time, the Garden State is number three, as Illinois finally surpassed Jersey and betting handle.
00:05:14
Speaker 2: In August.
00:05:15
Speaker 1: Illinois, which lags several weeks behind most states in reporting, drew five hundred and sixty four point eight million dollars in August, handle, beating New Jersey by about eighteen million bucks. New Jersey is still way ahead per capita, however, with about nine point three million citizens to Illinois's twelve point seven million. In states not named Illinois. September numbers have been rolling in over the past several days, and the big story there is that a handle is way up over the summer months. Predictably, b handle compared to September twenty one is either a little up or a little down depending on the state, and see revenue is setting records nearly everywhere, with the national hold at twelve point three percent based on the states that have reported so far, which would be a new record, blowing past the eleven point seven percent set in September twenty eighteen when there were only five states taking bets. John, your thoughts on your home state of New Jersey slipping to number three and any guesses why the sportsbooks beat the crap out of betters so severely in September.
00:06:16
Speaker 3: Well, I'm going to predict that New Jersey might pass Illinois another month or two in this fall season, although it won't continue forever, but you think about it. The Eagles, the Giants, and the Jets are thrilling their fan bases, and that takes up most of the football fans in New Jersey, so and the Bears are not thrilling anybody.
00:06:38
Speaker 2: So I think there could be a pretty big spike.
00:06:42
Speaker 3: In handle on those games, enough where it might even put New Jersey past Illinois. But that's that's a perfect storm to get there. Obviously, Illinois with the population base, is going to win in the end, but I think there's a chance they get back to number two at least for a little bit. Now, as far as the beating the crap out of betters, you know you're never out of it with the over was the mantra of the degenerate gambler on my block, as he always told me that when we were teenagers, he only bet overs, never bet anything else. Well, if you've been betting all NFL overs this year, you've lost more than sixty percent of the time. So in some states where this is the first full season football betting and irrational exuberance seems to be.
00:07:26
Speaker 2: In play, you know that's part of it.
00:07:27
Speaker 3: I think Also the worst gamblers noticed noticeably are in states like Delaware. In Mississippi, where you can only bet at casinos or rasinos, and the best meaning they lost elite the least percentage wise, although they lost double digits are in New York and New Jersey, which is where so many experts actually play the odds, so that was particularly noteworthy. There's got to be other reasons, but overunder surely is part of it.
00:07:52
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, that's a good point. I'll get to my theories on that in one sec. But first I'll just note that, if anything, we should be impressed held on to number one and then to number two for as long as it did. But you know, the combination of losing betters to New York, even if not as many as some expected, it still had to be a decent chunk. That, combined with Illinois becoming a more mature market with full remote registration, now it was inevitable. But there is still a pretty big gap between New Jersey and almost everyone below them. You know, Pennsylvania Nevada are the only states that are even halfway to Jersey in terms of monthly handles. So you should be able to hang on to number three slash number two, as you said, for a while longer, and certainly you don't have to worry about slipping out of the top five until a California or a Florida legalizes. As for the massive September holds, I think the over under is a great point that that's part of it. I think parlays are the number one factor. You know. All it takes is one or two major upsets a week in the NFL to bust up nearly all the parts, and we've been getting those. There hasn't been a clean week yet where three or four big public favorite type teams all won and covered. I expect October hold won't be too different from September for that reason. Look at some of these September parlay hold percentages. In New Jersey it's twenty two point seven percent, Mississippi thirty point six percent. Here's a crazy stat that our upcoming guest, Chris Altruda, shared on Twitter. One sports book in one state, FanDuel in Illinois has generated one hundred nineteen million dollars in parlay revenue through the first eight months of twenty twenty two. Over that same timeframe, total revenue in Iowa from all operational sports books combined on all sports has been one hundred nineteen point nine million dollars, basically the exact same amount. That tells you how big parlay revenue is and how FanDuel specifically took control of that market before anyone else and more effectively and anyone else. I think that's why they're number one over DraftKings overall nationally. I think that's the differentiator. That they've promoted parlays more aggressively. They have the best interface for building parlays. They've been first with every innovation. You know, the same game parlay, they did it first, the same game parlay plus DraftKings is number one in dfs because they do a better job with player pricing and making the games more strategically compelling. But FanDuel's number one in sports betting in a majority of states, and I think it's mostly because they've driven the parlay wave. And I should note to the detriment of customers who presumably have been running their FanDuel bank rolls down and reloading.
00:10:39
Speaker 3: Yeah, and even you know, I'm on the record here many many times over the years of being so much against parlays, and even I fell for one yesterday from DraftKings. You know, odds boost plus seven hundred and seven to one. Now I knew Nolan was going to get six k's. You had a terrible game and it took him to his last battery before he left to get the sixth k but he got it. And so I was like, now, score is probably not gonna get a home run. But I mean, if he does seven to one, hey, why not. You know, it's a loser. And it was the same kind of thing that happens probably a lot of these better. I had just won ten bucks, so you know, I'll risk it and try and get rich. And of course I lost because parlays are really stupid. But yeah, it's amazing and that, but you make that The point you make is really interesting too, because parlays are so brutal that the customers lose so much money. That's not always ideal.
00:11:30
Speaker 2: You know.
00:11:30
Speaker 3: I've talked to the horsemen who at times, you know, there's a big you know, underdog or whatever wins or something happened, and they're like, oh, it's okay. A lot of people get money and then they're gonna give it back anyway. So you want people to win sometimes. And with to your point about NFL parlayshere there's so many upsets, you know, the lock that you have to go and you throw, you know, a gamble here and there, your lock doesn't even win, so you can't You're not even close. And so there's probably a tipping point where the books are crushing it so so aggressively, people run out of money, you know, and then either they stop betting, which they should, or they don't, which is terrible. Also, So you know, I wonder if they ever have to cut back on parlay advertising just because they don't want to bleed their customers too quickly, right, I mean they want to get the thousand bucks in six months or a year, not in two weeks. And I wonder if we get to that zippig point.
00:12:31
Speaker 1: Ever, Yeah, it's an interesting thing to watch whether the strategy changes it all on that. For that reason, our second story this week comes with a warning. It involves people losing their minds on social media, so skip ahead five minutes if you don't want to venture into that cesspool anyway. For the Monday night football game pitting the Chargers against the Broncos, DraftKings offered a megaboost trying to give away a little easy money by boosting justin Herbert to throw at least one touchdown pass from eight hundred to even money plus one hundred. The limits were smaller depending on what state you're in and or what your betting history is. You were most likely able to get down either ten dollars or twenty five dollars on this. Herbert had thrown at least one touchdown pass in thirty six of his thirty seven career games, so it couldn't possibly fail. You can probably see the plot twist coming. It failed. He didn't throw for a single touchdown, and people lost their minds on Twitter. I made the bet, although fortunately for me, I was capped at ten bucks and I forgot I even made it, so I didn't know I'd even lost till the next morning. But in the moment, people on Twitter said it was rigged. They accused the NFL of fixing the game to make DraftKings money. I think some of it was tongue in cheek, but not all of it was. Had people lost big money on this, i'd get it. But if it cost you ten dollars or even twenty five dollars and you needed to vent on Twitter, maybe sports betting isn't for you. Did DraftKings tried to help everyone win their money back two days later with a boost on Kevin Durant to score twenty points Wednesday night against the Pelicans, which he did by halftime. So everyone should at least be back to even now, John, My first question, the important one are Roger Goodell and Jason Robbins conspiring. Do we need a federal probe to be launched? And what are your serious thoughts on the odds boost the result and people melting down on Twitter?
00:14:26
Speaker 2: Yeah?
00:14:26
Speaker 3: Well, I flashed back to twenty nineteen, and I only know that was the year because of the makeup call I'll get to in a second by a major sports book. It might have been Draftings, but I'm not sure, so I won't.
00:14:35
Speaker 2: Say that it is.
00:14:37
Speaker 3: But it was the October twenty first Jets game where the offer was you win if the Jets score a point.
00:14:43
Speaker 2: Well, let me come on, they're not going to shut out.
00:14:46
Speaker 3: So seemingly even easier than this one, right, I mean, although a quarterback did set the record for most passing attempts ever without a touchdown pass in a game where his team wons, that's kind of cool that happened there, So of course, the Patriots won thirty three nothing to drop the Jets to one in five that year, and the makeup two days later was Nick's rookie RJ. Barrett would score a point in his NBA debut. Yeah, it's a little easier, I think, Yes, yes he did. He fact, he scored twenty one. Now, there was little if any Twitter buzz about the first result of the Jets there, probably because it was an issue in just one state. I prefer to think of it though, as New Jersey is not being as whiny as the rest of the country, which, to be.
00:15:28
Speaker 2: Fair, is pretty debatable.
00:15:29
Speaker 3: But now I like the idea of hoping that these people should never make a bet again, because if this is how they act with a ten dollars bet or a twenty five dollar bet, well they do and it lose one hundred.
00:15:40
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's weird to me how people don't get that the goal behind these is to make customers happy and loyal to DraftKings, that DraftKings wants to lose these bets, otherwise they wouldn't offer them. They're happy to give you basically free ten dollars or twenty five dollars, knowing that ninety eight percent of customers will eventually give that money back, and believing that the bulk of the betters will come away with a positive feeling about DraftKings and want to keep an it count going there, or even use these boosts to tell their friends, Hey, sign up for DraftKings. This bet is amazing value. You got to try this. I guess they could have made it easier and done Herbert to throw for at least one yard instead of one touchdown. But you know, they thought that they had made it a near lock and it wasn't. So they tried again, and the second time it worked. And you know they would have tried a third time if Durant hadn't reached twenty points. But just think about where your mind has to go to get all the way to the conspiracy idea.
00:16:39
Speaker 2: You know, the.
00:16:39
Speaker 1: NFL Chargers coach Brandon Staley, justin Herbert, they're all on the tape to underperform and risk losing a crucial division game so the DraftKings can make a few million dollars, you know, until we're talking about a few billion dollars, I think it's an absolute non starter. I do think the majority of the people throwing conspiracy theories out there on Twitter. We're being sarcastic, but again, not all of them were. Some people are convinced that everything in life is rigged and fixed if it doesn't go their way. But anyway, all's well, that ends well, And so ending this conversation on a light note, This was a funny tweet I saw last night from at Sports Underscore fan two two two two about the Durant boost. He wrote, nice, try DraftKings, you really think I'm going to fall for your collusion after the Justin Herbert stunk you'll hold last night? I just put my son's entire college fund on Kevin Durant to score less than twenty points and plus two thousand. My wife's going to be so happy when I tell her.
00:17:37
Speaker 2: That is amusing.
00:17:38
Speaker 3: It is kind of telling, though, that, you know, in three years, we've gone from a rookie first round pick scores his first point and you win, or Kevin Durant injured constantly we'll score twenty. I mean, yeah, obviously, if he's healthy and he's playing decent game, he's going to get it. But that is not a lock by any means. So the these books have wised up a little bit they do want you to win. But then again, you know, I'm wondering what the third one would have been if Durant went under two, because maybe they're just like, you don't know, what the hell with these people?
00:18:10
Speaker 2: They got their money, right, Yeah, you could be right.
00:18:14
Speaker 1: There is a certain point at which they probably stop offering these and say, oh, well it's cursed. We've got some of your money, and that's that. But you know, you're absolutely right that they claim the real odds on the Durant boost were minus a thousand.
00:18:29
Speaker 2: They were boosting. It's even that's a.
00:18:30
Speaker 1: Terrible bet at minus a thousand. I mean, he can go under twenty sometimes. So yeah, but it did work out. So our third story is a more serious one. A mobile sports book a minor one, but a mobile sports book just the same is leaving the US market. Fubo sports Books, launched by Fubo TV in Iowa in November twenty twenty one, Arizona in December twenty twenty one, and New Jersey just last month, is ceasing operations effective immediately because, in short, it wasn't seeing a path to profitability, said Fubo in a press release. While multiple parties expressed interest in partnering with them. None of these opportunities would have allowed Fubo to lower its funding requirements and generate sufficient returns to shareholders. Therefore, we have made the difficult decision to exit the online sports wagering business, effective immediately. In twenty twenty two.
00:19:20
Speaker 2: So far, Fubo Sportsbook had.
00:19:22
Speaker 1: Generated one hundred and seventeen thousand dollars of revenue in Iowa before taxes, and about double that in Arizona. So weren't making big money. The exodus of the also rams continues. Churchill downs packed it in the score, handed its brand over in the US and became Canada Only. John, was there anything specific about Fubo's approach that you think doomed it? Did they get in too late or just at the wrong time in terms of the economy? And any guess is where the closing mobile sports books trend is headed?
00:19:54
Speaker 3: I mean in aw Jersey Horras Now that's one of three Atlantic city casinos owned by Caesar's Entertainment. As you know, they just took on Fubo and by the way, profit betting exchanged last month also and Harra's reported a loss of about ninety thousand overall and sports betting in a month with the state's sportsbooks cashed almost one hundred million collectively. In other words, fubo in state wise was zero for three, or should I say foo bar, which in part is an acronym for up beyond all recognition.
00:20:21
Speaker 2: You can look that one up now.
00:20:23
Speaker 3: Fubo tried to get in both late and in competitive sportsbook states, and it clearly didn't work. I can't say for sure idle speculation alert, but it feels like maybe the play was just to get licensed and then a bigger fish comes along and they cash out. Well, there aren't many new fish left probably, and there are tasier items on the menu. I would say, I think that's why they got nowhere. The trend is hading in only one direction, and that's downward in terms of the number of sports of operators. It's inevitable.
00:20:50
Speaker 2: I think.
00:20:51
Speaker 3: You know, unlike casinos, where the real money is but only a half dozen states have it. You know, that's where I'd be sniffing around if I was so inclined and rich figure out which states are ex roun. Like casino, you've prepared to strike immediately when that opportunity arises. Then you might have something. The margins on sportsbooks are so low anyway, and the competitors are massive. You know, you had obviously the two DFS giants, but also several casino empires.
00:21:18
Speaker 2: There's just they're too big.
00:21:20
Speaker 3: And you know, while we have noted that four or five, six, seven, you know, operators certainly can be successful enough in Ain' twenty twenty five, that's not.
00:21:30
Speaker 2: Going to happen.
00:21:30
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's all good analysis. One very problematic note worth mentioning. Our colleague Sam McQuillan over at Action Network reported this that customers have been unable to withdraw their money from the Fubo sports Book accounts. Fubo says this is just for a quote brief period while they're disabling the ability to place bets, and I tend to take them at their word on that that it'll be up and running and you'll be able to withdraw soon. But as someone who remembers what happened with Full Tilt Poker on Black Friday, where they misappropriated player funds and weren't able to cash players out, I'm a tiny bit wary about Fubo Sportsbook indeed having all the money on hand until this gets taken care of So I hope that that story becomes a non story very soon. Yeah, I mean in terms of what went wrong for Fubo. Unfortunately, they weren't around long enough for us to really gauge much about their approach. You know, they had this tagline watch Wager Win where they were trying to combine watching sports through their app with betting on sports. I can't jump to any conclusions about whether and app combining watching live sports with betting will find an audience. They just didn't have enough rope to make it work, or to or to find out whether it was going to work. And I think a lot of it is the economy right now. You know, it's not friendly to verticals that aren't making money. You're not giving given that opportunity to lose money for a while before becoming profitable. So you know, someone at Fubo got out in front of it and sided the future upside isn't worth it. We need to just cut this cost right now. So I would say their failure is about timing more than anything else, But there's certainly more to comment. As you said, I'd say over the next twelve months, the over under for mobile sports books that exit the US market. The lines probably I'd say one and a half, you know, not counting consolidation, just giving up and leaving. I'd put the line at one and a half over the next twelve months.
00:23:27
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm not too worried about the better's getting their money back either, but I will say that the Jersey Division of Gaming en force with people.
00:23:35
Speaker 2: If somebody tried.
00:23:36
Speaker 3: To wriggle out of that, oh man, you don't want them bearing their fangs. You know, if you want to ride the ride, here you go, I mean forget it. That's good news for gamblers in all three states because there's no way that they would let that happen even a little bit.
00:23:50
Speaker 2: I mean, they would come down on them.
00:23:52
Speaker 3: There's all kinds of not only regulations, but enforcement opportunities available, and DG's not afraid to take them, so people will get their money back.
00:24:02
Speaker 4: It's time to welcome a special guest from the world of gambling. Let's get to the gamble on Interview.
00:24:16
Speaker 1: The twenty twenty two Global Gaming Expo is in the rear view mirror, but we didn't really talk about it on last week's pod since neither John nor I were in attendance. This year, But joining us now is a man who was our colleague, Chris Altruda is the master of the sports betting handle and revenue spreadsheets. He is also presumably a very happy New York Jets fan, and he was in Vegas last week for G TWOE, So he's going to fill us in now on what we missed. Chris, Welcome back to the podcast.
00:24:43
Speaker 5: Hey, Eric John, thanks for having me on again.
00:24:45
Speaker 2: Appreciate it.
00:24:45
Speaker 1: Yeah, thanks for joining us.
00:24:47
Speaker 3: So.
00:24:47
Speaker 1: G TWOE is an event that spans the whole gambling industry. It's not a sports betting specific convention. It takes place at a casino. There are always a lot of casino products on display. I'm curious if you saw the ace shifting at all this year. You know, sports betting has been at the center of nearly every gambling conversation since twenty eighteen, But is that starting to recede at all? Or is sports betting still what everyone was talking about at G two A.
00:25:14
Speaker 5: It's hard to talk to discuss like at a level of conversation. I noticed the big thing actually was spending more time off the floor because more people were there this year versus twenty twenty one due to the pandemic, you had the foreign contingent there as well, but also the fact that it seemed to be what I would call max capacity of twenty five thousand people, that you had more opportunities to network, and I think more people took advantage of that to do one on ones. I mean, I was no different talking to various people from Aristocratic Gaming about their NFL deal with the slam machines and sports wagering in other places, and also going to the educational sessions. So I don't know if the percentage of conversation tilted at all. I think there were just early more conversations being had on a one on one and smaller, smaller intimate level than say group levels.
00:26:08
Speaker 1: Okay, And as far as the conversations that were happening regarding sports betting, I'm curious whether the tone felt any different this year, Like it is there more apprehension than in years past about sports betting as a profitable enterprise. Was that they're more of that sort of questioning the direction that it's heading in than than the enthusiasm of years past.
00:26:29
Speaker 5: I think there was some to it. I you know, I think one of the things was sometimes you get the keynote speakers who who can excel at the art of saying everything without saying anything right. And I think you had that to a degree with Jason Robbins and Amy how FanDuel has already you know, gotten to that point where they are profital. DraftKings is trying to get closer to that mark. And I had never heard Jason Robbins speak publicly before, so the nasal twang was, you know, something to get used to on top of it, but it just it just felt ordinary, if that makes sense. It was, you know, we're here, we're doing this. You know, we're doing the things we need to do to maintain our space and get to that road to profitability. We're not promising anything. We're not talking about the proposed the rumored merger with the ESPN. We're on this path, we want to stay on this path, and we want to get there. I think that was the biggest takeaway from his speech. I thought the first panel.
00:27:28
Speaker 6: With Derek Steevens from Circa and the win executive whose name escapes me, I thought that one was actually more insightful because when offered a little bit more about its overall strategy in the gaming space.
00:27:42
Speaker 5: So to that reg it's interesting, but I don't think the enthusiasm is it is a hard word to gauge it, especially when it comes to profitability, because I mean that's more urgency than enthusiasm. So I don't know if you can place it as enthusiastic. I mean, people, we still want to market the product. People still want California to be legalized at virtually any at all costs. So finding those paths, I think is where the enthusiasm lies, getting that market open, getting Texas open, getting Florida open. People still want to see the Holy Grail States come to life, right.
00:28:18
Speaker 3: Yeah, Chris, As you mentioned, is about twenty five thousand people from around the world there in their number of times. And one thing I noticed is in kind of the great Hall where the all the booths are, it's a little bit.
00:28:27
Speaker 2: Like a carnival.
00:28:28
Speaker 3: I mean, there's a couple of hundred games you can play, you might say, in this case being the booths where they're really established, huge companies that you know, you got to have a booth because everybody has a booth.
00:28:38
Speaker 2: So we have one. We staff it.
00:28:39
Speaker 3: But whatever, people show up and talk to us, so they don't we don't care. Others are a lot more engaged. Then you got startups where this may be make or break. You know, they're in there. They spent a lot of money, they have to get they have to draw attention, and you know through that there's a lot of offbeat games and even some celebrity appearances. I was struck in twenty eighteen. You know, Chubby Checker used my line Google it kids. There was a person named Chubby Checker and he's there signing autographs. Was kind of bizarre, and I'm wondering, you know how much time you got in the hall anyway, but did you see any celebrity sidings, and also were there any unusual games or contests or attractions that kind of lured more people to one boot than another.
00:29:23
Speaker 5: I didn't see any celebrities. That doesn't mean, of course none of them were were stalking around the hallways and byways. I mean the biggest thing, the biggest takeaway for me was just the fact that it was a full on expo hall, as opposed to twenty twenty one, where there might have been some empty spaces. This time, Aristocat had what seemed to be the entire length of the wall, wow on on like the left side of the expo as you first walk in, and there's like the two story a is there this tunnel where they have where they're they're really promoting this NFL deal, which I completely understand, where you can like take a picture in this little tunnel with your favorite NFL helmets and things of that nature. IGT had a notable presence, and the slot games are just everywhere, and I don't recall all the theme names, but at the same time, all the popular ones were there in big shiny HD everywhere you turned, so there's definitely presence there. Some of it is offbeat. I also think some of it, you know, kind of a goofy thing. I always liked the fact there's casino furniture salespeople there, people selling stools, people selling tables, people like different kinds of tables, the electronic craps table, which I still admittedly still kind of like fawn over the first time I saw it in Michigan a few years ago, and things like that. But in terms of celebrities, I didn't see anything. But it's when it's bigger like this one was, and last year was my only other point of reference. It was a lot harder to like kind of narrow things down because you're going to certain places to talk to certain people at certain times, and as a result, you don't allow yourself time, especially this year when you wanted to book more people to talk to. So it was a little harder for me to focus, which comes hard naturally because I have such a sort of tension span, but you know, that's what it was for me this year.
00:31:21
Speaker 2: Yeah.
00:31:22
Speaker 3: I always like the data they have on the furniture because it does seem like, you know, what differences to make really one chair or the other, and they sort of dissect humans down to objects in a sense of you know, in this chair that we have set up, people stay an average of twenty two minutes the slot machine, right, and in this one they stay at average twenty nine minutes.
00:31:41
Speaker 2: That's an enormous profit difference.
00:31:43
Speaker 3: And so even though that's a lot much more expensive chair, you can do the math fairly easily and figure out, you know what, if that's what happens, and then of course the casinos can figure this out for themselves too. But so I that's one thing where yeah, at a face value, I think, who cares what kind of chair you have machine and an actuality. That's money because human beings being what they are, the more comfortable they are, the longer they tend to stay. And you know, we don't normally think about it, but it's kind of a unveiling of our own conscious selves when you go to an event like that and like this is hardcore. Hey, look, it's business where you got to keep the customers asking the chair for.
00:32:19
Speaker 2: As long as possible.
00:32:20
Speaker 3: And we've got the chair that asks is love and so therefore you're going to stay exactly.
00:32:26
Speaker 1: Well, one type of chair is a barstool.
00:32:29
Speaker 2: See what I did there.
00:32:30
Speaker 1: This is one of the greatest segues I've ever pulled off. So, Chris, you wrote an in depth piece about Erica Nardini's keynote session, and so for anyone who doesn't know she's the CEO of Barstool Sports, she talked a lot about Barstool as a media entity. But I didn't see much in your piece about how Barstool Sports Book specifically is going Any guesses whether they're happy or not right now with their standing as roughly the fifth place mobile sports book. Did she have anything to say subject or did she seem to be going out of her way to talk about the media side rather than the sportsbook operator side.
00:33:06
Speaker 5: I don't think she went out of her way to not talk about the sports book side. She did mention Kelly and Vegas as arguably their best handicapper as opposed to every guy they seemed to throw out on a screen, which I thought was kind of funny. I think the thing with Barstool is that they actually should be content with where they are in this space. I think they are pushing the ceiling or floor of what I would call the third tier of operators. You have FanDuel and DraftKings one and two. You know, pick a state, regardless of state, that's where they are. What I think has been underreported to a degree is that BENMGM has essentially created its own tier as the number three operator nationally in terms of handling you. I mean, you look at them in Michigan, they're they the retail space, but as you look at them going into each marketplace, they're pretty much running neck and neck with Caesar's for third in New York. They have completely flattened the fourth through seventh spots in Illinois since entering in March, and where they took the market share away from wasn't fandul or draftings in Illinois, it was bet rivers, And while there's still a ways away from catching them, they've shrunk the gap significantly. So I think BETMGM has this like second tier all to itself. Caesar's kind of has that third tier, and then you see the scramble underneath it where everyone's trying to be that fourth and fifth spot, and Barstool does probably have a more firm grip on that than say, points Bet And what keeps them in the conversation for that fourth spot is the lack of traditional ad spend that don't need to do because their social media presence is so strong, and that was something that Nardini, I think rightfully touched on it. And one of the things that I took away from that is that one, she's a very she's very media savvy as a veteran of other places she went that have other platforms, the Yahoo, the Google's, the AO, the Microsoft's, the aols. But she's also intellectually curious about how to achieve it.
00:35:22
Speaker 2: They're not, you know.
00:35:24
Speaker 5: She talked about, you know, learning the regulatory side with pen gaming, but also maintaining a distance from the actual gaming operation too, As she said, what kind of fence can I put around my people to make sure they don't run a foul and foulow Pen's product? And I think that in the long run helps Barstool be a better media company and makes PEN a better gaming company.
00:35:49
Speaker 1: Well, speaking of all these different sportsbook brands, I'm just curious. This isn't directly related to G two E, but I'm wondering. You know, you're in Illinois, a legal mobile betting state, a state where Barstool was among the many options. John and I talk often about how we choose two or three or four sports books. We don't have accounts at ten or fifteen. I'm just curious, how about you? How many accounts have you opened up since they started invading your state?
00:36:16
Speaker 5: I have all some them, Okay, I mean, I mean part of it is professional research. At the same time, I mean I'm curious. I'm like everyone else. You know, you shop lines on NFL Sundays, you shop lines on NBA Fridays. You want to see what the difference is. You want to build parlays. I think one of the things, and I don't know how many other websites have online virtual gaming. But Bett Rivers has a very Rivers has a very good free play virtual casino, and it includes a sports book, and every now and then I'll just tinker with their sports book page to build parlays, see what it looks, see what kind of value I get, and maybe comparison shop a little bit to that end. But no, I mean you, I think only having seven in the state makes it very easy to have all seven in the state right on your phone.
00:37:14
Speaker 3: So Chris, you're saying, if you're in New Jersey like me, you wouldn't have all twenty five apps.
00:37:18
Speaker 5: I mean I might actually test that theory in December when I visit my family. I would probably have the pre existing seven from Illinois, and I would probably pick or choose three of them. Maybe, you know, just you'll have a nice round number of ten.
00:37:35
Speaker 3: Yeah, all right, So I want to ask you about It's funny, Neally that esports was a panel topic, as it is at every single gaming event in the country every single year and has been for years. But a couple of panels even made a joke about, you know, this sort of next big thing question mark title of the panel. It sounds so twenty nineteen and I think I went to that panel in twenty eighteen nineteen, and you know, you have on the one hand, you know, esports is incredibly popular among young people and a lot of older people, including a lot of older casino and even sportsbook executives don't realize. It's not just that, oh, young people like to play video game. This is they want to watch tournaments. They want to watch professional experts who are are the best at their craft, and they'll and they'll spend time and energy in watching those events for a good amount of time.
00:38:23
Speaker 2: They even show up at arenas to watch them, you know.
00:38:26
Speaker 3: And so there seems to be a massive, uh, sportsbook opportunity there, and yet all we have is Nevada and New Jersey frankly, are kind of half assed on. They kind of allow it, but it's half heartedly. You mentioned in your story about Nevada is making some progress and improving that situation. New Jersey as a bill in Trenton that's kind of going nowhere that will make it easier to automatically approve a esports event, whereas now you've got to, you know, go through a lot of hoops. So you know, in five years, is the panel to be the same title, or do you have any particular expectation that this nut is finally gonna be cracked, because it seems like the revenue possibly will be there, and yet there seems to be a little interest in the industry in it.
00:39:13
Speaker 5: I think there's a few factors that play with this. I think one is that other states are waiting on Nevada and New Jersey to craft something because these are the states that always come up with the best practices that everyone follows along with. I think that's a big thing. And to that end, Nevada's pushed to create a white list of operators. A white list of leagues could go a very long way in accelerating that process. The problem is no one has applied to be on that white list, which begs the question, do these operators and do these leagues have they done the internal due diligence that is going to be scrutinized to the end degree right in a Nevada gaming control board, which, as we all know, is you know, essentially the law of the land in some respects when it comes to sports wagering. I think to that end, I think the leads themselves have to fall under a single governing body, or at the very least do it the way European Soccer does, where you have this continental this continental governing body that has a top down where you can where you go lead country continent. I think that would help. I think one of the other underrated parts of this is there's a technology aspect that for eGaming specifically that no one seems to want to address, and it was brought up kind of in passing and not really focused on. But it's the fact that a platform like Twitch has a chat box. And what doctor Brett Abrabanam was saying during that is that people who are watching the sports games on Twitch are in that chat box, They're talking to each other, they're making wagers in the chat box, and then they go to discord and you know, pay out their wagers, whether they be real or imagined or in whatever currency they are. And I think that is a is a technological elite that sportsbooks might not have the capability to take right now. They might not want to take that right now as well. I think you know, putting putting an actual event on the board is the easiest part of the whole equation. You know, it's okay, it's approved.
00:41:40
Speaker 2: Yeah, throw it up.
00:41:40
Speaker 5: Sure, fine, well you know we can, we can wager on it. But I think the technology, it's one of the few places where the technology is ahead of the sports book, and it's going to continue evolving ahead of the sports book and until there's a bridge. And it might be that chat box, it might be the platform, the the internal tech stack that creates that chat box for the sport, the mobile sports book that winds up being the forerunner to expanding the esports vertical.
00:42:11
Speaker 2: Yeah.
00:42:11
Speaker 3: I mean New Jersey only has one approved sportsbook operator, and the marketplace hasn't been very kind to them.
00:42:18
Speaker 2: They're not too impressed.
00:42:19
Speaker 3: And I think the sense is that the the creators of the games themselves don't seem to care about the gambling angle, so they're not necessarily going out of their way to talk to regulators or lawmakers and say, hey, you know, we had a great product here, we think you should should be legal gamming. I guess their businesses is strong enough. It's like, you know what, that might work, it might not. We have to put a lot of investment in, so why bother. So That's why I'm thinking, if I'm still around in twenty twenty seven, I might be attending a panlogy to with the same title.
00:42:50
Speaker 5: I think that's a very valid point as well. I think that I don't think any very few developers make wagering a priority, and to some respect that son ud standable given the constant innovations that come with Counterstrike Global Offensive, that come with League of Legends and things like that, You're always adding components to the game itself, that wagering on the game become secondary because you have to add these components to whatever list you're going to offer markets on as well. So that makes I mean that does I agree with that sentiment as well, But I really think the chat box thing is something that could be the bridge to help sport, to help mobile sportsbooks expand the vertical.
00:43:33
Speaker 1: All right, we'll see if we're having this exact same conversation with you on the podcast five years from now or now. Well, thanks so much for joining us again, Chris. I don't know how it's possible for anyone to survive caring about this industry and the details of it and not be following you on Twitter, But just in case, it's at Altruda seventy three is the handle to follow to get all the latest updates on the numbers going on in every state. Chris, thanks so much for coming on the podcast again.
00:44:01
Speaker 5: Hey, thanks for having me on. Guys appreciate it as always.
00:44:03
Speaker 2: All right, thanks Chris.
00:44:05
Speaker 4: Two men, two men, ten thousand dollars. Will they run it up for blow it all. It's time to check in on the gamble on bankroll.
00:44:21
Speaker 2: Wow.
00:44:23
Speaker 1: We'll get to the fast five shortly, but first let's update our betting bank roll. And it was a perfect week for US, three for three plus lots of positive movement on older futures bets. Here were are three wins. John had Tennessee plus seven and a half. They of course won outright versus Alabama, so an excellent bet there. It won US one hundred dollars. I had under forty four points. In the Bucks Steelers game, I guess the better bet would have been Pittsburgh money line, but still a fine win on a twenty to eighteen final score. Another one hundred dollars profit for US. And lastly, the Shields Marshall boxing match did indeed go the ten round distance easy money. We won fifty six dollars on that and that means we added two hundred and fifty six dollars to our bank roll this week, putting us down twenty eight hundred and ten dollars. Overall, we have nine hundred eighty dollars on hold in futures bets, so that leaves us with six two hundred and ten dollars available to bet with this week, and you are up first job.
00:45:16
Speaker 2: Yeah.
00:45:17
Speaker 3: I never thought it'd be so pleased to be under a loss of three thousand and so hopeful that the Phillies got us even closer to I don't know, less humiliated something like that. But any rate, give me Oklahoma State plus six and a half points at home versus Texas. Now both punters can skip the game and head to a local bar and watch along with their classmates. I mean, it's a wild shootout and the Cowboys can stay in it until the end, and I think they will.
00:45:39
Speaker 1: And so that's the standard one ten to win one hundred deal.
00:45:41
Speaker 2: Yes, sorry, exactly.
00:45:43
Speaker 1: Okay, I'm going to start with two football bets, and first, sorry to take your corner here, John, but I'm going to take a shot on a CFL game. Our colleague Greg Warren wrote his weekly preview, and he's been focused a lot lately on the Edmonton Elks, who have lost sixteen straight home games. This is their final home game this season against the PC Lions. The Lions have a lot to play for seeding, home field advantage, and the Elks just stink. They've been outscored one hundred and five to twenty nine by BC in their two previous games this year. They have the worst defense in the league, and you can't make this stuff up. Their quarterback Taylor Cornelius will miss the game. He's been hospitalized with a spleen injury. Get well, Taylor Cornelius, but give me the Lions minus seven one hundred and ten dollars to win one hundred and then one quick NFL bet. I like the Seahawks money line against the Chargers. Seattle's better than anyone expected, and the Chargers are talented but have a lot of injuries and are capable of losing to anyone and don't really have a home field advantage, so I think the Seahawks are worth a shot at plus two to sixty. Let's bet fifty dollars to win one hundred and thirty.
00:46:51
Speaker 3: Quarterback from Ebonston named cornel if he's not nicknamed youkon Cornelius done. Somebody's getting it wrong, probably another Google item for a Christiness But any rate, I figured I was done picking golf for the calendar year. But I figured i'd peak at the CJ Cup odds and there's our President's Cup boy, Jordan Speth.
00:47:09
Speaker 2: He's the eighth choice and.
00:47:10
Speaker 3: Admittedly a stellar field that includes Rory McElroy, John Brahm, and Justin Thomas. But Speith has the game to play with all of them, with anybody. It's what's above his shoulders that sometimes holds him back, but he seems to be getting zact together. Speeth already has one win in South Carolina this year. This course is generous to erradic drivers. That's great for him, and it's a gift to creative wedge players.
00:47:31
Speaker 2: That's him.
00:47:32
Speaker 3: So speak twenty units at plus twenty two hundred like that, I'll be on that twenty year old Tom Kim one hundred units at minus one oh five the place in the top twenty. I likely do even better, but I'm playing it safe, I think. But I think Tom Kim is gonna be in the top twenty of every tournament plays pretty much.
00:47:49
Speaker 1: Okay, So there are no major boxing matches this week, but I'll get out ahead of one for next week, October twenty ninth, The Jake Paul Boxing side show continues.
00:47:59
Speaker 2: He's taking on and since.
00:48:00
Speaker 1: Silva AUFC all time great, who is my age forty seven, but has proven himself a competent boxer. He's still physically capable despite his age. Last year he won a boxing match over Julio Caesar Chavez Junior, who, for all his flaws, was a legit pro boxer. My friend Brian Campbell, who we had on the podcast once a couple of years ago to talk MMA. He's been saying from the start that he favors Silva over Paul, but the sportsbooks have made Paul the slight favorite. We can get Silva at plus one oh five, So forty seven year olds unite. Let's take Silva to win one hundred dollars to win one hundred and five, and we'll have to wait a week for that one to grade. But I'd rather bet it now just in case sharp money comes in on Silva and starts moving the line. And we finished the show with the fast five where for the second week in a road sean you inched ever closer to me. We agreed on two games and we went one and one on those, losing with the Jags but winning with the Seahawks. On my other three, I went one and two. The Falcons covered the rounds and Panthers did not. On your other three, John, you went two and one, hitting with the Bills and Bengals, but missing with the Ravens. So it's a second straight three and two week for you to improve to fourteen and sixteen, while my record dipped to sixteen thirteen and one off the two and three week. Collectively we are thirty twenty nine and one and not quite beating the Veig just how the books like it. We again have four teams on by in week seven, and you're up first, John, with your five picks.
00:49:26
Speaker 2: Yeah.
00:49:27
Speaker 3: So instead of starting with a bunch of three and two is and then having a slow fade like most years, I'm mixing it up this time and getting rolling a little later. So I'll try to continue this renaissance. And boy, I hope you weren't watching the less seconds of our Jaguars against the Cults. By the way, that one, that one left the mark that was that was a rough beat.
00:49:43
Speaker 2: But speaking of the Jaguars.
00:49:45
Speaker 3: They're in absurd eight and thirty five against the spread in games versus the NFC in the past decade, and at two and four they're favored by three against the Super Bowl bound five and one Giants. Give me the jag so we'll win this game by double digits. This is the sucker bet of the year.
00:49:59
Speaker 2: I suspect.
00:50:00
Speaker 3: Next, I've got Titans minus two and a half over the Colts, who admittedly are confusing team. Now they beat the Chiefs, but the Titans have more of a track record of figuring things out. And speaking of which, the Bengals minus six verst the Falcons, who yes, the Loans six and zero team against the points spread this year. Like the Titans, I think the Bengals remember I see what I did there, who they are and finally put together a solid sixty minutes. Fourth, I've got Jets plus one of the bumbling Broncos and wounded slash overrated Russell Wilson or a grim alternative quarterback the Jets on a Jersey team that is more for real. Finally, the Chiefs minus two and a half at the forty nine ers and their missing defensive line. I shorted the Chiefs last week and barely got away with it. Andy Reid against a decimated defense is a joy to behold.
00:50:45
Speaker 2: All right.
00:50:45
Speaker 1: So we have one we agree on one we're head to head on, and two others that I strongly considered going with, and we would have agreed on one and been head to head on another. And then one I was never even thinking about, and that's the Chiefs and Niners. I'm staying the way the hell away from that one. I don't know quite what to make it, but this is a week where I loved some of these opening lines, but apparently other people loved them too, and so a few of them have shifted a half point or a point in the wrong direction based on these super book lines, making it a little tougher for me. But I still have five I think are good. So here goes, starting with the one we agree on Tennessee minus two and a half at home against the Colts. We're on the right side of the hook. I still don't think the Colts are any good at all, even though they've been finding ways to pull out wins. The Titans beat them by seven in Indy already this season, so I think they can win by at least three at home now are.
00:51:31
Speaker 2: Head to head.
00:51:32
Speaker 1: At some point the falcons perfect record against the spread will become imperfect, but I don't think it's this week. They're getting those six points in Cincinnati against that Bengals team that can't protect Burrow and doesn't blow anyone out. I don't expect the Falcons to win outright. I do expect them to keep it close. Next I don't believe I've picked the Commanders yet this season, but I'm gonna do it this week because a now of the opinion that the Packers are actually legit not good after they've lost to both the Giant and San Jets back to back and be no Carson Wentz. That's a positive for Washington. I believed in Wentz longer than almost anyone. I still think he could have been great. He had the confidence knocked out of him, though, and whatever the would have could have should as he's proven over the last two years or so that he's a liability. So Washington getting five at home against a Packers team in turmoil, I'll take the points with Washington. Next up, Seahawks getting five and a half in LA against the Chargers. No explanation required really after my money line bet, I'd expect a three point or so game either way here. And lastly, I'm going to back one big favorite, the Patriots minus eight at home against Chicago. It's probably going to be a slow paced, low scoring game and you're not supposed to lay a lot of points in that situation. But with Belichick and the Pats starting to put the pieces together and the Bears being one of the worst teams in football, and the way the Pats have done against bad teams. They beat the Steelers, that one was close. The last two weeks they've smoked Detroit and Cleveland. This is another very bad team. I think New England can cover the eight points and that'll do it for this episode of Gamble On. Thanks to everybody out there for listening, and thanks again to our guest Chris Altrude. You can find me on Twitter at Eric Raskin and John at Bergen Brennan and follow us Bets at us Underscore Bets. Go to us bets dot com for all the latest news and analysis from the world of gambling, and subscribe to this podcast on megaphone, Apple Podcasts, Spotify or anywhere else. And with that, John, please take us out.
00:53:29
Speaker 3: Well, we mentioned the Alabama Tennessee game in passing earlier. I'll just say it's one of the ten best college football games I've ever watched, the best ever being Texas versus USC for.
00:53:37
Speaker 2: A national title.
00:53:39
Speaker 3: Combining that with a long, long day of terrific baseball playoff game, it was just glorious. I mean, I've mentioned in recent weeks that I've learned that betting only what you can afford to lose was a wrong premise. It's really betting only what you can lose and not.
00:53:51
Speaker 2: Get pissed off.
00:53:52
Speaker 3: And I didn't have any favorite teams in any of these games, so I just enjoyed the heck out of it, and once it ended, I remembered only then, Oh, I'd made two modus bets that day, but it had nothing to do with the you know, whether I enjoyed the product or not. So I'm adding another caveat on ideal sports watching days like that, Maybe either don't bet at all, or bet small that you can savor to competition. You don't have to need a particular outcome to make it fun. It should just be fun because it's fun. So with that observation, until next time Gamble on
