iGaming Daily

Jessica Welman (00:02.281)
The results still aren't official and the margin is razor thin, but it sure looks like online and retail sports betting is coming to Missouri. We've got all the news you need to know about Amendment 2, the Show Me State sports betting launch, and what state could be next on today's episode of iGaming Daily. iGaming Daily is brought to you by Optimove, the number one CRM and marketing solution for the iGaming market. I am Jessica Wellman, editor of SBC Americas, joined by media manager Charlie Horner.

Charlie, did you watch the election at all for the US? Were you interested in the slightest?

Charlie Horner (00:34.892)
Yeah, as a bit of a politics geek, I was closely following the election. Of course, the sports betting election result, nothing else big happened that day, right?

Jessica Welman (00:37.732)
okay.

Jessica Welman (00:49.563)
Nah, meh, I'll be honest, I was watching the Missouri one, because I was ready to go to bed, and I'm like, come on, man. Let's go ahead and call it. And it was so close that I was on Central Time this week. So same time zone as Missouri. 1 a.m., not close enough. 2 a.m., not close enough. At 3 a.m., I was like, I'm going to stop waking up every hour. I think I'm just going to get up at this point and write it in the morning.

Charlie Horner (00:58.222)
You

Jessica Welman (01:18.505)
By the time I woke up around 630, they called it, but like it was close. As of this very moment, I believe the margin of difference is less than 5,000 votes in a race in which I, let me pull the numbers up. You would think I would have these at the ready, right? In a race in which,

Rough, a little short of 3 million people voted. 2.9 million or so. 2 million 932 thousand people voted. The differential is less than 4 thousand.

Charlie Horner (01:54.798)
That is so, so, so close.

Charlie Horner (02:02.36)
Wow, that's remarkable.

Jessica Welman (02:05.269)
It is razor thin. Wednesday morning, we were at like 7,000. Now we're down to a little lower than 5,000. Civics lesson time. For those who are curious, technically these results are still unofficial and the precincts will double check everything, certify their results, and those are due to the state this coming Tuesday. And at that point, the Secretary of State John Ashcroft

will certify them and it will be official. It doesn't seem like it's going to change and technically if somebody wanted to they could ask for a recount because the threshold is so low. The main group against sports betting in Missouri has said they don't really intend to do that, you gotta pay for the recount.

if you want to do it and you've got 20 days. So somebody could come out of the woodwork and say, I'd like to recount them, but for now doesn't seem all that likely.

Charlie Horner (03:11.904)
Yeah, yeah, it would be, especially if you have to foot the bill, would be a bit, take a big person to come forward and...

Jessica Welman (03:19.325)
of costs, you know, like I don't

I don't know how much I would charge to count 2.9 million things, but who knows? It's bureaucracy, I'm sure they'd find a way to make it expensive. We didn't really get a good sense from polling how this measure was gonna do. We always were seeing that like 50 % supported it, 20 % were kind of indifferent, maybe 30 % was against. Do you?

Did you expect this to go through? I know you probably weren't following it too closely, but...

Charlie Horner (03:57.208)
think the one thing that I really noted that made me think that it was close was the fact that it was a big last minute donation to the yes campaign. believe it was another injection of cash from the sports teams a couple of days before election day. So that kind of gives you a signal that it might be close and the sports teams just want to get a little bit more campaigning dollars in there to try and swing it in that direction.

Jessica Welman (04:12.82)
Yes.

Jessica Welman (04:23.829)
Whoop it.

Then the campaign against had pulled ads in the weeks leading up. They pulled about a million dollars worth of ads. So a lot of mixed messages coming out of this one.

Charlie Horner (04:39.587)
Yeah, and I'd imagine if you're the person who decided to pull those ads, now looking at the result and seeing how razor thin it is, you know, potentially that could have made the difference for the result really.

Jessica Welman (04:53.907)
As someone who is so sick of political ads, I'm gonna say maybe they just decided there are too many dang ads and it's just not worth it and we're not seeing a response. like, times in my life that a political television ad has made me go, I should rethink my position on this. Zero, I'm thinking, there might be one I've forgotten about on like a local measure, like something like this, but.

People have their minds made up, you know?

Charlie Horner (05:24.704)
Yeah, I'm very glad that we don't do those sort of political ads on TV and radio and things like that in the UK like you do there.

Jessica Welman (05:35.509)
All right, so it was a very narrow victory, but we did get a new state for sports betting. So how would you categorize, how big a victory was this for the gaming industry?

Charlie Horner (05:48.846)
Well, I think you've got to take the wins where you can get them in this climate. So I think in that regard, it's a big win. Obviously the home of the Kansas City Chiefs, Super Bowl champions, huge fan base. So that's a big market to go after. I guess those fans could have just hopped over into Kansas to place their bets, but...

for them to be able to do it on their home state is a positive for them. Yeah, it's a new market and it's something that we weren't necessarily expecting throughout this year for us to get a new state after a pretty quiet legislative season at the start of the year. So I think, it's a big win. How about you, Jess? How would you assess how big this moment is?

Jessica Welman (06:44.317)
It's a win for sure, especially given that they had tried legislatively so many ways to do this and Danny Hoskins, who coincidentally is going to be the new Secretary of State in January, was one of a couple of people that were just very obstructionist about this. They want VLTs, they wanted to horse trade. so, like, props to the teams and the operators that they were able to get a version of this done.

when legislators couldn't. A version of this, by the way, that is like so favorable to them. There's gonna be up to 22 operators. get a license per sports team, a license per land-based casino, and, gee, two standalone online licenses that like, I wonder who those are gonna go to.

Charlie Horner (07:34.043)
wow, that's a...

Jessica Welman (07:39.879)
A tax rate of 10%, it sounds like promo cred deductions are in play. So like very low, low barrier to entry here, which is good for small operators. will note like one group of Democrats, I think rightfully pointed out, there are scenarios where especially at launch, you're talking about companies that are gonna pay like zero tax dollars. So this whole like education, we need to teach the children thing is a good angle.

how much money this very favorable bill actually brings in, who knows. So good for them getting a very good bill for the industry passed. To me, when this was very close early in the night I tweeted this, you narrowly avoided disaster. This was like Props 26 and 27, record setting spending on a ballot initiative on both the for and against side, but.

The against side spent like 15 million, the for side spent well over 40. The previous record for a campaign to get an initiative passed was like 31 million. You spent a lot of money and you almost lost. So I do think that there is a grain of salt here that like some of these states where we're gonna need.

a ballot initiative, potentially Georgia, definitely California, some of these others, you have to worry that the sentiment for sports betting is maybe not there.

Charlie Horner (09:19.983)
Yeah, I mean, particularly as you mentioned earlier that you can't really package this as a tax raising mechanism if the bill is so favorable for the operator. So in the public relations messaging, the campaigning, you're struggling to make that much of a dent.

Yeah, you're right. It was a close one. And they're going to have to be confident if they're going to move again in California or go for the constitutional amendment in Georgia as well.

Jessica Welman (09:56.147)
Yeah, again, it's a win end of the day. I don't think this is something that the industry is thoroughly patting themselves on the back about because again, the margin was so narrow. The upside though, this bill is insanely favorable to operators, relatively low license fees, these standalone licenses.

I understand why Caesar's entertainment in particular was an operator that was just like, we don't like this version of this. We would like multiple skins for our casinos. We feel like we're not getting enough out of it. It was kind of the first time we've ever seen, we've seen casinos that are not that interested in sports betting, opposed sports betting bills. I think this is the first time I've seen an operator that is very much a player be like, nah, I don't think we like this. So.

Charlie Horner (10:52.538)
particularly if they have a land-based presence in the state, there's that whole cannibalization argument. know it's sports book versus casino, it's slightly different, there is that argument there. there's not going to be, I know you said earlier that there's like 22, up to 22 licenses. There isn't going to be that many operators that go in there, I'm sure. But it will still be a very competitive place.

We all know who's going to be in there, and Caesar's probably think, yeah, maybe it's not worth it.

Jessica Welman (11:21.684)
Yeah, it's

It's a.

Jessica Welman (11:29.621)
I mean, they'll go in there for sure. But the skins thing, you're right. I'm just like, you're not gonna get 22 operators. don't think, I think the bigger issue is teams and these two standalone licenses mean that you are depriving casinos of deals with FanDuel, DraftKings, and some of these other people. And you're providing them either a direct path to entry or a path of entry through a sports team that,

I would think the casino industry argues like we do more for gambling, this should be ours. For those who don't understand, like market access rights are a very real thing. Just go listen to Boyd's earnings call because they have a long standing deal with FanDuel on market access and they make quite a lot of money off of it. The reason Kentucky did sports betting is not.

for operators or for horse racing tracks in Kentucky to make money doing sports betting is for the license or the market access fees that they charge partners. So I get it. And I think this also kind of signifies that we're reaching the point of maturity in this industry where we are long, the days of any old bill will do are kind of long gone. So I'm curious now.

Can we do a ballot initiative in a state that's not going to be the most expensive thing they've ever seen?

Charlie Horner (12:56.826)
I think the last two ballot initiatives that we've seen has probably shown that no, no, can't. Obviously we had Missouri and then the record shattering spend that we saw in California as well. So yeah, it's going to be tough. think there's going to be a lot of money spent on both sides, wherever this goes next.

Jessica Welman (13:20.743)
You also, like, with an industry that is increasingly getting more and more flack for how much it advertises, it is kind of funny that they are, like, also blowing up people's televisions to get them to vote for it, which I would think, you know, only turns people off more. It's a fairly bipartisan kind of issue, sports betting, but I do think it's worth noting overall election trends for the

for the country, it wasn't that like more people voted for Trump than last time. It's actually that fewer people voted. I think there's a lot of people that were kind of in the middle that were just like, I hate both of these people and I'm not gonna go vote. But we did see kind of right leaning people come out more than left leaning people did for this particular election. So.

Maybe that helps explain why it was a little bit closer, because they might be a little more of the religious right that opposes these sorts of things. And it might be a little easier for the future, but I think Colorado, think we called that one, within a couple hours of results getting in, it was clear it was going to pass. believe Virginia, was similar the night of. We knew very quickly that this was going to pass, that

the popularity around this is waning. To give a little insight on the process for Missouri Now, they will certify these election results and then Missouri gaming regulators have until December, technically, to launch. That is the deadline written into the ballot initiative. I wouldn't be surprised if they push for September so that football season is...

is on the books for them. So that's kind of the timeline on this. Charlie, I wrote the list in our notes, but there are 11 states left to legalize. Which ones of these did you know hadn't been legalized yet? And I'm sure you've forgotten about a lot of the other ones.

Charlie Horner (15:31.918)
think most of these I'd have recalled just because of the sheer number of conversations that we've had on this podcast about some of these. mean, Georgia, think one of the first ever episodes we did was on Georgia and obviously California. You're never going to get the Alabamas and the Utahs of the world to change their minds. No, no. So really we are left with a very small number of states that realistically could flip.

Jessica Welman (15:51.551)
Hawaii, I don't think that's happening. Yeah.

Jessica Welman (16:03.997)
Yeah, I mean, the states left are, there are 11 left, California, Texas, Georgia, Minnesota, Oklahoma. I think those are the five everybody has their eye on and there's actually a possibility it happens. Then we have South Carolina, Alabama, Idaho, Utah, Alaska, Hawaii. So five, maybe six, Alabama has its discussions here and there about

gambling, Idaho, I think it's a lot like Utah. There's a lot of very religious people there. It's also just not a big state. So at a point if you're the government relations team, you're like, it worth schlepping to Idaho to make this happen? So we're running out of states to legalize, at least on the sports betting front, on the iGaming front, much different story. So perhaps.

I mean, you could even, I don't know if it's even worth putting, you can put more resources there. I don't know if you'd really change the end result though with iGaming hesitancy, right?

Charlie Horner (17:13.014)
Yeah, that's a really tough one. US has been really embracing of sports betting, but yeah, has really struggled on the iGaming front. So I don't know how you change the perception with law makers on that one, but I'm sure there's a lot of people who have experience of the seven states who have legalized who could give a lot of good advice.

Jessica Welman (17:36.713)
Yeah, mean, I don't think sports betting helps iGaming on this one because they've seen how it's shaken out where there are these two big players and then everyone else and that local people and local casinos have not really, with rare exception, found too many places to thrive. I will say if you do follow iGaming results, it does seem like there's a lot more room for a plurality of operators to keep going versus, you don't hear about online casinos shutting down all that.

There's room and people like to play different brands and different games and you can diversify the offering so much more than you can a sports book that perhaps that's the sell of it, but that is a conversation for you know two months from now when we do some sort of legislative preview. In the meantime we have the rundown of all of the election stuff, how much was wagered on Robin Hood and Cal she which is like millions and millions.

the recap of Missouri, the recap of Colorado where voters appealed to, essentially there was a point where they were supposed to refund operators because they went over the sports betting tax threshold and the voters were like, nah man, we're gonna keep that money. So can run down that. In your side of the business, Charlie, what should people be checking out and reading?

Charlie Horner (19:00.622)
Well, for SBC Americas this week, I did an interview with Nick Patrick, who is the CEO of Radar, a geolocation service provider looking to provide an alternative on the market. of course with Missouri launching sports betting next year, I'm sure there'll be lots of geolocation checks in Missouri. So if you're interested in that side of the industry, be sure to check that one out. It's an interesting read.

Jessica Welman (19:29.823)
Fantastic. Alright guys, that's all we've got for today's episode of iGaming Daily, but check out all of the sites in the SBC network for latest news and tune in tomorrow for another new episode with the latest, most important headlines on iGaming Daily.

Jessica Welman (19:49.685)
just kidding, let me do that again.

Jessica Welman (19:57.417)
Alright guys, that's a wrap for today's episode of iGaming Daily. Enjoy your weekend and be sure to check back in on Monday with a fresh round of headlines and another new episode with the latest news from around the gaming world.