Episode Transcript
[00:00:16] Speaker A: Right, welcome back, Everybody. Is episode 16 of Right to the Source. We were on a break last week and while I moved house and took some time to do that, Apologies if you can hear any drilling in the background. I'm still having work done in the house, but I am here as ever with the Chewbacca to my han solo Mr. Ed Birkin. Ed, how are you doing?
[00:00:42] Speaker B: I'm well, thanks, Robin.
A little bit disappointed and hurt about last week, if I'm honest. I mean, let's do the nice stuff first. The new house looks beautiful. You don't have a baby chair behind you. I'm sure that piece of art up there, some trendy flat film slash music thing that.
[00:00:58] Speaker A: It is. Actually, it's a very niche. A German film that I saw, enjoyed, and hunted down a poster for.
[00:01:07] Speaker B: But taking a week off the podcast is no excuse. I was on holiday in Scotland. I got up and did one. Quite frankly, it's just laziness and I think really goes back to the core of maybe your whole business. Who knows? But I don't think I literally.
[00:01:22] Speaker A: I literally couldn't. I literally didn't have anywhere to sit. I didn't have Internet.
Even in the.
[00:01:28] Speaker B: There's no Internet.
There's no 5G that you could do.
[00:01:33] Speaker A: Your phone to and then have poor quality recording, shaky on a phone. Don't want to do that.
[00:01:39] Speaker B: Oh, you're right, because drilling in the background makes it a much higher quality recording. Anyway, I think our listeners can see me.
[00:01:45] Speaker A: You can hear me.
[00:01:46] Speaker B: I mean, I don't think seeing you is necessarily advantageous, but I think our listeners can decide that really the work ethic comes from one part of this partnership. And then there's you. But anyway, we're here now, so we should probably make it a good one. While you were away sanding floors, or by the sounds of it, supervising other people, I was researching what NHL team to support.
[00:02:09] Speaker A: Were you? What did you. What did you decide on again?
[00:02:13] Speaker B: I didn't just want to go with, you know, the most popular one, et cetera. It's difficult. And also, who am I going to see? I pretty much nailed it down to three of them with the Las Vegas Golden Knights, who I am, who I actually called you while you were busy to offer a considerable expense to myself to buy a ticket to see them when we're there at G2E in Vegas.
[00:02:33] Speaker A: That was kind of you.
[00:02:34] Speaker B: None of our. None of our subscribers are willing to offer free tickets. We are open to that. It is not bribery. And so it's a case of them.
And also because, let's be honest, that's the place I'd be most likely to be most often in the U.S. so, yeah, see the most. Or I do have a soft spot for the Edmonton Oil list.
[00:02:52] Speaker A: Is it because of the name?
[00:02:53] Speaker B: No. I was thinking, what's Euler's got to do? No, it's because they have the. The. The. The greatest player in the NHL at the moment, Connor McDavid. They've lost twice in the Stanley cup final the last two years. I just really feel for him. He's got all the individual plaudits, but he needs a Stanley cup to his name. I also think there's something slightly cool about supporting the Canadian NHL team because, let's be honest, all Americans are like, yeah, it needs to be Americans. Like, no, I mean, look, it's Canada. It's where the great Wayne Gretzky spent most of his career.
[00:03:22] Speaker A: Yeah, true.
[00:03:23] Speaker B: But the chances of me ever going to Edmonton are pretty slim. So I had it down. I went on the NHL website Matic Sing, and there was a Edmonton Oilers top that was for sale, reduced, but when you clicked on it, it had the Las Vegas Golden Knights on the logo. So clearly either the name of the piece or the pictures were mislabeled. So I thought, if I order that, see what turns up, and whichever turns up, that's going to help make my decision.
[00:03:51] Speaker A: So.
[00:03:51] Speaker B: So what turned up four days after, but it turned up. I got an email saying after it was meant to turn up, I got an email saying it was out of stock.
[00:03:58] Speaker A: So you close it.
[00:04:00] Speaker B: No closer. So I'm going with the Oilers, but maybe I'll give the Las Vegas Golden Knights a chance to win me over when we go and see them against the LA Kings on the 8th, I think of October.
[00:04:12] Speaker A: Fantastic. It's very exciting.
[00:04:14] Speaker B: I may still get you a ticket.
[00:04:15] Speaker A: I'll need to check when I'm actually flying out.
[00:04:17] Speaker B: Anyway, we were talking about what we're going to do. Instead of two countries, we were going to do a country and a company.
[00:04:24] Speaker A: Yep. And then somehow. Somehow we accidentally. And just to stress, this was not deliberate. We did not plan this.
[00:04:35] Speaker B: We don't do any planning at all.
[00:04:38] Speaker A: No, there is absolutely no planning or foresight in any of these episodes. We can guarantee you of that. But. But we accidentally picked a country and then an operator that is intrinsically linked.
[00:04:50] Speaker B: To that country, which makes our life easier.
[00:04:54] Speaker A: That's true. That's true. It does look like we fixed it. But as I say, you can rest assured that there is absolutely. We don't have the capacity to fix something like that. We are not that good at planning.
[00:05:07] Speaker B: Or much else.
[00:05:07] Speaker A: Yeah, or much else, indeed. I think that's fair enough to say.
[00:05:11] Speaker B: The one bit of planning you should have done though is give us a story of the week, because I've got my fact of the week.
[00:05:16] Speaker A: Well, I've got a story of the week. It went out yesterday, so that'll be August 20th.
And it's quite an interesting piece about Pikspet and their relationship with Flamengo. Obviously the biggest football club in Brazil. I would say the Man United of Brazil. But we're recording in the wake of Man United losing in penalties to Grimsby, having been 21 down. Grimsby are of course in League Two. Some like a league that, let's face it, Sheffield Wednesday once look destined for. But it does seem that John Texter is riding in his white horse. And just.
[00:05:53] Speaker B: Just to clarify for non UK listeners, when we say League two, that's not the second league down, that's the fourth division.
[00:06:00] Speaker A: Yeah. So that is a very low standard of football and yet one that is still better than Man United currently. So really interested to see who they're going to get in as a manager next and to see what becomes of their career after they leave in 18 months time. But for the story of the week, Flamengo, their relationship with Pixbet, which was a local brand obviously named for the primary method of payment in Brazil, launched even a Flamengo branded sportsbook called Flabbit. And that partnership over late payments has ultimately run aground and they've now been replaced by Botano, I think the market leader. Funnily enough, actually reading that piece, there was some interesting comments in there from a Mr.
Birkin of a company called H2 Gambling Capital.
[00:06:57] Speaker B: Well, actually one of them is my stat of the week, but because we've missed two weeks, I've got two stats, so you'll need to scramble for second story.
[00:07:05] Speaker A: We've missed one week.
[00:07:07] Speaker B: One week. So we need last week's stat of the week and this week's.
And also I've got a bonus stat. So the first stat of the week is 5:1. That's the score that Sheffield Wednesday beat Grimsby last year in the cup. And we even had Ugbo scoring, which was his only goal of the entire season. The second stat of the week is four. No, actually, yeah, four. Three working days, I suppose on a bank holiday. That's how long it took between me being interviewed by your star reporter and him actually writing something to go on your website. Again, probably goes back to the similar ethos of not doing a podcast while you're on holiday. But the main stat about just. It's quite obvious but just the scale, okay, the scale of Batano and what they're able to do versus pigsbet. So pigspet has about 2% market share in Brazil on our numbers. Exactly 2%. So we reckon they had net gaming revenue of about 316 million for the first six months. Botano has a. Is a clear market leader and they've got well over 20% market share. Although Botano. So Botano was rumored to be paying 250 billion Brazilian real, which is like one of the, not the biggest in Brazilian sport, but one of the biggest globally in football. That is double what pikspec were paying.
Even though they're paying double of what Pikspet were, it equates to only 3 1/2% of their net gaming revenue. It equated to 20% of Pixbets. Bear in mind sponsorship is going to be only one part of your marketing budget. You've got the tax rates etc that's coming of GGR and all the tax, not just the 12% GGR tax going up to 18. It's all the other taxes that people reckon up weight to nearly 50%. You know, you just cannot run. Even though they are the 11th biggest operator Pixbet, it's just not a viable business to run when you've got one sponsorship taking 20% of your net gaming revenue. So to put it into perspective, because I had to explain this for your reporter in more simple terms for let me get this. It was actually a well written piece in fairness, Jim. So for Botano, despite them paying double, it would take them just 13 days of operating in Brazil to cover the year's cost of their Flamingo sponsorship.
[00:09:11] Speaker A: Wow.
[00:09:12] Speaker B: Pic spec. Despite it being half the price, it would take them 72 days of operations. So that's just the difference in scale and what these big operators are able to do in terms of their marketing power. That said, I know it gives them a vantage in that thing. Then again, for them to what they will have to get out of this to make a, you know, to kind of move their top line is substantially higher than, than what Pittsburgh would have. So to get 5% growth then it's going to be a hell of a lot more money than it is for Pix Bed or the small ones. Really the crux of it was you can. Yes, if, if the financial issues are correct that are rumored at Pixbet, it Doesn't mean that if you're not a top 10 operator, you know, you, you can't run a successful business in Brazil. It just means you can't be spending over 100 billion reish a year on one sponsorship deal. That's just.
[00:10:02] Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, well, that, that's an insane amount of money, especially proportionately. And I mean it's interesting that considering there's been a lot of talk about localization in Brazil and obviously there are, you know, excellent local executives. And I've said before, you know, one thing of key differentiators is having these really kind of super intelligent people, like just thinking about likes of Alex Fonseca, who we met in Rio, or Hugo Baumgartner, like these kind of recognizable, well known, well established figures. But really it is ultimately it's international kind of means that does seem to be winning the day in these early stages.
[00:10:42] Speaker B: Yeah, and they're the ones, you know, the four top operators. You've got Botano, about 365, Sporting Bet, Super Bat, Superbat came a bit later. But you know, the other three, they've been around in the market, especially bet, 365 and sporting bet. But Tom has been around a few years as well. They've been around for a while, but yeah, they have built a good local presence. And I suppose when, when the Brazilians you're hearing saying, you know, you need to be like a local operator, win out and foreign operators don't understand Brazil, they won't do anything yet. They have a point if they just do it as a foreign operator. And we saw that with Sporting Bet, they lost huge market share a couple of years when they didn't have anyone locally on the ground. I mean it was just a completely naive operating with, you know, Antenna Meted. It's like messed up if you have a good local team with the know how and quite frankly monetary backing to run at a loss if you want to for however long in these markets. You know, leveraging the technology and expertise and financial power of being a big global business obviously gives you an advantage over local ones. If you're willing to admit that you need to get local talent and localize your business, which these big guys have.
[00:11:53] Speaker A: Yeah, I think that's fair to say. But that's not about Cambodia. Let's talk about Cambodia.
[00:11:57] Speaker B: Cambodia. We glossing over the fact that you don't have a second story of the week?
[00:12:01] Speaker A: Well, no, I mean, what would I probably put forward as the second story? It's really more of an ongoing series. So obviously In New York, the downstate casino hearings are happening at the moment. And I think the coverage that Jess Marquez is doing that really is kind of fantastic. You know, in each of these ones, you know, from, you know, Caesars bringing out Jay Z for their proposal, I think Resorts world brought out NAS2 more recently. You know, about the, you know, like the Bally situation, which obviously I touched on in my last story of the week. And then, you know, the potential for the Coney island casino. I mean, I think that is really a series worth following. You know, it's really kind of interesting kind of ongoing series of developments in the market and highly, highly recommend those articles. So I wasn't glossing over that fact.
I was actually just keen to keep up the pace, you know, keep things moving, keep things snappy. And to talk about Cambodia.
[00:12:57] Speaker B: Okay, well look, Cambodia, let's start. What do we have? 19, I believe end of 2019 it happened. They banned online gambling from, well, as you say, maybe pressure from some of their neighbors.
[00:13:10] Speaker A: Yep, yep. Because there was, there was also pressure on the Philippines around that time. And you know, there was, was a moratorium and licensing in each country for online. And then it was President Duterte at that time in the Philippines came out and said absolutely not. You know, this is our kind of economic development, you know, kind of thing.
We're not bowing down to pressure. Whereas Cambodia said, yeah, we are putting a moratorium. It's bringing criminality, it's bringing kind of like economic hardship is not something that you know, we want to sustain.
So that was obviously shut down. But what still exists, I mean, I think there are still going to be illegal kind of illegal, you know, kind of operations. And I think a lot of the problems that dog the pogos, the Philippine offshore gambling operators, I think they also are affecting, were prior to, you know, this kind of a bat and were affecting the Cambodian operators. So these things are going to be sticking about and there are kind of like, you know, kind of like scam centers where essentially kind of like, you know, these kind of a ball like kind of like a sweatshop where people are running kind of online scams. These things still exist, but I mean what exists legally now is obviously the, the, the land based casino sector now will leave aside the capital, Phnom Penh because that's very much linked up with Naga Corp. Which we'll talk about later. Again, didn't plan this, just total serendipity. But the tourism hubs, so like the border towns generally, that's where you see a lot of the casinos being located, I don't know. I'm sure you've got the exact numbers of properties but they're mainly based in the tourist kind of areas of the country, kind of like around the borders. There's even some talk about, you know, the recent kind of border dispute with Thailand being kind of linked to kind of gambling operations.
But I'd be interested first of all to hear about kind of like more of like the size of this market because I don't really know that much about it, I'll be honest. But also how it's kind of snapped back from the kind of COVID era because obviously a lot of the visitation was from China and mainland China that was obviously very much limited and locked down for a longer time than anywhere else. So that had a knock on effect on the Cambodian casino sector. But how is that recovered, you know, in the years since?
[00:15:44] Speaker B: Well, if you take a step back 2011, you're probably still trying to make your life as a chef.
At the time I was at EGR at that time.
[00:15:54] Speaker A: Yeah, I was at EGR grubbing away, you know.
[00:15:57] Speaker B: Oh, that's when, that's when he did. That's when journalism was done with news stories would be out same day, fast paced work and moved on from that. So 2011 there were 27 casinos. By 2014 this has increased to 59 casinos. By 2015 this is up to 75. 17 is up to 98, 2018 was 150. And 2019, 2020 is 100.
You're right. A lot of these are all on the. And now it's actually 195 casino licenses. In fact there's 15 expires, there's.
Yeah, it's about 180 casinos. Now they are foreigner only and you say most of them are in on, on the, the kind of border area for tourists. But the big issue has been. Okay so yes, in 2024 tax revenues went up 85% versus 2023. So has dollars come back? But the big issue in Cambodia was the elimination of junkets much like in Macau. So yes, you've got. Okay, so let's, let's look at the, the Nagakur in the capital because we need to. Yes, it's one out of 180. But I think we need to put into perspective how big this is. Okay so and this is why we think Cambodia will not in the when reach pre pandemic levels. Okay so Nagakur represents 185 casinos or so it's Naga Core, Nagaworld Integrated Resorts in one the capital and that means we think Naga core is about 55% of the total market. So total tax revenue of 63 million.
We see how that's split. Nicor has a slightly lower tax rate but in fact implies they had GGR of 543 million. All the others combined had GGR of 414 million. So US$957 million total. So just under a billion 55% of that is NagaCore now within them. In 2019, junkets accounted for 70% of their revenue. So suddenly out of 70% of 55% of the market was all coming from junkets. In 2024, junkets represented under 10%.
So to put this into context, NagaKor between 2019 and 24 their total GGR was down 68%.
Mass market tables were down 15%.
Mass market machines were down 20% but VIP was down 88%.
And without junkets that, that is just not. They are not going to be able to recover that in any, any time period. We did numbers out of 2030 we don't get them getting back to pre, pre Covid levels. So yes you could get the political border wars aside, you know, there's no reason you can't see a full recovery in in all the other 184 casinos. But in terms of you know the main one of that's just they just can't recover without drinkers in our view.
[00:18:50] Speaker A: Okay. And that leads us quite nicely on to talking about them a bit more because that property is the biggest. Well it's the only integrated resort in the country, you know and they're building another like Naga 3. I think it's going to be the tallest tower in Cambodia or at least in the capital. But recent results for that business have been relatively good. Like it feels like it has kind of snapped back. But is that really just the post Covid recovery? And it's and it's just always going to kind of like stay below those levels because I mean obviously in Macao, you know you lose that kind of VIP segment then you have that premium mass segment of kind of slightly higher spenders. So you don't see that kind of element coming to Cambodia. Yeah.
[00:19:34] Speaker B: So you know we obviously will expect mass market, you know still down 2019. We expect that to recover and then you know it's what you classes VIP versus Mass. You know before is pretty those had its two and now it's kind of like as you say in Macau we call it premium mass market. So yeah that that will help. But when you're say when it was just when it's 70% of your revenues with junkets and then goes down to 10%. Are you really, how long is it going to take you to be able to get this premium mass market? I mean look at another way. 30% of your revenues was mass market say or non junket. Now you're going to have to triple that to make up the 60% that you've lost from the junkets. 70 has gone down to 10. It's not easy to triple your mass market revenues now. Let's say building the new tower etc can help. You know, we expect to see continued growth from here, but I don't see in the foreseeable Future on a one to five year view them getting back to 2019 levels personally.
[00:20:27] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:20:29] Speaker B: But let's ask a question that you should be able to answer about Cambodia. You've got the capital, which I would not have done. I'm not going to ask you about the population because we know you're terrible. Can you remember currency and national dish?
[00:20:40] Speaker A: Current national dish. See, this is the thing. I mean like I brought up having eaten in a Cambodian restaurant when you asked me this. Is it alloc something?
[00:20:50] Speaker B: Yeah, It's a national dish of creamy spice, coconut, fish curry or sometimes chicken or eggs that's steamed in banana leaves.
[00:20:58] Speaker A: Sounds quite nice. And the currency, baht is Thailand. Cambodia is dollars.
[00:21:07] Speaker B: Us.
[00:21:08] Speaker A: What's that?
[00:21:08] Speaker B: Dollars in the US probably just going through other currencies.
[00:21:12] Speaker A: No, no, I just thinking Sabat is Thailand, Dong is Vietnam. Cambodia is.
[00:21:19] Speaker B: I don't know why is it Cambodian? Real.
[00:21:21] Speaker A: Real.
Right.
[00:21:26] Speaker B: Should we look at the country for next one?
[00:21:28] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. What we're going to do next week.
[00:21:30] Speaker B: Well, we're not doing Suriname. This is one that we remotely know. Belgium.
[00:21:35] Speaker A: Belgium. Yeah. Let's do Belgium.
[00:21:38] Speaker B: Capital, Brussels currency, Euro and national dish.
[00:21:42] Speaker A: I mean I want to say mill frite because that's what I associate with Belgium.
[00:21:47] Speaker B: I mean you're close. Fries really. Just fries. Don't even need mould.
[00:21:52] Speaker A: No mould, just fruit.
[00:21:53] Speaker B: Right, I'm gonna go on to the supplier tab. No, we'll stick on the operator tab. So again, a number. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 3. So a number between 1 and then a number between 1 and 7.
[00:22:06] Speaker A: All right, so 11 and then 4.
[00:22:14] Speaker B: Right. Let's just check. Yeah, Zeal.
Okay, Zeal.
[00:22:21] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. Lottery brokerage business.
[00:22:24] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:22:24] Speaker A: Yep.
[00:22:25] Speaker B: Let's see what we have in the latest company updates we've done.
[00:22:29] Speaker A: There's loads of coverage of Zeal on igamebusiness.com so we can definitely provide a lot there.
[00:22:34] Speaker B: Appointed a new CEO in July.
[00:22:37] Speaker A: Yep, yep. Helmut Becker stepping down.
[00:22:39] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:22:40] Speaker A: All right.
[00:22:40] Speaker B: We've got zeal and we've got Belgium.
[00:22:41] Speaker A: Yep. Zeal and Belgium. So join us next week when we talk about zeal, when we talk about Belgium.
[00:22:46] Speaker B: When I actually, I was. I was, I wasn't gonna. I wasn't gonna do this, but I think we've got a couple of minutes. I'm just gonna get into a rant.
[00:22:54] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:22:54] Speaker B: I'm gonna get into data based rant.
[00:22:57] Speaker A: Right. So we've got a date. All right, so instead of wrapping up, we've got a database rant.
What data are you ranting about this weekend?
[00:23:05] Speaker B: Yeah, well, I wasn't planning on doing, but it's been. More numbers have been brought to my attention. And look, we do not have a monopoly on gambling data in the market. Not all of our numbers are perfect. You know, we have actual data, we have estimates, and we try our hardest to make all the estimates as good as possible. But there are numbers out there like the crypto casino one we talked about before, which you will never know the exact number, but there is enough. There's enough evidence out. There's enough stuff out there that you can logically work through and say, this seems a plausible number. Or when a number comes out and you have so many people in the industry just go. That just, just seems so implausible. It looks ridiculous now.
May not be wrong. I say that. Probably got lawyers, you know, could be that everyone else is wrong. Okay. To me, there's another numbers just come out that was brought to my attention by a subscriber, actually a trade association who. You think that them having a number out there that showed this, a large legal market is helpful to them, you know, to say, look at the issues we have with LIU one. Even they were like, this number just looks ridiculous and is really unhelpful for us. And to me, it does not pass any test of plausibility. But okay, you know, it could be wrong. So if the people who put this out want to come on and say, we think you're wrong and this is how we get there, because at the end of the day, we want the right number out there. Okay. I think the important thing for the industry is have the right data, be that ours, be that someone else's. If ours are completely wrong, then, hey, you know, come here. And we'll be like, we need to change our figures because we are clearly out by a lot. But this is suggesting that over 70% of online revenues in Europe was from illegal sites last year.
[00:24:44] Speaker A: Right.
[00:24:44] Speaker B: And to me, that just makes no sense. It's not easy to me plausible when we talk about the biggest mess of a market being Germany.
And people will disagree about how much is onshore offshore. But the general view is that 50 to 75 or so percent is illegal. And if you listen to regulators, they'd say they're like 80% onshore. So let's go to the extremely. What you're pretty much saying is that in Germany, which everyone agrees is the worst market there is, is still at the top end of estimates. Let's say 70 illegal. You're trying to say the whole of Europe's at. I mean, look, Europe, Europe generated the legal market. Most of this is reported. Okay. So there's not much scope of being wrong on this. Betting and gaming, forget lottery 20, 24, 42.5 billion. Okay. Of revenue. So we'll forget the 71 or 70 of it because it also says black market book is casinos rate to 70 billion. So that number doesn't actually match up. That would make 62% offshore. So forget the onshore numbers. Just don't appear to be what's reported. But even that. So that's saying, you know, that the offshore market is 1.65 times bigger than the onshore market. I mean, if you actually take it as being at 71%, then clearly it's more than double the size of the offshore market. And you look at the major offshore operators. I mean, okay, name, name one. Name the biggest that comes to mind. Operator that is not locally licensed in. In many European markets.
[00:26:19] Speaker A: So, like steak. Someone like that.
[00:26:22] Speaker B: Okay, stake reported their GGR. Yeah. US$4.7 billion. So say euros. Let's say, I don't know, exchange rate now. Four and a half billion euros. Something like that. Yeah.
[00:26:32] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:26:32] Speaker B: Yeah, now we know. At least when we look at it, we know quite a lot of that's Canada. I mean, look, the biggest person's drink. Yeah.
They're using kind of a big Brazil market. Yeah, we know there's. We hear like, look at the web traffic and stuff in Asia stuff. So based on that, a lot less than half of that is in Europe. Okay. Some of that is also regulated. At least it wasn't in the UK at a certain point. So let's be really generous and say 2 billion of that, you know, is stake. That's 2 billion out of 70. And you get, oh, crypto casinos. Well, we know the stakes. Half the crypto Market just by looking at blockchain stuff like that. And actually stakes crypto is a lot less than that. So stakes crypto, part of that is, is a 30 of it. Okay, so 600 million. So you double that. The crypto itself is about 1 1/2 billion, let's say crypto casinos, 2 billion, let's just be generous, 4 billion is now crypto casinos in general. So you still got another 66 billion somewhere comes on now could be right. I could just be completely misunderstanding this and all of our data is wrong and everyone else I speak to, if you want to get them on to try and explain the. Fine. But to me it appears this is more data out there that is just completely implausible. While the size going back to the Brazil point, while it may seem that having a high illegal market number is helpful to onshore operators, their arguments, if you have a number that says this, they're just going to look at and go are you serious? Show me some proof, show me some proof. Or you're clearly just, just not being serious, not going to have a conversation. And that's why someone came to me and said can we have some, we actually want some numbers that we can, we can use that are plausible for someone to make an argument. Because this.
[00:28:09] Speaker A: Okay, well I mean it's something that I think, you know, it's like obviously we're not naming the company but I think it's worth offering a right of reply, you know, so let's, let's ask them, let's see if we can get them on. Let's go from there. Okay.
[00:28:21] Speaker B: Should, I mean, I mean we've got an unofficial one at the moment. Should we just make it an official. You know how we were trying to make a, some structure. So now we've got then a random country, random company.
[00:28:31] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah.
[00:28:32] Speaker B: We might as well just do an ED data rant because there's enough out there weekly that upsets me and then we can just, then we can just, we can just piss off lots of different people and no one will feel victimized.
[00:28:41] Speaker A: That's equal opportunities offending. And then, and then that also brings in guests because as you know, we.
[00:28:47] Speaker B: Have people to, who want to sue us.
[00:28:50] Speaker A: Yeah, no, you want to write reply.
[00:28:54] Speaker B: So as a journalist, as a quasi journalist that you are.
Because this stuff, you know, gets bought to on tensions. It gets, it gets published. So the crypto number got published in the ft. You know, this has been in Reuters. How much I suppose how much can you fact check stuff rather than trusting. Because you know, they're well known, pretty well known brands that are giving you. Well one of the brands reports it's not just like a random company that's providing this data, you know, do you take. Take stuff at face value or.
[00:29:27] Speaker A: No, we want to verify it. So you'd ask around, you try and get kind of like similar figures for, you know, or kind of like equivalent figures. You'd then ask about methodology and you'd basically kind of like piece that sort of thing down. So that's really how we go about it. Anyway, everyone, thank you so much for joining us. It's good to be back after a week off. Apologies, is there any drilling sound in this? And we will be back next week talking about what are we talking about.
[00:29:54] Speaker B: We are probably having another rant of something and we are talking about Belgium.
[00:29:59] Speaker A: Yep.
[00:30:00] Speaker B: And zeal.
[00:30:01] Speaker A: Well remembered. So we'll see you on episode 17 of Right to the Source with Robin Harrison and Ed Birkin being the next one.
