Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Foreign.
[00:00:15] Speaker B: Welcome back, everyone. My name is Robin Harrison, and I'm here on episode 17 of Right to the Source with the Bertmy. Ernie, Ed Birkin, and Ed, how are you today?
[00:00:26] Speaker A: I'm very well. Again, another reference of something that I know of, but couldn't really tell you much about it.
[00:00:34] Speaker B: Sesame Street.
[00:00:35] Speaker A: Sesame Street. Is that the same as Muppets?
[00:00:37] Speaker B: Hey, similar, but different. The Muppets was kind of like Jim Henson production. Sesame street was PBS production.
[00:00:45] Speaker A: I think they both sound American.
[00:00:47] Speaker B: Yeah, they are.
[00:00:48] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:00:48] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:00:49] Speaker A: But I think our cultures are very different worlds.
[00:00:52] Speaker B: It's. Sesame street was iconic television.
You had the giant bird, you had big bird. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Yeah. See, there you go.
The other one guy.
[00:01:04] Speaker A: Miss Piggy and Kermit.
[00:01:05] Speaker B: Yep. Rolf the dog. Fuzzy bear. Yeah. The conservative eagle.
[00:01:09] Speaker A: Were there any humans in these?
[00:01:12] Speaker B: Yes. Well, in the Muppets, because the idea was, like, it was the TV show, she'd have different people each week. So you had Christopher Reeve, Raquel Welch, you know, like, really, like a weird bunch of people, but they'd always be like, human guest, you know? And then obviously in the films, there was more kind of interaction between humans and Muppets.
[00:01:31] Speaker A: Okay, so talking about. Oh, my God, this almost. This almost sounds scripted. Talking about Muppets with human guests. Are we going to get any guests on?
[00:01:39] Speaker B: Yes, we are.
[00:01:40] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:01:41] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:01:42] Speaker A: More definitive than just a very vague yes, we are. At some point, we must have a. Well, I don't know. You're. You're younger than you look. I mean, you're not in your 50s yet, so, you know, younger than you.
[00:01:54] Speaker B: Thank you.
[00:01:55] Speaker A: You probably, you know, had a fighter fax at some point. You know, a. Roll it, roll it, whatever, you know. Are you gonna dip into that and try and use one of your industry contacts?
[00:02:06] Speaker B: Well, yeah, so what I thought we'd do for a guest is when we do the Random country generator, we will use that to. Random Country Slash Company. We will use that to find someone relevant. Rather than just going, you know, kind of just choosing something at random. Let's do it in a way that fits in the structure of the podcast.
[00:02:26] Speaker A: I mean, choosing someone at random would be better than not having anyone, but. Yeah, let's just. Let's just aim high and see if we can settle in the middle. Also, can we get someone who's, like, you know, connected, because, you know. Well, I'll put out the kind of, you know, plead for some NHL tickets and not one of our 12 listeners.
Yeah, it's come through the goods, so it's almost as if we're doing this just as a public service, you know, give me some stuff. That would be great.
[00:02:53] Speaker B: Yeah. Okay. Okay. We'll try and. We'll try and find someone with access to tickets, merchandise or other goods and services.
[00:03:02] Speaker A: Speaking about merchandise, just order some Edmonton Oilers T shirts.
[00:03:05] Speaker B: Very excited you've committed to the Oilers.
[00:03:09] Speaker A: Yeah. Although as was pointed out by someone kindly in my office, that's their season over. As she actually, in fairness, asked me how Sheffield Wednesday were doing, then asked me how the drags were doing and I don't. It's not a great record for teams that I support in terms of success. So I apologise to Conor McDavid and all the Edmonton Oilers team and fans for what will likely be a disastrous season after two seasons in the Stanley Cup Final.
[00:03:34] Speaker B: Sort of like a reverse Midas touch. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So how are Sheffield Wednesday doing?
[00:03:41] Speaker A: Well, my. My stat of the week week is that I spent four, no, six times the amount of time driving as I did watching football this weekend. So I did a eight hour round trip to watch 80 minutes of football and when Swansea's second goal went in after 80 minutes, I left. Which some people criticize fans leaving early. But in my defense, I wanted to get ahead of the traffic. To be honest, given the number of people in the stadium, probably wouldn't have been that hefty. So I did have a four hour, 200 mile journey home. So if you criticize me leaving early for the football, how many of you actually travel a 400 mile round trip to go and watch a crap team? The disappointing thing is it's just not even the atmosphere there at the moment because I think a lot of fans are still staying away in protest at the ownership. It's not looking good. We managed to sign one loan signing because, man, you kindly agreed everything, including a combination of bonuses. Wow.
For this young player.
Man City wanted to give us a player, but apparently the EFL wouldn't let us sign him because they said that if he would do any bonuses or accommodation, we couldn't afford to pay that.
[00:04:48] Speaker B: Right.
[00:04:49] Speaker A: Even though all of his wages have been covered. So look, you know, I just want to give a shout out, I think we've done before Barry Bannon, you know, the captain, he took a pay cut to stay at Wednesday. He could have gone to a lot of places. He's been very loyal, works hard, runs his little socks off.
And you know that I think that loyalty is something that you haven't seen since the days of the great Matt Letissier. And when you compare that to the Alexander Isak debacle, etc, it's lovely to see in the game that I did.
[00:05:17] Speaker B: I did find it quite funny that there was this outpouring of rage from the Newcastle fans and in a very terse statement, when Isak finally went, and then they signed a player under almost identical circumstances in Yuan Wissa.
Also.
[00:05:36] Speaker A: Very true.
[00:05:37] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. I mean, he had, you know, essentially it was the same thing, but there it was. Okay. And also, I think one of all the transfers, one of the ones that I thought was kind of showed the right way to do it. You look at Mark, we, you know, he had the move to Liverpool lined up, allegedly, he had the medical, but then palace couldn't get in a replacement, so they just. So they, you know, they basically canceled the deal. There was no public statements, there was no sort of backbiting or fighting and even scored an amazing goal on Saturday.
[00:06:10] Speaker A: Or did score a fantastic goal. But, yeah, I suppose with him and nothing against it, you know, he came out, played, didn't try and force the move. I mean, he probably knows he's going there next year. Potentially. Potentially, he'll even get more from it because, you know. Yeah, of course, because there's no transfer, but, you know, that's.
That's it. And from what you understand, the chairman wanted to sell him because he wanted money, doesn't want to leave him for free, but the manager wanted to keep him. Yeah, he came out and, you know, he. He played, Played very well, scored a great game and led the team. And then you look on the other side and you've got Martinez, the Aston Villa goalkeeper who wasn't available for selection because he was trying to force a move to Manu. And now that hasn't happened. He's got to go back with his tail between his legs and be interesting to see. Yeah, it's back in the Villa Park. So look, you know, footballers pushing for a move, it can work and it can end up terribly. But, you know, there's. Yeah, it's good to see some of them have. Appear to have legal alert, some scruples and loyalty more than when in a world where most of it doesn't exist.
[00:07:10] Speaker B: Beautiful sentiment.
[00:07:11] Speaker A: And that is why one of the reasons why I haven't looked for a transfer to another podcast, really.
[00:07:17] Speaker B: Well, the window's shut now, so you're stuck here until January. But anyway, story of the week. So, last Friday on igb, Matt Raibeltowski's cover of the Gary Bowyer sentencing. So for context, just to jump from talking about football, soccer, which I don't know how many of our 12 listeners will be totally left cold by that. To baseball.
Bowyer was the bookmaker for. Yep, you've got your baseball. Well done.
[00:07:48] Speaker A: I should see how the Pirates are doing. I don't really support them, but I've had this ball since I went to a Pittsburgh Pirates game when I was nine years old.
[00:07:56] Speaker B: I'm surprised you haven't bought a load of merchandise from the Pirates.
[00:07:59] Speaker A: Well, we see if my bad luck still holds on that one.
[00:08:02] Speaker B: So. Yeah, so Gary Bowyer was a. Sorry, Matt Bowyer. Gary Bowyer was a former football manager.
[00:08:09] Speaker A: Gary Bowyer was a former footballer.
[00:08:11] Speaker B: Yeah. So Matt Bowyer was the bookmaker who was taking bets from EPE Mizuhara, who of course was Shohei Ohtani's interpreter and embezzled a huge amount of money from the Dodgers star. And really that case has been fascinating because it's had some major ripples into, you know, for example, to Las Vegas. You think about the activity in casinos such as Resorts World and you know, the kind of like the fallout which ultimately led to scottsba, you know, kind of a being, you know, kind of, you know, kind of charged being fines, AML fines handed out to MGM to Wend to Resorts World. And Matt has just been tracking this case, you know, kind of like and he's a really kind of tenacious reporter. So it's a fantastic, it's a fantastic read. Like highly recommend having a look at that. But we are now around 10 minutes in and we should probably start talking about Belgium.
[00:09:12] Speaker A: Yeah, well, just on that because I don't know why it's just come up again now, but there's an ex JAGS employee who borrowed $22 million.
Oh yes. And that seems to be back in the news. And I mean that should probably not happen because it says sued Vandrel. That's back in October last year. So almost a year ago. But he's saying that was it from memory something like he was posting like 25, 25,000 a day or something and they didn't know anything about it. And it's, you know, you're never going to stop people doing that. But you know, it's one of those things where if there gets snowball these stories and you're looking at proof of funds and responsible stuff, you know, is there going to be a, is there going to be a big issue where there's a kind of pushback in gambling or have we seen enough of these high profile things now that you talked about that. Actually, no one really seems to care. But, you know, there's not the risk of something happening and blowing up, because something's already happened and it's. The industry continues to march forward.
[00:10:13] Speaker B: Well, I think there's. I think there's a number of these cases. I think for the most part they are isolated and as we've seen, for example, in the uk, when these things are prosecuted, you know, the Gambling Commission takes a pretty hard line in these things and the fines have been getting progressively larger or regulatory settlements, however they want to kind of position them. But one market, just to claw it back to Belgium, where quite. It's quite interesting, you know, talking about this and talking about this kind of player safety. When you think about a market like Belgium, which has progressively just ratcheted up the controls on the regulated market, like, this is kind of like, just like a personal impression. But you kind of feel of all the European countries. Well, it was quite early Belgium, you never really felt the regulator was on side with the industry.
It was more. They saw their role as kind of obligatory because it was difficult not to regulate it.
And then it's been a case of really kind of tightening up the controls on the industry. But then also, you know, politicians have got involved and so it's got to the point where it's almost kind of like pushing, you know, kind of how the industry works back. Like, you think you have to separate registration for online sports betting and online casino accounts. You know, there's a ban on inducements to gamble, there's a ban on advertising. It's just in a. In for such a small market, it's really taken a kind of, you know, very aggressive approach towards the industry.
And look, we always talk about how this, you know, kind of like has unintended blowback of supporting the illegal market. And I was keen to just get an idea of how, you know, of. Of what the onshore offshore split in Belgium looks like.
[00:12:04] Speaker A: Yeah. So talk about some of the regulations. So, December 22, coming in on 1st of July 23, ban on all gambling advertising on TV, radio, social media, newspapers, public places it couldn't send personalized emails and sports sponsorship be restricted, etc. That's obviously only for onshore. You can't ban no social media.
Then you have September 2024. It came in where minimum age 21.
[00:12:32] Speaker B: And just.
It might have been before that. Actually there was. I'm sure there was.
Was a €200 minimum, like maximum deposit limit set in.
[00:12:44] Speaker A: I think the worst check if that was just For Covid or not? Yes, there was, there was deposits and also there's things such as they said this bill was there to ban on bonusing, incentivization, to gamble. Anyway, the expectation was the onshore market, therefore in 2023 would decline.
It didn't. It grew. It grew quite healthily. And the reason for this is Belgium is, I was going to say unique, but I believe that there may be one other country. In fact, I'm just going to cheat and quickly look it up. Is it Luxembourg or something? Yeah, the only country in Luxembourg where both public and private wages are indexed to inflation. So over the course of 2023, it's kind of literally a monthly goes up. So it was over 11% increase in wages on 2022. So if you then look at what that means in terms of disposable income, etc. You know, you can see that the, the industry has, it appears to me, clearly benefited from people having, you know, much higher wages and that perpetuates more inflation. So I think you need to be careful. If people look at Belgium as an example, say, oh, they did this, but the onshore market continued to grow, that's very different. You know, when you, you've got 11% wage inflation compared to, if you look at other.
Actually inflation is leading to cost of living crisis or extra cost. And I say cost of living crisis as in don't believe it. But you know, everything's a crisis, you know, so let's say just pressure. So using inflammatory language, pressure on disposable spend. Whereas in Belgium, yes, obviously inflation has gone up by that amount, so their costs would have gone up. But you know, chances are their disposable spend has at least stayed the same, if not increased, probably increased.
And that's kind of helped fuel the market growth.
[00:14:34] Speaker B: Okay, that's interesting.
[00:14:36] Speaker A: I mean there's also, and it has another unique thing, says there's, there's limited licenses. So there's nine, nine what they call a plus casino licenses, which last four casino. And there's also sports betting licenses.
[00:14:48] Speaker B: I believe there's 30, I think because it was something like 31, but then they took.
[00:14:56] Speaker A: Yeah, we are so sad.
But they also have these ones called B licenses, which kind of dice type games. I mean for intents and purposes they look pretty much like slots. That's based on the kind of gaming halls, it's like 180 gaming halls or something. You know, main operators there, they do actually bring up 2023 data for the main operators because they do report it in the regulator report. But the largest I casino, so if you take out the dice, dice is going to be similar. So you've got Circus and they also actually share a license with Poke Stars, but I imagine that Circus is majority of the revenue. And Napoleon Games, they have 20% of the market each, followed by 777. And Star Casino, they have about 16% of the market each. In terms of the size, the onshore online betting and gaming market was worth just under a billion euros in 2024. And this year we estimate it to go up, despite the regular restrictions, to 1.1 billion, which is about the same size as the land betting, gaming and lottery in total. So the online is ad lottery, it's about the same size and we are just reworking our illegal market numbers. I mean, it's, it's, it's around that kind of, you know, 50 mark, 40 to 50 thing being offshore. You know, it's, it's not as bad as Germany, but, you know, you're looking at the kind of Netherlands type, you know, channelization because of the restrictions, because of the limited licenses, the fact they've got these dice ones where there are more things and there's a more open market, I suppose, in terms of the sports betting and. Yeah, I suppose. Is it a market that's been targeted particularly by the offshore operators? I suppose it is. I mean, they've got different languages you have to contend with.
[00:16:45] Speaker B: Yeah, you've got French, Flemish and Walloon.
[00:16:48] Speaker A: Is it your word for it? They speak German anywhere there?
[00:16:51] Speaker B: I'm not sure. I don't think so. I mean, they def. Yeah, Flemish is obviously in there. Obviously there's French speaking Belgium and then I think Walloon is the other one. Or Walloon is a region, but I'm pretty sure it's got a distinctive language.
[00:17:03] Speaker A: And what's the, what's the national dish?
[00:17:06] Speaker B: It's fries, no milk.
And I mean, say, you know, home of Tin Tin.
[00:17:12] Speaker A: Tin Tin.
[00:17:13] Speaker B: I love Tin Tin.
[00:17:15] Speaker A: Don't tell me, don't tell me, don't tell me. Dog. Spotty.
[00:17:18] Speaker B: No, no, absolutely not. So. Well, well, so in the original, in the original books it was called Snowy.
[00:17:26] Speaker A: Snowy, yeah.
[00:17:27] Speaker B: So in English it's called Snowy. And the original books in French, or at least the ones that I've seen, it was called Milou M I L.
[00:17:34] Speaker A: O U. I mean, this shows that my fluent French has gone downhill.
[00:17:38] Speaker B: That was just name, right? Yeah.
[00:17:41] Speaker A: I mean, have you got anything else to talk about on Belgium?
[00:17:43] Speaker B: Not really in Belgium. Well, I suppose just one interesting thing There have been some examples of operators buying inlet for example Kindred effectively acquired a land based property to enter that market.
So it's interesting that a license system effectively set up to preserve and kind of like safeguard the brick and mortar business is now actually being kind of, you know, kind of like literally taken over by the online operators and I suppose.
[00:18:11] Speaker A: Well, two things actually on Belgium.
[00:18:12] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:18:12] Speaker A: Correct me if I've made up one of these. It was a few years ago. I'm pretty sure B Win I can. I don't know whether B Win on their own or be win party. I'm almost positive is before the GBC acquisition said they weren't going to get licensed in Belgium because they were still holding on to this. You don't have to be locally licensed, it's against the EU law, blah blah blah. And I think it could have been again this may not be true. So I'm pretty sure it's Norbert Toy for BO when he was CEO and he was a meeting in Brussels and got questioned by authorities over there. And a couple of days later B Win announced that they were partnering now with a casino and going onshore. So you know they have been able to at least with the kind of the main listed operators get them onshore despite all these regulations even if you know they had to do it with some, you know, authorities questioning etc. But the problem is you can't do that with the likes of the Caracao casinos, you know, they really don't.
[00:19:06] Speaker B: Well, of course, yeah.
[00:19:07] Speaker A: Why you've seen the big growth and then talking about Unibet this is what makes me think about France where again I just say it, you know, you can sort out the legal things in my view.
[00:19:17] Speaker B: Oh no. Oh no.
[00:19:19] Speaker A: It's the French regulation has always been protectionist and you know they opened it up to comply with EU law but they wanted to know make sure that the French monopolies and and French companies had you know a, a good share and it wasn't all just taken over by the international operators.
[00:19:34] Speaker B: Well yeah, I mean like and for.
[00:19:36] Speaker A: I casino I think that's again the thing the casino industry has has a big lobbying and important part and also pay a load. Isn't that over 50% up to 70% effective tax rate for some of the products on the land based casino?
[00:19:49] Speaker B: Yeah, it's significant because when they shifted it from turnover instead of to a GGR based model instead of reducing it they basically look to set the equivalent amount in GGR to maintain tax rate.
[00:20:04] Speaker A: So on one side they want to protect the land based casino industry, then they're all saying, well, if it goes online, you've got the big guys and obviously so if you're a big guy like a Partouche or Lucien Barriere, then they will go, well, if, and I'm not saying there is, we're not getting into this debate, but if there was some meaningful cannibalization of the land based casino revenues by doing online, obviously we want it to be with us rather than with, you know, international operators. So then they go, okay, well we'll make sure that only land based casinos can have a license. But there's 201 casinos in France. A lot of them are small independent ones.
[00:20:41] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:20:41] Speaker A: So quite frankly you just do Unibet. If you want to go in there as an international operator, you spend what would be very little money buying a small casino and suddenly, you know, you've got your license and it's, it's open. This tying, it doesn't necessarily, when you've got that many casinos, tying it to land based properties doesn't work in the Belgium.
[00:21:04] Speaker B: No. Though of course in the case of, you know, Unibet Kindred, they are now owned by FDJ United, one of the beneficiaries of French regulation as a former kind of lottery monopoly. And FTJ is obviously, you know, currently against I casino regulation. But there's a weird kind of a nice little bridge into the other company, the company we're going to talk about this week, Zeal Network, in that it has navigated a fairly protectionist system in Germany. You think of like the state lotteries under the Deutsche Lotto and totoblock with a lottery brokerage model, essentially a kind of ticket reseller, you know, earning money off kind of like commission and kind of like additional fees from kind of selling a, you know, different state lottery tickets across Germany. And is it's one of these businesses that seems almost kind of like ancillary to the core market. But it's really kind of like carved out quite an effective niche for itself because aside from that business used to be called Lotto 24, I think it was maybe two years ago now, maybe a bit longer, maybe just over two years, they acquire or they kind of got a license to offer, you know, kind of a slot games in Germany. So there is scope for them to, you know, kind of build out from there from that kind of brokerage model. And in recent years, I mean just thinking about IGB's coverage, obviously, you know, as I imagine like H2, you've got a lot of kind of tracking of them since they're a list of business. But over the past few few years I think they're enjoying quite strong growth. It seems quite a profitable business. It seems to be doing quite well. And we'll talk about like the ventures side and some of the kind of like international things are doing.
[00:22:54] Speaker A: Oh Robin, you just set me up. I'll knock out the park. Yeah, so they have. I'm just looking at our.
Our zeal report news flow. So May 25th they signed a deal with Gammat for slots games integration which grants the web things of Lotto 24 and Tip 24, the other one.
And in July they announced a partnership with GreenTube for selected online games will be gradually integrated into the game portfolio. So yeah, they are. They are growing well possibly in parts of that. So H125, their revenues were up 30% year on year. Adjusted EBITDA up 76% year on year.
They're on a run rate now of just over 200 million of revenue and 75 million of EBITDAs. You know, a very profitable and profitable business.
[00:23:44] Speaker B: What was.
[00:23:45] Speaker A: That's a big transition because you know, 96, 97% of their revenue is this Germany model lottery brokerage.
[00:23:52] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah.
[00:23:53] Speaker A: But look back to Q1 2019 and 96% of their business was lottery betting. And I think this was in Spain. But I could be wrong because I think there was then legal issues. I know they can talk about rental issues where they. They effectively will want to do lottery betting because you know you've got the two. You've got onse, the kind of Spanish blind charity lottery which just scratch cards on the streets and then you've got lottery as the main one.
[00:24:20] Speaker B: I think they'll have a partnership or they can provide the online offering for onse, don't they?
[00:24:26] Speaker A: Yeah, they do on say. But lottery ass doesn't really have an online offering to their effects. I'm pretty sure it's the biggest mustering. Well if not it's definitely in Europe actually tried to go around Covid time looked to float it, the government's float it. They wanted to have a large share for retail investors for individual scratch investments. Actually when I was at.
When I've been there, Credit Suisse. No, no, this wasn't Covid. This is well before COVID No, I was probably as a Barclays, I think. And so this would be after the financial crisis and they were looking to raise money by selling it. They're selling it actually for a very good price. But it's because no one believed that the Spanish government wouldn't then just increase all the taxes and try and get more money, etc. But my understanding is that. So it collapsed at the last minute. They pulled it. My understanding was at the time that is because suddenly they realized that if all these retail investors, these individual Spanish citizens are going to be take a stake in it, how are they going to pay for it? They're going to withdraw obviously money from their savings etc from the banks and suddenly the Spanish banks won't be able to cope with having all of this money just pull out in this one actually one day in order for them to buy the lottery. But anyway, it's a different thing.
[00:25:36] Speaker B: That's.
[00:25:37] Speaker A: Yeah. So lottery has huge lottery and they're effectively taking advantage of that. From memory, it's a long time ago, I believe that a lot of their lottery betting thing was they're taking advantage of that by saying, you know, effectively use our online platform so you can have access to this lottery but have a good online product.
And that wasn't allowed. There could be other lottery betting. But yeah, so in 2019 they really switched and that's when they acquired Lotto 24 I think then.
And yeah, built effectively from. They had the expertise etc, but they've gone from a lottery betting business and just completely switched now into this German focused lottery brokerage business, moved headquarters back to Germany. So fair play. What a transition from a business where they were 96% of their revenues was like, it's not sustainable to do this. There's too much pressure, you know, we're going to lose our whole business or we've had to shut down all of our business but now transition into this, you know, successful, profitable business in Germany that yeah, you know, now they're allowed to get gains on. You think it's just gonna grow even more.
[00:26:41] Speaker B: Listen, it's a good business and as you say, I think it is quite a kind of like remarkable, you know, kind of model to transition. It also is similar actually to fdj. They've got a kind of venture capital arm.
The reason why I bring that up is one of their kind of investments which I think FDJ funnily enough is also an investor in. It's a company called Random State, which is a Swedish kind of online lottery. I think they do some bingo products but they are one of the GCGRA licensees in the uae, which is quite interesting.
[00:27:19] Speaker A: So I think we need to moderate our use of the term interesting.
[00:27:22] Speaker B: Fascinating.
[00:27:23] Speaker A: Maybe. Well, I've got A couple of questions for you. Okay, One of the notes we've gone over for is Zeal appointed Dr. Strefan Tervasser as a new CEO, effective 15 September 2025.
That was from. That was in July. Why did they change the CEO? I have no idea. This question for you.
[00:27:43] Speaker B: Well, Helmut Becker or Dr. Helmut Becker, he was. I think he moved up from CFO to CEO and it was decided because he's working on a contract basis. So I think his contract was up end of the year at the start of next. And he basically said that he wasn't going to renew it.
[00:28:02] Speaker A: And the second question, okay, why are a large proportion of senior people in Germany called Doctor?
[00:28:10] Speaker B: Because they have a document? Well, yeah, I mean, basically they have a. They have kind of like higher qualifications, earn a doctorate and then go into the workforce.
[00:28:21] Speaker A: So is that. Is that very common in Germany for a lot more people to do doctorates or we just happen to see them more at this higher level?
[00:28:29] Speaker B: You do see that a lot. Like at kind of senior level, a lot of people, you know, kind of are kind of like styled as kind of like doctor, you know, because I.
[00:28:39] Speaker A: Was looking at getting a doctorate just because I thought it would look quite cool to be introduced as Dr. Ed Birkin.
And people then think what I was talking about wasn't complete crap because, you know, you've got a doctorate, so you must be, you know, you must know your shit. It just seems so much effort.
[00:28:53] Speaker B: You could try for an honorary doctorate.
[00:28:55] Speaker A: That would probably be even harder because people would actually have to. I backed myself to get a normal doctorate because I think I'm good enough to actually do the work okay, if I had the time. But to have someone who actually thinks I deserve it without me just doing things, I mean, that's a lot harder. They're going to give me that.
[00:29:11] Speaker B: That's the difficult thing. I mean, I'm pretty sure that Ross Kemp, Grant Mitchell from EastEnders has a doctorate because it was voted.
[00:29:17] Speaker A: Voted by who?
[00:29:18] Speaker B: Whichever uni gave him the doctorate.
[00:29:20] Speaker A: Ok, so it's.
[00:29:22] Speaker B: So, yes, you need to be. So that's kind of like my benchmark. You need to be kind of like Grant Mitchell. Levels of.
[00:29:29] Speaker A: Yeah, but he probably didn't get it from his standards. He probably did it for his. He does like gang stuff. Doesn't he spell it.
Holds a doctorate.
So he was at Loughborough Mansion, training at Weber Douglas.
Doctoral degree.
[00:29:45] Speaker B: Can doctorates just be given out depending on.
[00:29:48] Speaker A: You don't have to. Been to that university.
[00:29:49] Speaker B: I'm pretty sure Just kind of like it's almost just devote for them as a kind of leader in their field.
[00:29:55] Speaker A: He attended Shenfield High School as an Essex boy.
[00:29:59] Speaker B: But anyway, enough about grant.
[00:30:02] Speaker A: Be honest. Universities, that'd be the easiest ones. Right. Anyway, so what are we talking about next?
[00:30:07] Speaker B: Yes, what are we talking about next?
[00:30:09] Speaker A: We need to do some random country generators. 35 minutes we've been talking about a lot of crap and I haven't even ranted and I don't think we've insulted anyone so.
[00:30:17] Speaker B: Well, let's hold off on the rant to next week.
So what countries are we talking about?
[00:30:23] Speaker A: We came to say professional.
Just think we've even sworn Afghanistan came up.
[00:30:30] Speaker B: I think we have a policy against unregulated or that.
[00:30:35] Speaker A: Right. What do you know about Malawi?
[00:30:39] Speaker B: Pretty small market. There was a push to regulate some product around 2019 so we've just covered that.
[00:30:48] Speaker A: Then Indonesia A.
[00:30:49] Speaker B: Well, I mean it's a majority Muslim market and it's unreal.
[00:30:53] Speaker A: Okay, Georgia, there you go. One's called Georgia.
[00:30:56] Speaker B: Capital Tbilisi.
[00:30:57] Speaker A: I don't know how to say that.
[00:30:58] Speaker B: Population 30 million, 34.
[00:31:01] Speaker A: I'm not going to ask you the national flower but I am going to ask you the national dish gone.
[00:31:08] Speaker B: Is it that sort of like bread bowl with like butter in it?
[00:31:11] Speaker A: How the hell do you know that? Khachapuri, traditional dish of cheese filled bread fill in the center with a mixture of cheese and sometimes eggs rather ingredients. I, I don't have to say this. I'm generally impressed. Okay, right, so we are doing Georgia then need the H2 website.
Companies.
Companies. So as before, operator or supplier?
[00:31:34] Speaker B: Operator.
[00:31:34] Speaker A: Operator. So 1, 2, 3, 3, 4. So between 1 and 12. 6. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 6.
Between 1 and 7, 3.
[00:31:52] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:31:53] Speaker A: Would you believe we've just got a Georgian company?
[00:31:56] Speaker B: No, we haven't.
[00:31:57] Speaker A: No, we haven't. Group potish.
[00:31:59] Speaker B: Group partish.
[00:32:01] Speaker A: I mean to be honest, we should probably just cut a load of stuff. We talked about the French casino market and save it for next week. But we're not going to do that. We will find new food. Fascinating information as always.
[00:32:11] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:32:11] Speaker A: So actually we are currently in the process of just finalizing our update for our France model. So that actually works relatively well because it's one of those where. So it's a bit annoying on the data side. So when you have markets we've covered for a long time like France, you know, because of how reporting change and regulations change, just the models become particularly unwieldy and lots of KPIs are no longer reported. So we've kind of had to strip it down and start again, try and make things more user friendly.
Your website.
[00:32:41] Speaker B: In process.
In process.
But anyway, everyone, thank you very much for joining us again. Next week we will be talking about Georgia, the country, not the state and group Partouche. So join us on episode 18 of Right to the Source. See you.
