Episode 33: Are prediction markets overstated for March Madness?

[00:00:00] Speaker A: Foreign. Welcome back to Write to the Source. My name is Robin Harrison and I'm here, as ever, with the Carlton to my will, Mr. Ed Birkin. Ed, how are you this fine afternoon? [00:00:26] Speaker B: I am good, thank you. And I'd like. I'm pretty sure you're Carlton. Why am I. I do know this one. I do know this one. [00:00:36] Speaker A: All right. [00:00:37] Speaker B: In West Philadelphia, born and raised in the playground is where I spend most of my days. I can do the whole of it, [00:00:43] Speaker A: but chilling out, nice and relaxing, all cool and shooting. Some people outside of the school and a couple of guys got into one little fight. My mom [00:00:56] Speaker B: climbed. Yeah. [00:00:58] Speaker A: So and so. Yes, yes, that. The Fresh. [00:01:01] Speaker B: The Fresh Prince of Bel Air. Will Smith's Will Smith's best song, in your view. [00:01:12] Speaker A: Yeah, probably because it's connected to that program, which was great. Most of his other songs were kind of. [00:01:20] Speaker B: I know. I was asking what your viewers have. The best song. That's not the best song, surely. [00:01:27] Speaker A: Wait, what else? What else is better than the Fresh Prince? Thim t. [00:01:33] Speaker B: I. I actually bought his album when I was younger, when I was a school. [00:01:38] Speaker A: Oh. Big release. All right. Okay. [00:01:41] Speaker B: I think that's the one that preceded it because I would have been. Yeah, I would have been about 98, I reckon. 1998. I mean, I quite like. Even though it's a terrible film. Wicked Wild, Wild West. [00:01:55] Speaker A: That was quite a good song. [00:01:58] Speaker B: Two of Us. [00:01:59] Speaker A: Just two of us. [00:02:02] Speaker B: That's quite poignant. Boom. Shake the room. [00:02:06] Speaker A: Oh, yeah. That was him, wasn't it? [00:02:09] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:02:10] Speaker A: I mean, it just. I mean, the Men in Black bomb was quite good. [00:02:15] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:02:15] Speaker A: Okay, all right, fair enough, fair enough. His UVRA is slightly better. Have vivid memories of that one he did recently where he's just saying, I like girls, girls, girls. That was terrible. [00:02:27] Speaker B: Is. Is he. Is he still sidelined after slapping Chris Rock? Chris Rock. [00:02:35] Speaker A: I mean, I think I would hope so. [00:02:42] Speaker B: I. I haven't seen him in any films. I don't believe recently he's. [00:02:45] Speaker A: I think he's done since then. [00:02:48] Speaker B: No. [00:02:49] Speaker A: I don't know if there's been a. I'm not sure if there's been a new one. Weirdly, the same year that he. That. That this lap happened, I saw Chris Rock at the comedy seller in New York. [00:03:02] Speaker B: Okay. [00:03:02] Speaker A: Yeah. And it was. I mean, obviously it's very funny. He's Chris Rock. He is very funny. But it was just. [00:03:10] Speaker B: Let's, let's. Let's be honest. The BETMG adverts are terrible. In my view. [00:03:17] Speaker A: It's not his best work, but I mean, well, I mean, it's. It's generic. You know, you've got someone like Chris Rock and it's fairly generic advert. But when. When we saw him at the Comedy Cellar, he just had turned up. So at the end of the bill, he came on and he did about 20 minutes, and at the start he said. He walked up on stage and he stood there for a second and he just said, nobody approached the stage. And weirdly, like, my first thought was I could slap him from here. [00:04:00] Speaker B: So he said that being serious, nobody approached the stage. [00:04:04] Speaker A: I mean, come on. He was joking. [00:04:06] Speaker B: Oh, I don't know. I wasn't there. [00:04:09] Speaker A: No, you weren't. But, yeah, some of the standup that he did. It was then in the show that I think was actually live streamed to Netflix originally, which is where he actually talked about it. And it was a very good stand up show. I do enjoy a bit of stand up. Okay. Yeah. [00:04:24] Speaker B: Were you a fan of Uncle Phil? [00:04:27] Speaker A: Of course. [00:04:28] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:04:29] Speaker A: Who wasn't exactly. He'd have to be a monster not to like Uncle Phil, who was also the voice of Shredder in the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles cartoon. [00:04:43] Speaker B: Was he? [00:04:44] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:04:44] Speaker B: I didn't know that. I've gone Uncle Phil, dear. He's. He's a nice guy as well. Yeah. Wednesday games with him. [00:04:51] Speaker A: Nice. [00:04:52] Speaker B: But he turned me into Sheffield Wednesday fan, so actually he's got a lot to answer for. [00:04:56] Speaker A: Imagine. You're probably not particularly grateful about that. No. [00:05:01] Speaker B: But, you know, you take the rough with the smooth. [00:05:03] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. [00:05:04] Speaker B: Owns a good pub in the Peak District. Anyone up there? I'll give you the recommendation. Barrel in Breton. There you go. Boom. [00:05:10] Speaker A: There you go. Lovely. [00:05:11] Speaker B: You can have that if. If I. Well, I get free beer there in a way, but I can claim that as sponsorships. We've now had our first sponsor of the podcast. [00:05:20] Speaker A: Wow. [00:05:20] Speaker B: Baron at Breton. There you go. [00:05:22] Speaker A: We're in the big leagues now. [00:05:24] Speaker B: We are. We are. Right, what are we talking about this week, Robin? [00:05:28] Speaker A: Right, so what do you want to talk about? Let's start by talking about the European Court of Justice. That sounds fun. Doesn't, does. [00:05:39] Speaker B: Oh, fun fact. Bowling at Breton. On a good day, you can see five counties. [00:05:44] Speaker A: Can you? Which five? [00:05:48] Speaker B: How good's your geography? It's in the Peak District. [00:05:51] Speaker A: My geography's terrible. I thought Kent was a city until I was in my twenties. [00:05:58] Speaker B: Derbyshire, Yorkshire, Lancashire. I want to say Staffordshire and Lincolnshire, [00:06:07] Speaker A: but I feel you should know this about our sponsors. [00:06:14] Speaker B: Yeah, well, I know quite a bit about the sponsors. Great steak, pie, good food. Good views. You can see so opposite when you're standing at the top of the outside of the pub at the car park shop, dip down into the valley. It's in Hope Valley. And then the other side, there's a hill that goes down to the valley, obviously. [00:06:36] Speaker A: Okay. [00:06:36] Speaker B: And that's where in one of the recent Mission Impossibles. Don't know which one because there's been about 30. Tom Cruise. They built. They spent millions. Actually built a railway line that went over the edge for. They filmed a bit where the train. I haven't seen that train went off the. The edge of the line and blew up. And so I just assumed they'd do it all through cgi, but they actually built a railway track and you can see practical effects. [00:07:01] Speaker A: I mean that's not even practical effect. So that's just building and crashing a train. [00:07:06] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:07:07] Speaker A: Practical destruction. [00:07:09] Speaker B: Tom Cruise went to the local fish and chip shop just down the hill. [00:07:12] Speaker A: Nice. [00:07:13] Speaker B: There you go. A little fat. Anyway. Yeah. Let's talk about European court proceedings for people trying to get their losses back. Yes. You make a bet, you lose it and suddenly you deserve to be refunded. [00:07:28] Speaker A: Well, well, it's, it's. I suppose it's really helpful to get a taster of where you're going to fall in this whole argument. But yeah, I mean, obviously this way. Obviously this week a. I can't remember the name of the Advocate General but you know, I. ECG court official basically came out, was one of the first, I suppose in theory, clear rulings on player losses. And I mean essentially they're saying that local. Yeah, I mean it's basically. [00:08:06] Speaker B: It wasn't a clay rolling on thing. [00:08:08] Speaker A: No, no, no. Well, this is the thing. This is the thing I'm trying to kind of say. Well, this offers some kind of clarity. It absolutely does not. [00:08:14] Speaker B: Let's, let's. Let's remind people there's effectively three points to it. Yeah. One, one that, you know, people are saying we want. The lost players are saying that because it's illegal, we want to scale our losses back. [00:08:27] Speaker A: Because it's not regular or. No, it's because the provider is not locally licensed. This is. In this particular case, this pertains to typical obviously German operator. German case. During this period in question. [00:08:42] Speaker B: The second part of it. Yes, during the period in question, Tibco didn't have a license, they didn't have [00:08:48] Speaker A: a license, but there wasn't a working licensing system. Because the German regulatory progress for sports betting has been, I think the most charitable way to put it is an absolute shit show. First of all, it was meant to be a fixed number of licenses going out to tender. They selected some, this was challenged. Then there was the idea that there would be this, you know, essentially no limit in the number of licensees. But then certain elements such as tax rates remained prohibitively high. Controls around spin speeds, stake limits per spin, and on the sports, on the [00:09:38] Speaker B: sports bit, typically we're paying tax, but they couldn't get a license. So licensing didn't actually happen until October 2020. But that's the one bit. So there's one bit of people wanting the money back to the tax. There's the other bit they're talking about that actually still trying to argue Malta, that, you know, that their license counts and that shouldn't have the individual stays. Then also, you've got Malta saying that effectively, it doesn't matter what any individual state says, nothing can be enforced against Maltese companies because we're more important than the, the European law. Now all this has come down on. [00:10:09] Speaker A: I mean, that, that's, that's, that's a slight distortion and oversimplification. I mean, essentially with Bill 55, Malta is, if it is a legal and regulated activity in Malta and its licensee is carrying this out, no matter where it is in Europe, it is, you know, protected from prosecution. I mean, I think ultimately this ruling, where it really gives clarity is on how Bill 55 is going to be treated and that other European member states are going to just look at and go, no, that's not how this works. Like, that's where I think, you know, [00:10:49] Speaker B: I think it gives clarity on that. All it's saying is that states have a right to regulate their own gambling markets, which we've known. Like, that's. [00:10:57] Speaker A: Not. [00:10:58] Speaker B: Everyone knows that. Everyone accepts that. [00:10:59] Speaker A: Yeah. But I mean, it's also that local, local, local laws do apply. I think that's the other element to this. Local laws do apply [00:11:09] Speaker B: without the local market, but they haven't, they haven't really said that, you know, Malta can't just say they haven't said that. I believe that, you know, you can enforce stuff against Maltese licensed operators that Malta, you know, Malta's protection, but hasn't really been bought into it, has it, in the ruling. It's pretty much just said that local laws apply there in the local jurisdiction, which is the only bit that everyone knew anyway and was completely uncontentious. We don't know if people can. What. We still don't know from my, my limited understanding of it. This doesn't give Any clarity on whether they can get their losses back and if they are allowed to do that, whether then Malta kind of says actually no, screw you, you can't. [00:11:57] Speaker A: But no, but equally I feel that with Bill 55, it kind of says that even if Malta says that its people are protected, if they this overseas that can be applied or it kind of, it's almost like a step towards that. [00:12:17] Speaker B: When we talk about this next time we should probably get a lawyer on who knows what they're talking about. [00:12:21] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:12:22] Speaker B: Then maybe they'd make it even more boring than we're making it right now, which would be a challenge. But you know, lawyers can do that. [00:12:27] Speaker A: I don't know if we're making it boring. I mean it's just essentially it's a naughty case. I mean like at the core of it, you have a player's, as you said early in the episode, deciding that they lost and therefore they have a right to have that money back. I mean essentially they entered into a contract to stake this money. I mean if they'd won a shitload of money, are they going to be then coming back and saying, well there wasn't, there wasn't a, like they didn't have a license. So yes, I've won a grand, better give that back. You know, what's your sort code? What's your account number? [00:13:12] Speaker B: Exactly. This may not surprise you, my view on this but my view is that the people who want their money back are idiots and unreasonable. And Malta's stance on this is stupid and unreasonable. It is very clear that if you have local licensing, I don't care if you've got Maltese license, you have to respect that. And it should be very clear to anyone with half a brain that people who you know, use unlicensed operators, let's be fair, Typico is, is a. They may not have had it technically had a license. An online charlatans. [00:13:49] Speaker A: No, it's like they wouldn't have had an online license. They obviously had, you know, betting shop licenses. I mean this is a legitimate company and I think. [00:13:58] Speaker B: No, no, no, no actually because I was looking at this today because I was actually read thing the GGL's 2020 reports and on that they don't include in the license market, they only include betting, even land based betting shop revenues from October 2020. So technically even the, from my reading of the GGL's reports, even the betting shops weren't officially licensed. But look, they, for all intents and purposes of paying tax, they're there and [00:14:24] Speaker A: all of that, they're a legitimate operator contributing to society. So I think even to claim that typical is an unlicense. This is, you know, ridiculous. [00:14:37] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean technically they are licensed, but yeah, I get it. It's not, it's not like you've got some. No, it's not like Oran or, you know, I mean, clearly we can't say they're not great licensing places, but, you know, someone without any license anywhere, you know, these are not typical is, is a, from what everyone understands, a well run, solid, legitimate, fair business. Yeah. So, I mean, the whole case is a bit of a joke, to be honest, but it has repercussions, of course. [00:15:07] Speaker A: And there are, there are further. Obviously there are other similar cases in the works. And, and I think, even if, even if we see these cases as a bit daft, I mean ultimately they do potentially have fairly hefty impacts on operators. Like there's a few companies that have obviously been, you know, kind of cited, such as Mr. Green and Evoke or 888, which were obviously owned by Evoke, which is not in the best place as a business. But. No, but yeah, look, these, it's, it's kind of frustrating in the, the first sort of rumbling from the ECG and what this is actually going to entail has really kind of come to, you know, something fairly minor. I mean, like maybe I'm kind of looking into it too much by trying to pull out the Malta Bill 55 stuff, which we probably should have explained. Blankets, Malta licenses from pros, you know, from prosecution, provided the activity they're conducting is legal and regulated in Malta. [00:16:30] Speaker B: Yeah, it's, I mean, which again, I think, yes, it simplified it, but they're trying to effectively supersede other national laws. But yeah, I mean, I think the, the, the, the, the ruling, the verdict, whatever it's called, is just a bit of nothingness. So yeah, it's quite frustrating and it will just continue to drag on and on and on. [00:16:49] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:16:49] Speaker B: So let's talk about something that does have, don't mind getting this. Does have some. [00:16:55] Speaker A: Must have. Come on, come on. [00:17:01] Speaker B: Nothingness. [00:17:01] Speaker A: Make the transition. Non. Nothingness. Oh my God, that was terrible. [00:17:06] Speaker B: Well, no, because we didn't end, we didn't end well enough on the previous one. It's all a bit of nothingness. [00:17:11] Speaker A: Well, just. Yeah, it's a bit nothing. It's going to go on and on. What about something like speaking as something that goes on and on over the course of March or has a finite [00:17:23] Speaker B: end that will be over soon. Okay, insert, insert really smooth transition here. [00:17:35] Speaker A: Yes. Yeah. All right. Yeah. March Madness. So March Madness. So why don't we start? March Madness is the NCAA Division 1 college basketball tournament. College basketball, yeah, tournament. So it's huge event, publicly televised. Everyone tries to create a bracket, you know, and essentially predict the flow of the teams from the initial seeding to the final. Obviously, no one has ever done this because it's border and impossible. [00:18:19] Speaker B: It's a knockout competition. [00:18:21] Speaker A: Yes, A tournament. [00:18:23] Speaker B: Yeah, I know World Cup's a tournament, but you still have. You still have group stages, so. Just saying, it's a pure knockout competition. [00:18:30] Speaker A: All right. [00:18:31] Speaker B: And. Yes. What are the odds of. Of getting it. Of. Of getting it right [00:18:38] Speaker A: fast? [00:18:42] Speaker B: 1 in 9.22 quintillion. [00:18:46] Speaker A: 1 in 9.22 quintillion, which is more [00:18:50] Speaker B: than 9 billion billions. [00:18:54] Speaker A: So how many zeros in the quintillion? [00:18:58] Speaker B: Billion. So there's nine in a billion. So 18. Yeah, Yeah. Thousand. [00:19:11] Speaker A: Really? Yeah, yeah. [00:19:13] Speaker B: Why is it. You think 18 zeros. [00:19:21] Speaker A: 18 zeros. Wow. But anyway, yeah, March Madness. So obviously, I imagine that the. In that the most trusted data and intelligence in the global gaming industry, or the purveyors of that sort of stuff would have a bit of a steer for our three to four listeners on how much is going to be wagered on the tournament. [00:19:49] Speaker B: So this is interesting. It's a thousand times larger than a quadrillion, which is 15 zeros, and a thousand times smaller than a sextillion. So. Which contains six groups. So actually. So that's how it works. So you should then have a. Oh, yeah, a trillion. Obviously it's a billion trillion. So it goes up. So every time it's a thousand of them, it goes up. So you've got million, trillion, quadrillion, quintillion, sextillion. Septillion, probably, yeah. Septillion, [00:20:27] Speaker A: yeah. [00:20:27] Speaker B: Well, so I never knew that. But yes, we do actually have data on this, Robin. Good. [00:20:32] Speaker A: Fantastic. [00:20:33] Speaker B: That is a good segue. You see? I see how you brought that in seamlessly. You see, that's because of your media background, your wordsmithery. [00:20:43] Speaker A: My word, Smithery taking letters, crafting them into sentences. [00:20:51] Speaker B: So did you know, Robin, that March Madness is the single most bet on competition in the world? [00:21:02] Speaker A: I did, actually. [00:21:04] Speaker B: Okay, good. You did not know about the quadrillion, did you? No. [00:21:13] Speaker A: No. [00:21:14] Speaker B: Okay, take. Take a wild guess and bear in mind, I think I sent you my estimates a few weeks ago, so you should have read them. How much? We believe that the legal US Sportsbook handle will be on March Madness. [00:21:32] Speaker A: My mind's going totally blank. [00:21:33] Speaker B: And, and to clarify. And why do you think about that? So when I say the most bet on event, the most bet on individual game is the super bowl. But obviously this is over 63 games. So it's, you know, when you take the whole event and Marsh Madness. So the single tournament. So we have US$4 billion of handle. Now in the UK or elsewhere in the world, we wouldn't talk about handle because it's not really that relevant. But in the US they love to talk about handle because it's a big number. So yeah, 4 billion of handle. And that's up from 3 points in our view, 3.7 billion last year. So 7% increase. [00:22:15] Speaker A: Wow. [00:22:16] Speaker B: Our super bowl was down. So yeah, who knows if this can ride. And that's across the men's and the women's tournament actually. [00:22:22] Speaker A: Right. [00:22:23] Speaker B: More than 63 games. However, the elephant in the room and if it's down, which will be blamed on is these pesky prediction markets. [00:22:36] Speaker A: Prediction markets. You never mentioned them before. [00:22:39] Speaker B: No, I love prediction markets. They're so innovative. We've never seen. Oh yeah, it's actually one of your guys, One of your guys wrote a thing on igb, didn't he, about prediction markets. And the interviewed Mark DAV Davis, who is one of the founders of Betfair, who's like every single discussion about it is what we had decades ago in Europe with exchanges. This is literally the identical thing. Yeah, but some people believe that I. Gaming only started in, you know, 2018, so in that case maybe it is new. But anyway, prediction markets. So we reckon that then it's a bit harder to estimate, but forecast. But we give it a go. There'll be $1.6 billion of volume on prediction markets for this. And this is not like stupid side bets. This is actually on the tournament. But volume on prediction markets is not the equivalent of handle. So we divide it by three. We've seen people try and estimate it between two and four times, but roughly three times. So that equates to 530 million of handle equivalent on top of the sports books. Now this is where I think it's controversial that actually if sports books don't do particularly well on this, I think the blaming prediction markets is very disingenuous because 530 million of handle, you know, seems, seems like a lot, you know, it's still a big chunk when you're looking at 4 billion. [00:24:06] Speaker A: Yeah, of course. [00:24:07] Speaker B: But don't, don't forget that you know, over 40 of or 40ish percent of the US doesn't have legal sports betting. In terms of population. If you're looking at like you know California, you've got Texas, you know big states. Okay. Yeah, depends where you're counting Florida in this but open to commercial books. Okay. So it would make logical sense that where there is not the legal competition that these prediction markets are going to over index. Yeah. More people like flight, more people in Texas would be using it than they would in Pennsylvania by the fact that in Pennsylvania there's a competition of FanDuel, DraftKings, MGM etc. Etc. [00:24:54] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:24:55] Speaker B: So on that basis we actually think in the states where legal sports betting is where competition operators it's a handle equivalent volume of 135 to 150 million. So actually a very very small amount. So that's. And then when you take that into the equator of three that's three and a half percent of the total market handle and they make actually a lot less revenue. So it equates to about 2 less than 2% of market GGR. But let's just stick with handle 3 and a half percent. So if you suddenly see handle down by 10 year on year then you know all low growth then to start blaming on the prediction markets I think it's just very disingenuous. [00:25:38] Speaker A: So what's then, what's then driving down handle for sports also as well? [00:25:47] Speaker B: There is a portion of this, this handle equivalent, this volume that's being taken by you know, 18 to 20 year olds that aren't allowed to. So. So that's not coming off the legal sports book anyway. [00:25:59] Speaker A: Yeah, no, that means. [00:26:03] Speaker B: Well actually we think handles gonna be up slightly. You know, if it's not then you know. [00:26:12] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. So. So if it's not what sorry? [00:26:17] Speaker B: And you go well would it be. I mean there's a couple things. Is it. I mean potentially you know we could be completely wrong and you know it could be prediction markets eating in more than than we we are estimating. But I don't think that's the case. Is it a general macroeconomic slowdown, you know, gas prices going up quite frankly in the US that becomes a big issue. I know we haven't really talked about what's happening in release but you know a lot of people care about gas prices so cost inflation with things like that, that could, that could have an impact. We've done the analysis on it. I haven't looked in terms of the interest in the games. I imagine it will be as interesting as now other ones. I've gotten her name. This is Bad. I know there's huge interest in the women's one a couple of years ago when Caitlin Clark. Yes. And she was breaking all the records so you won't have as much interest on that. But then again the women. There's a lot more interest in the women's because of that last year. Even though I think she'd already moved to the WNBA at that point. [00:27:19] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. [00:27:23] Speaker B: So there's that. And then the other bit is, you know, are a lot of handle is driven quite frankly by bonusing and free bets. So you know, if operators are starting to pull back on that and you know to try and whether it's because there's increased taxes or whatever reasons or pressure on profitability. I mean let's be honest, share prices of U.S. focused sports books have taken a bit of a beating recently. So if the viewers are going to pull back on promotional activity to try and get a higher net win revenue and to boost profit then that is going to show be amplified in the handle. So they would be the two main reasons. So quite frankly if I was saying you've got three reasons of promotional activity. If that's pulled back and this is if it goes down and we're not. I don't think it will do promotional activity, macro headwinds and prediction markets. I would put personally prediction markets as the least important of those. [00:28:22] Speaker A: Okay. In my view that's very interesting. I think what's also interesting is obviously we're starting to see the prediction markets leaders, you know, like the poly markets Kalshis, which let's face it are the new. Are the new sort of like the big companies, like the big men on campus. We've seen them launch in Brazil, seen them get banned from the Netherlands, banned in Argentina. [00:28:54] Speaker B: Yeah, but let's put this in context. [00:28:56] Speaker A: They launched in Brazil, the Netherlands and Argentina. [00:29:00] Speaker B: Yeah. But in Brazil, not sports betting. Yeah. Which sports betting makes up 90% of revenues. So you know, that's just this Brazil is not going to be a big market for them. [00:29:11] Speaker A: No. [00:29:12] Speaker B: Because they don't have 90 of their revenue generation there. And the only way they will get that in my view that I'm very certain of is if they have, you know, effectively sign up as a sports betting operator or betting exchange. They are not going to be able to get around and launch sports betting, you know, with some argument, you know about it's a financial contract. So they've got no chance. They've been thrown out of Argentina, thrown out of Netherlands. I think it's France has kind of said that they're not interested in them. [00:29:46] Speaker A: So France, I don't know, I mean, France is an interesting one because a few years ago there was a company called so Rare, which might still actually be going, but they were, it was almost a sort of crypto based, almost trading card game. And this was, you know, it was big, it was a bit of a phenomenon. It was, I think it was a unicorn, you know, so it was like valued over 1 billion. Early on, the founders seemed to have the year of a Macron. But ANJ essentially came in and said, no, no, no, this is too much like gambling. So I mean, if that's so that's, you know, this kind of, you know, phenomenon kind of like, you know, big company coming in of all places. You expect someone like ANJ to be very kind of clear and unambiguous about what it sees as gambling and what it doesn't. And just on prediction markets in the us someone shared a tweet with me that was from the Governor of Utah, funnily enough, guy called Spencer Cox. It was in response to a post or a kind of little video by the chair of the cftc, the Commodities Future Trading Commission, basically saying, yeah, so basically he was kind of saying, yeah, you know, we'll protect the rights of prediction markets operators, all this kind of stuff, you know, a big video. It's like, you know, we'll see you in court, that kind of thing. And the Governor of Utah replied, I didn't realize you held a, you know, kind of like jurisdiction over kind of, you know, derivative such as LeBron James rebounds. I just quite like that, you know, you thought it was a great little comeback, that is. [00:31:37] Speaker B: But I tell you what, for anyone who hasn't seen it, please look up the Sellig chairman selling of the ctfc. Ctfc, yeah, and cftc. Cftc. And look at his. It is his video on it. It is the most ridiculous, ridiculous thing in the world. It is so comical. I mean, you wouldn't sketch, you wouldn't believe this is actually real. [00:32:07] Speaker A: You also wonder like as a federal agency, as someone regulating a market, like maybe we've just been lucky with the regulators we've had in gambling, which are largely kind of, you know, whether or not the regulations are enforcing our fair or actually protect players and preserve the regulated market. Generally, they're pretty straight down the line, wary about showing any kind of sign of bias, anything like that. And then you get the chairman of the regulatory body coming out and saying, yeah, we're on your side, we're going to protect you like, he should be [00:32:51] Speaker B: saying, right, we're gonna, we're gonna protect these businesses that have just grown out of really nowhere because of sports betting, which to anyone with half a brain, this is sports betting. And that happened to like have big investors. Is the son of my boss. I mean. Okay, yeah, yeah. [00:33:12] Speaker A: I mean, there was, there was another. I think it was on LinkedIn, actually. I think it was. Someone had done some kind of substack article. It wasn't something they'd come across before, but they made quite an interesting comparison between like a Polymarka, a Kalshay and Juul. Like J U U L Remember that it was an early kind of vaping product. Actually. I don't know if it was that early. Yeah, yeah, they were rubbish, weren't they? Yeah, they didn't last. You know, they, they disappeared. You know, you had, you had two kind of puffs and whatever flavor and whatever nicotine liquid was in it disappeared or terrible. But they pointed out that this was valued in, you know, kind of like the tens of billions. This kind of, you know, essentially this kind of like this is going to revolutionize the world. And ultimately, first of all, they were largely doing it because, you know, through targeting younger people. So instead of like being kind of a smoking cessation tool, it was get young people into this. It's cool. And also we're not getting them onto cigarettes. [00:34:27] Speaker B: Yeah. I mean, at the end of the day, if you're doing watermelon flavor vapes, like it's. Well, I mean, you probably vape with watermelon, but quite frankly, I don't really [00:34:36] Speaker A: like the watermelon flavor. I do have an iron brew flavored vape at the moment. [00:34:41] Speaker B: That is just a whole new avenue we could go down. But generally there is. It's very hard to believe that a lot of these especially disposable vapes are not aimed at kids. I mean, it is just. But anyway, that's a different thing. Yes. [00:34:53] Speaker A: Yeah, that's a different thing. But at the same time, essentially, and instead of these things kind of taking off and, you know, kind of like flying into the sky, people don't want young people addicted to nicotine, do they? And so ultimately, you know, more kind of like legislation came into the US to prevent that sort of thing. [00:35:17] Speaker B: I would, I don't really agree with that parallel because, yes, people don't want young people addicted to nicotine. However, I don't think there's going to be any federal government legislation that's going to try and slow down prediction markets. I said I, you know, they're looking to actively so then. And I'm not, I'm not saying because what, I'm not saying it's because of his boss's son. I think that was more of a point of, you know, I know, I know any view of impropriety wouldn't be there. So the fact they don't care about the view of interpreter is just quite astounding. But they are clearly pushing this and I don't think the federal government's going to stop it. It's going to come from the states. [00:36:01] Speaker A: Exactly, exactly. And this is, this is what I was trying to get to before your interruptions about watermelo melon flavored vapes essentially. Obviously in that situation it was the federal government that came down. In this situation it's going to be the states. But essentially what happened, Jewel is, I mean I think this post said it was worth like 700 million though, as opposed to, you know, 15 billion or whatever. So. And I just, the reason why I bring that up is I think it's very interesting how these things kind of like, kind of can like you know, fire up into there and then come back down to earth very quickly. And the thing is, broadly speaking, you don't see that with gambling companies there's always going to be the demand you [00:36:54] Speaker B: saw with NFTs and all that stuff. [00:36:56] Speaker A: Yeah, exactly. [00:36:57] Speaker B: With these hyped up shit. [00:37:00] Speaker A: Yeah. And, and let's face it, I mean, do you think this is overhyped? [00:37:07] Speaker B: Let's face it, we saw it with gambling companies, I mean let's, I mean. Well, I mean what, I'm not saying what the share price should or shouldn't be or what's fair, but, but DraftKings had a share price of 72 even after 60, $70 for, for quite a long time in 2021, you know, it went down to 11 point something and now four years later it's at 24. You know, there's, you know, stuff, stuff got hyped. Those companies got hyped initially and then came crashing down. Yeah, but I mean you think markets have been hyped unbelievably and. Yes, I think. Well as I said in my prediction at the beginning of the year, prediction market's gonna get screwed this year. I then thought I was wrong and it was going to take a lot longer with the Supreme Court and it will take a lot longer. [00:37:57] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:37:58] Speaker B: But actually seeing the Arizona governor and people having the balls to go, I don't really care what selling's saying. It's clearly a load of crap. We are going to stand up and fight. I think it's pretty clear they're not going to make any traction outside the US at all. Europe, South America, okay. They may get into a couple of countries like Brazil without sports. So who gives a. It is, it is not a new product. So any, any non US growth is gone and I think the states are going to be gonna be pushing back, you know, significantly. So I would not go anywhere near prediction markets, not the game investment advice. But I think this is massively a. [00:38:42] Speaker A: Yeah, I mean like. But as I say, I do think the gambling companies are here to stay because there is demand for their product. Yes, there are going to be fluctuations in the share price, but this is tried and test mechanics have stood the test of time and essentially these companies are all just kind of like iterations and evolutions of what was there previously. But with these products, I mean. Yeah, it's just like I feel the hype is at an entirely new level because it's. I mean that's partially going to come out of frustration because you know there's going to be an. It goes back to. I mean we've talked about it before GameStop when there was all the. I think it was on Robinhood. There was all those users that were pumping the share price and ultimately made kind of big gains. But it's that same kind of mentality, isn't it? [00:39:46] Speaker B: It's just hyped up. So the last podcast say last week but you know, you took it, you had to take a little break because you know, you're busy and apparently it isn't as important to you. [00:39:56] Speaker A: But I've got other things to do. I've got many, I've got many irons in the fire. [00:40:03] Speaker B: It's about priorities. But anyway, so our last podcast we were talking about Vegas. Yeah. And is this decline there? And I'll say no. It's just a bit of a pause in the. [00:40:16] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:40:17] Speaker B: Because of the strong growth we've had. Obviously they're not particularly sought after sexy stocks at the moment. And you've got everyone hyped up on this. Give me a share in a Las Vegas strip downtown, don't care bricks and mortar, boring casino over any of this prediction. I, I would not have be interested in any of it. As you say, gambling companies are here to stay. This is just a load of hyped up crap. In my view that's going to come spinning down. But what was that? Nft. I was trying to look at it Wasn't there a million dollars? [00:40:52] Speaker A: Bored Apes? I think was it Bored Apes? [00:40:57] Speaker B: It is a. Yeah, it's just like just what people was what people were selling. Like paying for these NFTs and they just can't be worth really. I know they're worth anything now. [00:41:16] Speaker A: There was one and it was owned by some kind of Internet man. Like you know when these kind of like influence influencers like Logan or Jake Paul, something like that, and they spent like probably hundreds of grab hundreds of thousands on it. I think they ended up selling it or it was even if they didn't sell it, it's now worth something like $80. I may have totally made up those figures but basically it was worth the shitload. Now it's worth barely anything. [00:41:51] Speaker B: There's an NFT. Okay, yeah, it says there's an NFT that March 2021 beeples everydays the first 5000 days sold at Christie's for $69.3 million. What? It doesn't. Doesn't look like NFT was talking about NFT and. But they weren't sure who sure did it and now they're confirmed anyway. Yeah, it was one person's gonna. But anyway they reckon here. I don't know how they do this, but according to the Internet, roughly 95% of NFT collections considered worthless or dead. [00:42:27] Speaker A: Wow. There were those ones that John Terry was promoting. [00:42:33] Speaker B: We don't talk about John Terry on this podcast. [00:42:35] Speaker A: Okay, okay. That feels like to come out of [00:42:39] Speaker B: talking about John Terry. [00:42:42] Speaker A: I was trying to move on and then you kept going on about John Terry. I feel like you do want to talk about John Terry. I don't really want to talk. [00:42:52] Speaker B: Nothing positive will come out of my mouth. So let's avoid a lawsuit and move on. [00:42:57] Speaker A: Okay, I think that feels like a good place to finish for this week. [00:43:02] Speaker B: Well, one final question, Robin. [00:43:04] Speaker A: What's up? [00:43:05] Speaker B: How much did Snoop Dogg pay for his nft? [00:43:09] Speaker A: A what is the NFT of? [00:43:13] Speaker B: I don't know. Put this on it. I'm moving on Instagram. Maybe I can still access it. So I don't know if this is even remotely true, but you know, who cares? Okay, well, I'm just reading a headline from Google, so it may not even be true, but apparently this is great. Listen to speak. It may not be true. In 2021, Snoop Dogg bought this NFT. This is probably a load of trying to say 1, 600 ETA at $7 billion. I mean clearly that's not true today it's worth $60,000. Comment below with your thoughts. It's just the whole insane. [00:43:44] Speaker A: Having said that, having just Googled Snoop Dogg nft, [00:43:51] Speaker B: well, you probably got the same clickbait comes up on your Internet as well. [00:43:54] Speaker A: It's all in July. Careful. In July 2025, Snoop Dogg released an NFT collection on Telegram, which sold out in 30 minutes. And how much do you think he made from it? [00:44:14] Speaker B: 20, 25? [00:44:16] Speaker A: Yeah, [00:44:20] Speaker B: I would say he made about $12 million. [00:44:28] Speaker A: Yeah. Did you just Google that in the background? Right. That is more than enough for this week. So everyone at home, thank you very much for watching or listening. We have enjoyed speaking to you and we'll be back with another episode next week. See you then.