First Impressions
The gambling world is preparing for the imminent launch of ESPN Bet, and one question that will be answered immediately is: Was it worth the wait?
The Bulletin Board
VIEWS: Did ESPN Bet outsmart everyone with its November launch timetable?
BEYOND the HEADLINE: ESPN Bet scrutinized in Massachusetts.
NEWS: CNIGA Chairman makes the case for SB 549, which would provide tribes with a pathway to sue California cardrooms.
VIEWS: Another wrinkle that could complicate Missouri’s efforts to legalize sports betting has emerged.
NEWS: The Ontario online poker market is the best in North America.
AROUND the WATERCOOLER: Our strange obsession with Mattress Mack.
STRAY THOUGHTS: Consistency over time.
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Scrutinizing ESPN Bet’s November Launch
In one of its first big decisions, ESPN Bet chose to forego the start of the NFL and college football season and launch in November.
Dustin Gouker did an excellent job explaining the pros and cons of a November vs. September launch in his monthly Between the Lines, American Gaming Report for Catena Media, which I’ll use as a launchpad for my thoughts.
Gouker highlighted three positives of launching in November (paraphrased below):
With three major sports in action (football, basketball, and hockey), November is a top month on the sports calendar.
Acquisition costs are lower than at the start of the NFL season, which could be a good time to “deploy a good bonus offer and more marketing spend.”
You only get one chance to make a first impression, and even though the backend will remain relatively unchanged, rushing the rebrand could have led to an unforced error that a new entry in highly competitive markets cannot afford.
And on the negative side of the ledger, he pointed to:
A late arrival means many potential customers have already settled in at competitors’ sportsbooks - which explains why acquisition costs are lower. “It’s difficult to understate the critical mass of people looking to start betting or reactivate with sportsbook offers in early September.”
Can PENN hold onto its existing customer base (likely a mixture of PENN and Barstool customers) following the rebrand? “You have to imagine some or even a lot of them [Barstool customers] will leave.”
On the final point, I’d venture that most “Stoolies” who care about the rebrand have already left the site and are betting elsewhere. They may come back to see what ESPN Bet is all about, but their loyalty to the Barstool Sportsbook ended with the sale to Dave Portnoy.
There is also a strong possibility that ESPN Bet will have a few more bells and whistles than the Barstool Sportsbook, even though it is using the same tech as the current Barstool Sportsbook.
Penn completed its migration to theScore app in July 2023. Less than a month later, it sold Barstool back to Portnoy. It’s not uncommon for companies launching a new app to take a minimalist approach to avoid hiccups, so the July debut may not have included everything theScore can offer. My guess is that any significant product upgrades have been held back until the launch of ESPN Bet.
And, of course, ESPN Bet has had three months to work on integrations.
Beyond the Headline: A Headache in Massachusetts
Penn-ESPN is also dealing with an increasingly hard-to-please Massachusetts Gaming Commission.
As reported in Compliance+ More on Tuesday, the MGC and Penn-ESPN are not on the same page:
“MGC chair Cathy Judd-Stein made it clear that the two entities are not on the same page. “I’m waiting for the ask [from Penn] unless there is this notion that there doesn’t have to be an ask,” Judd-Stein said. “I’m wondering why we haven’t received a request, and I am wondering where the disconnect is.””
Despite meetings scheduled for November 2 and November 7, ESPN Bet may not be granted approval in Massachusetts for its desired launch/rebrand date sometime in late November.
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CNIGA Chair Rallying Support For SB 549
In its fall update, California Nations Indian Gaming Association Chairman James Siva focused on SB 549, a bill supported by CNIGA and introduced by State Sen. Josh Newman, which “seeks a state court decision as to whether California card rooms are offering illegal games.”
As Siva explains (you can find more of the backstory here):
“Over the last decade, tribes have watched as commercial cardrooms have gradually introduced games and practices that seem, on their face, to violate the California Constitution… Multiple efforts to prompt the state to enforce the law have proven to be a Sisyphean task as the state has simply refused to act.
“… Previous Tribal lawsuits seeking a hearing on these cardroom-controlled games were dismissed in both state and federal court not on the legal merits of the practice, but merely on procedural grounds. SB 549 would give Tribes legal standing.”
“SB 549 would allow for a one-off court case to determine whether these games and practices are legal.”
But this is California, where once-and-for-all solutions are as elusive as an in-focus Bigfoot video, and SB 549’s fate is uncertain, as it has stalled in the Assembly.
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Missouri Sports Betting Has Another Wrinkle to Iron Out
Missouri sports betting efforts have proven elusive, and there is no light at the end of the tunnel. State Sen. Denny Hoskins and a cadre of lawmakers have held sports betting hostage over VLT legalization. Hoskins has already said he will not give up that fight.
Further complicating the situation is a parallel effort to raise the patron entrance fee at casinos to help fund state nursing homes.
“Rep. Dave Griffith, R-Jefferson City, told fellow members of the Missouri Veterans Commission he plans to introduce legislation in January that would boost a $2 per patron entrance fee paid by casino operators by at least $1 to benefit the nursing homes,” the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reports.
Of note, patrons do not actually pay the entry fee. Casinos pay the $2 per entrant on top of the 21% tax rate. That amounted to over $20 million in FY2022, so a $1 increase would cost the state’s casinos another $10 million annually.
So, where does sports betting fit in? As the Post-Dispatch noted, “The Missouri Gaming Association, which represents the state’s 13 riverboat casinos, has strongly opposed raising the admission fee. And the organization also has been in the middle of rocky negotiations over making sports betting legal.”
The sports betting debate is already messy. If raising the entry fee peters out and Griffith shifts to sports betting to fund nursing homes, it’s just another complication.
Ontario Online Poker Market Outshines the US
In its Ask Us Anything series, PokerFuse fielded a question about the overall healthiness of the Ontario online poker market.
Ontario’s four online poker operators generated $11.8 million in Q2 (July, August, and September). That may be a blip in overall online gambling revenue (poker accounts for less than 3% of online gambling revenue in Ontario), but it’s a solid number for a North American online poker market.
With a population of 14.5 million, Ontario’s closest comp in the US is Pennsylvania and its population of 13 million.
Over the same three-month stretch, Pennsylvania’s four online poker operators generated $7.5 million.
On a per-population basis:
Pennsylvania: $.58 per resident
Ontario: $.81 per resident
New Jersey, the top online poker market in the US, was closest to Ontario at $.80 per resident ($7.5 million with a population of 9.3 million).
On the online front, Ontario isn’t blowing US states out of the water, but it is beating them. It could simply be the province’s population edge. Another possibility is the operator rolls, as Ontario has PokerStars, the BetMGM network, 888, and the wildcard, GGPoker/WSOP, which is currently unavailable in legal US markets.
Around the Watercooler
Social media conversations, rumors, and gossip.
I have to ask. In 2023, why is Mattress Mack still a thing? I don’t blame the people tweeting about him, but I don’t get how anything he does is newsworthy or why people are interested in the same story year after year.
As Jamie Salsburg noted more than a year ago, it’s a publicity game. Mack runs a promotion at his furniture store with a multi-million-dollar liability and then bets in the opposite direction as insurance… and for the free press.
Stray Thoughts
I tell all my martial arts students that improvement comes from consistent practice over time. But I also stress that there is a caveat: it needs to be deliberate practice. You need to be serious about it, and you can’t just go through the motions.
You can’t improve if you lazily dribble a basketball at chest height for hours every day. In fact, you will get worse. You can’t seek out terrible players and use the same moves to win every chess match and expect to get better. You can’t roll into the gym and pick up 5 lb dumbbells and easily do 50 curls and then walk on a treadmill at the lowest setting and expect to get stronger or fitter.
To improve, there needs to be a goal, there needs to be a challenge, and there needs to be feedback.
There are several ways I could apply this to the gambling industry, but I’ll leave that up to you.