That's Just Crazy Enough To Work
The NCAA puts player prop betting on notice and the wild idea behind the mysterious California sports betting initiatives.
The Bulletin Board
NEWS: The NCAA is setting its sights on prop betting.
NEWS: Underdog launches new P2P Pick’ Em DF contests.
NEWS: Who is behind the mysterious California sports betting initiatives?
NEWS: Three updates out of Canada. Legalization in Alberta, Ontario’s new advertising rules, and a new player safety program.
VIEWS: Striking casino workers in Michigan call for a limited boycott of online gambling sites.
AROUND the WATERCOOLER: The rise of GG Poker.
STRAY THOUGHTS: A different time.
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NCAA President Is No Fan of Prop Betting
NCAA President Charlie Baker has his sights set on prop betting.
Prop bets on college athletes are among the US’s most heavily restricted betting markets. Even in states that allow prop betting, there are limitations, like in-state prohibitions.
Baker still sees these markets as a serious concern for student-athletes.
“My concern about prop betting is just putting myself in the shoes of a young person who’s on a campus who has a friend or two that come up to them and say, you know, I love you,” Baker told CBS Sports. “If you could just miss your first couple of free throws this week, it won’t affect the outcome of the game.”
Adding a little fuel to the fire, soon after Baker’s comments, Barstool Sports personalities Dave Portnoy and Dan Katz actively discussed their wagers on a mid-major broadcast within earshot of the athletes. The tweet has over 10 million views, thousands of likes and retweets, and hundreds of comments.
Baker, who spearheaded legal sports betting in Massachusetts, has prioritized sports betting since becoming President of the NCAA in March. The NCAA commissioned a student survey (released in May) and another survey of compliance directors (released in September).
In a release with the second survey, Baker said, “The NCAA will use this staff survey data, as well as data from our prior sports betting activities survey of college-age respondents, to make the best tools available to help schools educate student-athletes on how and why to avoid sports betting. Clearly, there is more work to do, but this survey will be a big help with all our sports betting efforts.”
Why prop betting? Considering the existing restrictions, the NCAA could pick up an easy win and signal that it is serious about reining in sports betting. My big question is, will the NCAA take the issue to Congress (a state-by-state approach could prove cumbersome)? That would severely complicate the entire sports betting landscape.
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Underdog Unveils New P2P Pick’ Em Game in 4 States
With regulators casting a critical gaze at certain DFS products, including vs. the house fantasy contests, Underdog Fantasy (a newsletter sponsor) announced the launch of a new peer-to-peer Pick’ Em game called Pick’ Em Champions.
The new contest was rolled out in four states on Monday: Alabama, Mississippi, Tennessee, and Wyoming. The product will be available in more states over time.
Underdog will no longer offer player vs. the house Pick’ Em games in these states (it didn’t offer them in Tennessee). The new P2P games will not affect Underdog’s offerings in other states.
In a press release, Jeremy Levine, founder and co-CEO of Underdog, said, “Recently, a few regulators have said that in their states, fantasy should be peer-to-peer. While we don’t agree with that interpretation of the law, we developed Champions to be peer-to-peer.”
“We’ve built Underdog to innovate and help sports fans increase their enjoyment with sports, and that is exactly what we are doing with Pick ’em Champions,” Levine said. “I’m very excited for what comes next. As we continue to evolve Champions, I think it very well could become the best game we offer. “
Here’s how the new P2P contests work. Players “build teams of athletes and predict how they’ll perform against statistical benchmarks. Players will then have their teams entered into a tournament where they’ll face off against other teams. Winners will share in a prize.”
It’s safe to say the rapidly changing regulatory environment around DFS is having an immediate impact. PrizePicks recently launched a new free-to-play version of its contests in Michigan.
CA Sports Betting Initiatives Get Stranger and Stranger
The group behind the recently filed California sports betting initiatives (details here) provided Play USA with an explanation of the effort. Play USA called the plan ambitious.
I used a different word in my tweet about it.
The plan, as laid out by Kasey Thompson, Reeve Collins, and Joe Versaci, to Play USA is to cleanse offshore sportsbooks through some sort of sale to tribal entities in California.
That would accomplish two goals, according to the trio:
Provide the tribes with a competitive product.
Rid the US of [some of] illegal sportsbooks.
Victor Rocha, the publisher of Pechanga.net, Conference Chair at the Indian Gaming Association, a Pechanga member, and my go-to for anything California-related likened it to a bad joke in a statement to Politico: “Basically what you have is a tech bro and a poker bro walk into a bar. Or, walk into the secretary of state’s office.”
Several Online Gambling Updates From Canada
The Gaming News Canada newsletter (subscribe here, seriously, go subscribe, I’ll wait) covered two important stories last week.
Alberta
The first was a non-story, as the Alberta government’s “throne speech” contained zero mentions of online gambling. Alberta is considered a top contender to follow in Ontario’s footsteps and legalize online gambling.
The optimism stems from a July mandate letter to Dale Nally, the Minister of Service Alberta and Red Tape Reduction, from Premiere Danielle Smith that includes the following nugget:
“Working with Indigenous partners, (to) finish developing and implementing Alberta's online gaming strategy with a focus on responsible gaming and provincial and Indigenous revenue generation.”
There are other reasons to be optimistic, but based on Gaming News Canada’s reporting, further legalization seems to be in the research phase.
Ontario
The second story from our neighbor to the north deals with advertising restrictions. The Alcohol and Gaming Commission of Ontario has been meeting with key stakeholders to discuss proposed changes to advertising guidelines, which have caused some confusion among operators.
The rules are set to go into effect in February, but it appears operators will have answers in the not-too-distant future.
Gaming News Canada queried the AGCO and received the following response:
“The AGCO committed to providing some additional guidance to further support registered operators to ensure they understand and meet their obligations in the updated Standard.”
According to Paul Burns, the President and CEO of the Canadian Gaming Association, operators are simply seeking clarity. Burns said operators are merely looking for guidance to comply with the new advertising rules, highlighting some confusion around bonuses in the early days of online gambling in Ontario that led to several fines.
The CGA has also announced a new player safety program called the Commitment and Strategy to Promote Player Health and Wellbeing (that doesn’t quite roll off the tongue), which will officially launch on December 5. According to CDC Gaming Reports, the purpose is “facilitating optimal player and community health and wellbeing with igaming.”
Michigan Casino Workers Understand Online Gambling
Striking casino workers in Michigan are calling for a boycott of some online gambling sites.
“Online sports betting and online casino platforms like FanDuel, ESPN BET, and BetMGM are critical sources of revenue for the companies that operate Detroit’s three casinos,” said Nia Winston, President of Unite Here Local 24. “Now, they’re calling on the public not to cross their virtual picket line either, and to boycott these apps until the strike is settled.”
Notably, the boycott is only targeting online gambling sites associated with the three Detroit casinos: “Other apps, such as Caesars Sportsbook, Caesars Palace, WynnBET, DraftKings, Sports Illustrated Sportsbook, and others, are not part of the boycott.”
Setting aside the labor issues, the premise of the boycott supports evidence from the pandemic, where brick-and-mortar customers will use online sites as a stand-in when land-based gambling is unavailable.
To quote C+C Music Factory, this is one of those Things That Make You Go Hmmmm. The group only calls for a boycott on the sites associated with the three Detroit casinos (not other sites) and only until they have a new contract. They don’t fear online. Instead, the boycott can provide some leverage in negotiations.
Cannibalization concerns have stymied online casino legalization efforts. While there is some evidence that cannibalization occurs, existing forms of gambling have not been negatively impacted in states that have legalized online casinos or online lotteries. I’ll avoid going into the weeds here, but what the numbers show is that land-based gambling growth in markets with online gambling is a touch slower than in other locales. It’s still growing, and online more than offsets the difference.
As I wrote in April:
In the five years before the arrival of online lottery products [in Michigan], from 2009 to 2014, retail lottery sales grew at an 8% rate. Following the launch of the online lottery, retail sales have grown at a 9% rate (see chart below).
The 9% growth rate is slower than the national average, but adding online lottery is a net positive for the state and helps future-proof the industry.
Around the Watercooler
Social media conversations, rumors, and gossip.
Nick Jones from Poker Industry Pro posted a fascinating chart last week that clearly shows the shifting tide in online poker as PokerStars wanes and GG Poker waxes.
In an August column, I provided a short online poker timeline (and how wrong everyone was) that touched on GG Poker.
In 1999, Planet Poker was the only place to play poker online.
By 2001, everyone knew Paradise Poker was the best place to play online poker.
By 2003, Paradise Poker’s star was fading, and new online poker sites were the talk of the town. Party Poker, Ultimate Bet, and PokerStars, to name but a few.
By 2007, Party was out of the US market (thanks, UIGEA), and PokerStars had a new rival in the form of Full Tilt Poker.
In 2011, Full Tilt Poker and UB (nee Ultimate Bet) were exposed by the Black Friday crackdown, and only PokerStars remained, making Stars the victor and seemingly unable to be dethroned. *I’ll ignore UB’s scandal-plagued history.
In 2013, everyone knew US legalization would usher in a new golden era of poker, and everyone knew PokerStars would get a new rival, like the upstart Ultimate Poker.
That never came to pass. Online poker stalled in the US, and Ultimate Poker was offline a year later. Instead, PokerStars has been supplanted by GG Poker, a company that didn’t exist in 2013 and was barely on the radar in 2017.
Stray Thoughts
When my grandmother passed away, I inherited her pictures. Going through them the first time was an experience, as they started when she was a teenager in the 1930s and went up through the 2000s.
I recently went through them again to pull pictures for a Celebration of Life service for a family member. My memory was most of the photos were staged and posed. After all, you only got one shot at these back in the day. What struck me was how candid many of the photos were and how happy the people in the foreground and background appeared.
These were obviously curated, as there were no blurry pics or photos of thumbs. However, seeing the difference between my grandmother’s photos and candid social media photos was still interesting. Maybe people were just more cognizant of cameras in the pre-digital era.
Still, I wonder how many photos you would need to take with your phone to get the thousands of quality images my grandmother had.