A Rock And A Hard Place
An unlikely name has emerged as a national sports betting market share contender. Hard Rock is on the verge of snatching the bronze medal podium spot from BetMGM.
The Bulletin Board
NEWS: Hard Rock is making its presence felt in the US sports betting market.
BEYOND the HEADLINE: Hard Rock’s NJ online casino bolstered by Aristocrat Interactive content.
NEWS: CNBC announces the launch of CNBC Sport, including coverage of the sports betting industry.
VIEWS: Should casinos fear VGTs? Like every argument, there are two sides to the story.
NEWS: Poker Hall of Fame finalists announced, and the list addressed one of my criticisms… but not another.
AROUND the WATERCOOLER: The right way to do an unpleasant thing.
STRAY THOUGHTS: Tradition for tradition’s sake.
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Hard Rock Eyeing a Podium Finish by Year’s End
With a monopoly on the Florida market, Hard Rock has moved into fifth place in terms of national sports betting market share, according to Eilers & Krejcik Gaming’s (a newsletter sponsor) latest estimates.
EKG notes that with a 5% national share, Hard Rock has nearly overtaken Caesars and is within a single percentage of overtaking BetMGM.
Its Florida monopoly is the driving force, but Hard Rock has been expanding its footprint. Most notably, it gobbled up 888’s US assets, which included market access to Michigan, a key mobile betting and casino state.
And, as I noted in May, Hard Rock is now a Top 5 mobile sports betting app, per Eilers & Krejcik’s proprietary app rankings:
Hard Rock, which is becoming quite a story in the US sports betting and online casino space (here and here), rounds out the Top 5. As EKG pointed out, “Hard Rock was ranked 26th in the 1H22 edition of the report but has tracked upwards ever since. Testers specifically praised the app’s live betting, loading times, and high uptime cash-out.”
Considering all of the above, it’s unsurprising that EKG forecasts that Hard Rock will overtake BetMGM sometime in H2 2024.
Beyond the Headline: Hard Rock Adds Aristocrat Games in New Jersey
Hard Rock’s New Jersey online casino is adding some of the most popular online content through a new agreement with Aristocrat Digital.
According to CDC Gaming Reports, “Aristocrat Interactive’s Content & Aggregation department will make available a suite of gaming content for Hard Rock Bet’s platform in New Jersey.”
Aristocrat jumped into the real-money online gambling sector following its acquisition of NeoGames, which led to the creation of Aristocrat Interactive.
In the online casino space, content has proven to be king.
“The addition of these popular Aristocrat Interactive games to Hard Rock Bet [including the wildly popular Bufalo slot] is yet another way that we’re entertaining our players like no one else can,” said Hard Rock Digital SVP of Casino Grant Williams. “Since launching Hard Rock Bet in New Jersey, we’ve increased our casino offerings by nearly 1,000 games and are excited to continue adding unique gaming experiences to our top-rated platform.”
CNBC Announces Sports Business Focused CNBC Sport
Are you ready for a new CNBC channel?
Per the press release announcing the creation of CNBC Sport, “The new vertical will harness the strength of CNBC’s reporting and its access to the most influential voices in business, focusing on the intersection between business and sports.”
That coverage includes sports betting, an area CNBC’s Contessa Brewer has been in the thick of for several years.
The release lists several other CNBC personalities that will be involved with the project, including:
Alex Sherman will become CNBC’s Media & Sports Reporter, focusing on the intersection of sports and media.
Scott Wapner will focus on “interviews with league commissioners, team owners, and investors who are driving the business of sports today.”
Jessica Golden, “who serves as Senior Sports Business Producer, will bring her extensive experience reporting and producing sports content to the vertical.”
But for my readers, the critical cog is Brewer.
Brewer “will continue to focus on the money, data statistics, and strategy behind the sports gaming industry,” the press release states. “The companies on her watch list include big Las Vegas players like Caesars and MGM Resorts, regional casinos Penn Entertainment and Boyd, online gambling juggernauts DraftKings, and Flutter’s FanDuel, and global luxury casinos Wynn and Las Vegas Sands.”
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Bold Claim: Skill Games Don’t Cannibalize Casino Slots
For some time, Pace-O-Matic has been issuing press releases congratulating Pennsylvania casinos on record-setting revenue numbers. The skill game provider uses the release to make the case for legalizing and regulating skill games.
“These numbers show that there is room in the state for both casinos and small businesses that operate skill games to be successful,” Pace-O-Matic spokesperson Mike Barley said in a recent press release. “There is no competition between the two.”
Casinos disagree, and for good reason, considering the evidence from Illinois (a state that has legalized VGTs):
Jon Bruford makes a good point in his The Gaming Boardroom newsletter:
“I'm no expert, but in my humble opinion* I think he's [Pace-O-Matic's Mike Barley], right. Lots of countries have a variety of slot-style entertainment offerings, and the fact is, they attract a different kind of player to a casino player.”
Bruford has made this point before, noting that labeling “these machines as illegal might be more of an issue, rather than unregulated, which is what I believe they actually are.”
Bruford’s solution is to regulate and tax them, which is something Pennsylvania is trying to do. However, the process is getting messy as it moves through the legislature and the courts.
As I previously reported, former Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell opposes the current legislative effort to regulate skill games, but Rendell is not against regulating the machines. Rendell is advocating for the machines to carry the same tax rate (52%) as the other slot machines in the state.
As Roger Gros said on X, “Don’t believe this [Pace-O-Matic’s claims] for a second. The competition is real, and it will put a huge dent in casino revenues. Now, if they pay a tax of more than 50%, we can talk about it.”
Poker Hall of Fame Finalists Announced
The World Series of Poker has announced the ten finalists for the Poker Hall of Fame, and it’s an interesting mix, as the careers of eight of the ten finalists pre-date the Poker Boom era:
Patrik Antonius
Josh Arieh
Barny Boatman
“Miami” John Cernuto
Ted Forrest
Kathy Liebert
Mike Matusow
Matt Savage
Isai Scheinberg
Bill Smith
The list is promising, as I noted in my recent feature column on fixing the Poker Hall of Fame, “Looking at the inductees, you’d be forgiven for thinking nobody played poker until the 1960s, with some kind of prohibition in place from the 1980s until the 2000s.”
However, only one of the ten will join the Poker Hall of Fame in 2024, and I would argue that most of the above list (and 20 others) deserve to be called Poker Hall of Fame members.
As I wrote in my column: “The Poker Hall of Fame is a relatively new entity and never mass-inducted the players of eras long past…” and “because the Poker HOF refuses to induct ten people in a single year, we are left with a severe backlog of players who deserve to get in but are watching modern-day superstars cut the line.”
Mass induction is an idea others seem to agree with.
And this summary from X reads like a dozen articles I’ve written over the years:
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Around the Watercooler
Social media conversations, rumors, and gossip.
Layoffs are never fun, but there is a right way to do them, and Rivalry’s Steven Salz nailed it on LinkedIn - Salz was a guest on Episode 2 of STTP’s Talking Shop Podcast. Salz posted a spreadsheet with their former position, contact information, and a chance to share any other relevant information. The list was opt-in, and Rivarly offered to “speak to the capability” of anyone listed.
Stray Thoughts
I touched on the idea of fake tradition in my Poker Hall of Fame article, and I’ve been thinking about it a lot lately.
The notion that “because this is how things have always been done, it’s the best way to do things” needs to be called what it is: BS spouted by people who don’t have a deep understanding of the issue.
I’m a big believer in leaning on curated wisdom. It provides the best shortcuts. Still, if the answer to a question is “because that’s the way it is,” I become very skeptical.