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SportsTranscript
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00:03 Sports betting now legal in the state of Florida only via the Seminole Tribe of Florida and their
00:08 gaming program. But what does that mean for the future of daily fantasy sports? Well, Sam is with
00:14 us to talk about that. And certainly, Sam, I knew that this was coming down. I kind of had a feeling
00:20 that once Florida got sports betting, that everything else would be scrutinized.
00:25 And indeed, not just scrutinized, but boy, it does feel like there are some folks who would like to
00:31 eliminate DFS unless they want to pay the tax. And I don't know that that's going to happen. But
00:37 anyway, thanks for joining us here on the show. I'm following, of course, very closely because
00:41 I live in Florida. Yeah, absolutely, Craig. Yeah, to your point, pretty much when any state legalizes
00:48 sports betting, they then kind of take a look back at what are our fantasy rules? What are our
00:53 regulations around daily fantasy sports? Maybe some of these apps which can look pretty similar
00:58 to sports betting. And in a lot of cases, in these states like Florida, like California,
01:04 big states where you really had no legal sports betting option, people really turned to fantasy
01:09 sports kind of in lieu of that. And it kind of filled that void for a while. And now that you
01:14 have the Hard Rock bet app back online in Florida, people are betting a lot on it, obviously. But
01:19 to your point, the people who control that are kind of looking at what they view as maybe the
01:24 competitors who have been operating in Florida for a while. So there's been a few bills introduced
01:29 already this session in Florida, which just started a few days ago, that would propose kind
01:34 of regulating the daily fantasy sports industry. Now, Florida is one of those states where
01:39 essentially, it's the Wild West for these fantasy sports companies. They've been operating
01:45 despite no real rules or regulations saying they can or can't and according to who you talk to,
01:50 it could be very different kind of the view on whether or not they're legal. But you have Draft
01:55 Kings, FanDuel, Better, PrizePix, Underdog Fantasy, all among the apps that have operated
02:00 there for years without any real, you know, pushback from the state. But that's all starting
02:05 to change now that you have sports betting back online. This new bill from a Florida senator would
02:10 essentially create the framework to regulate the industry, putting in place different rules and
02:15 regulations, including a minimum 21 years old age to play. And another provision, which is probably
02:23 the most important thing here, is that operators could not be contestants in the contests that they
02:28 offer. This takes aim at the player versus house model, which has been really successful for
02:33 companies like PrizePix and Underdog, which offer these pick 'em games that essentially allow you
02:38 to parlay together different player props over unders in return for a prize. So a number of
02:45 states have kind of identified this as sports betting. Florida is one of those. Their commission
02:50 came out recently and sent cease and desist letters to these companies and broke decades of silence
02:55 on what they believe to actually be sports betting. Now, they don't really have the,
03:00 you know, wherewithal or the tools to enforce these regulations. And that's what the bill would
03:05 create and allow them to do. It's unlike another bill in the House, which would essentially create
03:11 the framework for these games, but allow the pick 'em games to be included. So, so far, we've got
03:16 two kind of competing pieces of legislation in Florida, and obviously a ton of groups involved
03:21 with, you know, the Seminoles being behind Hard Rock Bet. So it's going to be an interesting
03:26 session in Florida when you have all these kind of competing, you know, operators and competing
03:32 interests here and different lawmakers already taking different stances. So it's going to be
03:36 pretty interesting to see what happens going forward. Could it lead to these operators
03:41 pivoting to peer-to-peer games more as they've done in a few other states? Certainly. But, you
03:46 know, whether or not they do that depends on how far Florida goes with enforcing this fantasy
03:52 regulation and only things can be done through the Seminole Trial.