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00:00Arizona, they could use a lot of A.C. It gets very hot there, of course. It's a dry heat,
00:07as they say. Anyway, bad joke. Arizona Department of Gaming with an announcement. I know that
00:12they've had sports betting there. They've had sports betting operators there, but it
00:16has been mostly dominated by a couple of different sports books. Why open it up for other providers?
00:22Simply put, get some money. Is that it?
00:25I mean, yeah, the licensing fees would help a little bit, I'm sure. But yeah, it's such
00:30an interesting market. To your point, FanDuel and DraftKings, as well as BetMGM and Caesaret
00:35control, I think, more than 90% of the market. Now, there's 16 operators in the state. Do
00:43the math there. That's 12 operators that have 10%. That's crazy. But sure enough, they're
00:49opening up the license application process again. The third time they've done such a
00:54thing since the market launched in fall of 2021. And it's largely because there are,
01:01in Arizona sports betting law, 20 slots for sports betting operators, 10 for the sports
01:08teams in the state and 10 for the tribes. There's been kind of a revolving door in Arizona
01:15at the bottom end of it. We've seen quite a few operators drop out. Fubo, Twin Spires,
01:22Unibet and Winbet have all pulled out. So right now there's only 16 operators. So there's four
01:27slots open. They figure, hey, let's go ahead and try to fill those back out. What operators
01:35are left? I mean, in the last two rounds of open application periods, we've had Fanatics
01:40jump in and Bet365 jump in. Those are two big players in the industry kind of making their way
01:46and trying to crack into any sort of market share. So what is left? I mean, Circa with their
01:53huge Las Vegas resort, not too far away from Phoenix. You have to imagine they're going to
01:58look at the market again. Maybe Underdog looking to expand their market as they're only live in
02:04North Carolina at the moment with their sports betting product. And it's interesting because
02:09there's a few things. There's only been eight sports team licenses given out since the beginning
02:15because according to the law, you have to be playing at the highest level. And I think your
02:20stadiums have to have a certain amount of capacity. And so, you know, we know the USL team,
02:26the second tier soccer team has applied a couple of times, but they're not at the highest level.
02:30So they haven't been granted a license. There are two, well, there's an indoor football league team
02:37in Phoenix that has a license. So that's deemed highest level. There's two other IFL teams in
02:42Arizona that could also get a license. And then I just heard a rumor yesterday that the rodeo,
02:49PBR or the like, I'm not exactly sure what organization might be looking at securing a
02:54license in Arizona. So that could be the sports teams angles. I have to imagine the tribes.
03:00There's 16 tribes with gaming operations and there's only eight licenses connected to the
03:05tribes right now. So I have to imagine that'll fill back out with two more tribes. Interestingly
03:10enough, there are two smaller sports books, Sahara Betts, which is of course tied to the
03:16Arizona Coyotes, which no longer exists. Well, that's a complicated situation, but they're
03:22staying for now. And then Desert Diamond, which is a tribal endeavor that's actually outperforming a
03:30lot of sports books like ESPN bet and that river. So lots of options in Arizona. This will close
03:38sometime in July and then we'll know early August if any new operators are coming. So that's a,
03:43it's kind of, it's a fun state to pay attention to. And I hold it close to my
03:46heart because it was one of the first states I started paying attention to when I joined LSR.