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00:00Welcome back to Newswire here on Sports Grid, going to be a very busy weekend for Jim Ghazali.
00:07I know we're not going to talk a ton of horse racing here on the show.
00:10Usually we do with Jim.
00:11He always brings something new to the table.
00:13I'm sure he's got his sports betting apps open.
00:16I'm sure that there's some horse that nobody knows about, that Jim knows about, that he's
00:21got a X-Acto or a Trifecta box in.
00:23I don't know.
00:24Maybe he'll one of these days give us one of these and one of these Santa Anita races
00:29or something like that.
00:30What's going on, Jim?
00:31Great to have you back here on Newswire.
00:34Not much, Craig.
00:35I'm always happy to talk about horses, but not a lot of news in the racing industry since
00:41we last spoke.
00:43I feel like I've been inundating you with horse topics, so we'll skip that this week.
00:49All right.
00:50One week off from horse racing.
00:52All right.
00:53Hey, look.
00:54This is something that's brand new for us here on the show.
00:56I know you guys wrote about it over at Legal Sports Report.
00:59Nebraska, boy, we don't cover them a ton here on the show, and all of a sudden there's legislature
01:05going on.
01:06I mean, Jim, I guess, is it possible that in quarter four ahead of football season or
01:11during football season that that state legalizes sports betting?
01:15Because as I look at this landscape right now, I don't see a single state showing any
01:19positivity to get something done before the end of the year.
01:22Are they it?
01:23Yeah, perhaps, Craig.
01:25And they do have retail sports betting in Nebraska.
01:29There are three or four brick and mortar casinos that do take bets.
01:34So the market is relatively small in the grand scheme of things.
01:38But what they're discussing now is the potential of bringing sports betting online in Nebraska.
01:46And the reason for that is because the governor there has stated in recent weeks and months
01:52that the state is in a property tax crisis and they need to raise revenue to reduce that
01:59property tax burden on its residents.
02:01So a special legislative session kicked off yesterday.
02:06They introduced a online sports betting bill, which would essentially just be a small amendment
02:13to the current sports betting bill that, like I mentioned, has legalized retail sports betting.
02:20So this would bring that market online in Nebraska, potentially, and it would create,
02:28if passed, a constitutional amendment.
02:31So then it would go before the voters coming up in November.
02:36So they introduced that bill yesterday.
02:39From what I'm gathering, it sounds like some committee hearings will begin after the weekend.
02:45And then we'll get a better sense if this is going to be discussed at any length or if we'll perhaps have to wait
02:54until the beginning of the new year, in which the governor recently signaled last week that he would be putting forth
03:02a priority bill to legalize online sports betting in Nebraska.
03:07Now, of course, industry groups want this to be kind of ironed out and put in front of voters in November.
03:14So they don't have to wait any longer to raise additional revenues to help with that property tax crunch that the state is currently in.
03:22If that does not happen over the next couple of days, then we'll likely see legislation to legalize online sports betting in Nebraska
03:33come at the beginning of next year.
03:36Yeah, and it would be interesting to see.
03:38I know, as you said, they're retail books.
03:40You just don't hear a ton about their revenue or finances.
03:44Going online is clearly the thing to do.
03:47All right, let's get to now some places we do have some revenue sharings in and numbers.
03:51We've got Louisiana, the latest sports book there.
03:55Jim, you sent a social media post about this yesterday as well.
03:59What's the latest there?
04:00Yeah, kind of more of the same like we've been talking about, Craig, over the last couple of months with Louisiana and these
04:08parlay bettors.
04:09So fiscal year figures, complete fiscal year figures came in in recent days for Louisiana.
04:17Obviously, that fiscal year running July through June and the market did show pretty solid growth in overall handle.
04:28About three billion dollars was bet over the last fiscal year, and that was up 37 percent.
04:35So a sizable increase over the prior fiscal year, revenue was up as well.
04:41Seventy three percent, three hundred and fifty eight point two million dollars in this latest fiscal year that just ended in June, up from two
04:49hundred and six point eight million dollars from the prior fiscal year in revenue.
04:54And Craig, like we've talked about many, many times in recent weeks and months, the parlays accounted for 70 percent of
05:05that revenue total for the sports books.
05:07So as we've seen, a lot of these sports books talk about enhancing their parlay product, better pricing, better app technology,
05:21better features, because obviously it is a a huge driver of handle.
05:27And, you know, of course, as you string together multiple legs of parlays, the likelihood of you winning goes down and down and down.
05:37And the likelihood of the revenue coming to the sports books goes up and up and up.
05:44And I think what we've seen over the last couple of months and through that that latest fiscal year in Louisiana is that those sports books
05:50really do bank on those parlay profits, if you will.
05:54Seventy percent of overall revenue in the latest fiscal year in Louisiana coming from those combo bets, Craig.
06:01Wow. Parlay bets, 70 percent.
06:03That's a huge number. All right.
06:05Let's get to Pennsylvania.
06:07What do we got for the latest on everything in terms of revenue there?
06:11Yeah. Another fiscal year coming to to an end in Pennsylvania and their revenue dipped just slightly, just about one percent.
06:21Four hundred and eighty six point six million dollars in winnings for Pennsylvania sports books,
06:28which was down from four hundred and ninety two million during the prior fiscal year.
06:33Handle, on the other hand, was up about a billion dollars, eight point one seven billion dollars bet during this latest fiscal year.
06:41And that was up from seven point two two billion from the fiscal year prior.
06:48FanDuel saw its revenue drop by two percent in that that latest fiscal year.
06:56DraftKings, they saw their revenue jump by about twenty five percent in this latest fiscal year.
07:03And what really stuck out to me was Penn Entertainment and the ESPN bet at Craig.
07:10And I know we've talked a lot about ESPN bet over the last several months when they made that transition from the Barstool Sportsbook last November,
07:21right in the middle of football season.
07:23And if you recall, prior to that, they announced that that change was coming in in August.
07:31I believe it was last year. And then the Barstool Sportsbook brand, you know, they stopped offering promos and they just kind of let the the players that were on there just kind of sit dormant for a little while and not a lot of marketing activity.
07:47So once ESPN bet took over in November, you know, there was that rush of of promotional play and whatnot.
07:55So over the last fiscal year, which again was, you know, July of twenty three through June of twenty four, which covered about half of that Barstool covered half of it, ESPN bet covered the other half.
08:10But for Penn, the parent company, their revenue was down seventy five percent in this last fiscal year in Pennsylvania.
08:18They made about four point seven million dollars in sports betting revenue in Pennsylvania, which was down from nineteen point two million dollars the year before, which, you know, that that full fiscal year they were operating solely as the Barstool Sportsbook.
08:36So likely that that transition likely had a good deal to do with that revenue, revenue decline.
08:44You know, obviously, like I said off the top, the the overall market revenue was down slightly.
08:49They were a big piece of that fan, a little less, but DraftKings was was the big winner.
08:55Twenty five percent revenue increase in Pennsylvania over the last fiscal year.
09:00Yeah. And again, the revenue in some of these places, too, about to get a huge jump.
09:03Don't come on this show, Jim, in November telling me every state is up.
09:07I know they're going to be up in football season.
09:09I'm just kidding. Have a great weekend.
09:11We'll see you next week. Thanks, Greg.
09:13You, too.