Intralot's Sports Betting Failures in D.C. Under Investigation
Transcript
00:00Okay, so a story that was out last week, we didn't talk about it a ton here on Newswire,
00:09is this company called Intralot.
00:11Now, Matt, I think we should catch people up with who this company is.
00:14They're being investigated right now.
00:17I know that they're based out of Washington, D.C., and they were prominent in the sports
00:21betting market there.
00:22So before I go any further, I'm going to turn this one over to you.
00:24Who is Intralot, and what are they under investigation for?
00:28Yeah, well, Intralot, Craig, actually, they're a Greek company that is a lottery provider,
00:35and they also offer sports betting as well.
00:38So Intralot works with a lot of the U.S. lotteries, providing their draw-based games and their
00:44lottery systems and all that kind of stuff.
00:47Intralot was also the provider of sports betting in Washington, D.C., and that happened because
00:54a certain congressman, council member, excuse me, pushed for there to be a no-bid contract
01:00in D.C., and he basically just said, look, let's give the deal to Intralot.
01:05They're already our lottery provider.
01:08If we don't get this up and running as fast as we can, we could lose, I believe he said
01:14something like $60 million over a little over two years, as council member Jack Evans did.
01:21And you know what, Craig?
01:22It turned out that Jack Evans was a little dirty, and he was in bed with people that
01:26were getting kickbacks from Intralot, and he was removed from the council.
01:31Now Intralot just did a terrible job with D.C. sports betting and was kicked out.
01:37They now have a different way to do sports betting in D.C., with the market being open
01:42to the DraftKings, the FanDuels, the Caesars, the MGMs.
01:46And now the attorney general of the District of Columbia wants to look into these Intralot
01:52compacts and wants to look into what exactly was promised, what happened, and why it didn't
01:58work out the way it was supposed to.
02:01And basically the way that this is going down is the Washington City paper says that they
02:08talk about false claim violations, which is basically what happens when contractors or
02:13companies say that they are owed money by the district for work that was not fully or
02:19completely or correctly performed.
02:22So the attorney general, it seems like, is coming out and saying, look, you guys promised
02:27a whole heck of a lot for sports betting, and it didn't even come close to what it should
02:32have. We know Intralot and their Gambit D.C.
02:35platform missed their expected earnings year after year after year.
02:41And it was cut and cut and cut.
02:45So it's going to be really fun to see what happens with that.
02:47You know, Intralot is still in the U.S.
02:49sports betting business.
02:51They're up in Montana.
02:53They have a book in Maryland.
02:56And, you know, their odds all across the country, from what we've seen, they've all been
03:02really highly juiced.
03:03And that was Intralot's plan, basically.
03:07They wanted to get the people that maybe weren't, you know, great sports bettors or
03:12learned sports bettors.
03:14They just wanted people that wanted to get down.
03:17And so they weren't necessarily line shopping.
03:19And it didn't work out for Intralot.
03:21It got them kicked out of D.C.
03:22and now it could be getting them sued.