Sweepstakes Gaming Surges in Popularity at G2E Conference
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SportsTranscript
00:00All right, so let's get started and let's start off with the possibility of sweepstakes
00:08coming to gaming and it seems like it's a really hot popular topic.
00:11I think if we did this a year ago, it would have been iGaming would have been betting
00:15on iGaming was sort of the hot next thing that was going to happen.
00:19Sweepstakes is the new like click word out there.
00:21What does it mean?
00:22Yeah, it was the thing everyone was talking about as the global gaming industry converged
00:29in Las Vegas for G2E, the global gaming conference this year.
00:33Last year, everyone was talking about iGaming as you're right, Craig.
00:36Also everyone was talking about daily fantasy sports as well and essentially what companies
00:41have done trying to blur the lines between different types of gaming and sports betting
00:46as it's become increasingly more popular and the size of the total addressable market has
00:51just boomed in the last couple of years.
00:53This year, it was all about sweepstakes gaming.
00:56Obviously, online sports betting is only legal in states that pass laws to legalize
01:00online sports betting but what we've seen popped up especially over the past year are
01:05a number of these startup companies which essentially are using what functions as a
01:09legal loophole to give a sports betting product or sports betting adjacent product in some
01:15of these large states like Texas and California that haven't legalized sports betting yet.
01:20You don't have companies like DraftKings and FanDuel there offering sports betting.
01:25What you saw this year is executives from those companies are starting to turn their
01:30eye towards what's essentially a new form of competition in a largely unregulated market.
01:36This year, Flutter CEO Peter Jackson who owns FanDuel said that his company won't partake
01:44in this kind of game until it is regulated, sort of indirectly calling on regulators in
01:50states to turn their attention to these sweepstakes games.
01:53Eric Stevens, the CEO of Circa Sportsbook went even farther saying that it's pretty
01:58clear these companies have found a loophole calling out companies by name such as Fliff
02:03and Novig and then pointing out the rigorous steps it took just to get his sports betting
02:07app legalized in five states.
02:09So essentially these companies allow you to deposit money and then you get a sort of virtual
02:17currency back which is then exchanged for another form of currency which you can then
02:21use to participate in this game.
02:24It's a lot of hoops to jump through for a reason because it's a largely unregulated
02:28market.
02:29So we'll see if like last year the regulators start to turn their attention towards these
02:33new sweepstakes games.
02:34I think it's pretty notable that you have these big companies starting to talk about
02:37it.
02:38Obviously it's starting to eat their business.