Speaker 1: Hey everybody, and welcome to Life is a Gamble. I
know you've missed me. It's been a while since our
last episode, but I am back and Life is a
Gamble is the podcast where we talk about life scambles.
But today we are talking to someone who is literally
in the gambling business. My guest today is Nigel Eccles,
who was one of the founders of FanDuel. So let's
get right into it. Nigel Echls, Welcome to Life as
a Gamble.
Speaker 2: Well, thanks for having me on.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so, I'm very interested in how you. First of all,
most people know you from FanDuel, but that was not
your original startup or your original company, and I'm wondering
what your background was and what led to that first company.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so, well, like being in online gaming since two
thousand So the very first company I joined was a
company called Flutter dot com and it merged with Betfair
in two thousand and one, and that today is Flutter Entertainment,
which is the parent company of vandel. I relaunched a
betting exchange called bat Doc in two thousand and three
and it's still operational today. It's a batting exchange at
BSI Dublin and then Fando actually started in two thousand
and seven as a prediction market, which you know, funnily enough,
for ten years I had to explain to people what
that was. And obviously polymarket did so well and last
year that I don't have to do that anymore. So
Hubbub originally was a prediction market. It did very well
in two thousand and yet it did last well immediately
after the election because people aren't as interested anymore, and
that's when we pivoted in two thousand and nine to
becoming fan bill.
Speaker 1: What was your educational background before going to work for Oh, yeah, educational,
So I studied pure mathematics and military operation research.
Speaker 2: So my first degree was in pure mathematics, my second
degree was in operational research.
Speaker 1: And were you drawn to games and gambling before you
got into.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I've been like I like, I've always liked gambling.
I've always find it fascinating. Given my mass background, I've
always found they start of mass behind it really interesting,
and so probability was something that I've always been fascinated by,
and so whenever I started working, I was just drawn
to that sector. I was like, Wow, this isn't me
is and it's I always sort of think it's fascinating that,
you know, in the gaming industry, you you create your
own product. You're actually what I when I really thought
about recently is you're the opposite of insurance company. And
insurance is you know, they are like as a gambling company,
you sell variants, right, you know, so people, you know,
people for people at whose life are just too boring
and too you know, like not enough stuff happens. You know,
they have a lot of consistency. They want to buy variance.
Their buyers a variants, and there's a gamblant company. You're
a seller variants. Obviously. The insurance is the other way Ryan,
which is people that you know, my life is too risky,
you know, like and yes there's certain things you know,
and to ensure your harget you know, getting smashed or
your life, you want to you want to you want
to sell variants, right, But I think it's really interested
in the gaming companies. You know, you create and sell variance,
and then all the different types of companies are different
forms of variants that we sell. And so that just
drew me into the business in two thousand when I started,
and you know, I've always come by even though I've
left the industry twice, I've always come back to it
because I just loved that that aspect of the business.
Speaker 1: Did you gamble yourself? Did you? Or do you go yourself?
Speaker 2: Yeah? I know I've gambled since I was a teenager.
I remember the first horse ever won, which is I
think it was, well, I know the horse was West Tip,
which was a gray won the Grand National. I think
it was an eighty seven. So I was like cover
thirteen and I had a pint on it. And I
won sixteen times from sixteen to one, and you know,
I was at the moment, I was like, wow, it
was amazing, but I like it was you know, I
always sort of threw. I've always started being fascinated. You know,
I was always fascinated. And I had friends at university
would go to casinos and they would have systems, and
I was like, yeah, that doesn't work, like and and
but I was always fast by the systems, and so like, yes,
I've always been interested. And I've always been interested in
from a sort of puzzle perspective, like how can you
beat it? Like what are the things you can beat?
And so, you know, horse racing silly, interesting and sports
Patty because it is beatable. You know, blackjack, you can
card kind but even casino games, you know, are interested
in the systems there, like even if the game is unbeatable.
You know, how does a Martin Gale change your hai phenomena?
Like I I played blackjack a lot. I go to
see how played blackjack. I know that it's ev negative
for me, But you know I have ways that I
play it that you know, I like the you know
that it'll you know, you know means that I know
in the long run, I'm gonna lose, But you know
I sn't play it well it.
Speaker 1: I mean, if you at least learn basic strategy and
you're giving up less than one percent, right.
Speaker 2: You're like, yeah, it's it's a that's a for me,
it's a yeah, it's a pretty good you know, uh,
your your cost of enter kimment is pretty low.
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly exactly, it's a little bit worse.
Speaker 2: You live.
Speaker 1: Where do you live?
Speaker 2: I'm where in New York?
Speaker 1: Oh? You're in New York.
Speaker 2: Oh?
Speaker 1: For some reason I thought you were in No.
Speaker 2: No, No. Originally British, originally from Northern Ireland, but I
moved to New York about nine years ago.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you know my kids as they were growing up,
I would preach to them constantly them and their friends.
Math is where the money is. And as long as
you really, as long as you understand the concepts of
ev and some basic probability, you will find ways to
make money. So what was your job when you first
went to work for a flutter?
Speaker 2: Oh? I was a product manager for.
Speaker 1: Flutter and and so what was the impetus then? So
you first just went into the prediction market, So what
was the impetus for that?
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, so Flutter was interesting. When I joined Flutter,
the idea find Flutter was more of like an eBay
of betting. You know, people could create all these different
types of bats and treated them of other people. Batfair
was their main competitor. Batfair is a betting exchange. You
could kind of think of it as like what Robin
Hood is doing, you know, sports betting contracts at the moment.
And that was a real innovation. And what we figured
out was that the Batfair model was a dramatically better
than the Flutter model. And so through the period of
two thousand and one, we hevotted Flutter to becoming an exchange.
And that's why they ended up marging, because they were
essentially it's the end product. In two thousand and eight,
when we had launched hub dub, which was our prediction market,
just very similar to polymarket, we sort of felt that
all of these news stories, we felt that prediction markets
were kind of truth seeking machines, you know, that they
would be not only the people who wanted to beat it,
but would be really interesting to the people that just
wanted the information, like who is the fearv ofite, Like
you know, who who's going to win? Like kind of
give that information. And we find that, like you know,
oftentimes the news media will report something as significant and
you'll go and check the batting market and nothing changed
and not tells you that because the news media their
job is to create news and pretend that something is
significant dramatically. What we discovered was that, you know, this
is a newsic's nothing did happen, and so that that's
so we we created the prediction market because that's what
we wanted to tackle. And what we discovered was that
prediction marks are brilliant for elections, Like they're just you know,
like particularly US elections, so many people are fascinated by it.
And so many people have an opinion. A lot of
those people have money that they're willing to put behind
those opinions. And so it worked really well right up
until the election, and then immediately afterwards, you know, that
sort of dried up. And what we discovered was that
outside of the election, the biggest category by far was sports.
And so that's why whenever we sort of were finished
with hubdub, we we basically said, well, what will we
do next? And we said, you know what, we should
focus on sports. We know how to build really good
prediction games, and that's how we pivoted and delfandom.
Speaker 1: So you were working for Flutter still.
Speaker 2: When you oh no, no, no, I left. No, that was
a long later. So Flutter was sort of two thousand
and two thousand to two thousand and two. Hubdub wasn't.
We didn't start in a two thousand and seven, and
then we ran a two thousand and eight and we
launched fund on two thousand and nine.
Speaker 1: Okay, So so at that point you were on your own.
It was you and your wife, am I correct?
Speaker 2: Yeah, my wife, and we had three other co founders.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and so you knew you wanted it to be sports,
and initially it was just fantasy well yes, snap decision.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Well so you know, it's funny like I was
in the UK at the time, where you could sports bat,
but in the US you couldn't. It was only like
one state was Nevada. You could sports bat in the US,
and we always thought that was weird. But there was
a law called the Unlawful Internet Gaming Enforcement Act with
US in two thousand and three that like sort of
kicked out a lot of poker operators, but in it
was a carve oute for fantasy sports. And I remember
the actual language. It was like, you know, you know,
fantasy sports is a game where it's a statistical accumulation
of points, blah blah blah blah blah. And I remember
being on a flight and just reading it and going, Okay, well,
there's there's nothing here that says that a fantasy sports
game has to last like the entire season. And you know,
there's nothing here that says And I'm like, we could
build a game that's a lot faster and a lot
more fun and exciting than traditional fantasy sports, but we're
still within the letter of the law. The letter of
the law is written here we're going to stay within
this and uh and we're gonna build that game, and
we think that's gonna be a lot more fun than
what people are currently playing on. Like, yeah, you're ESPN.
That was the idea.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, well certainly your timing could not have been better.
Speaker 2: Well yeah, you know, it's interesting, you know, and I've
sort of thought a lot about timing. It's you know,
there's an interesting question if we hadn't done it with
somebody else, I've done it, like, you know, did we
create that or and I don't actually know, you know,
when we created it, there was a couple of other games,
but it was only whenever we started to be successful
that we see an explosion of competition. Like, you know,
we launched two thousand and nine, there was one Draft
Street launch not that long after Draft Kings was twenty twelve,
but really and then there was one hundred other competitors
launched that period, but they were largely sort of drift,
you know, drifting about off what we were building, which
was they saw like whenever we started a lot of
people thought we were crazy, Like peop were like it's
not a real big business, like you know, like people
you know, like but it was only when we started
raising you know, ten fifteen, twenty seventy million dollars, so
many people are like, wow, this is a really big business.
And then it became you know, and then where the
timing was really good was you know, if we started
that launched out in two thousand and nine, by twenty eighteen,
so nine years later. Here it was a brand that
had huge brand awareness and millions of users and we
had five hundred people, and that put us in an
incredible position whenever sports betting became legal that we then
could take that brand and go boom, we can be
number one. And Fandal has become pretty much number one
in every state in the US when it's opened up,
you know, so it's basically gone in and and it's
just really because they had such a brand, depth to
brand and and and user base that to give them
such a huge, you know, huge advantage.
Speaker 1: Well, and they were, yeah, they were so well positioned
to get into regular gambling, in internet gambling.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So here he had fantasy sports, which you know,
in a lot of ways is very very similar to
like regular sports patting. It was to see him user
bas it was a very similar user behavior and the
brand was you know, very much connected with the people
who would be sports betting. You know, they were seeing
in ESPN. So going from fantasy sports to sports betting
was a very small staff, whereas you know somebody like
MGM or Caesars who think, oh, we know gambling, but
sports fans didn't really associate them with sports batting like
they you know, they didn't see them in ESPN. They
were like, you know, MGM is a casino in Vegas.
It's you know, it's something to do with you know,
the Wizard of Oz. It's really nice. It's not like
it's not like it's not an app I would have
my phone, and so that just gives FanDuel and Draftking.
It's just huge advantage whenever that market opened up.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm one of the things that surprises me. And
maybe you were gone from FanDuel by the time these
discussions happened. But I live in Las Vegas and I'm
just shocked that fan Duel is not here. And I
know they have to have a brick and mortar casino, yes,
but it would be nothing for them to buy one.
They don't have to have a big one, right they can.
Speaker 2: It's Hilaire. Honestly, I feel the Nevada game authorities massively
screwed this one up, like they you know, I went
and saw them. I went to see them in the
summer I think it was twenty sixteen or twenty seventeen,
and we were called in front of them, and I
remember the panel, and I remember actually being really impressed.
Like one of the panel was saying, you know, Apple
has got a million developers working on their platform, and
in Vegas we have three million suppliers like you know,
IGT Scientific Games. And they were like, if we don't
start to innovate and welcome more people in the industry,
we're gonna get left behind. And I was like, amazing,
this is like these guys get it, like they want innovation.
And we ended that session and they said, look we
you know, we want you guys in Vegas and so
like you know, this is all you have to do,
and it's like come by a casino. It was just
like you know, you know, and here we are, like
you know today in Vegas, how many suppliers in Vegas
have today like to see him as they had like
ten years ago, right, And so I think Vegas, I
think Nevada short of felt you know, we're the number
one in gaming. You have to be in Nevada if
you want to be a serious player. And you know,
we tried in twenty sixteen. I know the found on
DraftKings since then has tried to kind of work for Vegas.
They'd love to be in Nevada, and they Nevada. I
just think, you know, I don't know, in those early days,
I think it was maybe arrogance. I just don't know
why they haven't sort of realized that the world has changed.
Speaker 1: Yeah, no, you're you're absolutely right, and it is arrogance.
And they shot themselves in the foot because for sports betters,
Nevada is now the worst state.
Speaker 2: Right, yes, sports on my phone? God, Like, yeah, you can't.
Speaker 1: You can't use a computer. Yeah, And to to sign
up and put money in the account, you have to
physically go to a casino, which I'm crazy.
Speaker 2: And I understand, like there they feel their job is
to protect the physical casino. But there comes a point
where you're like, you know, like you know, MGM. Caesar's
actually you know, they're Tier three players, but they've done
pretty well. Like you can't stand in the way of
innovation of that not when you have customers going like
this is how I want to play, to kind of
create these artificial rules, and that's not essentially what they did.
And so yeah, I think it was a huge mistake.
And yeah, like I think it's you know, it's what
we've seen is like an explosion of gaming around the US,
and Nevada is sort of like the you know, and
I guess Nevada in a lot of ways has sort
of pivoted become more of a like an entertainment destination
and less of a gambling destination. That's worked, but you know,
they kind of could have a both.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely, And and the people running the
casinos now really are not coming from a gaming background
and and you know, it used to be that the
gambling drove everything else, right, and now it's sort of
a you know, redheaded stepchild or something.
Speaker 2: Yeah, no, it's definitely like we always fuse sports betting
in Nevada as being a like as a not as
a profit center, and more as a you know, required
service to like service the VIPs. Whereas you know, we
always felt that, you know, sports betting was going to
be front and center, like we weren't we weren't just
using it as a way to get you to the
high you know, the slots tables.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah. When did you end up leaving
fan Duel?
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, So I left Fondo end of just end
of twenty seventeen, started twenty eighteen, actually just before pastpos repealed.
I like, I'd love being startups, and you know, but
that's steven the end this company. I'd get very very big,
and so I left and started to do some you know,
really interesting other startup and like in in like in
music and social media, e sports. It's a real kind
of mixture of other verticals. For I actually try to
just get totally as far away from gaming as possible.
I was like, you know what, you know, I don't
want my entire career to be gaming. And what I
discovered with those other verticals was that I actually really
messed gaming. It was the vertical that I you know,
and really love, and so I by twenty twenty one,
so only I guess four years later, I was like
back into gaming and I was like, Okay, I you know,
I've still got a few things I really want to
do in this in this sector, and I've really enjoyed
being back in the category.
Speaker 1: We're going to take a quick break and be right back. Okay,
we are back with Nigel eccles. Do you still have
the music and the sports that you started?
Speaker 2: So there was there was kind of three different so
it was like social media. There was a music business,
and then there was cards, the music and card business,
and we sold and the card business is still operational.
Really interesting verticals. Both sort of had a very crazy
twenty twenty one web, so like everyone went great and
then everyone went terrible, and so for both businesses, we
saw this incredible twenty twenty one spike and then and
then things kind of website in twenty twenty two, twenty three,
and so those businesses then we ended up selling on.
Speaker 1: I saw you made a comment on Twitter recently. They
were there was a tweet about, uh, the increased revenue
at fan Duel, and your com was basically that the
betters have gotten stupider, uh, which I agree with you.
But could you expand on that? Yeah?
Speaker 2: No, I thought that would would generate a little bit
of a response. And it was funny like somebody was like,
are you serious, and I was like, actually I am,
And I'll tell you why. So Number one, I think
Better is a stupider for two reasons, maybe three reasons.
The first one's fairly simple, which was, you know, pre passed.
But the people who were betting in Vegas were were
a lot of them were sharps. You know, they were
really focused on it. They weren't. It wasn't as recreational,
and so the money was sharper. And even today, I
think the money in Vegas is sharper. Today We've got
everybody and you know they have they may have very
strong opinion, but they they're not. They're not. They're not good.
Better is necessarily But then the two other factors are this.
So the second factor is that if you're a profitable
better on a fanueil DraftKings, you've been banned are limited, right,
And obviously a lot of people are very aware of that,
and so by definition the sharps are gone. They're not
on fandoil DraftKings. That's why Vandel has gonna. It's one
of the reasons Vandel has got a fifteen percent margin.
And the third reason then is parlays. From an Evy perspective,
a parlay is a dramatically worse bad but consumers love them, right,
and consumers love lotteries. So I'm not I'm not saying
that they're idiots. I'm just saying that they're you know,
they're like if their intention is to like make money,
but this is not this is not a great way
of going about it.
Speaker 1: Yeah. No, I mean, as you said at the beginning,
they want to buy variants.
Speaker 2: I want to buy.
Speaker 1: And when the company prepackages a you know, in game parlay,
that's going to pay them you know, fifty to one,
you know, but it's minus twenty five percent to them. Yeah,
they don't care, they want to but I have to disagreement.
Speaker 2: I've interviewed consumers and you know, I remember one guy
saying to me, and I was like, why do you
play a parlay? You realize this thing is like when
did a thirty percent margin? And he said, he said,
what should I did? I was like, you know, like
you know, like it's straight at bat's like even stuff.
And he said, so I go in, I put fifty
bucks done and I win fifty bucks. He's like, why
how is that going to change my weekend? Right? Like,
you know, why why is it with anybody remotely excited
about that? And I was like, now you put it
like that, I kind of get I do kind of
get it, like it's your you know, And that's the
way they view it. It's like a lottery ticket and
you know, straight that just isn't going to do it
for them. They need to see something that's really going
to move the dial. And and that's why, like they
you know, they don't think in terms of ev They think,
you know, if I win, I win, and if I lose,
like you know, it's it's it's discretion the capital. So yeah,
that's why they love Parlais. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I have to disagree with you though about the sharps.
They definitely are still on FanDuel and draft gis.
Speaker 2: Yes, maybe, yeah, there there definitely are are a few
that they're maybe not treating under their own names.
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly. And it's a constant cat and mouse game
not having account skit yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, yeah, now there are But I you know,
the books are pretty good at catch and that stuff,
Like they're pretty good, and that's you know, like it's
always going to be cat and mice.
Speaker 2: But you know, I've seen some of the stuff behind
the scenes, and and I'm like, yeah, like they'd see
changes in batting patterns and it's not like you know,
like we operate Battex operates and India and uh, it
takes a lot of sharp auction and you see that
money and you know there's no limits there.
Speaker 1: But that's an exchange, that's.
Speaker 2: Absolutely yeah, a totally different business model. But there's you
know a lot of very sharp auction there.
Speaker 1: Sure, yeah, yeah, and they don't have to hide it.
Speaker 2: I don't know they don't.
Speaker 1: Did you ever, you know there there are books, you know,
sharp books who will take all the action and not
limit people. Did you did you ever consider going that route?
Speaker 2: Or so?
Speaker 1: What were you not that?
Speaker 2: I wasn't. I was whenever you know, those decisions are
be ADMD. But what I will say is if I
was no, And you know, for a very simple reason
is that if you're going to be the mass market
consumer product that Fondo had the opportunity to be on
a is today, it is much more profitable not to
take sharp action. It's much more profitable to just you know,
limit the sharps and put out lines that you know
are going to sucker the you know, the punitories. That's
probably the pejorative but that they want right like you know,
you're going to push on parlays, but you're not going
to take the sharp action because it's going to reduce
your you know, it's going to reduce your profitability. You know.
The reason the reason why book makers take sharp action
and say in like India is that they don't ky see,
so they can't they couldn't limit it, right, So the
books there have no means of lemming, and therefore they
have to accept the sharp action. Right.
Speaker 1: But if you look at a book like Pinnacle Sports,
you know, they they just they have the sharpest lines
because you know, then they make money on volume that
they're not like.
Speaker 2: A mass mark like Onshore regulate event today and that's
the day is I found. I'll at this opportunity to
be this, you know, the number one consumer brand that
takes money from well everybody, the mass market shall always
say it's much more profitable to go to the root
of let's limit the sharps and you know, and and
and take the money from the mass market. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So your your latest venture is that hoog that's right, yeah,
and now and that is correct me if I'm wrong,
that's a crypto casino.
Speaker 2: That is a crypto casino. It operates internationally. We don't
operate in the US or the UK for that matter.
We take deposits and you know, about a dozen different cryptocurrencies.
And the insight behind it was like one was that
when I looked at I'd always looked at the casino market,
and I'd always been a little bit surprised that there
wasn't as much innovation, Like I would look at these
lot games and I'd go, wow, those are the same
games I was playing like twenty years ago. That to
me was like, this is an industry that could innovation.
I also saw that crypto was the part of the
market that was showing the most innovation, right, you know,
provably fair games that came from crypto streaming. Massive growth
for slots, and it's coming from from streaming. You look
at like you know, Instagram reels and TikTok, these are
all crypto casinos, and these are influencer playing these games
and creating these storylines that are incredibly popular. Like I
know people that follow them. We don't you know, don't
play casino and I don't even think of a casino,
but they just love the you know, the whole storylines,
the reactions the highs and the lows, and so that
got me really interested to say, look, this is where
the innovation's happening. This is really interesting. The other thing
that I thought was fascinating was when we were at Fando.
You know, in a lot of ways, we just lived
at the mercy of our payment provider, like you know,
and you would be paying you know, fifteen twenty percent
of your you know, revenue would go to payments and
profondo I think it was even today. I think in
Q one I was like twelve and a half percent DraftKings.
I spent five hundred million last year on payments. And
to me, this is like this is dead money, Like
this is money that goes to Visa and MasterCard in
their shareholders. That is no, there's no benefit to the players, right,
So the player all they see is I deposit my money.
It turned up my kind Well, you know, the bookmaker,
the sportsbook didn't see all that money. And when you
withdraw and then redeposit, then that's another four or five
percent gets taken eye. And so with crypto, crypto just
solves that problem. So and with with crypto, what we
do is we give somebody a wall of a dress
and they they basically send their crypto to that wall
of the dress and boom, we get one hundred percent
of the money with it and seconds, and so from
the user it's like there's so we immediately save ourselves
fifteen to twenty percent of our costs, which then we
can get back to our user like we do a
rake back daily, weekly, monthly rake back to user and
adds to about thirty percent. So most of that is
actually the savings we make in terms of payments that
we can just give directly back to the consumer and say, hey,
you know what, here's here's a bunch of money that
we don't actually have to pay to visa master card.
So that's really came. And then from the consumer experience
is like this is instant. You know, they basically send
the money, it's there and they can play it immediately
and with withdraw it. We have instant withdrawal, right, Like
if you're an established customer of us, when you go
to withdraw, it's like boom, strap back into your wallet. Wow.
Speaker 1: Yeah, not here in the US.
Speaker 2: Unfortunately, unfortunately, not of the US. And isn't this is it?
Speaker 1: Is it slots only or do you have table games
as well.
Speaker 2: Slots live, we've dealer and.
Speaker 1: Sportsbook is the live deal dealer. Evolution Gaming is yes.
Speaker 2: Yeah, okay, yeah, evilution, non pragmatic do live dealer and
you know, very popular. We've one of the game formats
which is a salon Preve. We had a user coming
and use in the first use of this week and
it's uh, it's minimum you need a minimum six thousand
dollars in your kind and it's minimum one thousand dollars
per hand. So it's your high stakes player and it's uh,
it's fun and you have a live dealer just you
one on one and so like it's it's a really
good product.
Speaker 1: Huh. Yeah, I noticed you are following crypto, uh and
talk about it on Twitter a lot. And and how
do you manage your risk in terms of the fluctuation
of the crypto?
Speaker 2: Yeah, you well, that's actually not so bad because we
hold people's currency in crypto. So if somebody de posites
in bitcoin, we hold it in bitcoin. And so what
that means is if they deposit a bitcoin, which is
currently about one hundred thousand, and if bitcoin were to
drop by twenty percent, they would come back the next
day and they would still have a bitcoin, it would
just be worth eight thousand and so, so, which is
what they want because if you are into crypto, you
want to hold it in crypto. You don't want to
hold it in fit and so. But it also means
for US is we don't have that, we don't have
to manage that liability.
Speaker 1: So does that mean whatever coin you deposit with you
must withdraw in the same coin.
Speaker 2: That's correct, we posit in bitcoin, you will draw and
betcoin deposit in Solana, you will have draw in Salana. Yeah,
so that doesn't that volatility is actually you know, funnily enough,
most of her to positis actually are in stable coin.
So USDT very very popular, and I think it's you know,
there's obviously people whole crypto because as an investment, but
I guess, uh, for casinos discretionary money, and so that's
why it's like USDT that's there that are spending money,
whereas you know, they're probably holding bitcoin and they don't
want to play with that.
Speaker 1: MM So where do you see it all going? Where
do you see this five years from now?
Speaker 2: Yeah? So I think I think we're going to see internationally.
I don't like I said something before I don't think
we will have crypto casinos in five years time, because
I think all casinos will be crypto casinos, apart from
regulated ones, Like it would make huge sense for New Jersey, Pennsylvania,
Michigan to enable crypto payments. There's three trillion dollars in
crypto assets, and they're highly liquid, and they're held by
people who are risk seeking. They're absolutely you know, perfect
for a sportsbook or casino. You know. I would hope
that you know, the regulators there would sort of say, wow,
we you know, we should be in on this market.
I definitely think we get there in ten years. I
don't know if we get there in five years under
certainly under the Trump administrations get way more favorable towards crypto,
which has been you know, a huge buron for us
because before, yeah, like it was like they traded crypto
like it was all there to fund terrorism, when really
people just wanted, you know, to own their own half
assets and be able to use them with that without
interference like that. Really, I think that should be protected
in the Constitution, and I think it probably is. But
so I do think that crypto is going to become
and you know, like the other thing from them for
the you know on shore ones is like, why are
they paying twenty percent of their revenue not? No, two,
you know, there's no, it's not twenty percent of the
fall twenty percent of revenue to master Card and Visa
who offer a really crappy right like you know, and
I remember like with Visa, like, you know, we have
a user who would deposit and the next day decide that,
you know what, I didn't really want to lose that money,
and they would do a chargeback and then it would
be all us to prove that that person actually had
really made that deposit. And I'm like that's crazy, right yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So to me, I think over the next five years
internationally we will see all sportsbook and casinos move really
heavily to crypto, and then over ten years, I think
we'll see the onshore ones go as well. I think
we're going to see more of the innovation that we
see in the crypto space come on shore. So you know,
we're going to see more crash games provably fair something
the crypto games invented, which is how do I know
this game was fair? And it's something that we have
but really stake invented it, which is you can they
give you a seed free is that you can after
the fact prove that that game was fair, that you know,
they weren't changing stuff behind the scenes. And again, it's
just a great innovation that like I think we're going
to see the un happened, you know, cross the industry
and come on shore. Wow.
Speaker 1: Yeah, fascinating. Anyway, I really want to thank you for
taking the time with me today. Yeah, and any final thoughts.
Speaker 2: No, it's and great to be on the show. Yeah,
like we uh uh, you know, we're excited about what
we're building. Like we you know, we also just felt
with bat Outs that we could bring a lot more
sort of original products and original games, which is essentially
what we've done. So it's uh, yeah, we're really really
exciting the next few years.
Speaker 1: Actually, now that you mentioned that, have you tried innovating
in the table game space?
Speaker 2: We haven't, but I'd love to. You know, it's really
interesting in table games and we see it like you have.
We have really big influencers like on Instagram and on
Twitter and on TikTok that are talking about games, and
then you have a live dealer experience and these are
just like typical live dealers. What if we really could
combine those two. I'd love to be able to like
take somewhere top influencers and have them dealing with the game.
Oh yeah, you know, I just think there's so much
opportunity there, you know, and then like, you know, make
it much more of a party experience. Like the best
experience I've ever had at in Vegas is you know,
you're at a you're at a blackjack table and it's
a fun party experience. Well, you know, we could do that.
They just don't really get that online because normally the
dealers are not I don't know there maybe a lot
of them are not hired for their personality? Shall we say?
But what if what if we did? What if we
need Like if you look at Peloton, look at the
people who do the Peloton coaches, they're like celebrities. Why
aren't these dealers like more Niam, Like I want this guy,
He's hilarious, Like that's this, you know And part of
the reason that their personality doesn't come through is I
don't think they were rewarded for it. What if what
if we could?
Speaker 1: You know, I think it's discouraged. Yeah, I mean so
when I first got out of college, I was a
blackjack dealer here in Las Vegas, and most of the
casinos their attitude was dumbing up and deal the cards, right,
and and you know, I fortunately I worked at a
place where they literally hired the dealers for their personalities
and told us, you're here to host the players. This
is a service industry. Yeah, yeah, and yeah, so the
dealers would have a great time with the player.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and that's like, that's what it's all about. Like
one of the I honestly think one of the online
gaming well, it's been a phenomenal growth industry for me,
in a way, is still failing to deliver the one
thing that offline gaming delivers, which is just that they
that social and community experience with strangers, right, Like you know,
blackjack table one of the few places in America we
can talk to a complete stranger if I think about
them thinking you're crazy, right, Like, that's like that to me.
Online doesn't do that, And I think that's something that
we still need to like really figure out because I
just think that's really powerful.
Speaker 1: Yep, I agree. Anyway, thank you again, No, thank you