Antitrust Claims Against DraftKings and FanDuel Examined

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00:00All right, Pat and I talked about this story earlier in the week, Sam, and I know that

00:06we're going to expand on it as well.

00:08You know, the notion that there's some antitrust lawsuit against DraftKings and FanDuel, or

00:12one potentially coming, really doesn't add up to me, Sam.

00:15You know, I understand that they are the leaders in the industry, but naturally that doesn't

00:19mean that other companies can't get their footprint in.

00:22What's going on here with this potential hearing?

00:25Yeah, it's a really interesting thing to talk about right now.

00:30As you rightly point out, it didn't really add up at first, but now we're kind of hearing,

00:34at least I'm hearing, the climate around this in the industry, what people are thinking

00:39of it, is really changing a lot just over the past week.

00:43You know, originally it came out that the senators who really have had no involvement

00:47in sports betting were calling on a lame duck FTC and a lame duck DOJ to investigate these

00:53supposed antitrust claims from this one source document that this random Temple Law professor

00:59had sent out.

01:00And like you point to, Craig, you know, other people have options to bet on different apps.

01:04There was really no evidence we've seen of this happening.

01:08But now a lot has changed.

01:11First of all, I'm told that there will be a couple of key witnesses at this hearing,

01:15one being NCAA president Charlie Baker, who, while he did sign the bill to legalize sports

01:21betting when he was governor in Massachusetts, he's been relatively critical or at least

01:25outspoken about its impact on student athletes, even calling on a lot of states to ban player

01:30prop betting on college athletes.

01:32You're going to have a Rutgers professor who's been critical of the industry testifying at

01:36this hearing, someone from a company called Epic Global Solutions, which specializes in

01:42dealing with problem gambling.

01:43They employ a lot of people who are gambling addicts or recovering gambling addicts themselves

01:48who have now worked at really admirable to tell their story and use their story to work

01:53with leagues and sports books on solutions here.

01:55But I'm told from industry sources that nobody representing the industry itself is going

02:01to be has yet so far been invited to speak at this thing.

02:04So that kind of points us in the direction of maybe this is going to be a very critical

02:08hearing.

02:09You know, you don't know what will come out of that.

02:13More has come out in terms of the picture of what the FTC will look like next year.

02:17Trump just appointed his new nominee.

02:20That nominee is a former staffer of one of the senators who called for this investigation.

02:27He also works for a law firm that does heavy work with one of DraftKings and and FanDuel's

02:33chief competitors, which does not do sports betting.

02:36So that kind of leads us to maybe some breadcrumbs as to where this is exactly coming from.

02:41At the end of the day, we don't really know if it will amount to anything.

02:44It could.

02:45It might not.

02:46But it seems to be more than we thought it was at this time last week, and I'm sure more

02:50is going to come out.

02:51I'm really excited to see, you know, what flies during this hearing next week.

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