Michigan Issues New Cease Orders to Offshore Sportsbooks

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00:00Hey, so Michigan has some new cease and desist as far as the offshore sportsbooks are concerned,

00:05telling them that you can't operate in our state anymore.

00:10You know, I see a list of about eight, nine here, Sam, and I've only really heard of one

00:15of them.

00:16So, you know, I'm, you know, the one that I've heard of is BetDSI, or, you know, years

00:21ago I was familiar with them.

00:23But needless to say, what's really fascinating is that these cease and desists are being

00:28taken seriously, as we've talked about a month ago, two months ago.

00:31I did not anticipate these offshore sportsbooks saying, okay, you know, we're done.

00:36They must have really been threatened to be like, hey, like you're going to be going to

00:40jail if you don't get out, because they're following the rules.

00:43Yeah, it's been one of the more underrated kind of plot lines we've seen develop over

00:48the past year is offshore sportsbooks that are still very active, like just because you

00:52legalize sports betting doesn't mean these websites are going to go away, and they certainly

00:56have it.

00:57You know, we've arrived off of this, you know, popularity of legal sports betting in general

01:01saying, hey, you know, we also exist out here and blurring the lines.

01:04And to your point, it's been really hard for states to enforce or take any action against

01:09them.

01:10But lately, they've been going away when the states tell them to.

01:13We have nine more websites were issued cease and desist orders by Michigan regulators just

01:18this past week, which now brings the total list to about 17, including some other major

01:22ones like Bovada.

01:24And everyone has always said, you know, there's nothing that's going to make them comply.

01:28These are websites that exist not in the U.S.

01:31There's no real teeth for these regulators to go after them.

01:34It would take federal regulators to and federal regulators have a ton of other things they've

01:38been dealing with.

01:39This is very low on their list.

01:40So to see these websites respond and say, OK, we're going to leave immediately really

01:45makes you think why they're going to leave, because these states don't have that much

01:48power and kind of makes you wonder why this hasn't been done earlier.

01:53It is spreading to other states, other states.

01:56About 17 now have taken some action against offshore sports books, and most of them, as

02:01far as I know, have complied.

02:03So it's been states where sports betting is legal, states where sports betting is illegal

02:09as well. So you have to wonder if something's coming to a head here when these websites

02:13stop responding or if this is quite simply the answer to get rid of unregulated offshore

02:18sports betting is just to tell them to leave.

02:20And they say, OK, we'll take our business somewhere else.