00:00Pat, welcome back to the show. I know you love Fridays, so we got some hot topics here to talk about. Let's start off in Chicago. We're seeing this flat sports betting fee and percentages being added all across the country, a quarter, 50 cents. Just depends on who you ask and the way things go in legislation. Things can change at any time. So is Chicago now going like a different direction as to what we thought previously?
00:22I mean, we'll have to wait and see, but this is just potentially more bad news for sports books in Illinois. I mean, if you've been following this and listening to this show when we're on from LSR, I mean, yeah, a couple, two years ago, or I guess it was last year, the Illinois government went from a 15% flat rate sports betting tax to a tiered system from 20 to 40% based on how much revenue those sports books are doing.
00:48Well, on top of that, this year, the budget included a new thing where you bet for the first 20 million bets from a sports book, you get a 25 cent per bet tax for the sports books. Well, that jumps to 50 cents per bet when you go over those 20 million bets. So that's in itself, all the sports books are pretty upset. We've seen six now.
01:10BetRivers just announced a $1 minimum bet on top of Hard Rock is $2. BetMGM is $2.50 minimum bets. And then of course, FanDuel, DraftKings, and Fanatics all have a per bet fee that's included in their sports book bets now.
01:28Like you just can't place a bet without paying that extra bet. Well, now you've got the Chicago city council saying, Hey, that's not a bad idea. Maybe we can institute a 50 cent per bet tax.
01:40It's nothing officially proposed or anything like that. It was just floated as something they've looked at. Based on their estimations, they could make up to 40 to $41 million a year in this per bet tax.
01:54But you really have to wonder based on the action these sports books have already undergone to kind of mitigate the effect of this new per bet tax fee that just went into effect July 1st, how much another 50 cents from just a city could play into what they might do and how they offer things to customers.
02:13So this is just something to keep an eye on. Again, nothing official from the Chicago city council, but that's being floated. And when people start seeing more tax dollars, you have to wonder what happens in the long run of no Chicago does have a per bet or a tax included in in-person bets, which of course is only at Wrigley field right now at a draft Kings.
02:35And they haven't made a ton of money only some, you know, 20, $40,000 or whatever it is. So not huge, but they, they are looking at it and saying, we want to get ours somehow from this industry.
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