00:00Let's take a look at, you know, we mentioned earlier in the show, Sam, the fact that there's an expectation, according to the AGA, that we are going to see north of $30 billion across regulated sports books spent, wagered on the NFL this coming season.
00:15And, you know, it's an increase of seven and a half percent, I believe we said, maybe eight and a half percent. It's, you know, it's a big number, obviously, but just regulatory betting in general is just, it's spiking across the board. Football, obviously, is always going to be a catalyst. It's always going to lead to more and more because football is king.
00:35And that is by far the most popular bet that or sport that we all like to wager on. But, you know, across the board, you know, we're seeing here an increase here for 2025, up nine and a half percent from 2024.
00:49Are you surprised that the number has jumped that much? Would you have thought maybe it would be even higher than that? How do you view it?
00:54So if you look at how much the numbers projected the jump or expecting $164 billion in total handle, again, that's how much money was bet on sports for the year, about a 10% jump on the year sounds like a lot, but it's actually less than in past years where it's grown a lot more.
01:11Now, on the flip side of that, you have revenue, which is expected to go up 17%. So you kind of have to wonder, okay, why is revenue outpacing the handle growth?
01:19And we can turn the reason really that we've been getting is that, again, parlays, people like betting these higher margin bets for the sportsbooks, these lottery tickets, these bets that allow you to participate in player narratives.
01:31And in turn, sportsbooks have really pushed it down everyone's throat, you know, whether people like doing it before sportsbooks started marketing them heavy, or whether sportsbooks marketed them heavy first, and then people like doing that, like that's, we don't, that's neither here or there.
01:46People are betting these higher margin bets. And it's allowing sportsbooks basically squeeze more money out of their customers. But as a result, as a cost, people are betting less people are betting $10 on a parlay versus multiple $5 bets. And we've seen those concerns voiced on Wall Street, which is talked about, you know, we're kind of concerned about handle growth. Now, sportsbooks only started ratcheting up these parlays when everyone was concerned about when they'll be profitable.
02:11So it's kind of a give or take situation. From a betting standpoint, it seems like the appetite is obviously increasing, you're going to have, I think, upwards of at least $40 billion. I think our projections go past the AGA's numbers there, if you include parlays, as well as future bets to be about in the NFL this season.
02:29So it's going to be a big season for them regardless. Last year, they got absolutely hammered on the NFL. There was 10 weeks where you had at least 75% of favorites winning their games. And if you know anything about sports betting or sports in general, that's pretty unlikely. And the public tends to bet favorites. So that resulted in sportsbooks getting absolutely hammered.
02:50I think FanDuel lost over $600 million just because it was a weird luck year that way. So it'll be really interesting to see how they do this NFL season. Obviously, people are betting a lot more, but will the sportsbooks kind of come out on that better side of, okay, maybe they got hammered last year. Now they'll recoup some of that this year. So it'll be a make or break year or make or break season for them. That's for sure.
