00:00Okay, so many years ago before sports betting was legal, Sam, they just couldn't get these offshore operators who were outside of the United States to stop offering sports betting.
00:11They talked about it for many, many years.
00:13Then sports betting became legal, and the offshore sports betting operators continue to operate as usual.
00:19But all of a sudden, in the last year, we've seen a lot of the offshore shut down, which I am perplexed by.
00:24I'm very surprised that it happened now.
00:26It almost makes me think that some sort of agreement was made, by the way.
00:29And GeoComply has some new data that shows that the direction that they're going, getting the offshore accounts out of the United States, is probably going to help the accounts inside the United States.
00:41Yeah, I don't think that last part is breaking news, but it's an excellent point you make, Craig, that for years, whether it was federal oversight or state-by-state level, everyone had called on someone to crack down on these offshore sports books,
00:55which right now I could go to 10 different websites and type something in and place a bet, and it technically would be illegal, but it's happening anyway.
01:02And over the past 12 months, it kind of started with Michigan.
01:06A bunch of these states started sending cease and desists, started threatening lawsuits, started fining offshore sports books throughout the country.
01:13Of course, these are mostly states where sports betting was legal, so they kind of had some incentive to get rid of this black market that was going on.
01:19You know, you want to legalize sports betting in the first place, you kind of have to also get rid of the illegal part of it as well.
01:26But, yeah, now you've seen a bunch of these offshore sports books just kind of admit defeat and walk away, which is surprising.
01:32You know, you wonder why it took so long if this was going to kind of be the result anyway.
01:36It definitely makes you think about what's going on behind the scenes.
01:38But GeoComply coming out yesterday, just a couple of days before NFL season, with data that shows that, you know, there's five states that took recent actions against offshore sports books.
01:48They compared that to data from five states that did not but were similar sizes.
01:53Those are Arizona, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Michigan, and Tennessee.
01:56They all took some action, and they found that they actually grew active players in those markets 10% on legal sports books faster than the states that hadn't taken enforcement action.
02:08New account signups were also up 39% in enforcement states versus similar size states that had not taken action.
02:14So I think they kind of wanted to, you know, throw that information there that, you know, this is helping the legal market when you get rid of offshore sports books,
02:21when you threaten them, when they do end up, you know, abiding by those threats and going someplace else and kind of just taking their losses,
02:27it does lead to a better legal market, which at the end of the day was one of the main components of legalizing sports betting in the first place.
02:34Now, the offshore market definitely is still thriving.
02:37It makes up about 33% of all the money that's bet in the U.S., but that number is down from about 40% a couple years ago.
02:45You know, you've had almost all 50 states came together to ask the Department of Justice for even more effort against these offshore sports books to not just, you know, chase them down, but really eradicate them and get rid of them.
02:57I don't think that will ever happen.
02:58It also remains to be seen if the feds ever get involved with this, and I don't think it's as likely if you have, you know, the success at the state level,
03:06but it does go to show that there's this kind of coordinated effort, and the data is suggesting so far, at least, that it's working.
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