00:00Talk about the hot topic of the year, which has been the prediction markets, which essentially are companies that are offering ways to make predictions on sports.
00:09They don't call it sports betting. Underdog is now launching sports predictions as well through Crypto.com.
00:16They don't call it sports betting either, Sam. Eventually, someone's going to really check into this and say, is it sports betting or not?
00:22But for now, a welcome partnership with these two companies.
00:25Yeah, it's funny. On a show that's centered around sports betting, we sure talk about something that isn't sports betting quite a lot.
00:33And now you have Underdog, the latest company, to announce it.
00:37It's going to get in the sports prediction market space through the partnership with Crypto.com.
00:42These are these prediction markets, which allow you to buy a proposition on an outcome.
00:47It could be a spread on an NFL game. It's even marketed by a lot of the prediction markets as betting.
00:52But it's available in all 50 states right now.
00:56They have contended that they are under federal oversight and thus don't need to get gambling licenses.
01:01You know, Underdog only has one sports book in North Carolina.
01:05So this is basically them saying they're going to do sports betting in all 50 states without needing to get a license.
01:11Now, not really surprised. This is the route that they've taken.
01:14Underdog has been the company that has gotten into a lot of states with, again, another product that's looked very similar to sports betting in these pick'em player prop style over-under contests.
01:26And they had a lot of scrutiny and oversight over that.
01:30Almost two years ago now, they're jumping in with kind of the latest version of a workaround to sports betting, which has been popularized by companies like Kalshi, companies like Polymarket, and Crypto.com was offering their own version.
01:44So now they'll do it kind of facilitated through Underdog.
01:47The company came out and said that they're going to focus specifically on states where sports betting isn't legal.
01:52So not really hiding what they're doing here.
01:54They want to get into markets where there is no legal draft kings, there's no legal fan duel option.
01:59And those are big states like Texas and California, which the sports betting industry, or if you live in that state, they've really pined to have a legal sports betting option there for years.
02:08So this is getting a product over to that states where people are very hungry for it and potentially doing it on a platform like Underdog instead of a platform like Kalshi or Robinhood.
02:17These are people who know sports gambling, know sports gambling products.
02:21They have familiarity with what users want here.
02:24They haven't been offering contracts on the election.
02:27They're now just getting into sports betting.
02:28So you could have a product that looks even more like sports betting in those states.
02:32And, of course, this comes as multiple states have sued to stop this from happening.
02:36But so far, the federal courts have sided with companies like Kalshi and other prediction markets saying that it's really up to the CFTC to figure this all out.
02:45And the CFTC has not figured it out.
02:47They haven't really done anything here, which, you know, the longer that happens, the more we're going to have companies like Underdog doing this, FanDuel potentially as well.
02:56So it's a space that just gets continued to be taken advantage of right now by these companies.
03:01And I wouldn't be surprised if we're talking about, you know, prize picks or somebody else doing something similar sometime soon.
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