00:00All right. So maybe the prediction markets jumping in in the back door will open up to somebody else competing in the future against DraftKings and FanDuel.
00:09But Sam, it just appears as though for now there's really not much to talk about.
00:13These two companies are dominating the space and dominating stocks.
00:17And for whatever, you know, ESPN bet is trying to be or some of these other companies, they're going to have to fight their way over FanDuel and DraftKings.
00:24Yeah, DraftKings and FanDuel have combined now for 70 percent of the market for a long time.
00:29And that number keeps going up every football season.
00:31This football season, investors are calling especially critical, not just for those two companies, but to your point, Craig, if anybody else is able to make a dent, it'll have to happen now.
00:41ESPN has had about three percent market share. Their goal is to get to 10 percent by next year.
00:46So if they can't make a big push this year and really see a lot of the new features that they put on their apps, a lot of the integrations with ESPN fantasy products, with ESPN flagship products across the board,
00:57if those don't pay off soon this football season, it might be curtains for them.
01:01They do have an opt out clause. So that would only leave the space, you know, more dominated by FanDuel and DraftKings.
01:07That MGM is, of course, also in the race, but they've been more focused on iGaming lately and have kind of ceded some ground to FanDuel and DraftKings.
01:14But the big question here this football season, just for the industry overall, is going to be looking at Handel growth.
01:21There's about 13 billion dollars that is expected to be bet on the NFL this season, which is obviously more than last year.
01:27You have another state turning on as well. But the rate at which Handel is growing has definitely slowed down over the past couple of years.
01:33It went from it was about 15 percent to 30 percent growth every year. And this year so far, it's about eight to nine percent growth.
01:40So I think investors are going to be really keen to see if these sports books are able to take more money.
01:45Now, again, that's not exactly how you measure how well they do. They also have margins. They have hold rates.
01:50They have the revenue that they make is much more important.
01:53But if people are betting less or not betting as much at an increased rate, that definitely is a concern of Wall Street.
01:58So they want to see if, you know, shoving parlays down everyone's throat, whether that's actually making people bet less money,
02:05like betting five dollars as opposed to, you know, a bigger bet you put on a spread or something like that.
02:10So that's going to be a very important thing for investors to watch this NFL season, how much they can actually keep growing the handle
02:17and ultimately how well the books do, because as we know very well, they got absolutely hammered last football season
02:23when I think there was about, you know, 10 weeks where 75 percent of the favorites won and the public loves to back favorites.
02:29So we'll see if the pendulum swings this season, if the public gets hammered.
02:33You know, that's kind of how the law of averages usually work.
02:35But again, this is a very explosive business and risk averse business.
02:39So investors are going to be keen to see week to week how the results are doing.
02:43And if it doesn't get off to a good start, you can see some heat from Wall Street and the stock prices.
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