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00:00Let's start off with our big sports betting story of the day.
00:03And boy, another scandal involving collegiate athletes.
00:06This is 13 former men's college basketball players from six schools involved in a gambling scheme that included betting on their own games.
00:14Schools included Eastern Michigan, Temple, Arizona State, New Orleans, also North Carolina A&T and Mississippi Valley State.
00:22The NCAA has yet to name the athletes stating that they're no longer involved or at their schools where the violations took place.
00:28And that the infraction process is still ongoing.
00:32It's, again, a third-party organization that reports these issues.
00:36And this will be a big story ahead of the next college basketball season, which is coming your way in a little bit over a month.
00:42Go figure that.
00:44Another turn in the Kawhi Leonard story.
00:46If you're unfamiliar, there was a report from Pablo Torre's podcast that reported that Kawhi Leonard received money from a defunct company.
00:54It was a no-show payment that circumvented the salary cap.
00:57That's what he reported.
00:58A limited partner with the Clippers in this next part of his reporting reportedly sent $2 million to a now bankrupt company that gave Kawhi an endorsement deal for the no-show job less than 10 days before the forward was paid $1.75 million by the company.
01:16Reportedly, the company's name is Aspiration.
01:18They agreed to pay lettered $28 million in an endorsement deal.
01:23And the owner, Steve Ballmer, invested $50 million through his personal LLC in 2021.
01:28Of course, the story continues to evolve.
01:30And the commissioner of the NBA, Adam Silver, says that innocent until proven guilty.
01:34So we'll see what ends up happening there.
01:36All right.
01:36In the National Football League last night, close score, but really didn't feel that way.
01:42I don't know if you had watched this one, but it did feel like the Packers more or less dominated this game.
01:46And they end up winning 27-18 as the Green Bay Packers are now 2-0 on the season.
01:55Josh Jacobs had 80 yards on the ground.
01:57Jordan Love did his thing as well.
01:58But it really was the defense that contained Jaden Daniels and the Washington Commander's offense.
02:04In fact, the Packers went up 14-0 in this one.
02:06Tucker Craft, tight end.
02:08If you played him in fantasy or played against him like me, you're not feeling so good.
02:12Here's Matt LaFleur on the win.
02:15You know, all in all, I thought we were in control of the football game.
02:19For the majority of the game, we just got to – there was a lot of mistakes out there that we have got to clean up between penalties, some miscues, some misops.
02:31But you've got to give credit to Washington.
02:33That's a really good football team.
02:35But I thought I was overly – overall, I was impressed with our defense, the energy they're playing with, getting a lot of pressure on a really good quarterback.
02:45It seemed like they were hitting them quite a bit.
02:47I know we had four sacks and like eight pressures or whatever it was.
02:51I thought Keyshawn Nixon was playing his butt off out there, just competing, getting a lot of PBUs.
02:57I think he had five.
02:59And then offensively, just – it was kind of feast or famine a little bit.
03:03I mean, too many three and outs.
03:05And then having opportunities where, you know, for whatever reason, whether it's a call or just not executing
03:14or doing things to put us in a bad situation.
03:19But I think there's opportunities that we need to capitalize on if we want to become the team that I think we can become.
03:27One of the favorites currently on FanDuel to win the NFC.
03:30How about that?
03:31Green Bay off to a great start.
03:32Meanwhile, the Commanders thought they had a very crowded running back room when they traded Brian Robinson to the San Francisco 49ers.
03:39Well, scratch that.
03:41Austin Eckler, with a serious injury potentially yesterday, to his Achilles, he may end up missing the season.
03:46We'll find that out probably, I would guess, later today to get confirmation, which doesn't leave them with much in the backfield.
03:54Here's Dan Quinn on the loss and the injury.
03:57Just starting off, just a tough night, honestly, from an injury standpoint and in-game.
04:03We used the weekend to see where we're at from the injuries.
04:07I don't want to, you know, make a guess, so I'll give you those updates on Monday.
04:12Give credit to Green Bay.
04:13I thought they played a hell of a game, certainly down the red zone.
04:16I thought that was the real difference for them converting into some touchdowns there and for us only one trip down to the red zone.
04:22So, yeah, I thought just, you know, getting behind, I thought that was a big piece of it.
04:26And then I thought coming out of the half, you know, got a nice return to get going.
04:30And at that point, I thought we'd get ready to go back into it.
04:34And then another score later, we're behind.
04:36But I just felt like we didn't find the rhythm, John, that we needed to.
04:40You know, really from Jump Street, it didn't feel like our third downs, our conversions in that space were at a spot that we need them to be.
04:46You know, down the field, I agreed the big plays were really the story in the game.
04:50I thought that, to me, was, you know, down the field, plays were really a big difference.
04:55Like I said, I thought overall, just a tough night in terms of style and attitude of how we want to play, identity.
05:01So, we just missed the mark on those.
05:02But I don't want to – I'll give the credit to Green Bay.
05:05You know, they played well.
05:06A couple of more injury updates.
05:08Ed Oliver of the Buffalo Bills, great defensive tackle, going to miss this week's game.
05:13And also, some question for the Las Vegas Raiders, as Brock Bowers missed practice Wednesday and Thursday,
05:20which means that he'll have to practice today, almost definitely, in order to play this upcoming weekend.
05:25Michael Mayer is their backup there.
05:27The Miami Dolphins, after losing 33-8 to the Colts, decided it would be best to have a team meeting after week one.
05:33How about that?
05:34Tua Tunga-Vailoa, quarterback, said he was involved in it, and it was more or less going over some of the struggles of the offense.
05:40Well, I got the offense together, and we had a meeting about things that we wanted to do to hang our hats on this week,
05:47points of emphasis, and how we want to go about it this week.
05:51So, we got all of that communicated to those guys.
05:55So, that's what we got.
05:57So, you said after the game that you were definitely curious who would be showing up to film session on the off-day Tuesday.
06:04Did you see the people that you wanted to see?
06:06Yeah, no.
06:07I thought that was the cool thing, is that was their process going into week one.
06:14Win, lose.
06:15Like, you got to see a lot of the same guys, you know, back in the film room, back in the meeting rooms.
06:20And, you know, I thought that was a cool thing.
06:24The NFL has decided they will not, not discipline Lamar Jackson for having that little skirmish with the fan who grabbed him at the end of the game in Buffalo.
06:34That's probably the right decision there.
06:35All right, last night in college football, Wake Forest goes up 14-0 on NC State, and then, yeah, fell apart after that.
06:4234-24, NC State not only wins, but they cover that big line on the road.
06:45Five games on the slate in college football tonight.
06:47Actually, some pretty good Friday night games.
06:50Indiana State, Indiana, that's not one of them, and neither is Colgate-Syracuse.
06:53But look at the rest of the schedule here.
06:55Colorado takes on Houston.
06:56Kansas State takes on Arizona, and, boy, UCLA has got to win this game tonight, and they play New Mexico.
07:03They're a short favorite, four and a half.
07:04Also, Indiana's cornerback, Lewis Moore's hearing has been delayed.
07:07He's going for a sixth year of eligibility, which could change the face of college football.
07:11As of right now, he's eligible to play two more games, and then we'll be done with his eligibility there.
07:16All right, in Major League Baseball last night, Aaron Judge made history.
07:20He tied Joe DiMaggio for fourth place on the Yankees' all-time home run list with 360.
07:26He also passed Yogi Berra earlier this week, and the Yankees win last night 9-3.
07:31Blue Jays keep on rolling.
07:33Two-hitter for Kevin Gossman and a shutout of the Astros 6-0.
07:38Mariners also won.
07:39They're in first place.
07:40The Mets slide continues.
07:41They're just now a game and a half up for the final wild card against the Reds and the Giants.
07:47They get swept four games in Philadelphia.
07:50Jackson Merrill hit a home run.
07:52Randy Vasquez also pitched six strong innings as the Padres defeated the Rockies 2-0.
07:58Welcome back to Newswire here on Sports Grid.
08:00Let's bring in Sam McQuillen from Legal Sports Report to go over the very latest in sports betting,
08:04and we'll get into the prediction market here a little bit.
08:07But first, Sam, let's talk about the growth of sports betting, which we've seen since legalized every single college and pro football season.
08:14People running to their phones, downloading the apps, DraftKings, FanDuel, Bet365, everybody else, MGM.
08:20I don't want to leave anybody out.
08:21But for the first time in a while, Sam, no legalization of any new state.
08:26We'll have to wait until December.
08:28So what does that mean for downloads?
08:30Yeah, you hit on it, Craig.
08:31This is the first week one of NFL and college football where downloads were actually down from last year, except for FanDex and Bet365.
08:41So every single sports betting app not named FanDex or Bet365 combined, the downloads were down 10% from last year.
08:50FanDex and Bet365 are newer entrants in the space.
08:53Bet365 has launched in about four new states since the start of last NFL season.
08:58So they're working from a smaller pool to compare to, and FanDex similarly has launched in a bunch of new states, and they've put a lot of promo dollars out there.
09:06So even an app like FanDuel was down in downloads about 29%, but still led the entire sports betting universe in app downloads versus everyone else.
09:18So that should go to show you how dominant they've been here.
09:20But yeah, you only have 50 states that can legalize sports betting.
09:24So this is a number that steadily decline kind of every year.
09:28Only so many people turn 21 in the time between last football season and the start of football season.
09:34So what it means for the operators is they're allowed to acquire people at more efficient costs.
09:40They're focusing, you know, you're not working from a base where you have everyone rushing to a new state to kind of compete for the same customers.
09:46They can kind of focus on squeezing more revenue out of their customers, reactivating old customers.
09:52And like you alluded to, Craig, we do have Missouri on the horizon in December, the only state that's going to launch during football season.
09:58That'll be about the 39th state, 39th new market with sports betting.
10:02So I imagine, you know, because they've had no other states to really compete for at this point, that'll be so much more important to them at that time to really come in and acquire customers pretty much at a later stage in the sports betting game where you have a bunch of states have already turned on as well.
10:18But yeah, definitely, you know, this is the first time ever we've seen the app downloads down year over year.
10:23Usually they're up a percentage.
10:24So very interesting, you know, down 10%, and we'll see if Fanatics and Bet365 can build on their momentum going forward.
10:33Yeah, and look, a long way to go here.
10:35December is around the corner, so we'll see what happens.
10:38All right, let's get to prediction markets here.
10:40That's been the hot story of the year.
10:42These different operators that have launched sports betting, they call it not sports betting, but to me, I'm just going to call it what it is at this point.
10:50I mean, you can get the money line on games or predict the money line on games.
10:53It's closer to sports betting than anything that I've seen that's not called sports betting.
10:57I don't know what to say about it, but is this what's in the future here, Sam?
11:01Because if they're not going to stop this and let hundreds of millions of dollars get exchanged on these apps and websites, it feels like we're going to see a lot more of this in the future.
11:10Yeah, most Americans sure seem to agree with you, Craig.
11:13There was this survey that the American Gaming Association put out this week where it polled U.S. voters, and it found that 84% of respondents agreed with you.
11:23They said, you know, this looks like sports betting, so it should be regulated as sports betting.
11:27You know, ahead of football season, you have these companies redesign their entire interface to have, you know, the six-box spread where you have, you know, the spread, the money line, and the over-under for each game where it looks almost exactly like a sports book.
11:39Although they say for, you know, regulatory purposes that it's not.
11:44It's been able to allow them to be in states like California, states like Texas, where there is no legal sports betting.
11:50So the poll saying that most people think that it should be regulated the same way as sports betting.
11:55Of course, these prediction markets like Calci, Robinhood, Crypto.com now, PolyMarketSuit, they say that they shouldn't be regulated as sports betting, and they're instead financial instruments that should be regulated by the CFTC.
12:09Now, the CFTC has not done anything.
12:11They were supposed to do a roundtable earlier this year to address the issue.
12:15There has been a commissioner nominated to take over from the last administration who actually has ties to Calci and other prediction markets.
12:23He hasn't been confirmed yet.
12:24They've basically done nothing in this space, so we're kind of in limbo.
12:28Meanwhile, a bunch of states have sued to stop it, saying that, hey, this is sports betting.
12:33We need to be the ones who regulate it.
12:34The judges so far have said, you know, it should be decided by the federal government, who says that they're the ones who figure this thing out.
12:40So obviously the federal government hasn't done anything yet.
12:43And meanwhile, these sports prediction markets continue to just expand with how much money they take.
12:49You had $300 million was traded on Calci over this past weekend, the first week into college football and NFL, which was its biggest day in the platform's history since the election in 2024, and its third biggest day of all time.
13:04They've continued to pump in money and investors and bring in people from the sports betting industry to expand it and make it even bigger.
13:12And in the meantime, you have companies like FanDuel, DraftKings, Underdog, all positioning themselves to launch prediction markets sometime in the future.
13:20So it seems like that, if anything, gives us a signal that they don't think that this is going to be cracked down on.
13:26And we very much could be talking just in a couple months, a scenario where you have betting on DraftKings and FanDuel pretty much legal in all 50 states, even though they haven't legalized it.
13:35So it certainly is quite a mess.
13:38And, you know, football season brings the most money.
13:40So we're only going to see more focus on it as we go forward.
13:44Yeah, it's kind of crazy.
13:46It feels a little bit.
13:47I don't know if I'm right or wrong on this one, but the prediction markets feel a little bit, Sam, like when the Hard Rock Sportsbook launched in Florida without any regulation at all.
13:58Then it got shut down, and then it came back up for good.
14:00So that kind of leads me to my next story, which is about Hard Rock, where Genius Sports and the Hard Rock have paired up for another partnership.
14:07Tell us more.
14:08Yeah, on that last front, I'll just say it seems to kind of be the strategy of sports betting these days or not sports betting to, you know, just, you know, shoot first, ask questions later.
14:17Better to ask for forgiveness than ask if we can do this.
14:20Hard Rock, meanwhile, you know, they are the only game in town in Florida.
14:24So it's pretty big news.
14:25You know, I know you're down there, Craig, that they're going to add new live betting and streaming features in their app.
14:31And that's through a partnership they announced this week with Genius Sports, which is the official data provider of the NFL.
14:37This is a sports betting technology and data company that works with sports books like FanDuel, BetMGM DraftKings, pretty much all the major players in the space where you can now go in an app and have this thing called watch and bet where you can watch the game.
14:52Oftentimes, it will be on a faster latency or a lower latency than the actual broadcast.
14:58And you can bet in the app and they'll show you statistics to try to make you facilitate live betting more.
15:03And it's all been peddled as features that will be good for the customer and allow the customers to be more engaged.
15:08So Hard Rock now joining in with this partnership, they'll have access to Genius Sports suite of live betting features, not just for the NFL, but they'll have bet vision features as well for sports like international soccer and a host of other events that Genius Sports has the rights to.
15:24So in my mind, this is Hard Rock kind of finally joining in or trying to get into the same spot as these other competitors that have had this feature for a long time.
15:33And pretty much you're going to have kind of the same thing on every sports book at this point.
15:37So the question to me now is, you know, how do those sports books who have been doing this longer, been doing it first, how do they differentiate themselves?
15:44How do they make their product better?
15:45We know live betting has been a major focus for sports books like DraftKings this NFL season.
15:50It's pretty much centered around their entire game plan.
15:53So now that you have competitors pretty much doing the same thing here with this partnership Hard Rock has just done, it'll be interesting to see how that forces the rest of the market to make their features even better.
16:02And hopefully at the end of the day, that just rolls into a better experience overall for the better, certainly in Florida, but, you know, elsewhere in other states where you have more options as well.
16:12Yeah, definitely the case.
16:13And Sam, you know, kind of going back to we were talking about the prediction markets before.
16:19Is it just possible that these things just all launch all over the country and that's it and with no pushback whatsoever?
16:25And how can they, I mean, it's great for them, I get it, but how could they get away with this not having to pay the same taxes of the other companies?
16:33And how can FanDuel and DraftKings just decide to get on board with this and not push back either?
16:37Yeah, it's a great question.
16:38It's definitely possible it could happen, whether it will be allowed to happen forever.
16:42I don't think that's the case.
16:43I think, you know, whether it takes a year, two years, three years, there's legal action, there's lawsuits coming in.
16:48People have a real vested interest to want to get the taxes.
16:52That was one of the main reasons the arguments for states being able to legalize sports betting in the first place so they could benefit from it.
16:58And this just circumvents that whole thing.
16:59So it definitely could happen, but there would then be some big, hard regulation coming, at least in my mind.
17:06Same, Sam.
17:07Have a great weekend.
17:07Thanks for coming on.
17:09Thanks.
17:09You too, Craig.
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