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00:00So let's get started with a sports betting story and we'll start off with prediction markets. What
00:04else do we start off the show with for the past year? Feels like it's every day. Prediction
00:08markets. All right. Another state says no prediction markets for us. Louisiana. That's
00:13the next one. They got legalized sports gambling there. They say that they're warning the unlicensed
00:18sports betting companies to stop. Okay. So Louisiana says that event contracts are just like
00:26illegal gambling because they are not licensed in the state of Louisiana. Right now they're
00:32saying and asking to not partner with anyone that offers prediction market companies sports
00:36event contracts in the state of Louisiana saying that it could negatively affect their business
00:41in the future. And so there are other states that are involved in this as we continue to
00:45go. It has been the story of this year. Different states stepping up essentially saying do not
00:51operate prediction markets like sports betting because you guys are the same and not paying
00:56taxes. And until they do, it has to be getting out. And that's what's going to happen here
01:01in Louisiana. Meanwhile, could Matt Ishbia be out as the owner of the Phoenix Suns? This
01:05is really bizarre story here. Minority owner basically stating that Matt Ishbia has had some
01:13financial misconduct as owner of the Suns. How about that? Using a quote saying he's using
01:19the Suns as a personal piggy bank? Now let's be real here. His spokesperson said that the claims
01:26are ridiculous. It also stems from a failed buyout in 2024 and then escalated in 2025 when Ishbia
01:33initiated two capital calls. That means more money going into the team not spent by him,
01:37which the minority owners say they paid under protest. So basically Ishbia called for a couple
01:43of owners to put more money into the team. They didn't want to do it. They ended up doing it. So
01:47naturally, that's the way things work when owners get pissed at each other. Keep in mind,
01:52Ishbia, the majority owner of the Suns having issues are the majority owners. Meanwhile, let's
01:57get to the latest in the National Football League. We've got a new quarterback on the practice squad
02:03for the Indianapolis Colts. He's almost as old as me. That makes me feel good. His name is Phillip
02:08Rivers. There's a chance he could play this weekend if Riley Leonard can't. Now Riley Leonard is the third
02:13string for the Colts. Remember, starter was Daniel Jones. The backup was Anthony Richardson.
02:18Riley Leonard is the third string. They also have Brett Rippon on the team too, but Shane Steichen
02:24says that Rivers is in great shape and could actually play.
02:28Sunday after the game, you know, when Daniel went down and then we found out about Riley's knee,
02:32we're kind of like, hey, what are we going to do? And me and Chris were talking. We're like,
02:35hey, let's call Phillip. See what he says. Called him Sunday night. We said, hey, what do you think?
02:40He said, heck yeah. I'm interested. Heck yeah. And so he slept on it. I said, sleep on it.
02:45And then Monday, called him back Monday morning. He said, I need to get up there. I need to get up
02:50there and throw, get in that building, start moving around. So he came in here through. He didn't forget
02:56how to throw a football. So we did that Monday. And then Tuesday, he was in the hotel, thinking it
03:02over. He called us. Me and Chris were in the office. Said, what do you think? He said, dadgummit,
03:07let's freaking go. And so we said, let's do it. And so we're excited for his opportunity.
03:13Like I said, he's one of the most passionate players I've ever been around. The obsession
03:18for the game is off the charts. So I know he's fired up to be back in this building. He's been
03:23with a lot of these guys when he played here last. So looking forward to that.
03:28Can't go well. I just can't. I cannot see this going wrong before. Okay. Police have officially
03:36arrested a 20-year-old Bronx man and charged him with attempted murder in the shooting of Jets
03:41Chris Boyd. After a manhunt ensued, Frederick Green, that's the gentleman's name, was taken
03:48into custody near the University of Buffalo North Campus in Amherst, New York on Monday morning. He
03:53was transferred to Midtown Manhattan. Nick Sirianni says that he is going to stay involved
03:59in the offense of the Philadelphia Eagles. Right now, they're ranking near the bottom
04:04in every category in the NFL except total points because they scored so many in the first half
04:08of the season. We'll see what happens with the Eagles as they free fall toward the end
04:12of the year. Meanwhile, the Pittsburgh Steelers continue to roll on. They got a shot to win
04:16the division. Is it possible that Mike Tomlin could be back again facing some fire here
04:21during the season for some poor play? Tomlin talked about, is he on the hot seat after so
04:27many successful years in Pittsburgh? Mike, you said you understand your role as a head coach to
04:32when negative things happen. DK after the game said, Mike takes a lot of bullets for us. I'm curious,
04:3819 years since taking those bullets, get rearing at any point for you. It's the job.
04:44Mike, one of those bullets was at the Bells game, fans calling for your job. Did you feel like
04:50you were in the hot seat at all last week? Man, I've been in the hot seat for 19 years.
04:55Did you feel like you had something to prove to the fans at all? I always feel like I got
04:59something to prove. Not necessarily to anyone in particular, but that's just the spirit in which
05:03I go about what I do professionally. What do you expect from the fans Monday night?
05:08Man, I expect them to show up, man. It's Monday night football in Akershire. It's going to be a big game.
05:12All right. We'll see if Tomlin is back next year. 19 years of the hot seat. I don't believe that.
05:17All right. Madison Square Garden, the host of a tournament going on in college basketball. I
05:24believe a Jimmy V Classic, if I'm not mistaken. Number five, UConn picks up another win, this time
05:28against my Gators. 77 to 73 as the Gators lose yet again. Of course, a little revenge here for some
05:36college basketball national championship losses. Solo ball at 19 points for UConn. The Gators now five,
05:42and four on the season. UConn nine and one. Dan Hurley after the game said that it was great to be on
05:47the court against the champs and coming out victorious. Just thought a gutty performance
05:51by us. And, you know, just to be able to share the court, you know, with Florida. And I just got
05:57so much respect for, you know, for, you know, for coach Golden and, you know, just you could,
06:04he's a champion, you know, there's their championship level program.
06:08Um, and one of the premier college basketball programs and like modern basketball, like the
06:14last 25, 30 years, it's one of the top, you know, top five programs, you know, just, uh, so it's an
06:21honor to share the court with them and, uh, obviously feel great about getting a win. This was a big win
06:25for us, uh, just to try to, um, you know, do a great job with our non-conference. You know, we put
06:31together a monster of a schedule. We've dealt with some injuries and different things along the way,
06:35but, you know, to be at nine and one with everything that the team's been through versus
06:39the quality that we've, uh, had to play against, you know, with the schedule, um, you know, just
06:45impressed with what we've been able to do.
06:48Big 10 champions, no more Ohio state right now reeling after another loss this time to number
06:5513, Illinois, as they go to Columbus and win one of the biggest wins of the season, of course,
07:00for the Illini who could be inside the top 10 of the new AP poll. Here's Brad Underwood on picking
07:05up this huge road win. It was, uh, I'm proud of our guys coming off a very emotional game, uh,
07:13after a very hard week of practice, uh, before the Tennessee game and, and, um, being on the road
07:19there, um, and then, and then having to turn right back around and, and, um, uh, and come to Ohio
07:25State who's nine and one or whatever they are. Uh, but, um, Jake's doing an incredible job. This
07:32team's very, very efficient offensively. Uh, we had to withstand a really, really good player
07:40having, having a half and, uh, uh, you know, it's amazing. We spent a ton of time talking about
07:47Bruce and not letting him get going and he got going and, um, there wasn't a whole lot we could
07:53do about it. Some of those shots were very deep. Um, but, uh, I thought, uh, Andre Stryakovich's job
07:59defensively, everybody's going to look at his points. I thought the job defensively he did on
08:03him, um, maybe shocked his central nervous system a little bit. He just gave him a different look.
08:09Meanwhile, Michigan takes care of business in a blowout win against Villanova. They're the number
08:14two team in the country. They've won by 25 points or more, six straight games, really impressive
08:19for the Wolverines at the start of the college basketball season. The Knicks took care of the
08:23Raptors. Final score, 107 to 101 as Jalen Brunson ended up having a great game and they've advanced
08:31to the semifinals of the NBA Cup, as you see there. And the Magic took care of the Heat, 117 to 108.
08:38Magic also getting involved in the NBA Cup. They're in the semifinals as well. Desmond Bain has been
08:42fantastic. 37 points again last night. Welcome back to Newswire here on Sports Grid. Great to have Sam
08:48McQuillan with us from Legal Sports Report to check in on the latest news in the sports
08:52betting world here in the States and abroad. Sam, great to have you back here on our midweek
08:56edition of the show. Let's touch on the big story in sports and sports wagering. In the NBA,
09:02we have players being accused and alleged improprieties involving sports betting and,
09:07you know, poker games and such. It seems as though, Sam, these players appear to not want to go down
09:14without a fight, so to speak. Terry Rozier yesterday pled not guilty to his allegations
09:20that he was involved in a sports betting scandal. What did you make of the plea and what are the next
09:25steps? Yeah, I definitely thought it was interesting that he pled not guilty, despite the fact that the
09:33FBI says they have an overwhelming amount of evidence, which comes from an investigation that
09:38stemmed over two years, not just with Rozier, but with other athletes, other coaches involved,
09:44Chauncey Billups, the Portland Trailblazers, Damon Jones, former Cavaliers assistant coach,
09:49all kind of ensnared in these two sports betting and poker manipulation rings, which, frankly, the NBA
09:56is probably hoping gets, you know, over as soon as possible. It's really not a good look for the league
10:03to have this ongoing. But as part of the plea, you know, I don't think that Rozier would have
10:09pled guilty and forfeited, you know, his two home properties to put up the $3 million bond
10:15and agree to a couple of travel stipulations and gambling stipulations as well. If he didn't think
10:23he kind of had a case here, it's really expected that he's going to file for a motion to get the case
10:27dismissed, sort of on grounds that the prosecutors might have overreached with the federal statute,
10:35they might have had an improper application of the fraud law and procedural violations.
10:40What's going to happen next is there's going to be a March 3rd discovery hearing where the
10:44evidence will be brought forth by the prosecutors. That's going to be over a thousand documents,
10:50over 55 gigabytes of data, which will be really interesting. We'll get to see
10:54more into the betting records, the exchanges between the alleged conspirators. There's over
11:0030 people arrested in this case. So Rozier is obviously the high profile guy in the NBA,
11:05but it involves a number of other mafia backed figures, figures from his childhood. So we'll know
11:11more than he actually asked for the case to be sped up because he's in the middle of an arbitration
11:17with the NBA right now over what happens to his $26 million contract. He's not getting those
11:23installments right now because this is ongoing. It's kind of unsettled whether or not he will
11:28get that money because the case, you know, innocent until proven guilty hasn't been resolved yet.
11:33And then meanwhile, the Miami heat, which traded for him kind of after the, uh, the game in question
11:39was when he was a member of the Hornets, they want to know if they can move his contract before
11:43the trade deadline. They're sixth in the East right now. It would be normally be a major trade ship
11:48to get something else. Um, but right now they're kind of in limbo with something that they
11:52probably didn't even know was going on. So everyone wants it to move forward quickly.
11:56I think the NBA as well, the judge, however, said that she's not going to take any of that
12:00into account and allow the case to proceed. So, uh, this might be something that is, isn't even
12:05settled for a couple of years at this case. We'll know more when we get all those documents and all
12:09that data on March 3rd, supposedly it could always be changed. Yeah, that's, that's true too. And
12:14again, these things can stretch for months, if not years with this, but we'll follow it for you.
12:19Sam will over at LegalSportsReport.com. Okay. So the state of Missouri, their first sports bets
12:25were placed by patrons on December the 1st. We're not quite two weeks into this, but some numbers Sam
12:34are in at least early showing data about downloads and where people live that they're placing these
12:40sports bets. And, you know, certainly you've had a chance to look into some of these numbers again,
12:44albeit still very early. What is the data showing? Yeah, so far we're seeing very promising numbers
12:52from Missouri, which again is the first state to launch sports betting in almost two years since
12:58North Carolina. So it's kind of a different experience when you have a state where it's taken
13:03so long, there's been a huge pent up demand for sports betting with surrounding states having it legal
13:08as well. There is over half a million active sports betting accounts detected just in the first week
13:15alone. Now that doesn't mean that half a million people were sports betting, you know, people can
13:20have multiple accounts, but there was a lot of geolocation checks processed by GeoComply. In fact,
13:26almost 19 million pings to its servers, which pretty much happen whenever you make a transaction on a
13:32sports betting account, or whether you log in to verify that you're in a legal betting area.
13:37And according to GeoComply, the demand is very much in line with states around the same size,
13:42Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, and Colorado, which all had a lot of activity as well. So it's a very
13:48good start for Missouri, according to the people who watch this stuff. It was also the first week you
13:54had over a million sports betting app downloads during the NFL since week two. So there was over a
14:01million app downloads last week, which obviously comes on the heels of Missouri's big launch,
14:06and a 30% increase year over year. So really big demand, not just in Missouri, but you see the
14:12eight sports betting apps are involved, really trying to push their apps to everyone across
14:17the US. And so far, it's been so good with Missouri, there was obviously the big Texans and Chiefs game,
14:24the Chiefs did not end up winning, but there were over 10,000 active accounts in Missouri. So a lot of
14:30activity around a very popular team, it'll be really interesting just to monitor activity and
14:35handle reports that come in on the Chiefs throughout the rest of the season, if they make
14:39the playoffs or not. And we're going to keep watching all the data and all the reports and
14:44see how Missouri kind of shakes out. If this is just a big spike in activity, or if it's kind of
14:49the status quo for the market.
14:50The story isn't sports betting here on Newswire, it's got to be surrounding casinos here. And it
14:57looks like Sam, at least according to the column that you guys have up at LegalSportsReport.com,
15:02that the state of New York could be in a better position to get this going. Maybe that's our big
15:07story for 2026.
15:10Yeah, it would certainly be very big news if New York legalized online casino, not just because you
15:16only have six states where iGaming is legal. And not just because iGaming is really the endgame
15:21for sports betting operators, they want people to become sports betting users, and then they want
15:26states to legalize iGaming and sell them on a much higher margin product. But New York obviously is
15:32New York, it's one of the biggest states. So whatever happens there usually has a trickle down
15:36effect. With other states, we've certainly seen it in gaming when they raise taxes, other states raise
15:41taxes when New York legalized sports betting, more states tended to do that as well. But
15:45with the political environment in New York right now, they just took care of licensing
15:52the state's three downstate casinos. One is going to be near Citi Field, one is going to be near the
15:58Aqueduct Racetrack in Queens, the other a Bally's location in Bronx. And the main component or the
16:04main proponent of gaming legislation in New York, Senator Joseph Adabo, came out this week and said,
16:09now that we have that taken care of, it's a lot easier for us to focus
16:14on iGaming. When in the past last year, you even had Senate leadership come out and say,
16:19we're just not ready to do this, we still have to work through the casino stuff, we have a lot of
16:23other issues. By the way, they also just banned sweepstakes casinos, which are essentially iGaming
16:29casinos that are not following the law, because of a loophole and mechanism, they just banned that.
16:33So he also came out and said that, you know, that's another major step is before you can legalize
16:38something you have to crack down on the bad actors, which we certainly saw with sports betting
16:42as well. So he's going to have a bill that comes forward in 2026. The next step will be to watch
16:48Governor Hochul's budget process, whether iGaming is folded into there, that would be it would make
16:53it a lot more easier, easy for it to pass if it's going to be part of her plan to raise revenue,
16:57they're gonna have to still go through responsible gaming concerns, safety concerns, integrity concerns,
17:02it's all very early on in the process. But so far, it looks like this is as good a year coming up as
17:09any for New York to legalize online casino legislation. And it could always have a trickle
17:13down effect with sports betting legislation as well. There's been talk of, you know, banning sports
17:19books from placing limits on bettors if they don't have to do with integrity or responsible gaming
17:25concerns. And there's been some more talk of expanding New York sports betting market as well,
17:30which I know operators would really hope happens. So New York, either way, looks to be a big state
17:34for gaming legislation in 2026. We'll know more in about a month when the budget process starts. And
17:40we'll keep watching throughout the whole process. Sam, great stuff. As always, we'll catch up later in
17:45the week. Appreciate you coming on Newswire. Thanks again. Yeah, thanks a lot, Craig.
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