00:00Okay, let's get to Louisiana sports betting bill that could potentially limit or maybe even ban player props.
00:07And this is certainly targeted at collegiate athletes, Sam.
00:10At this point, they're doing everything possible to protect their interest.
00:15Yeah, we're now seeing another state in Louisiana moving forward with legislation which would ban not only player props,
00:22but all prop bets in the state as well as micro bets, those very bets that were identified just a
00:30few months ago
00:30in the Cleveland Guardians scandal with Emmanuel Classe and Luis Ortiz.
00:34We've been accused of rigging pitches and intentionally throwing in the dirt or throwing balls to cash in for bettors
00:41in a manipulation scheme.
00:43Of course, we had the NBA prop betting scandal, whatever you want to call it, with Jontae Porter about a
00:49year ago, the Terry Rozier news.
00:51So now lawmakers are really starting to take attention to this, take notice, and propose legislation that would ban these
00:58kind of things.
00:59It obviously is not something the sports betting industry wants.
01:01They want to be able to offer all these prop bets, especially because they're really popular with parlays, the highest
01:07margin bets that they take.
01:09So we're starting to see that point where we get friction from lawmakers proposing this stuff.
01:14Whether or not it passes will be a different kind of thing we have to see in weight and how
01:18the climate kind of works out,
01:20especially in Louisiana, you know, sports books really have a lot of lobbying presence in the state,
01:25although obviously their interests are maybe focused elsewhere right now with prediction markets and everything else going on.
01:30And then furthermore, one of these other bills from Louisiana would also ban or make it so sports books would
01:36automatically have to ban
01:37people who were deemed to harass athletes, which I think is a really good kind of no-brainer component,
01:44something that you might want to say, okay, maybe that's where sports books can find a win
01:48with all the kinds of bad press sports betting has got lately if they automatically harass athletes.
01:54So that's a measure I think they'll probably get behind.
01:56We saw BetMGM, I think last month, announced that it's doing something similar on its book.
02:01I think it kind of reminds me of when states tried to ban credit card uses on sports books.
02:07A lot of the sports books themselves just automatically went ahead and banned it.
02:11So we'll see kind of what shakes out here with the rest of the legislature.
02:16But, you know, it's kind of a mixed bag so far in Louisiana in terms of new policies.
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