00:00So let's get to Michigan. The Senate is eliminating online casino and trying to make
00:06more money off sports betting taxes. I think that's my quick summary for what we're about
00:10to discuss here. Yeah, the state of Michigan, the governor, Gretchen Whitmer, along with the
00:18state Senate and the state House, just agreed on a new budget, or rather the legislature passed
00:24the new budget. Whitmer's version would have increased taxes on sports betting as well as
00:30online casino, about $800 million. She wanted to copy what Illinois did, which is add that 25 cent
00:37per bet fee to the first $20 million bets that a company takes. And then for every bet after that,
00:44it's another 50 cents. So Illinois, a lot has been made about their tax rate. It's a handle tax,
00:49basically on top of already a high tax rate. And the industry has obviously been very upset about
00:55it. And what they've done is actually pass the tax down to customers there. You know, if you're in
01:00Illinois, you'll see the I think a surcharge fee, it's called or there's a bet minimum sometimes as
01:05well. And betting is actually dropped off in Illinois as a result. So the governor wanted to
01:10pass kind of the same thing in Michigan. And the Senate actually came out and said, No, we're not
01:15going to pass that now is not a good time to really consider any tax hikes, citing kind of the
01:20state
01:20of the economy is notable that you know, she really only wanted to raise taxes on, you know,
01:25gambling tobacco as well. But syntax is what we call them. But the, you know, the legislature kind
01:32of said it would be a really bad time to do that just optically, we don't want to be tone
01:36deaf to
01:36what's going on. So ended up not passing, which is actually a big win for the industry. I'm sure
01:40they'll they're happy they're not gonna have to pay, you know, almost a billion dollars more in
01:44taxes next year. But pretty interesting as well. It was a Democrat controlled House, Democrat
01:48controlled Senate, Democrat governor kind of disagreeing on this. So on the backdrop of all,
01:53it could be prediction markets, you know, if we raise taxes, people are just gonna move over to
01:57prediction markets. But who knows with that whole thing? It's, it's obviously a good thing the
02:01industry for the industry that this didn't pass, but we'll see if kind of the same thing happens
02:05in other states as the year goes on.
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