00:00Let's start off with Caesars, a pretty monumental sale number here I'm seeing.
00:05Is this right?
00:06$17.6 billion.
00:08Who is buying this and what is sort of the reasoning behind it?
00:14Yeah, it's a huge number, $17 billion.
00:17$6 billion, which Rockets owner and U.S. ambassador to Italy,
00:24Tillman Fertitta, is going to pay out of his own pocket for this deal.
00:29And then an extra $12 billion, which is taking on the massive amount of debt that Caesars has currently.
00:35It's obviously a huge deal.
00:37Caesars is a gigantic name, not just in the sports betting space, but in the hospitality space.
00:42Really, in any space you talk about, it's a gigantic global company with a lot of brands and a lot
00:48of weight behind it.
00:50This would seemingly bring those and everything that Caesars owns into the same umbrella that Tillman Fertitta owns with his
01:00Golden Nugget casinos,
01:01as well as a number of other restaurants and hospitality groups.
01:06So that's really the interesting thing we're looking at here is combining these two sports betting brands together and gambling
01:13brands together.
01:14What does that mean kind of the future of the industry?
01:17You know, Caesars has online sports betting in about 25 states,
01:20but it's talked about lately spinning off its online sports betting brand into kind of a separate entity from the
01:28company.
01:29Something that you saw MGM do with BetMGM, which is technically not part of the company anymore,
01:35although the company owns about half of it.
01:36So interesting that Caesars actually did not go through with that and sold the entire thing to Fertitta.
01:42Caesars has about, you know, number five, number four spot nationally when it comes to all of their sports books
01:49behind FanDuel, DraftKings, BetMGM, sometimes Bet365 in some cases.
01:55So it might have to sell a bunch of its casinos as part of this deal.
01:59It's not really clear yet exactly what happens.
02:01There's instances where, you know, Fertitta would now own about three of the total casinos in Atlantic City, for example.
02:09So some regions have rules, which, you know, mean you don't want someone to own too many of all the
02:15casinos in one place.
02:16So we'll see what more kind of details we get out of that department.
02:20Another interesting wrinkle as well is when New Jersey first passed online sports betting and Fertitta owned the Golden Nugget
02:28Casino in the state,
02:30there was a lot of concern about the owner of an NBA team owning a sports book that takes bets
02:35on that team, right?
02:36So as part of that deal, Golden Nugget has not taken bets on any games involving the Houston Rockets for
02:43years now.
02:44Golden Nugget obviously isn't one of those big names in the online sports betting space, but Caesars is.
02:49And if Fertitta now owns Caesars, the question is, does that same rule apply to him?
02:53But I think the bigger question kind of here, Craig, is does that even matter?
02:56Does anybody really even care about that?
02:58Because at this point, you have presidents involved in their own sports books.
03:02You have players on teams involved in their own sports books.
03:06So the candidate has kind of just been open.
03:09It's been a whole chaotic kind of, you know, crazy venture with all these people's involvement into different sports betting
03:16brands.
03:17So I wonder if people even care about that these days, like they did back in 2019, 2020, when New
03:23Jersey was legalized.
03:24We'll see you next time.
03:24We'll see you next time.
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