FanDuel’s Next Gamble

[MUSIC] Congratulations, you made the varsity. >> A podcast, my name is John Aran and I and Pucks Sports correspondent in the host of this pod. And today, I'm really happy to have Christian Genesky on the varsity. Now Christian is the president of Fandall and we're going to talk all about the sports betting scandals, the growth of the prediction market, and the enduring popularity of the world cup. I really enjoyed this interview and I think you will too. But before we get to Christian, today is Wednesday, June 24th, and here's what I'm watching. I'm looking at Fox. Now in the four days after Fox announced that it was buying Roku for $22 billion in cash and stock, the company shares dropped by 24%. Now according to Peter Sipino of Wolf Research and a former podcast on the varsity, that drop came because investors got queasy about the fact that the Murdoch family, which is always operated with an entrepreneurial spirit, was operating in an entrepreneurial way. Sipino is positive on the move in general, which he said expands Fox's nation free ad supported streaming while putting Roku's data and ad inventory in the hands of Fox's powerful ad sales group. Just how powerful is that ad sales group? Well, Sipino pointed out that coming out of the upfronts, 2B and Fox News posted double-digit growth in an overall down year. Eight out of Fox's 10 biggest advertiser categories spent more than they spent last year, which is a good sign for near-term results, especially from Fox, which is going to benefit from the world cup. But back to the Roku deal. Financial analysts really seemed to like it, at least in the long run. Moffit Nathanson, well, they put out a report saying that the deal is going to ensure Fox's future as streaming overtakes traditional distribution in the coming years. And Guggenheim said that the combination of content and distribution assets is going to raise some questions about the balance of owned media growth. But Guggenheim also emphasized that this type of deal is typical in the media business. Just look at Alphabet and Amazon, which are vertically integrated technology companies. In other words, ignore the negativity that consensus really seems to be that Fox's Roku purchase is one that will stand the test of time. Okay, now let's get to Fandals Christian Tineski. Christian, thank you very much for joining us. You're just a month and a half into being CEO of a Fandals. So I appreciate you taking the time to stop by here, especially given its world cup week, world cup month. For Fandals, where does a world cup fall in terms of just the popularity on your platform in terms of other other American sports? Yeah, you know, first of all, John, good morning. Great to be here with you. It's interesting. I think we didn't know. It's been four years, obviously, since we had a world cup, it was in the Middle East last time a lot of time. Variations, our business was much smaller than we had less population reach in the US. So we certainly planned for it to be a much, much bigger event this time, just given that it's being hosted in North America, that the US involved in some optimism at the US team. I think so we planned for it. We planned to go big. I think we have been very pleasantly surprised even about the level of customer interest pretty much from the first game on obviously a ton of excitement about the US team and its performance through the first two games. But we just much heavier user engagement and it's been interesting to see its power as an acquisition tool. This is not June is not typically a big user acquisition month for our sports book. But we're seeing a lot of people come to the sports book for the first time and a lot of reactivations. People who haven't been around as much or don't typically bet this time of year. So it clearly has captured a ton of interest and we're continuing to lean into it with a bunch of fun promotions and other things. And certainly around our office there, our office is filled with sports fans of people who love sports and you can be excitement's palpable in the office. The games are on all day. People are as a conversation piece so far it's been amazing. Other than volume, how is betting on the World Cup different than say betting on the Premier League or on MLS or are just sort of like the soccer leagues that come every single year? So I think some of the differences are people who bet soccer regularly, bet Premier League or Champions League or MLS are more hard for soccer fans. They're people who know the game, they know the players. Obviously our parent company Flutter Entertainment has the leading sports books all across the UK and Ireland and Europe and you've got very sophisticated soccer betters there or football betters there. And so you'll see the same kind of customer dynamics in soccer by those experts which is more same game parlay, more proposition bets around players, people betting on the number of corner kicks, a certain player will take and those sorts of things. I think for the World Cup here what we're seeing, it's a count myself among them. I follow the Premier League, I have a team, right? To my team, I follow it fairly closely, not nearly as closely as those sports, but you know, in the World Cup, I don't know most of the players. I'm learning them. I'm quickly, you know, like many people, I'm quickly becoming an expert with strongly held but not necessarily well informed opinions. But so what you see are people betting a little bit more the sides, the totals, kind of, you know, things that they are familiar with, sort of betting the flags for the different countries and a little less of kind of the multi-leg parlay, more sophisticated, educated player-driven bets. Your Premier League team is brightened. How did you pick brightened? I don't know if I know another American that, you know, you got to go to Arsenal or Chelsea or Spurs or Man-U. It's nothing like that, right? So when I went through my process, because I was watching Premier League when a lot when my daughter was very young because you could, it's kind of quiet, you could put it on Saturday morning, whether crawling around the floor. And that was when I first kind of got interested in it and fell out of it a little bit. Decided I want to get back kind of did my process. You know, Bill Simmons did this on page two on ESPN years ago, but how he went about getting theme and, you know, it came down to Arsenal and Brighton and Arsenal I was influenced by the Nick Hornby book, Fever Pitch. It's one of my favorite books. But it felt a little, I realized they just finally won, you know, the Premier League for the first time in a while this year, but it felt a little bit front runner-ish. So I wanted kind of a middle-of-the-pack team. Two things for Brighton. One, they have a very money ball approach. They're doing more with less, which made them sort of a fun team to root for. I guess three things. Two, it's located on the water in England. So if I ever want to go to a game and visit, it's a nice place to go. And then three, they're owned by SportsBetter. The owner of Brighton made his money as a high stakes expert sports better, which that just kind of felt right. I lived in London and I lived in walking distance to Highbury in the late 90s when Arsenal was winning everything. It sort of got into your blood a little bit there. Let me ask you, I want to stick on the World Cup a little bit. What the first World Cup in the US, they did expand. So a lot of the, you know, a lot of these first round matchups are, you know, not sort of World Cup worthy type games, I think, for allegedly, except some of these teams are drawing and winning them. I know you would have thought, I suppose, from your platform. What are some of the bigger surprises that you've seen come out of this? I think we knew there was a lot of anticipation for the first US game. We had some pretty great promotions on the first US game, but the volume on that game still took us a back a bit. I mean, it was the, it's the biggest soccer game handle by a fairly wide margin in the history of our sports book. And what is surprised is more is the sustainability of the handle on the other matches. I, you know, I think we were like, okay, first, first couple days, we're exciting. You had the first big US win. What would there be? Would that sustain or would we kind of have a lull until we got to the knockout round? Because to your point, there's a lot more games. I think what we've seen instead is the way the games are structured with this sort of for a day and they're, they're all paced out. So, you know, you've got, got your early afternoon. It's, it's, it's, you know, it's a kin for us to, like, a March Madness, right? Where you've got a bunch of games, although these games aren't overlapping. So for a sports betting business, it's better to have one game end, have a bit of time before the next game kicks off. You I could still have poor lays that are people are betting across the multiple games on the same day. But I think the structure of the tournament has really led itself to sustained interest. And then again, people are just into it, which is great. I'm more into it personally than I anticipated. I would be when it started. I thought I would be fairly common like a lot of people to kind of really tune in at the knockout stage. But excitement, you know, seeing the crowds, all these things on Twitter with the people who are in the United States and visiting and traveling around and seeing different parts of the US and their impressions. I think all of that is kind of contributing to a lot of excitement. And the other thing I would call out is we now have, we were blown away that the first US game was the biggest soccer game we've ever had in the history of the sportsbook. We now have, I think, the top five to seven by handle games in the history, soccer games in the history of the sportsbook. So it's building on itself. It's not waning. And the other, you know, right behind the United States is Mexico. And you know, perhaps unsurprisingly, but just huge interest in the Mexican national team across their first two games. And, you know, I think we'll continue. We've already qualified, obviously, so we'll continue to see that in the knockout also. Am I right in assuming Canada would be third? I, I, I'm not sure of that. They would be in the mix with the other big names. So Spain, Brazil, France, you know, the heavyweights have attracted quite a bit of action. And then when those heavyweights get drawn by lower caliber opponents, that's a great day. And then when the United States gets drawn by the United States, that's a great day. And then when the United States gets drawn by lower caliber opponents, that's a great day. And then you have college football, then you have baseball and basketball sort of in there. Does, does activity on your platform track with that? Is there, are there any surprises like that there are certain sports that are bit more than others or less than other? By and large, it tracks it. The difference for us in terms of size of our NBA business or MLB business versus our NFL business is really comes down to the number of games. So the NFL is our, we have more people bet the NFL. That's our highest, you know, the September to December or our highest active user counts and the highest, you know, revenue grossing months. They make up more of our year than other months. And that's because you've got the NFL and you've got college football. And of course you also have NBA starting up again in October and NHL. So those are prime calendar months, but there's 17 weeks in the NFL. I guess they'll probably be 18 weeks soon enough, plus the playoffs. And, you know, while they continue, I think there'll be games on four or five different days of the week this year, they continue to expand that. Mostly you're talking about Sunday and with one game on Monday, two occasionally. And so just the number of times you can make a wager on an NFL game, or even a college football game, is just far less than an 82 game, you know, 30 team NBA league and, you know, MLB obviously playing for several months over the summer. So the volume totals bet on some of those sports that have a much longer calendar are higher overall. But the acquisition period and the, you know, the number of more people bet on the NFL than any other sport. History that doesn't suck is a legit, hard-hitting American history podcast told through entertaining stories. As we approach America's 250th anniversary, now might be the time to go back and learn how we got here. With more than 200 episodes, you can binge your way decade by decade, defining event to defining event from the founding into the 20th century. Join me, Professor Greg Jackson, for History That Doesn't Suck, an Odyssey podcast available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. We've been talking about trying to get you on this pod for a while. And of course, one of the big, big stories that you address all the time is just some of the scandals that have been happening in the sports betting scandals. And I was worried that I was going to have to go back to a Otani's interpreter or John T. Porter or the Guardian's picture. And then sure enough, within the last month, there's Brendan Swartz being Texas Tech, Texas Tech quarterback. I don't want to get into it. I mean, you've covered this ground before. And, you know, the sun, I think you've heard Adam Silver even talk about the sunshine of a legalization has allowed for a lot of this to get caught. But like, let's take the Brendan Swartz be mess that's been going on. Instantly, take me through. How did you hear about that? What was the tenor like within your office when that started, when his problems started to come to light? Yeah, so we have, I think the most important thing to remind and you touched on it is that the legal and regulated market, we're accountable every day for every transaction that takes place on our platform. And there are unfortunately still, you know, there's a proliferation of illegal sites. There are bookmakers on campus, sort of old school, bookies who now, you know, use mobile apps because everybody can create a mobile app. And there are sites that cater to the underage users that are allowed to bet on a fan dual platform. So there's a real dichotomy about from where this activity takes place. I think we have dedicated teams within our sports book and compliance departments that are monitoring all the activity on our site. It's again, it's sometimes not intuitive to people that we're, you know, and this is by far the least important part of sports integrity scandals. I care about them as much as a sports fan as I do as a sports book executive, but sports books are the, are, are victims in these scenarios where people have inside information and try to use it to, to make bets on games on our platform. They're betting with information we don't have, which means that there's a, you know, not a symmetry of, of, of information there. And so when these things generate in multiple ways, there are times where we identify that there's abnormal betting activity. I think the, the Terry Rogier matter was one where the sports books first noticed, you know, on a random Tuesday afternoon that they were getting a lot more volume on Terry Rogier bets. We alert third party integrity monitoring services, which then in turn alert all the other regulated sports books who look at their activity, if they see it, they put it into the mix and you build a profile there. I mean, the, the Terry Rogier situation was terrible and got a lot of deserved attention. I think it's important to note that betting was halted on those props hours before tip off of that, of the, of the game in question. And so, and, and our level of sophistication that was, I think, four, four years ago, five years ago, when the actual activity took place, as orders of magnitude, better now we're catching that, you know, those sorts of things more quickly. I think the, you know, generally speaking, I said earlier, talking about the World Cup, our, our employee base for the most part, they work for Vandal because they love sports. And they are caretakers of sports. And they think that, that our business and sports betting are additive for people who love sports. And that's your experience, it gives you another way, another lens through which to see the game and it's fun. And so, these sorts of stories are, are not fun for us at all, but we take very seriously our role in ensuring that there's transparency and that these things come to light. You obviously have had plenty of betting scandals that predated the Passport decision in 2018. You know, intuitively, you would assume that there were more scandals that went unnoticed, that were smaller and not as pervasive and long, you know, ongoing over time. Whereas in the regulated market, you're picking up things where there are literally, you know, a few hundred bets on one game on one day. I also think, sores be notwithstanding, we are seeing improvement. Whereas I, you know, the industry is still new. I think people are learning, athletes are learning. What's becoming clear is that if you do this, you'll get caught. So if you have pressure from friends who are saying, come on, it's no big deal, you know, throw a pitch out through the first pitch outside and the fifth inning. You know, what you're seeing is that there are real and lasting consequences for taking actions like that that disrupt the integrity of the game and I think the leagues have been, um, have done the right thing by, you know, having a very low to zero tolerance policy about this sort of activity and law enforcement has taken these cases, uh, seriously as well. And I think that when the consequences become clear and when the reality that you will get caught become clear, um, you're, you're going to see this activity diminish over time, at least on regulated sportsbooks and then you know, the hope would be that it doesn't move from regulated sports books to, to the illegal market. Now, the, the, the guardians pictures, I forget their names, but I think it was, uh, the, the, the, the bet was the first pitch was going to be a striker ball and, and John tape order, I think it was an under in terms of, of rebounds and you've had, um, influential people like Adam Silver come out and say like, you know, we, we want to call pop, uh, we, we want to, uh, did he, does he want to ban pop prop bets or does he just want to call them or, or, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, so, so we, yeah, we work closely with, like, so with the NBA in the wake of the John tape order, work, we look, we, we had sat down with them, we talked about it, we said like, what, you know, what, what, what do, what do we want to do here? Are, are there things we should be doing as operators who are close partners with the league? Um, we don't need to take a bet on everything, um, and we agreed to, we eliminated under bets on two-way players that, that, which are people that don't have a full-time contract in the NBA and can go back and forth between, uh, the G league. It's not a perfect solution, you know, unders and form the pricing on overs when you run a sports book, like, if you were to eliminate all unders across the board, it probably lends itself to a really bad customer experience on pricing, um, because you sort of need to have both parts of the bet, and for, for more prominent players, you know, um, one thing it gets difficult to do here is to retain perspective. So if you look at the total volume of bets on proposition bets and then you isolate out the ones that have been problematic from an integrity perspective, you are talking about, you know, 0.001 percent of the bets. Doesn't mean it's not important, doesn't mean it's not something we have to address and take seriously, but you, you do need to, um, place it in the context of how small, relatively the bet is, and if you were to get rid of all prop bets, say, you know, those are bets that are readily available all across the illegal market, you're, people aren't going to stop betting them. We see this in, you know, in the Vandal, uh, Vandal operates our sports book and roughly half the states and roughly 50 percent of the population of the country. The other half is not, not betting. They are betting through other sources, and now you've got, um, you know, prediction markets coming in and filling, uh, some of that need, but you still have thriving illegal and, and somewhat gray sites that are giving people an opportunity. So, so the demand is there either way. And I think what we've tried to do is work very closely with the leagues, work with our fellow operators to figure out where the regulated market needs to lead, and are there, are there bets and bet combinations that, um, are lend themselves are more vulnerable to manipulation. We need to take a harder look at those. Um, and, you know, we'll continue to iterate and refine as we go forward. I wish I could come at you with some hard numbers, but I don't have any hard numbers other than like, you know, my feelings. And so, uh, it feels like we're seeing more scandals right now. It feels like, more shenanigans are being brought to light. Um, two part question. One is, do you, do you feel the same way, or do the stats say the same thing? And, uh, two is, um, uh, is it because of the sunshine that, that, you know, that you've referred to. Yeah, I think from the advent of legalized sports betting. So, you know, 2018, we launched our first sports book in the fall in New Jersey for a year and a half or two we only had, we were only in three states. It's relatively small. So if you sort of take from the 2021, you know, quid, COVID, 2020, there were no sports for six months, it kind of take from 2021 to the present. I think, you know, and I don't have everything in front of me, but, but, but I'll, I'll go by feel, uh, as well since you did, I think if you plotted out when these events took place as opposed to when they came to light publicly, because there is typically, especially if it's a law enforcement investigation, there is a, a lag between when the activity occurred. I think you would see the activities decreasing. Like, if you look at the, the first year the NFL introduced all of their, um, policies around what, and these aren't, you know, these aren't people violating laws, but the NFL had policies about players couldn't bet on other sports, even if they were on a, a team facility. So if you were rehabbing an injury and, you know, you were going to get PT and sitting in the ice tub and you had your phone out and you made a bet on the NBA, um, that violated league policy. If you did the same thing at home, it was okay. We saw a bunch of players get suspended for multiple weeks, uh, in the NFL, uh, that first fall that those policies were implemented, then they'd all had training on it, but, you know, we've all been through training. It doesn't always hold the first time around. We've seen none of those incidents over the last couple of football seasons. So I do think there's an education component that is going to, um, at least via the regulated market. I would say the initial kind of spate of things you saw was a fact of it's being reported. Um, you know, we're finding it, we're identifying it, we're, we're bringing it to light. I think seeing it diminish a bit, uh, has more to do with the transparency and people understanding and learning what they can and can't do and, uh, being a bit more responsible. Um, yeah, I think so, so that to me, it feels like where we are. I don't, unfortunately, I'm sure we're not, we haven't seen the last of these cases. And, you know, you mentioned so, so RISB was betting in his own name on sites that were available. He was not 21, you know, available to people under 21. Um, a lot of his activity was there. Uh, the activity on legal and regulated sports books was done by using, you know, people who were over 21 to create accounts for him. And then he was, he was betting with those, those, those things are harder to catch, but we obviously did on earth, all of that and, and all of that's been reported. And it's, you know, look, it's an unfortunate story, but I think the reaction to it hopefully makes an impression on other people in source-based position that understands that if they, they take their, um, college career and, and their future professional prospects seriously, this is just not activity they should be engaged in. You of course, launched a Fandall predicts recently. Uh, as, what appears to me to be almost sort of like a hedge, like if, if this moves forward, then you, then you, you know, got some, you know, beachfront property real estate, uh, there, like what is, what is your view right now of the prediction markets and, and, and where do you see this, um, migrating to as a business? Sure. I, I think we, but we, we are a business that services sports fans, um, and, you know, the, there is obviously a ton of debate about the contours of, uh, what should or should not be allowed with event contracts that are regulated through the CFTC and, and with a license, but I, you know, when we looked at this is not an area, you know, frankly that we were exploring before others jumped in and, uh, but once the federal government made it clear that they are backing, um, the right of licensees with the, uh, CFTC, whether they hold an F-C-M or a DCM license, to be able to offer sports event contracts, um, the CFTC has jumped into court cases as the states obviously have taken a number of states have taken a different view and believe that, that something that looks very analogous to sports betting should be, um, exclusively the province of states that have legalized and regulated it. That debate is, has been joined in the courts and we've had one circuit court decision, which is sort of in favor of sports event contracts and CFTC preemption, their speculation and other circuit court will soon come down on the decision in the opposite direction. I think everybody, uh, believes this ends up back at the Supreme Court and we have another major, um, you know, sports betting or in this, in this case, a prediction market case before the Supreme Court that will ultimately, um, be a predominant factor in dictating the way this goes. For us, you know, it's a, it's been a delicate situation to navigate because we hold gaming licenses, as I said, and, you know, 24 or 25 states, that is our primary business. We've, we think that that public-private partnership with states has been, uh, beneficial for consumers. It has been beneficial to residents of states that don't care about sports, spending one way or the other because of the amount, you know, fandoms paid $5 million in taxes over the course of its operation of its sports book and eye gaming properties, that money, funds roads, it funds teacher salaries, it funds first responders and rural healthcare. And so these are real dollars that are having a real impact on people's lives. And they're generated from people who enjoy being in customers as sportsmen. So there is a lot to like about the sports book market as it's evolved in the US, but it's only in half of the US. And you know, I have, because of my position, I hear from my friends who live in places where the sports book's not available all the time about when are you gonna get this, when am I gonna be able to use fandom in my state? And so we know that demand's there. We saw the early movers in prediction markets immediately gain a foothold in sports, especially in those states where our sports book and other legal sports books aren't offered. And so we have to be there to meet that consumer demand. We have a license, it's through a JV with CME. So we have an FCM license. So we're offering this. We're playing by all the rules that have been established. And we feel comfortable doing that. Now we split the world out of deference to our primary offering. And we're not offering our prediction markets product in any state where we operate the sports book. We're only operating it outside of those states. And so the way we view it is, it is really, and you'll see more of this as we head into the NFL season. We're giving people an opportunity to experience fandom that here to four have not been able to. So in some sense, it's not that dissimilar from having a launch party for a fandom in half of the country by the time we get to the NFL season. It won't be like for like the same product. There are different regulatory limitations to one and to the other. You know, we don't have much in the way of politics or entertainment in our core sports book. You're going to see more of that on the prediction side. You may not see quite as full of sports offering on the prediction side. But we're going to do what we can to deliver an experience that feels authentically fandled for the customers that are experiencing the predicts product. Many of them have a fandled sports book account already. They live in California, but they've traveled to DC or New York or Chicago and they've, you know, gone to a game and they've downloaded our sports book and they've used it. They go home, they can't use it. The, what we hope the predicts experience will give them is a way to engage with fandil on a more regular basis. All that said, nobody knows how this is going to play out in the courts. You know, a new administration may have something to say about what a CFTC does and doesn't authorize. So we're aware that all these things could take a turn over the next two to three years. In the meantime, if we're acquiring more customers and giving them a great fandil experience, I think that is all to the good for us. And if the way this looks long term is that the way half the country or a third of the country experiences being able to use, you know, put money on the outcomes of sporting events is through event contracts and a CFTC regulated platform. And given the business fandil is, we need to be there. - I should have looked this up before this interview, but fandil predicts is the length of this interview. Can I get, can I put a wager on that? Christian. (laughs) - I don't think we're not into the markets quite that niche just yet still focusing on sports. - So what I'm hearing you say is that it's in the courts and you're waiting to see how the courts decide. But if the courts decide that the prediction markets can move ahead as currently constituted, why is it consumer what I ever do fandil with the sort of the state regulated fandil if the prediction markets are okayed by the courts? For sports, it's still a much, much richer offering. And we think it will continue to be a much richer offering. We are not seeing a much meaningful cannibalization in the states that we offer sportsbook. If you look, the most of the volume for prediction markets is coming outside of the states where we in draft kings and fanatics, others operate. So there are things you can do with user generosity around profit boosts and free bets and recycling things that are much more difficult to do in prediction markets where you're setting up an exchange, you're relying on third party market makers largely to come in and whether they accept a contract or not. There are little user frustrations as people get used to using these products. If you were to go, John, I know would only go to fandil given where you live and work, you've got access to the real thing. But if you, you know, the next time you travel, if you want to use a prediction market, what you'll see is if you were to bet the US open last Wednesday golf and you were looking at outright winners, you would see prices quoted on the list drop down. Just like you very similar to you would see in a sportsbook. The difference is because those prices aren't being offered by one bookmaker who is kind of fixing the price, they're making a request for a quote and a bunch of different market makers may or may not fill that. What you'll see is like, oh, I see Brooks Keppga at 80 to 1 to win the US open, that looks interesting. And if you go to put 10 bucks on it, suddenly the price is 52 to 1 and if you put 100 bucks on it, it's 30 to 1 and more and so on. So there's a lot of fluctuation. There's a bit less transparency in some of the operators out there about how those sorts of changes are disclosed and how they work. Whereas if you're betting on a regulated sportsbook, if the odds change from the moment you select them, there is in bold, it will say the odds have changed. Do you accept the odds? You're also going to see that far less frequently. If it's in play live betting, you'll see that more often because somebody just scored and scored change. But for pre-live golf, you're almost never on a regulated sportsbook. Gonna click on Brooks Keppga and see the odds change when you try to put 5 bucks on it. It's a constant price that's being offered by the sportsbook. That plus the generosity, just the pure suite of the product offering, the same game Parlay is doing a 17 game, same Parlay leg is not the kind of thing that's really available on prediction markets. And there's a bunch of technical reasons why it gets very difficult to do that. So I just think that you're going to see a persistent advantage that if people are offered both, most consumers who are sports first and sports driven are going to choose a regulated sportsbook. I think some of the zeitgeisty stuff on pop culture and word mentions, those are things we're going to be less focused on, we're a sports company. And I think in that market, you will continue to see growth. And some of those, even in sportsbook, states those kind of markets being gravitated to prediction markets, but not sports. Christian, let me lob a Vandal TV question at you. Because I think you can probably Google my name and go back to a couple of stories that I wrote back when you signed Pat McAfee to a deal to come on that here is a sleeping giant in terms of some of a company that's looking to get sports rights. Because what better scenario than to have a live game on your platform that you can actually bet on? That obviously didn't have, and you had Vandal TV for a while at which it was horse racing, which is in the process of winding down. Why didn't that work? That seems like an obvious sort of way for you to grow the business to me. Yeah, I think we were really intrigued by the opportunity. I'm really talented people in our Vandal TV business that have been with the TVG racing business for years in producing high quality horse racing content. In the racing business, you've certainly seen that flywheel effect where we have the racing on all the time. People can see it, they can watch it. There's a lot of frequency. And it's work. We experimented with what I'm sort of called long tail sports. So we had Chinese basketball, we had some Australian basketball, some Euro League. That we would broadcast live. Some of the challenges had to do with the hours that you could show live sports from around the world. This is sort of on in the middle of the night here and with our racing calendar, it was a little difficulty mixing it all in. Ultimately though, it comes down to being honest with yourself about what you're really good at, what you're better at than the competition. And for us, that's operating our core gaming business. Media rights are very expensive. So for us to compete with anything other than sort of long tail sports was a level of investment. And with so many streaming platforms out there competing to acquire sports rights to populate their own libraries. It's just very challenging for a business like ours where it wasn't, you know, we would have been a side business or an ancillary venture for us versus streaming platforms who's a big fan of sports. entire business is to acquire that content and monetize it through advertising and subscription revenue. In some of the same ways, I often, you know, people ask me, why, why Fandola Draft Kings, why have you succeeded over and above some of your competitive set in, in online gaming and part of mine, there's a bunch of reasons for that. But part of mine is like, it's the, it is the business that we are in. Our success rises or falls on how we performing, perform in our core online gaming vertical. And a lot of our competitive set is has other businesses that are more or less important to them than their online gaming business. And so the, I think that level of focus on executing on the things that you do best and are more important to you, when it comes time to make priority decisions, you always have to lean in that direction. And I think that's part of, it's probably the most important reason for, for where we ended up on that journey. Yeah, I never thought Fandola would be trying to get the NFL rights or even major college football rights, but D3 college may, maybe even like pickleball, but like you said, that would be too ancillary and sort of a side quest because the sports just aren't as popular as, you know, basketball, major league baseball, NFL college, etc. Yeah. One of the things that you said that really stuck with me and I know quite a few Fandola employees is, you know, you are, you are sports fans, definitely. And I know that you and me are two of the few in the proud Wizards fans that are out there. What are you hoping to see this week? I already saw what I was hoping to see. I was at my daughter's dance residual, furtively looking down at my phone at the, at the lottery drawing and then silently, I felt like winning a playoff series almost. I mean, you know, John, you know, I have tickets to the Wizards and I endured a lot of interesting basketball and player development over the last two years. And last year when the Wizards fell to six, it was a tough, got a great player in Tray Johnson, but to still a tough beat to miss out on the Cooper Flagdill and Harper portion of the draft. And this year, you know, the way it stacks up, I was just not fifth, anything but fifth. Just get us in the top four. Obviously, I think Will Dawkins, the GM, is used to phrase the power of choice by being number one, which I think is great. I think they're taking debancer that's, you know, I think he's sort of had separated himself as the number one guy during the college season. He seems driven. He seems like he has a high ceiling high floor. So I'm excited about that. But honestly, you know, it seems like it's down to him and Peterson, you know, Peterson looks like at the top end. He could be, you know, Kobe Bryant light. So I think that things are looking up for the Wizards either way. I'm excited on Tuesday night to see how they pick. Just bring some excitement back to Captain Warnerina. Christian, can't thank you enough. It's great to see you again. We'll meet up at Blacksalt or one of the DC bars in our neighborhood pretty soon. Sounds great. Thanks so much for having me, John. Thank you to Christian Jineski for joining the pot. I love listening to him talk about fandall and how he's going to grow the business. There's so much competition out there from the prediction markets and really everything else. It's really instructive to listen to Christian on this pod. Thanks to Alex Pita-Chelli and Jake Goldman for their help in setting all this up. Most importantly, though, thank you for listening to The Varsity, an Odyssey podcast and partnership with Puck. Thanks also to the executive editors from Puck, Bobby Grossman, Ben Landy, John Kelly, the great Bob Tabitor from Odyssey, and of course our partners in Nesson, Greg Oath and Mark Romacka. If you'd like this podcast, make sure to sign up for my newsletter. It's also called The Varsity. 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