Nigel Eccles - Fan Duel Co-Founder

Hey everybody and welcome to Life as a Gamble. I know you've missed me. It's been a while since our last episode, but I am back. And Life as a Gamble is the podcast where we talk about life scambles, but today we are talking to someone who is literally in the gambling business. My guest today is Nigel Eccles, who was one of the founders of FanDuel. So let's get right into it. Nigel Eccles, welcome to Life as a Gamble. Well, thanks for having me on. Yeah, so I'm very interested in how you, first of all, most people know you from FanDuel, but that was not your original startup or your original company and I'm wondering what your background was and what led to that first company. Yeah, so well, I've been in online gaming since 2000. So the very first company I joined was a company called Flutter.com and now it merged with Betfair in 2001 and today is Flutter Entertainment, which is the parent company of FanDuel. I re-launched a betting exchange called Betdack in 2003 and it's still operational today. It's a betting exchange, a BSR Dublin. And then FanDuel actually started in 2007 as a prediction market, which funnily enough for 10 years I had to explain to people what that was and obviously Polymarket did so well and last year that I don't have to do that anymore. So Hubdouble Region was a prediction market, it did very well in 2008, it did last well immediately after the election because people aren't as interested anymore and that's when we pivoted in 2009 to becoming FanDuel. What was your educational background before going to work for? Oh, yeah, educational. So I studied pure mathematics and military operation research. So my first degree was in pure mathematics, my second degree was in operational research. And were you drawn to games and gambling before you got into? Yeah, I've always liked gambling, I've always found it fascinating. Given my mass background, I've always found the sort of mass behind it really interesting and so probability was something that I've always been fascinated by. And so whenever I started working, I was just drawn to that sector, I was like, "Wow, this is amazing." I always sort of think it's fascinating that in the gaming industry you create your own product. When I really thought about it recently is you're the opposite of an insurance company and insurance is a gambling company, you sell variants. For people whose life is just too boring and not enough stuff happens, they have a lot of consistency. They want to buy variants, their buyer is a variance and as a gambling company, you're a seller of variance. Obviously, insurance is the other way around, which is people like, "My life is too risky." And I guess there's certain things, you don't want to insure your car getting smashed or your life, you want to sell variance, right? But I think it's really interesting that gaming companies, you create and sell variance and then all the different types of companies are different forms of variance that we sell. So that just drew me into the business in 2000 when I started and I've always come by. Even though I've left the industry twice, I've always come back to it because I just loved that aspect of the business. Did you gamble or do you gamble? Yeah, I know I've gambled since I was a teenager. I remember the first horse I ever won, which is, I think it was, well, I knew the horse was West-Hit, which was a gray, it won the Grand National. I think it was in '87, so I was at Harvard 13 and I had a pint on it and I won 16 pints, I was 16-1. Was that the moment? I was like, "Wow, this is amazing." But I always sort of threw, I've always sort of been fascinated. I was always fascinated when I had friends at university would go to casinos and they would have systems, and I was like, "Yeah, that doesn't work." But I was always fascinated by the systems, and so yes, I've always been interested. And I've always been interested in, from a sort of puzzle perspective, how can you beat it? What are the things you can beat? And so horse racing is really interesting and sports betting because it is beatable. Blackjack, you can card count, but even casino games are interested in the systems there, like even if the game is on beatable, how does a Martin Gale change your payout phenomenon? I played blackjack a lot, I go to the casino, I play blackjack. I know that it's EV negative for me, but I have ways that I play it that means that I know in the long run I'm going to lose, but I still play it out. Well, I mean, if you at least learn basic strategy, you're giving up less than 1%. You're like, "Yeah, that's like, for me, it's a, yeah, it's a pretty good, you know, your cost of entertainment is pretty low." Yeah, exactly, exactly. It's a little bit worse. You live, where do you live? I live in New York. I'm sorry, where? In New York. Oh, you're in New York. Oh, for some reason, I thought you were in... No, no, no. I'm originally from... I'm British, I'm originally from Northern Ireland, but I moved to New York about nine years ago. Yeah, you know, my kids, as they were growing up, I would preach to them constantly, them and their friends, "Math is where the money is." Yeah. And as long as you really, as long as you understand the concepts of EV and some basic probability, you will find ways to make money. So what was your job when you first went to work for Flutter? Oh, I was a product manager for Flutter. And so what was the impetus then? So you first went into the prediction market. So what was the impetus for that? Yeah, well, so Flutter was interesting. When I joined Flutter, the idea behind Flutter was more of like an eBay or batting, you know, people could create all these different types of bats and trade them with other people. Batfair was their main competitor, Batfair is a batting exchange. You can kind of think of it as like what Robin Hood is doing, sports batting contracts at the moment. And that was a real innovation. And what we figured out was that the Batfair model was a dramatically better than the Flutter model. And so through the period of 2001, we pivoted Flutter to becoming an exchange. And that's why they ended up merging because they were essentially the end product. In 2008, when we had launched HubDub, which was our prediction market, just very similar to Polymarket, we sort of felt that all these news stories, we felt that prediction markets were kind of truth-seeking machines, you know, that there would be not only the people who wanted to bat it, but it'd be really interesting to the people that just wanted the information like who is the favorite, like, you know, who is who's going to win, like kind of give that information. And we find that like, you know, oftentimes the news media will report something as significant and you'll go and check the batting market and nothing changed and not tell you that because the news media, their job is to create news and pretend that something is significant. Dramatically, what we discovered was that, you know, there is a news that something nothing did happen. And so that that's, so we created the prediction market because that's what we wanted to tackle. And what we discovered was that prediction markets are brilliant for elections. Like they're just, you know, like particularly US elections, there's just so many people who are fast and I had to buy it. And so many people have an opinion, a lot of those people have money that they're willing to put behind those opinions. And so it worked really well right up until the election. And then immediately afterwards, you know, that sort of dried up. And what we discovered was that outside of the election, the biggest category by far was supports. And so that's why whenever we sort of were finished with HubDub, we we basically said, well, what do we do next? And we said, you know what? We should focus on sports. We know how to build really good prediction games. And that's how we pivoted and built Fando. So you were working for Flutter still when you. Oh, no, no, no. I left. No, that was long later. So Flutter was sort of 2000 to 2002. HubDub wasn't, we didn't start it in 2007. And then we ran it 2008 and we launched Fando in 2009. Okay. So so at that point, you were on your own. It was you and your wife. Am I correct? Yeah, my wife. And we had three other co-founders. Yeah. And so you knew you wanted it to be sports. And initially it was just fantasy. That's right. What was that decision? Yeah. Well, so, you know, it was funny, like I was in the UK at the time where you could sports bet. But in the US you couldn't. It was only like one state was Nevada, you could sports bet in the US. And we always thought that was weird, but there was a law called the Unlawful Internet Gaming Enforcement Act in 2003 that sort of kicked out a lot of poker operators. But in it was a carve out for fantasy sports. And I remember the actual language, it was like, you know, fantasy sports is a game where it's a statistical accumulation of points, blah, blah, blah, blah. And I remember being on a flight and just reading it and going, okay, well, there's nothing here that says that a fantasy sports game has to last like the entire season. And you know, there's nothing here that says, and I'm like, we could build a game that's a lot faster and a lot more fun and exciting than traditional fantasy sports, but we're still within the ladder of the law. The ladder of the law is written here. We're going to stay within this and we're going to build a game. And we think that's going to be a lot more fun than what people are currently playing on like Yahoo or ESPN. That was the idea. Yeah. Yeah. Well, certainly your timing could not have been better. Well, yeah, you know, it's interesting, you know, and I've sort of thought a lot about timing, it's, you know, there's an interesting question, if we hadn't done it with somebody else, I've done it, like, you know, did we create that or, and I don't actually know, you know, when we created it, there was a couple of other games, but it was only whenever we started to be successful that we see an explosion of competition. Like, you know, we lost 2009, there was one draft street launched, not that long after. Half Kings was 2012, but really, and then there was a hundred other competitors launched in that period, but they were largely sort of drift, you know, drifting off what we were building, which was they saw, like, whenever we started, a lot of people thought we were crazy. Like, if you were like, it's not a real big business, like, you know, like, but it was only when we started raising, you know, 10, 15, 20, 70 million dollars, something people were like, wow, this is a really big business. And then it became, you know, and then where the timing was really good was, you know, if we started that launch in 2009, by 2018, so nine years later, here it was a brand that had huge brand awareness and millions of users and we have 500 people, and that put us in an incredible position whenever sports betting became legal, that we then could take that brand and go, boom, we can be number one and Fandel has become pretty much number one in every state in the U.S. when it's opened up, you know, so it's basically gone in, and it's just really because they had such a brand depth of brand and user base that to give them such a huge, you know, huge advantage. Well, and they were, yeah, they were so well positioned to get into regular gambling, Internet gambling. Right. Yeah, so here you had fantasy sports, which, you know, in a lot of ways is very, very similar to, like, regular sports batting. It was the CM user base, it was a very similar user behavior. And the brand was, you know, very much connected with the people who would be sports batting, you know, they were seeing in the SPN, so going from fantasy sports to sports batting was a very small step, whereas, you know, something like MGM or Caesars who think, oh, we know gambling, but sports fans didn't really associate them with sports batting. Like, they, you know, they didn't see them in the SPN. They were like, you know, MGM is a casino in Vegas, it's, you know, it's something to do with, you know, the Wizard of Oz, it's really nice, it's not like, it's not like, it's not an app, I would have my phone. And so that just gave Fanduel Andrafiq a huge advantage whenever that market opened up. Yeah, one of the things that surprises me, and maybe you were gone from Fanduel by the time these discussions happened, but I live in Las Vegas, and I'm just shocked that Fanduel is not here. And I know they have to have a brick and mortar casino, but it would be nothing for them to buy one. They don't have to have a big one, right? It's a layer. Honestly, I feel that Nevada Gaming authorities massively screwed this one up. Like they, you know, I went and saw them. I went to see them in the summer of, I think it was 2016 or 2017, and we were called in front of them. And I remember the panel, and I remember actually being really impressed, like one of the panel was saying, you know, Apple has got a million developers working on their platform. And in Vegas, we have three main suppliers, like IGT, Scientific Gaming. And they were like, if we don't start to innovate and welcome more people in the industry, we're going to get left behind. And I was like, amazing, this is like, these guys get it, like they want innovation. And we ended that session and they said, look, we, you know, we want you guys in Vegas. So like, you know, this is all you have to do. And it's like, come buy a casino. It was just like, you know, you know, and here we are, like, you know, today in Vegas, how many suppliers does Vegas have today? Like, they see him as they had like 10 years ago, right? And so I, I think they get, I think Nevada should have felt, you know, we're the number one in gaming. You have to be in Nevada if you want to be a serious player. And, you know, we tried in 2016, I know the Fandome Drive Kings since then has tried to kind of work for Vegas. I'd love to be in Nevada. And they, Nevada, I just think, you know, I don't know, in those early days, I think it was maybe arrogance. I just don't know why they haven't sort of realized that the world has changed. Yeah. No, you're, you're absolutely right. And it is arrogance. And they shot themselves in the foot because for sports betters, Nevada is now the worst state. Yeah, you can't, you can't use a computer. Yeah. And to, to, to sign up and put money in the account, you have to physically go to a casino. It's crazy. And I understand like they're, they feel their job is to protect the physical casino. But there comes a point where you're like, you know, like, you know, MGM, Caesar's actually, you know, they're territory players, but they've done pretty well. Like you can't stand a new way of innovation of that. Not when you have customers going like, this is how I want to play to kind of create these artificial rules. And that's what essentially what they did. And so, yeah, I think it was, yeah, a huge mistake. And yeah, like I think it's, you know, it's what we've seen is like an explosion of gaming around the U.S. and Nevada is sort of like the, you know, and I guess Nevada in a lot of ways is sort of pivoted, become more of a like an entertainment destination and less of a gambling destination. That's worked. But, you know, they kind of could have at both. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. And, and the people running the casinos now really are not coming from a gaming background and, and, you know, it used to be that the gambling drove everything else and now it's sort of a, you know, redheaded stepchild or something. Yeah. Yeah. We always view sports betting in Nevada as being like as a, not as a profit center and more as a, you know, required service to like service the VIPs, whereas, you know, we always felt that, you know, sports betting was going to be front and center like we weren't, we weren't just using it as a way to get you to the high, you know, the, the slots tables. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. When did you end up leaving Fando? Oh yeah. So I left Fando end of, just the end of 2017, uh, start of 2018, actually just before Paspo was repealed, um, I've like, I love being startups and, you know, but that's the even then the company would get very, very big. And so I left and started to do some, you know, really interesting other startup and like in, in like, in, in music and social media, uh, eSports, um, it's a real kind of mixture of other verticals for, I actually tried to just get totally as far away from gaming as possible. I was like, you know what, you know, I don't want my entire career to be gaming. And what I discovered with those other verticals was that I actually really missed gaming. It was the vertical that I know and really love. And so, um, I, uh, by 2021, so only, I guess, uh, four years later, I was like back into gaming and I was like, okay, you know, I've still got a few things I really want to do on this, in this sector and I've really enjoyed being back in the, in the category. We're going to take a quick break and be right back. Okay. We are back with Nigel Eccles. You still have the music and the eSports, um, that you started with? No. There was, there was kind of three different, so it was like social media, um, there was a music business and then there was, uh, cards, uh, the music and, uh, card business. We sold, um, the, the, and the car business is still operational, um, really interesting verticals, uh, both sort of had a very crazy 2021 web sov, like everyone went great and then everyone went terrible. Um, and so both businesses, we saw this incredible 2021 spike and then, um, and then things kind of website in 2022, 23, uh, and so the, those businesses then we ended up selling on. I saw you made a, uh, comment on Twitter recently. They were, there was a, uh, a tweet about, uh, the increased, uh, revenue at FanDual and, and your comment was basically that the betters have gotten stupider, uh, with, which I agree with you, but can you expand on that a little bit? No, I thought that would, would generate a little bit of a, uh, a response and I, it was funny. Like somebody was like, are you serious? And I was like, actually I am and I'll tell you why. Um, so number one, I think betters are stupider for two reasons. Um, maybe three reasons. Um, the first one's fairly simple, which was, you know, pre-pass, but the people who were betting in Vegas were, were, a lot of them were sharps, you know, they were really focused on it. It wasn't as recreational. And so the money was sharper. And even today, I think the money in Vegas is sharper. Um, today we've got everybody and you know, they have, they may have very strong opinions, but they, they're not, they're not, they're not good betters necessarily. Um, but then the two other factors are, uh, so the second factor is that if you're a profitable better, uh, on a FanDual or DraftKings, you've been banned or limited, right? Um, and obviously a lot of people are very aware of that. Um, and so by definition, uh, the sharps are gone. They're not on FanDual or DraftKings. That's why FanDual is going to, it's one of the reasons FanDual is going to 15% margin. Um, and the third reason then is parlays. Um, from a EV perspective, uh, a parlay is a dramatically worse bet. Uh, but, but consumers love them, right? And consumers love lotteries. So I'm not, I'm not saying that they're idiots. I'm just saying that they're, you know, they're like, if their intention is to like make money, um, this is not, this is not a great way of going about it. Yeah. No, I mean, as you said at the beginning, they want to buy variants. They want to buy variants a little. And when the company prepackages a, you know, same game parlay that's going to pay them, you know, 50 to one, um, you know, but it's minus 25% of them. They don't care. They want to, but I hope to disagree with the sharps. I've interviewed consumers and, you know, I remember one guy saying to me, I was like, why do you play a parlay? He realizes the, this thing is going to get 20 to 30% margin and he said, he said, what should I bet? And I was like, you know, like, you know, like straight bets, like even stuff. And he said, so I go and I put 50 bucks done and I win 50 bucks. He's like, why, how is that going to change my weekend? Right? Like, you know, why, why is it with anybody remotely excited about that? And I was like, now you put it like that. I kind of get it. I do kind of get it. Like it's your, you know, and that's the way they view it. It's like a lottery ticket. And I, you know, a straight bet just isn't going to do it for them. They need to see something that's really going to move the dial. And that's why like, they, you know, they don't think in terms of EV. They think, you know, if I win, I win. And if I lose, like, you know, it's, it's discretionary capital. So yeah, they, that's why they love parlays. Yeah. I have to disagree with you though about the sharps. They definitely are still on fan duel and drafting. Yes, maybe. Yeah. They're, they're definitely are a few that they're maybe not trading under their own names. Yeah. And it's a constant cat and mouse game of having accounts get, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Now there, there are, but I, you know, the books are pretty good at catching that stuff. Like they're pretty good. And that's, you know, like it's always going to be cat and mouse, but, you know, I've seen some of the stuff behind the scenes and, and I'm like, yeah, like they, they'd see changes in betting patterns and it's not like, you know, like we operate bettex operates in, in India and it takes a lot of sharp action and you see that money and, you know, there's no limits there. But that's an exchange. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. It's a totally different business model, but there's, you know, a lot of very sharp action there. Sure. Yeah. Yeah. And they don't have to hide it. They don't have to hide it. No, they don't. Did you ever, um, you know, there, there are books, um, you know, sharp books who will take all the action and not limit people. Did you, did you ever consider going that route or, so were you not that, I wasn't, I wasn't, you know, whenever, you know, those decisions are being made. But what I will say is if I was, no, and, and, and, you know, for a very simple reason is that, um, if you're going to be the mass market consumer product that Fando had the opportunity to be and is today, it is much more profitable not to take sharp action. It's much more profitable to just, you know, limit the sharps and put out lines that, you know, are going to sucker the, you know, the punters. That's probably a pejorative, but that they want, right? Like, you know, you're going to push on parties. But you're not going to take the sharp action cause it's going to reduce your, you know, it's going to reduce your profitability. You know, the reason, the reason why, uh, bookmakers take sharp action and say, and like India is that they don't KYC. So they can't, they couldn't limit it, right? So the, the books there, um, have no means of, of living and therefore they have to accept the sharp action. Right. But if you look at a book like pinnacle sports, you know, they, they just, they have the sharpest lines because, you know, they make money on volume that you're not like a mass market, like onshore regulated entity. And that's the death. Is that Fando led this opportunity to be this, you know, the number one consumer brand that takes money from everybody, the mass market, shall we say, it's much more profitable to go with the road. Let's limit the, the sharps and, and, uh, you know, and, uh, and, and take the money from the mass market. Yeah. So your, your, um, latest venture is a bet hog. That's right. Yeah. And now, and that is correct me if I'm wrong. That's a crypto casino. That is a crypto casino. It operates internationally. We don't operate in the U S or the UK for that matter. Uh, we take deposits in, you know, but a dozen different cryptocurrencies. Um, the insight behind it was like one was that when I looked at, I'd always looked at the casino market and I'd always been a little bit surprised that there wasn't as much innovation. Like I would look at these slot games and I'd go, wow, those are the same games I was playing like 20 years ago. Uh, that, that to me was like, this is an industry that could innovation. I also saw that crypto was the part of the market that was showing the most innovation. Right. You know, provably fair games that came from crypto streaming massive growth for, for slots and it's coming from, uh, from streaming. Uh, you look at like, you know, Instagram reels and tech talk. These are all crypto casinos and they're, these are influencer playing these games and creating these storylines that are incredibly popular. Like, I know people that follow them, they don't, you know, don't play casino and I don't even think of everything casino, but they just love the, you know, the whole story lines and reactions, the highs and the lows. And so that got me really interested to say, like, this is where the innovation is happening. This is really interesting. The other thing that I thought was fascinating was when we were at Fando, you know, in a lot of ways we just lived at the mercy of our payment provider. So like, you know, and, and you would be paying, you know, 15, 20% of your, you know, revenue would go to payments and per Fando, I think it was even today, I think in Q one, it was like 12 and a half percent, uh, draft Kings, I spent 500 million last year on payments. And to me, this is like, this is dead money. Like this is money that goes to visa and master card and their shareholders that is no, there's no benefit to the players, right? So the, the player, all they see is I deposit my money and turned up my account. Well, you know, the, the bookmaker, the sportsbook didn't see all that money. And when you withdraw and then re-deposit, then that's another four or 5% gets taken out. And so with crypto, crypto just solves our problem. So with, with crypto, what we do is we give somebody a wallet address and they, they basically send their crypto to that wallet address and boom, we get 100% of the money within seconds. And so the, from the user, it's like there's, so, so we immediately save ourselves 15 to 20% of our costs, which then we can get back to our user. Like we do a rate back, uh, daily, weekly, monthly rate back to user and adds to by 30%. So most of that is actually the savings we make in terms of payments that we can just give directed back to the consumer and say, Hey, you know what, here's, here's a bunch of money that we don't actually have to pay to visa mastercard. So that's what you call, and then from the consumer experience is like, this is instant, you know, they, they, they basically send the money, it's there and they can play it immediately and once you draw it, we have instant withdrawal, right? Like if you're an established customer of us, when you go to withdraw, it's like boom, straight back into your wallet. Wow. Yeah. Not here in the US, unfortunately. Yeah. Unfortunately, not in the US and there isn't, is it slots only or do you have table games as well? Slots, uh, live, uh, we've, uh, live dealer, uh, and sports book. Is the live dealer, dealer, uh, evolution gaming is yes. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Evolution and pragmatic, uh, do, do live dealer in it, you know, very popular with, um, one of our, the game formats, which is the salon pre-vay, uh, we had a user come in and use it. The first user this week and it's, uh, it's minimum, you need a minimum $6,000 in your account and it's minimum $1,000, uh, per hand. So it's your high stakes player, uh, and it's, uh, it's fun and you have a live dealer just you one-on-one, um, and so like it's, it's a really good product. Huh. Yeah. I notice you, um, uh, are following crypto, uh, and talk about it on Twitter, uh, a lot and, and how do you manage your risk in terms of the fluctuation of the crypto? Yeah. You, uh, well, that's actually not so bad because we hold people's currency in crypto. So if somebody deposits in Bitcoin, we hold it in Bitcoin. And so that what that means is if they deposit a Bitcoin, which is currently about a hundred thousand and, uh, if Bitcoin were to drop by 20%, they would come back the next day and they would still have a Bitcoin, it would just be worth 80,000. And so, so, which is what they want because if you are into crypto, you want to hold it in crypto. Um, you don't want to hold it in fiat. And so, but it also means for us is we don't have that, we don't have to manage that liability. So does that mean whatever coin you deposit with, you must withdraw in the same coin? That's correct. If you deposit it in Bitcoin, you will have drawn Bitcoin deposits a lot and they will have drawn so on. Uh huh. Yeah. So that doesn't, that volatility is actually, you know, funnily enough, most of our deposits actually aren't stable coins, so USDT, uh, it's very, very popular. Um, and I think it's, you know, there's obviously people whole crypto because of an investment, but I guess, uh, for casino is discretionary money. And so that's why it's like USDT. They, that's their, that's our spending money, whereas, you know, they're probably holding Bitcoin and they don't want to play with that. Hmm. Hmm. So where do you see it all going? Where do you see this five years from now? Yeah. So I think, I think we're going to see internationally. I don't, like I, I, I said something before is I don't think we will have crypto casinos in five years time because I think all casinos will be crypto casinos, um, apart from regulated ones. And, like, it would make huge sense for New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Michigan, to enable crypto payments. There's, there's $3 trillion in crypto assets and they're highly liquid and they're held by people who are risk seeking, they're absolutely, you know, perfect for a sports book or casino. You know, I would hope that, you know, the regulators there would sort of say, wow, we, we should be in on this market. Um, I definitely think we get there in 10 years. I don't know if we get there in five years. Um, under, certainly under the Trump administration, it's way more favorable towards crypto, which has been, you know, a huge boon for us because before, yeah, like it was, like they traded crypto, like it was all there to fund terrorism, but really people just wanted, you know, to own their own half assets and be able to use them without, without interference, like really, I think that should be protected in the constitution and I think it probably is. But so I do think that crypto is going to become, and, and, you know, like the other thing from the, for the, you know, onshore ones is like, why are they paying 20% of their revenue? Not, you know, two, you know, there's no, uh, it's not 20% of the cause of 20% of revenue to MasterCard and Visa, who, who offer a really crappy product, right? Like, you know, and I remember like with Visa, like, you know, we have a user who would deposit in the next day, decide that, you know what, I didn't really want to lose that money and they would do a charge back and then it would be on us to prove that that person actually had really made that deposit and I'm like, that's crazy, right? Yeah. Yeah. So it's, so to me, I think over the next five years internationally, we will see all sports book and casinos move really heavily to crypto, um, and then over 10 years, I think we'll see the onshore ones go as well. I think we're going to see more of the innovation that we see in the crypto space come onshore. So you know, we're going to see more crash games, provably fair, something the crypto games invented, which is, how do I know this game was fair? And it's something that we have it, but really stake invented it, which is you can, they give you a seed phrase that you can after the fact prove that that game was fair, that, you know, they weren't changing stuff behind the scenes. And again, it's just a great innovation, um, that like, I think we're going to see the unhappen, you know, cross the industry and come onshore. Wow. Yeah. Fascinating. Anyway, I really want to thank you for, uh, taking the time with me today. No problem. Yeah. And any final thoughts? No, it's incredibly on the show, um, yeah, like we, uh, uh, you know, we're excited about what we're building. Like we, you know, we, we also just felt with bad hug is that we could bring a lot of more sort of original products and original games, which is essentially what we've done. Um, so it's, uh, yeah, we're really, really exciting to the next few years. Actually now that you've mentioned that, have you tried innovating in the table game space? We haven't, but I'd love to, you know, it's really interesting in table games and we see it like you have, we have really big influencers like on Instagram and on Twitter and on, um, TikTok that are talking about games. And then you have a light dealer experience and these are just like typical light dealers. What if we really could combine those two? I'd love to be able to like take some of our top influencers and have them dealing the game. Oh, wow. Yeah. I think there's so much opportunity there, um, you know, and then I, you know, make it much more of a party experience. Uh, like the best experience I've ever had it, um, in Vegas is, you know, you're at a, you're at a blackjack table and it's a fun party experience. Well, you know, we could do that. They just don't really get that online because normally the dealers are not, I don't know, they're maybe a lot of them are not hired for their personality, shall we say. But what if, what have we did? What if we made like, if you look at Peloton, look at the people who do the Peloton coaches, they're like celebrities. Yeah. Why aren't these dealers like more name? Like I want this guy. He's hilarious. Like that's how this, you know, and part of the reason that their personality doesn't come through is I don't think they're rewarded for it. What if, what if we could, you know, I think it's discourage. Discourage. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, so when I first got out of college, I was a blackjack dealer here in Las Vegas and most of the casinos, their attitude was dummy up and deal the cards. Right. And, and, you know, I, fortunately, I worked at a place where they literally hired the dealers for their personalities and told us, you're here to host the players. Right. This is a service industry. Yeah. Yeah. And yeah. So the dealers would have a great time with the players. Yeah. And that's like, that's what it's all about. One of the, I honestly think one of the online gaming, well, it's been a phenomenal growth industry for me in a way is still failing to deliver the one thing that offline gaming delivers, which is just that, um, the, that social and community experience with strangers. Right. Like, you know, blackjack table, one of the few places in America, we can talk to a complete stranger. But I think what I'm thinking, you're crazy. Right. It's like that to me, online doesn't do that. And I think that's something that we still need to like really figure out, um, because I just think that's really powerful. Yep. I agree. Anyway. Thank you again. No, thank you. [BLANK_AUDIO]