Sweepstakes Gaming Surges in Popularity at G2E Conference

Watch Sweepstakes Gaming Surges in Popularity at G2E Conference - SportsGrid on Dailymotion

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00:00All right, so let's get started and let's start off with the possibility of sweepstakes

00:08coming to gaming and it seems like it's a really hot popular topic.

00:11I think if we did this a year ago, it would have been iGaming would have been betting

00:15on iGaming was sort of the hot next thing that was going to happen.

00:19Sweepstakes is the new like click word out there.

00:21What does it mean?

00:22Yeah, it was the thing everyone was talking about as the global gaming industry converged

00:29in Las Vegas for G2E, the global gaming conference this year.

00:33Last year, everyone was talking about iGaming as you're right, Craig.

00:36Also everyone was talking about daily fantasy sports as well and essentially what companies

00:41have done trying to blur the lines between different types of gaming and sports betting

00:46as it's become increasingly more popular and the size of the total addressable market has

00:51just boomed in the last couple of years.

00:53This year, it was all about sweepstakes gaming.

00:56Obviously, online sports betting is only legal in states that pass laws to legalize

01:00online sports betting but what we've seen popped up especially over the past year are

01:05a number of these startup companies which essentially are using what functions as a

01:09legal loophole to give a sports betting product or sports betting adjacent product in some

01:15of these large states like Texas and California that haven't legalized sports betting yet.

01:20You don't have companies like DraftKings and FanDuel there offering sports betting.

01:25What you saw this year is executives from those companies are starting to turn their

01:30eye towards what's essentially a new form of competition in a largely unregulated market.

01:36This year, Flutter CEO Peter Jackson who owns FanDuel said that his company won't partake

01:44in this kind of game until it is regulated, sort of indirectly calling on regulators in

01:50states to turn their attention to these sweepstakes games.

01:53Eric Stevens, the CEO of Circa Sportsbook went even farther saying that it's pretty

01:58clear these companies have found a loophole calling out companies by name such as Fliff

02:03and Novig and then pointing out the rigorous steps it took just to get his sports betting

02:07app legalized in five states.

02:09So essentially these companies allow you to deposit money and then you get a sort of virtual

02:17currency back which is then exchanged for another form of currency which you can then

02:21use to participate in this game.

02:24It's a lot of hoops to jump through for a reason because it's a largely unregulated

02:28market.

02:29So we'll see if like last year the regulators start to turn their attention towards these

02:33new sweepstakes games.

02:34I think it's pretty notable that you have these big companies starting to talk about

02:37it.

02:38Obviously it's starting to eat their business.