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00:00Let's begin out in California, West Coast. Of course, California Attorney General Rob Bonta plans to ban daily fantasy sports.
00:09That decision is expected to be announced by July 3rd, less than a week away.
00:14Bonta's office started looking into the legality of DFS back in October of 2023.
00:20The Coalition for Fantasy Sports represents pick'em style DFS operators, underdog prize picks to name a couple,
00:27is arguing the legality of fantasy sports should be determined by voters, not, obviously, the AG of the state.
00:34We will explore this topic a whole lot more later with Sam McQuillan from Legal Sports Report when he joins us.
00:41Now, off the field, more issues in the NFL.
00:45Former Ravens seven-time Pro Bowl kicker Justin Tucker suspended 10 games for violating the league's personal conduct policy.
00:54Tucker has been accused of sexual misconduct by 16 massage therapists from eight high-end spas and wellness centers in the Baltimore area.
01:03All of the alleged incidents taking place between 2012 and 2016, first handful of years in the league for Tucker.
01:11The Ravens released Tucker, you may remember, back in May.
01:13Despite the kicker's denials of any wrongdoing, he had three years left on his contract.
01:18The suspension will take effect in late August, roster cut-down day, the 26th specifically.
01:25He will be eligible for reinstatement in mid-November after that 10-game ban.
01:29He is able to try out and sign for another team in the interim or even participate in training camp and preseason action if he is signed even before that late August date.
01:41But something to monitor going forward for, obviously, one of the league's most accurate kickers ever, but a guy who has trailed off a little bit over the last couple of years.
01:50Something clearly more substantial that he is dealing with off the field right now, though.
01:56Well, with a similar theme, we go to baseball.
01:58And Wander Franco, formerly of the Rays, he has been found guilty of sexual assault of a minor in the Dominican Republic.
02:06Franco received a two-year prison sentence on Thursday after having a sexual relationship with a 14-year-old when he was 21.
02:15The mother of the victim was convicted of sexually trafficking her daughter and sentenced to 10 years in prison.
02:21There were a whole lot more involved there, including receiving money from Franco, laundering money as well.
02:29And so, again, a 10-year sentence for the mother of the victim, Franco, two years.
02:35But more notable than that, as far as the baseball end of things for Franco, is that this conviction is going to make it very difficult for him to receive a work visa in the U.S.
02:45So, in all likelihood, his time in Major League Baseball and with Tampa is over.
02:51But, obviously, again, something to monitor going forward.
02:53More bad news as recently as this morning as we go over to the NBA.
02:59The Toronto Raptors have fired Vice Chairman and President Masai Ujiri this morning.
03:06Now, Ujiri was entering the final year of his contract.
03:09I think we can all agree the timing of this is downright insane.
03:13Right at the conclusion of the two-day NBA draft over the last couple of days.
03:18Only days away from the start of free agency as well.
03:21Well, Raptors, 30-52 last year, missed the playoffs for a third straight season.
03:25The former NBA Executive of the Year and Champion had been with the Raptors as GM going back to 2013.
03:33Quite a while, obviously, a dozen years.
03:35But new ownership of the Raptors there in Toronto.
03:39Rogers.
03:39And the belief is that there were a whole bunch of dealings behind the scenes in terms of arguments, disagreements,
03:47that led to this decision here first thing this morning.
03:50One more, brighter news.
03:52If you like hockey, you're going to get more meaningful hockey on the way.
03:55NHL plans to expand its season from 82 games to 84.
04:00Now, this is interesting.
04:02It's part of a new CBA, collective bargaining agreement, that we're going to see today ahead of the NHL draft.
04:07Technically, a memorandum of understanding for a four-year extension on a current deal.
04:11The deal includes a shortened preseason to only four games, a maximum of two games in the preseason for vets of at least 100 games played in the NHL.
04:22There are new details as part of this with revenue splits, length of contracts for both free agents, restricted and unrestricted.
04:31The dress code that we have seen in terms of when players enter and leave games, that is going to be gone.
04:37So no longer are we going to see players required to show up in suits.
04:41Obviously, we know dress code's kind of a thing in the past across sports and time, but the NHL had been hanging on.
04:48This would all begin, by the way, with the start of the 2026-27 season.
04:53So it is about a year out, but we can get everything agreed upon, ratified very, very quickly here in the NHL.
05:00So fun news there.
05:02Going back to baseball, how about we talk about games, sports, things happening on the field.
05:07The Braves and Mets.
05:08So they played once again, fourth game of their series.
05:12Mets beat the Braves to split the set.
05:14It was a 4-0 win for struggling New York that did put together, obviously, a couple of wins in this series.
05:22Pardon me.
05:23Griffin Canning feared to have an Achilles injury.
05:26I don't know what it is with these Achilles injuries across sports right now.
05:29We've seen it so prevalently in the NBA of late.
05:32But Carlos Mendoza, the manager of the Mets, happy to see his team getting back on track.
05:37Continue to stay on the fight.
05:39The one thing that I keep saying is as long as we're creating traffic and creating opportunities, we're going to come through.
05:46And we saw it today.
05:49We are second and third.
05:50We didn't – I don't think we scored that inning.
05:55And then first and third.
05:57Finally, TT with a sack fly.
05:59But then Pete was able to come through.
06:02A lot of good at-bats, especially with two outs.
06:05Again, I thought overall we want some counts that put ourselves in a better position.
06:10A couple of blocks.
06:103-2 by Beatty.
06:123-1 by Jeff.
06:13But overall, you know, as long as we're creating traffic, we're going to have a lot of opportunities with runners in scoring position.
06:19And we've got a lot of good hitters.
06:20So, they'll come up big for us.
06:23So, the Mets right now, again, inching themselves back to where they were atop the NL East.
06:29As it sits right now, they are a half game in front of the Philadelphia Phillies despite the recent struggles.
06:35Now, I hope no one took the over in the Colorado game against the Dodgers.
06:40A lot of people were on the over 12-and-a-half, over on the Dodgers team total 7-and-a-half.
06:44Low-scoring win out of L.A., 3-1 there in Colorado.
06:49Clayton Kershaw, the veteran and World Series champion, five strikeouts.
06:53He's only three away from 3,000.
06:56So, you're now just three strikeouts away from 3,000.
07:00You have a chance to do it at home.
07:02How special would that be for you?
07:04Yeah, it would be.
07:05It would be very special.
07:06It would be.
07:06Were you kind of – how mindful of you were that just of the total today while you were pitching?
07:12Yeah, I mean, I knew I had eight to go.
07:14Freddie's really good at reminding me every day.
07:16So, and, you know, eight in Colorado is never going to be easy to do.
07:20So, but, you know, pitched well, got through six,
07:25and a chance to maybe strike out three at home would be really cool.
07:30How did you feel just overall about how we kind of look how your stuff's kind of played at this point?
07:35Kind of neutral.
07:36You know, I think there's good days and bad days, good pitches and bad pitches.
07:39So, not as consistent, not as perfect as I would want.
07:43But the results, you know, have been okay.
07:47And at the end of the day, we're winning games that I've been on the mound.
07:50So, I'm thankful for that and just a product of being on a great team.
07:54So, something you might view as a pitcher's duel happening there in Colorado.
07:57We got a pitcher's duel once again between the Phillies and the Astros.
08:01Three incredibly low-scoring games.
08:04The Phillies were shut out the first two games of the series.
08:07We were talking about the rubber game yesterday, or pardon me, the final game,
08:11trying to salvage that series yesterday.
08:13It was, ah, the Phillies, they can't possibly get shut out again, can they?
08:16And they weren't.
08:17They lost 2-1.
08:18They scored one run.
08:19Hunter Brown against Christopher Sanchez.
08:21Both dazzled.
08:23Brown, seven scoreless innings.
08:24Again, the 2-1 win out of Houston.
08:26Rays and Royals.
08:27The Rays only a half game behind the Yankees for the top spot in the American League East.
08:314-0 shutout of the Royals yesterday.
08:34So, pretty good pitching.
08:36A whole lot of unders across baseball yesterday.
08:38Back with you on Newswire.
08:40And this is the portion of the show where we like to expand our palate a little bit,
08:46get a little smarter, get to the legalese of everything involving gambling and sports betting
08:51and just, again, how it all relates to, again, what's allowed, what's not,
08:55depending on the part of the country that you are looking at.
08:58Sam McQuill in Legal Sports Report rejoins us.
09:02He was with us, of course, earlier this week.
09:03Get Sam on Twitter, at Sam underscore McQuill.
09:06Sam, welcome back.
09:08Thanks, Adam.
09:09Good to be back.
09:10So, a report on LegalSportsReport.com that you contributed to, and it's a big story.
09:16We led with it out of California, obviously, is that the Attorney General, Rob Bonta,
09:20has announced his decision to ban all DFS, daily fantasy sports contests, in the state
09:26and plans to do so before July 3rd.
09:29You know, I guess, for one, how surprising is this to you?
09:34And two, because there's so much pushback in the belief that this should be up to the voters,
09:39not one singular member of office.
09:42Is this going to hold?
09:43Is this going to happen?
09:44Yeah, well, first, I just want to preface this with saying that he's expected to make
09:50this decision on July 3rd.
09:52Nothing official has actually happened yet, but you know how news goes.
09:55Once, you know, sources come out and say something, everyone kind of gets behind it,
09:59and his office has given us no reason to believe that that won't be the case.
10:03So it is very much expected that on July 3rd, the Attorney General will come out with this
10:07opinion saying that all daily fantasy sports contests are basically illegal gambling and
10:13sports betting, which we know isn't allowed in California.
10:15Now, the surprise factor, you know, California has had a very strong stance against sports
10:22betting for a long time.
10:23We saw in 2022 that the sportsbook spent a tremendous amount of money, I think over $220 million
10:31to get sports betting legalized on the ballot, that failed tremendously, mainly because of
10:37a huge pushback from the state's tribes, which spent almost $200 million against that ballot
10:42proposition.
10:43So the tribes have exclusivity over sports betting in California, which basically means
10:49unless they say so, it won't get legalized.
10:51They have tremendous lobbying influence and tremendous power.
10:54And they have pretty much looked at daily fantasy sports.
10:58These are companies like PrizePix and Underdog Fantasy, which offer these
11:01pick'em style parlay contests, you know, very similar to parlays where you put $10 to win
11:08$50 or something if you get two combinations right on a player prop.
11:11They've come out and said this is illegal gambling, which a lot of other states have done as well.
11:16The tribes see this as something that infringes on their rights.
11:18So it's no surprise that this is kind of what ended up happening because the tribes have so
11:24much power.
11:25But it is a little surprising the timing of it.
11:28You know, we can go all the way back to 2015 when Kamala Harris was the attorney general
11:32of the state.
11:34This issue was presented before her as well.
11:36Her office was tasked with reviewing whether or not these daily fantasy sports apps, even
11:40back then, you know, much less of what they are now, whether that was legal gambling.
11:45Her office didn't do anything about it.
11:47They kept reviewing it, never made a decision.
11:49Her predecessor after that didn't do anything about it.
11:52And Rob Bonta, who's now the attorney general, has been reviewing this for about two years.
11:57So the timing, you know, why now?
11:59There was recently a bill that was that had been pushed in the legislature.
12:04It never got introduced, but it would have legalized daily fantasy sports and basically
12:09made protections for these companies like Price Picks and Underdog, which really look to
12:13California as their major market.
12:15This is, again, a state without sports betting.
12:17It's a huge state.
12:18So a lot of people go to, you know, other options there that are very similar to sports
12:22betting.
12:22That bill fell apart kind of at the last minute.
12:24It came right as the tribe sent a letter to the legislature and presumably used their
12:30lobbying influence to get this done.
12:32So, yeah, we've been waiting on this opinion for a while.
12:34And all of a sudden, it's happening at a time when the tribes are, again, in contact with
12:39the state.
12:39And apparently, there's going to be some sort of deal worked between the tribes and the sports
12:45betting companies, which also don't like the DFS companies.
12:48They see them as competitors who basically don't have to follow the same rules they do.
12:52You know, they're in California.
12:53The sports betting companies are not.
12:55So they're apparently working on a deal that would legalize sports betting.
12:58So the timing of this kind of all makes sense when you look into what's going on behind
13:02the scenes with the other parties.
13:04Now, again, you know, sports betting is not going to be legal in California for some time,
13:08even if they do get a deal.
13:10It couldn't be on the ballot till at least 2026, which means that it probably wouldn't
13:14get implemented till 2028.
13:16And it might not even be on the ballot until 2028 if they do get a deal done there.
13:20So this could create a vacuum where there's really no similar sports betting options available
13:25in California.
13:26You got to wonder if that means, you know, offshore sports books will do better business in the
13:31state, whether companies like Kalshi, which we'll talk about in a minute, will do more
13:35business in the state.
13:36You know, these adjacent sports betting models that haven't been cracked down on yet.
13:40But so far, it's not looking good for the fantasy sports companies that have tried really
13:44hard to stay in the state.
13:46July 3rd, we'll know more, but it's expected that they'll be out soon.
13:50You mentioned Kalshi.
13:51Life's good there.
13:52A funding round of almost $200 million brings the valuation of the company up to $2 billion.
13:58And as we know, Kalshi at this point in time is a business that is mostly sports driven.
14:05So where do we stand in Kalshi's attempts to take over the world?
14:10It's a great question.
14:12I mean, Kalshi has been around since 2018 offering these event contract trading prediction
14:18markets where you can wager on things like the weather, whether or not Dave Portnoy is
14:25going to give a 9.0 on his next pizza review spot, you know, and then the election, which
14:31is where they really made headlines.
14:33You know, election betting is technically illegal under U.S. law, but they there was a lot of
14:38court cases with the Commodities and Futures Trading Commission that led to them being allowed
14:44to take money on the election.
14:45It was huge headlines.
14:47Basically, the way they got around that is by saying, you know, you're not betting on
14:50the election, you're buying a contract on the likelihood of something happening, they
14:54try to coin it more as a stock market.
14:56So, you know, they were able to do that with the election and had tremendous success.
15:00And I guess they kind of figured if we can do that with the election and call it not betting,
15:05why don't we do it with sports?
15:06And now that's what we've seen over the past six months.
15:09They've invested in the sports business.
15:11It's absolutely booming.
15:13It's no coincidence that, you know, just yesterday they announced a new funding round from some
15:17major venture capital firms on Wall Street to raise $185 million for the business.
15:22But even more importantly, the headline here is it values Calci at $2 billion now, which is
15:28it's a very big number, obviously, and much higher than it was for the company, you know,
15:33just a couple of months ago.
15:35So you got to look at what's happened since then.
15:37They've gone from about 100 markets on any given day to I think now up to 1,500.
15:44They want to have 4,500 by the end of the year.
15:47The CEO, when asked about it, has said, obviously, sports are the big one.
15:51You know, if you look at the most traded markets on their platform now, 50 of the top 51 most
15:57traded markets of all time are all sports.
15:59The only other one in there is the presidential election, which was the most traded market.
16:05But every other market is like the play-in game and it's all NBA betting.
16:09So they've just rapidly expanded this business.
16:12It's gone largely unchecked because they say they're not gambling.
16:16They're not subject to state laws.
16:18So if you're in a state like California, you can technically bet on something.
16:21But, you know, Calci is not going to call it betting.
16:23You know, meanwhile, everyone has urged the CFTC to do something.
16:27They said they were going to have a roundtable that would address this topic and kind of figure
16:32out everything.
16:33States have been complaining.
16:34States have filed lawsuits against this.
16:37The incoming CFTC nominee is actually a board member of Calci.
16:41The president's son is a special advisor to Calci.
16:44So it's seen that the new administration would be very favorable to allowing this kind of
16:48thing to exist.
16:49Meanwhile, the sportsbooks, the tribes are saying this is illegal gambling and they're
16:53not paying taxes and not paying fees.
16:55But in doing that, they've been able to obviously make a lot of money that's attracted a lot of
17:00money from Wall Street.
17:01And they're only booming.
17:02And it seems like, you know, this really only started this huge boom when they started doing
17:08sports prediction markets.
17:09Sam, Florida has been a dream state when it comes to legalized sports betting across slot
17:14machines, raffles, drawings, table games, DFS.
17:18Again, obviously, online sports betting.
17:20A recent complaint, though, a lawsuit wants it done away with.
17:23What's the likelihood?
17:26Yeah, this lawsuit, I would say, probably might be thrown out on procedural grounds that this
17:33is bigger than kind of just a constitutional question here.
17:35Florida has the, you know, sports betting monopoly with Hard Rock.
17:40Groups are saying that it was done unconstitutionally by not allowing the voters to do it and, you
17:46know, deal with the state instead.
17:47So a lot of money at stake in Florida, but I would say this is probably not going to get
17:53overturned.
17:53It could be in court for a while, which would muddy the market even more.
17:57Sam McQuillen from Legal Sports Report on Twitter at Sam underscore McQuill.
18:02Sam, always enjoy when you chat and join us here on Newswire.
18:05We'll talk again soon.
18:06We'll talk again soon.
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