00:00 - Joe Brennan (Guest)
The first guys who are going to find you are the sharpest right. The guys who will take your teeth out will be the first ones through the door, and then their 10 closest you know living female relatives right. 

00:18 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
Welcome to Circles Off right here, part of the Hammer Betting Network and presented, as always, by Underdog. I'm pretty excited for the interview we got planned today. It's a name that's familiar to you, in all likelihood Someone who's been in the news for the last few weeks for different reasons. We're going to talk about all of that over the course of the interview. If you do enjoy what you hear on Circles Off, please make sure to smash that like button down below. And, of course, if you're not subbed on the channel yet 50% of you watching last week's episode are not yet subbed Make sure you hit that subscribe button down below as well, as it does help us grow our channel. Now, before we get into the interview, I do want to tell you about our sponsor at Underdog, one of the smoothest platforms out there for player pick'em. 

01:00
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02:02
Today we have a guest that has played a massive role in shaping the sports betting industry as we know it. Whether it's spearheading efforts to legalize sports betting in the US, or launching one of the few truly sharp, friendly sports books, or challenging the status quo with his outspoken takes, he's been at the center of it all. Joe Brennan Jr is a co-founder of Prime Sports and he's one of the key figures behind the push that led to the Supreme Court's 2018 decision in Murphy versus NCAA that opened the door for legalized sports betting across the United States. More recently, he stepped away from Prime and he's joined the American Betters Voice as an advisor, continuing his mission to push for change in the industry. We're going to get into all of that his time at Prime, the state of the industry, the future of sharp betting and, of course, that infamous Bet Bash rant as well. Joe Brennan, welcome to the show. 

02:55 - Joe Brennan (Guest)
Thanks, rob, good to be here. 

02:56 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
Yeah, good to see you Been a long time coming for this one specifically, we're going to get to a lot of stuff today, but for those that don't know you, you've been involved in the gambling industry for over two decades now, from legalization efforts to launching a sharp book. Give the people a bit of background on yourself and what initially drew you to the sports betting space. 

03:19 - Joe Brennan (Guest)
I've been around sports my entire life. Some people, the structure that they build a life around is either school or maybe it's religion. For me it was sports, even though I did go to school and there were religious schools, catholic school but sports has always been kind of like the the definition of how I live my life and part of team sports, individual sports, individual sports Since I was a young kid, police athletically. You get six years old doing wrestling, boxing, all the way up through through college and afterwards and you know, like most frustrated athletes, it's always interesting to see if there's a way that you can continue to keep that a part of your life. And it just so happened that when I was at AOL in the early 2000s, the strategy team that was on one of the things that we were tasked with was trying to find other areas of the business that we could branch out into. And at the time you know this was really the late 90s, early 2000s was really kind of like the original cowboy days of offshore gambling and it was amazing like the visibility that a lot of the brands had Bowdog, betonsports, sportsbookcom and it was really interesting how this industry that was always really kind of like a street level cottage cottage industry was now becoming part of big internet right, and AOL had a UK division, had an EU division. So one of the things I came back to the strategy group with was saying like, hey, this is a business that we should be getting into. Look at, look at these examples of what's going on right now. At the time they said no. What a shock. The irony was is that my team reported up to Ted Leonsis and Ted is the owner of, obviously, the Washington Capitals and probably, less dramatically, the Washington Wizards, and at the time, you know, I was told that ted just had real issues with. It didn't seem like it was good from a variety of things, but I do think it's ironic that he he, uh, is now one of the biggest investors in draft kings and it was in sport radar and others has been a real voice in favor of, of sports betting. Uh. 

05:43
I remember, not long after paspo was was overturned, I sold ted at, uh, one of the capitals games. He always walks the concourse between the first and second periods. He's probably one of the best owners in sports, I think, and and he's a really genial guy. He does remember you, uh. It's amazing how many people he's got to keep in his head. But I remember at the time mentioning something to him about like hey, I guess it was a better idea than you originally thought, and he was very gracious and said, like yeah, maybe we should have done that earlier. But, uh, but that's really how I first got looking, at least on the online, uh, sports betting space. 

06:18
I mean sports betting, for me it goes all the way back to to childhood. I mean, I remember in catholic grade school, uh, parlay tickets. I think I was like in the second grade the first time I saw one of the the parlay tickets make their way uh through the classroom, uh, for an NFL weekend. I think it was probably in fifth grade the first time I actually played one and lost. Um, so, uh, I just, you know, sports betting was always such a part of the everyday life, everyday culture growing up. 

06:48
And it's funny, a little while back it was actually Michael Lewis on his podcast. He asked me like well, when did you first realize that sports betting was illegal? And I couldn't put my finger on it. I was like, geez, yeah, right, because it never really came to mind as a kid, because everybody did it. It was out there in the open, and so I guess it was like, unfortunately, when my family moved to Connecticut right when I was entering high school, that was probably when I first found out that sports betting was illegal, because it wasn't exactly part of the lifestyle up there. 

07:23 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
In the US. Joe, is it illegal? Was it illegal for you to actually place the bets with an offshore book, or was it illegal for them to operate? 

07:33 - Joe Brennan (Guest)
Well now, it is now as it was then. It's still not. I think there's only two states, one of which I think is Kentucky and maybe the other one is Utah. I always forget these. There's only two states where it's actually illegal to place a bet with an unlicensed operator, and that's kind of the paradox here is that you know the online sports betting industry. The law enforcement has always been chasing the operators. For them, it's inherently illegal to take those wagers, but it isn't necessarily illegal for bettors to place those wagers, and that's that's really the an ongoing challenge for the industry. I'm not in any way saying that we should. We should tighten it up and make it illegal for the players. If anything, I think it's. It's something that the regulated industry, regulators, lawmakers are going to have to take into consideration with the players when it comes to the future of this industry and how it evolves. 

08:43 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
Yeah, I was only asking because when I was growing up, I was very early to betting and some of my friends who didn't would always be like well, like you're going to get caught, you're, you know you're. And I was doing my research. And listen, I was betting when I was underage as well. That's a different story. But at some point I was like the onus isn't on me here, I can bet, no problem. This is gray market. There's no rules or you know, I'm not prohibited in any way. It's on the sports book, that, where they can actually accept the bet. So I was just curious if it was the same in the US. 

09:10 - Joe Brennan (Guest)
Yeah, it was the same and is to this day. 

09:13 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
Right. You played a key role in, as I mentioned, Murphy versus NCAA. That led to the legalization of sports betting in the US. I'm curious how you view that accomplishment today. 

09:34 - Joe Brennan (Guest)
And do you think the industry has evolved in the way that you expected since then? Well, it was cool to be the first kid from my neighborhood to overturn a federal law. I got that in my favor, I mean obviously. Yeah, when you look at it, it's quite an achievement to overturn a federal law that had been in place for over 20 some odd years. That's not a trivial thing, especially when you consider the asymmetry of the way the forces kind of lined up against each other. 

10:02
On our side it really was a very lightly resourced, small group of people pursuing this and on the other side, you had, for most of the time, you had the leagues, you had the government, the federal and state level, you had most of the gaming companies, both the AGA and the Casino Association in New Jersey, because obviously New Jersey was the focal point of our activity. 

10:26
For most of the time, those guys were lined up against us. So, to see, with the very small but very dedicated group of people that we had and the resources that we had, the outcome was really kind of amazing. Actually, on balance, I think it's gone fairly well. I think, if you set aside a lot of the noise that's happening right now in the media, because of course we had a few years of everybody when we had all those people from the other side jumping on the bandwagon the leagues, the casinos, the media, everybody. That bandwagon was really shaky ride there for a while as everybody was jumping on the bandwagon the leagues, the casinos, the media, everybody you know that bandwagon was really it was really shaky ride there for a while. 

11:08
So everybody was jumping on board and there was a lot of frothiness, there was a lot of exuberance over exuberance, you could say, and so inevitably we were going to hit the backlash point right. And that's kind of from a media perception right now is where we're at, but undoubtedly, immediate perception right now is where we're at, but undoubtedly, when you get down to the merits of it, this industry is more vigilant, better policed. We're more likely to catch problem gamblers and bad actors alike today than it was prior to 2018 and passed with being overturned. But it's not been perfection and, as a result, the industry will and continues to suffer from that. A lot of it is self-inflicted wounds that the industry does to itself, a lot of the business practices, a lot of the player development practices and just sometimes just being really tenured or tunnel vision compared to what's going on in the broader world. But, on balance, I think things have gone fairly well, with room for improvement. 

12:21 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
I definitely do want to talk about a little bit more broadly about the industry coming up here, but in recent years you co-founded Prime Sports and the vision for that was, I guess, running a quote unquote sharp book that welcomes winning bettors, which you don't see a lot in the space nowadays. What was the biggest challenge in building that model in a regulated market? 

12:45 - Joe Brennan (Guest)
Really it comes down to how you build balance in your user base so you can best leverage that sharp action. Um, you know, with new square players coming into the market, there's kind of a general divergence between the markets that they're pouring into, that are being marketed to them, and then the ones that are the mainstay of to that are being marketed to them, and then the ones that are the mainstay of serious betters. The difference kind of between entertainment and then somebody who takes us seriously because they want to earn consistently right, you know. So how do you get that balance is really the big question here. 

13:20
Prime started in the right place, focused on what our product is. We sell bets. We're not selling bells and whistles. We sell bets. We sell large bets openly and consistently to people who want to bet large and if they string together a few wins, at least in most of the industry, they're worried. Ok, is this going to lead to my account getting shut down or is it going to get limited and we say that we're not going to do that and we haven't? We've had to fight some pretty quiet off the screen battles in order to keep some of those people as prime customers. I guess that'll be for the book someday. It's too soon right now. 

14:09
But you know, now Prime has to kind of improve the experience part so that it can reach a appeal to a more diverse audience. You know, it's the part that, as I like to refer to them, fan kings trademark, right, you know, it's the part that, as I like to refer to them, fan kings trademark that they excel in. You know, their user experience is excellent. It should be, with the amount of resources and people that they have dedicated to that experience, okay. But it was and intended to be at its inception, which was kind of like the stripped down I don't know farm to table version of Sharp Sportsbook, right, autismal Sharp, you know. And now it's time for Prime to become a bit more sophisticated in its product. I don't think that Prime is necessarily going to just try and clone what the big guys are doing right now, right. But at the same time there are certain things that those guys do really well that it would really behoove Prime to make bigger parts of its user experience. 

15:21 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
And. 

15:22 - Joe Brennan (Guest)
And that's all, and then that's all you have to achieve the balance, like cause right now, overwhelmingly um prime's base of probably 70 to 80% of prime's action comes from sharp players or winning players. Uh, and that's something that you know. It's amazing, we still have the lights on right when you consider that mix of action. But in order to become more profitable and to really grow it really, prime has to broaden its appeal to, we'll say, more recreational square players. 

15:56 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
Right. So when you talk about the sophistication of the product and innovating on that and the need to acquire more square players are, are you talking mainly about bet types like obviously SGPs are huge nowadays and and that's like a huge thing for a casual, better are? Are you? Are you saying that over time, the sharp sportsbook model kind of has to incorporate more of those recreational bet types? 

16:21 - Joe Brennan (Guest)
um, you know, I guess the best way of thinking about it is right now, if you're under 35 and you are legitimately entering the sports book market for the first time, what's the product that you see? Overwhelmingly, it's parlay products, it's SGPs. And so, having some additional focus on parlay, which we haven't really done, I mean, obviously you can do parlays with us, you can do them for a lot of money, you can do teasers with us, but it's a bit more old school in its approach. And so, yeah, obviously, moving past this, we very much know the markets that generate action. Ok, right, and then having markets that are just out there for window dressing I mean, you've probably seen this for a long time where it's almost like an arms race. You see it in the marketing, particularly from the sports books that are from the other side of the Atlantic, and they'll be competing like, well, we've got 20,000 markets every month, or we've got 30,000. And okay, well, if there's 20,000 or 30,000, how many of them get a single dollar pound euro of action versus the ones that you know generate real money? 

17:45
Okay, our focus has been on the markets that generate real action and it's not because we're afraid that, you know, some small one's gonna, is gonna pick us off. Like you know, like Rob, you're gonna come in and prime. You're gonna find that, like you know, some guy third line forward for the Maple Leafs, you're like, just you just got a great feeling that tonight is going to be his goal scoring night or he's going to have a three point night or something like that. It's not that we're afraid that you're going to come in and pick us off on that one or something like that. It's more of the focus on the stuff that we know drives, drives, action, drives, handle and can therefore a better chance of driving profitability. But I do think you're right. Like you know, you can't. You can't go to market surrounded by customers who are carnivores and tell them well, now you got to be vegetarian. 

18:41
Yep, single wagers, I think, are you know, it's a product that people may like, people who are truly new to the industry and were acquired doing parlays, sgps other things are, you know, a certain percentage of them are going to mature, become more sophisticated and they will realize that, like well, geez, you know, if I actually do want to earn money at this, it's much easier to bet singles and and grind that out than to blow my entire thing taking long shots, yard shots, on parlays, which just mathematically, you're not going to make it, you're not going to be able to do it Right, and so it's. 

19:28
It's okay. 

19:29
Well, where do you want to focus? Does prime necessarily want to focus on catching guys on that part of their life cycle, like when guys want to step up and I want to become serious, I want to become a pro, I want to. You know there's a certain amount to that. That, yeah, I think that Prime should focus up there, just because the entry-level guys like the noobs who are coming in like I've never done sports betting before, that's not really Prime's customer and to provide the kind of product and promotions and things like that you're now really you're shoulder to shoulder with FanDuel, draftkings, fanatics, the casinos that's their bread and butter, that's their customer. So do you really want to spend your firepower trying to compete for the same customer that those guys live and breathe on? Or do you try and aim maybe a little further up market and get those guys who still want to do a certain amount of that, but they're becoming more sophisticated and they're trying to take things more seriously and maybe they're looking for a product, a provider, that allows them to do that? 

20:35 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
Right, you've had a couple years in the regulated market. Now let's say I were opening up a new sports book. I'm going to open up the pizza book tomorrow and I want to take sharp action. What, would you tell me, is the key to making that sharp model work nowadays? 

20:54 - Joe Brennan (Guest)
It's going to sound lame, but I'm just going to say persistence and reliability. Don't go back on your word. Players have a huge memory, a long memory, and if they forget, they've got betting twitter there to remind them. Right, right, how many books, when they opened up, you know, even the leaders said they started out by saying like, oh, yeah, we'll, we'll take sharp action, right, yeah, absolutely only to change course. Right, they got you like the first, I don't know however many months, six months, whatever and then all of a sudden, it's like oh, you know, you can bet a dollar 92 on this in-game money line or total. 

21:34
Uh, so, yeah, so the persistence and reliability of your promise to the market that what you're going to offer it it's not, it's definitely not easy, right, yes, the first guys who are going to find you are the sharpest. Yes, right, yep, the guys who will take your teeth out will be the first ones through the door, and then their 10 closest you know, living female relatives, right? So so can you, can you, can you get in there and can you take the early heat in the marketplace and stay true to your word that you're going to do this, right, yep? It's not easy. 

22:13
And again, it's not rocket science either. I always say I think it's more like sailing. I am not a sailor but I take it as more like sailing. You learn to take what the winds and the currents give you. That's what the sports betting market is. It's daily shifting winds and currents. That market is alive and you actively work to tack and shift and you can still make headway into the wind if you know the way to do it. That requires some effort, some investment, and it's something that most companies. They're not making that investment, they're not making that effort. And I get it. It's a legitimate. It's a legitimate thing to say like well, we want to concentrate our resources on, say, marketing and marketing to a recreational segment. Not everybody wants to be Becris, not everybody wants to be Pinnacle or Circa or Prime, and that's a legitimate business decision. But I think those operators maybe see the climb a little taller and a little steeper than it actually is. 

23:30 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
Do you think prime would have been bigger in more states if the regulatory environment was different in those states? And just to follow up on that, which states, if any, do you think are the most sharp, friendly in the regulations? 

23:45 - Joe Brennan (Guest)
I'd say the ones that we would have had a better chance of success if we were expanding were the ones with the low tax rates. 

23:50 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
Yeah. 

23:50 - Joe Brennan (Guest)
Okay, and those are becoming fewer and further between. Especially like us, if you're running reduced juice, you're already cutting your potential hold While having more or less the same expense level to operate. Keep your doors open, lights on, just be up and running as a standard margin shop. So you know the shops that are laying 110 versus us laying 108, you know we're already conceding an awful lot. So for us it really is, we got to get the volume in there. Awful lot. So for us it really is, we got to get the volume in there. 

24:28
And to that point it's a shame that what we, what Prime, really has to do is have a bit of what we'll call like a border strategy or a hub strategy, given that a number of the really big traditional sports betting markets, like New York City or Philly or Pittsburgh or Chicago, for example Right, they're all in big tax rate states. Yeah Right, new York, pennsylvania, illinois, like that. It's amazing. I don't know how sports books can, even the recreational ones, I don't know how they can operate in those states and make that that particular state market profitable. They must be robbing, I don't know, arkansas, delaware and virginia to pay for operating in in new york or or pennsylvania or someplace like that yeah, and I also wonder how much of the um responsible gaming practices might go out the window in those types of states as well. 

25:28 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
I'm just I'm speculating. I'm not saying that it happens or it doesn't, but you know, when you have a really high tax rate in one specific state, maybe some of the checks that are you're supposed to go through maybe you end up missing a couple there. I would be surprised if that doesn't happen. 

25:45 - Joe Brennan (Guest)
You know what what I'll do is, I'll say is I don't have personal knowledge of it, but you certainly have seen some of the bigger examples that have popped up in the media that have been covered have been people that are in those big, big tax rate states. Now, that just might be coincidence, because they're also media capitals. Right, that's true, philly chicago, but uh, it's still. You gotta wonder. Now here's the thing is like players haven't been forced to feel really the result of those higher tax rates yet. Um, it's not. Like you know, terrace got raised over the weekend on cars. So now, you know, any car in America is now $6,000 more. That you feel right away. 

26:29
But gaming taxes have not. There hasn't been a mechanism really to pass those on to the player, because, you know, now it's a game of chicken Like, okay, well, let's just say, in New York, for example, if DraftKings said like, well, gosh, we can't take this anymore, we're just going to start, you know, opening it at 115 versus 110. Well, gosh, if you're FanDuel, you're going to stay on 110 as long as you can and just and hammer DraftKings I know DraftKings is going to, you know they're going to experiment with their, I don't know, draft kings, prime, yeah, membership, right, although it really seems like, okay, well, who qualifies for that and what are the terms? And even that seems a bit convoluted to the point. Where is it really workable? Right, but for players, it, it, it hasn't hit them. 

27:21
So in a lot of ways, you know Prime happened to work on this strategy where you know we're in New Jersey and we border, you know, new York City and Philadelphia. Or you know we're in Ohio and we border Pittsburgh and you know, close to you know, the Chicagoland area, detroit, you know so many states in the Midwest. You know it's a challenge to get players to cross state lines to play with you. But I guess one of the things that's ironically good about the industry is that there's still enough issues in the industry that players experience things like on service, on real loyalty and retention, or giving the big players what they really need or not shutting players down that there still is an opportunity for Prime for growth out of those states. Okay. So it just means that Prime has to hustle more. I would say that Circa would have to hustle more too. You know, to get those kinds of guys, you can't do what the other guys are doing and expect to succeed. I think if you're a prime or if you're a circa Yep. 

28:28 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
Totally agree. Have to be different in market. Now it's my. I believe I'm correct in saying you departed prime in February of 2025. The only confusion is that you still talk like you're. You're a member of prime and I think a lot of that might come as a co-founder, because I know that when I left other businesses and stuff like that, I still mention them as if I'm working with them. We use that a lot in my vocabulary, even past dates where I've left companies. I'm curious what ultimately led to your decision to step away from Prime in February. 

29:06 - Joe Brennan (Guest)
I think one of the tough things like founders in any industry almost always come to a point where they have to be willing to step aside in order for things to grow to their full potential. It's a lot like being a parent that way. Eventually you have to let your kids stand on their own two feet and live their own lives, and I guess, in a small way, it's the same with prime. Okay, I'll always be there for them. I still have a small piece of prime right and I have a lot of pride invested in that. 

29:42
You don't just I might not be there every day working, but there's part of me that's there every day and always will be. But you know, it's probably time for those kids to do it on their own, especially if not the old man looking over their shoulder all the time. Right, god knows, my kids would really like for dad to give them the same amount of distance that he's given Prime, I think. But it wasn't just that. About a year ago, I had really started to consider some of the things that Prime was facing and that the industry as a whole was facing, and the more I thought about those things and developing a notion of what might be needed to be done to address them or solve them, the more it seemed that I wouldn't really be able to do it from where I was sitting at Prime. 

30:44 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
Can I ask you for more specifics on that, joe, because I read your departure note and you said like the American market is operating suboptimally, so you obviously see some inefficiencies in that market. Sure, what are those inefficiencies that you see? 

31:02 - Joe Brennan (Guest)
I think the most obvious one is the fact that we still don't have all of the willing participants in this market, in this market, that there's still so much liquidity that's rejected or never finds its way into the regulated market. It's definitely a suboptimal result for what we worked on. Everybody knows I spent a lot of time over the last couple of years exhorting US sportsbooks, the fan kings guys, to open things up and to not so quickly push out a percentage of players that they consider a danger, that are profitability. They're winners. I think they give up on most of them too early. 

31:47
Yeah, and when you look at the total addressable market, based on what we've seen I've seen over the course of the last 20 plus years it's 10 percent or less of the liquidity, not the number of participants, but the liquidity in the betting markets is what you consider to be sharp, and so few as sharp players are consistent year over year over year winners. I think that there's probably more opportunity in trying to serve them to some level than the market leaders really currently perceive. But I also understand, you know we're not going to get that liquidity into the market by just rhetorically making this case. I could sit there, you know me and Adam on the podcast, me on panels, whatever it may be, and I can sit there and I can call them out and challenge their manhood or whatever it may be. Talk about how it's un-American or anything like that. 

32:47
And it probably isn't going to move the needle now, is it? 

32:50 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
I, I, I, yeah, I think that would be a huge challenge. 

32:55 - Joe Brennan (Guest)
Like you know, sometimes, just like with your kids, like trying to tell them, like, clean up your room, clean up your room. Like I've given up on telling my kids to clean up their room, they're not going to clean up their room. So for a while I've been trying to, I've been talking with folks and I've been looking at ways that make the. Is there ways that we can make that liquidity more attractive to those sports books, or at least less threatening right Right to those sports books, or at least less threatening right Right, since some kind of commercial middle way might be the only palpable way for it to gain acceptance and dramatically reduce the size of the unregulated market. And if we were doing that, that would be much better for guarding the integrity of the game. That would be much better for guarding the integrity of the game. This, having such a large regulated market and unregulated market essentially operating in the same space, that's absolutely a suboptimal result for the integrity of the games. Yep result for the integrity of the games, yep. But beyond that, like the other, the other issue I think a lot about is there's better ways for us, I think, to work on problem gambling. I mean a long time ago when I was going through college, I was a bartender. Ok, I'm a proud graduate of the Philadelphia School of Mixology. I have I think I've got that certificate around here somewhere. 

34:37
As a bartender, one of the first things that you learn is that if you over serve someone, yeah, you can't just let them keep going. No, right, it's not only an act of responsibility, it's also an act of self-preservation, isn't it? Yeah, I agree, it wouldn't be enough for me to tell a guy in the midst of a bender the time and location of a good here's a good AA meeting. You might want to check that out, Right? Yeah, you know, you have to take the keys away from somebody. Get them a cab. I think a cab, that's how old I am. Call them an Uber. That's an act of not only responsibility but also self-preservation, because if I serve a guy and he leaves and he gets in his car and he got into an accident, that would definitely come back on me, yep 100% and it would come back on the bar, right, yep, and it should. 

35:32
And you can see the hits that the media is leveling on the industry and just how quickly you know the public. You probably saw the John Oliver pieceiver piece. I did yep, um, it's hilarious, it was so funny it was. You're like you sit there and you're like this is this is inaccurate and unfair. But god, he is so goddamn funny and this is the second time. He did remember back when he did dfs I did, I do when he took the shots at uhDuel and DraftKings. It's like wow, it's the same guys, just a funny guy. I mean, obviously you look at that. You got to remember John Oliver. He's a performer, right, he won a Peabody for entertainment. He didn't win a Pulitzer for investigative reporting, so you got to kind of leaven this a little bit. But and when you look at that story, you know the story about. You know the doctor from the childhood psychologist from Pennsylvania who wound up at the at the Pirates game with her son and the kid realizing this isn't a work event, this is for DraftKings and everything like that. The fact that they just glossed over the fact that she's a casino customer, she's not a sports betting customer. And then when they went to the 60 Minutes clip and they were talking to a guy from the UK and he was talking about, oh, and this player, he's redeposited seven times in one day. That's clearly a problem. It's like, yes, but you also said he was a casino player, so we're kind of getting mashed in with online casino as well. I can't claim that it's that unfair, because I legalized online gambling in New Jersey before I legalized online sports in New Jersey, before I legalized online sports betting. So, mea culpa. 

37:29
But yeah, so we're going through this phase now where the media it's very easy, like we can counter with as many statistics saying that it's only a small percentage. But you know what was it that Stalin said? Like one death is a tragedy, a million is a statistic is a statistic, and it's the same here. We can claim that the vast majority of people who participate in this activity do so without any problems. But as long as there are very profile and dramatic cases of people who are having a problem and kind of the meager response that we give to it, that's not going to reflect well on us and we're going to continue to be shown in a bad light and look, I can't sit there and say I'm not part of this because, as much as we really want to find ways to do this, like at prime and everything, like everybody knew, I'm very committed to this part of it. 

38:42
Uh, in part part, because I have both extended family members and friends who I grew up with, who not gambling addiction but other forms of addiction, and you just see how people struggle with that. So you have to be. Everybody can think of somebody in their life who's struggled with an addiction and they weren't a bad person or they weren't a degenerate or something like that. There's just a certain percentage of people in our population, amongst us, who are prone to addictions and if it's one addiction, the comorbidities of it that they're prone to multiple. So we have to, we have to be better shepherds for those people. Ok, and you know, I would really like to see us do things that are readily available. You know things that like the kind of vectoring that's available in the credit card industry no-transcript, simple things that we can do and looking at a player's account and in and saying like, hey, maybe we ought to reach out to him and see, is there something going on? 

40:18 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
here Yep totally agree. 

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41:05 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
Link in the description that's a good transition into into the advocacy side of things now because, uh, just about a week ago you joined the board of advisors for american betters voice yeah, they needed one more loud guy over there, didn't they? 

41:19
all right, so I? That's funny that you say obviously I know a lot of people who are on that that board and I'm close friends with Spanky as well, but what convinced you that this was something that was worth being a part of for you, and what's the ultimate vision, I guess, for the American Better's voice? 

41:35 - Joe Brennan (Guest)
Well, I want to be clear that, like I'm, I want to help Spanky and Richard and that group in any way that I can. I am not coming in to turn this into the Joe Brennan revolution vehicle. It's more important that Spanky and Richard and others, the people who have already committed to that, that they get as much support as they can because they are especially Spanky. He's a player. Obviously there's a lot of opinions about spanking, but the one thing he is is he's 100 sincere about this. Yep, and you know, and he's doing this under his own steam and and and you really gotta you know a guy. He's got so many things going on. He doesn't need to do this. If anything, he's just continuing to raise his profile and make himself more visible, which some would say probably isn't the direction that a guy in his business should be doing. 

42:37
So I really just want to be able to support them and support the players. But and I, you know I've been part of the lobbying effort, I've been there, I've had a front row seat for, you know, the laws being drafted, the regulations being drafted, and the one group that is never there are the players, and when you think about it like, the players are the most important resource in the industry. It's like having an oil industry with no oil. The players are the oil, the players are the resource. You can have all these big companies, but without the players and their discretionary dollar, you don't have anything. Right, right, yep, and so that's. That's primarily why I agreed, when they invited me to join to, to get involved with it. 

43:33 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
Full disclosure. I have been critical of ABV before, not not necessarily the intentions of ABV, but because I think there's often a divide between how casual bettors and how sharp bettors view sportsbook policies. I think those are two very different things. Do you think ABV can effectively represent both groups or do you think there's always going to be a conflict between those interests, between the sharp bettors and the casual bettors? 

44:05 - Joe Brennan (Guest)
those interests between the sharp bettors and the casual bettors. I'd say, you know, I would take the Ronald Reagan approach and say that my 80% friend is not my 20% enemy. I would say probably about 80% or more of what recreational players and more serious players care about are the same and maybe the 20% is the departure on things like getting limited and things like that. 

44:33 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
Now. 

44:33 - Joe Brennan (Guest)
I've I've heard you say on your show before that you know and and you're you're certainly not the only person who's made this argument that you know, if recreational operators were to take sharp action, then fewer markets would be available to players, that the product would be smaller, would be tighter. The operators themselves they say this constantly, they did that I mean. One thing that I participated in was when Massachusetts regulators had the public forum on this. When the operators did show up, they said exactly that If we took that kind of player, then we would have to make a lesser product for everybody else, and what I would say is that's one area that I sharply disagree with, based on experience. 

45:38
Going back to what I had said earlier about where Prime focuses on right now in offering markets like, yeah, you know there might it for the 30 000 markets, say, compared to like the 5 000 markets, prime offers, let's say, fan duels, 30 000. You know, rob, you might be able to go in on a couple of, like you know, deep bench player props. Yeah, find a couple that are weak, right, and be able to pick them off, but how much you really picking them off for? It's not. It's not like they don't set limits, market limits, for each available market. 

46:13
The fact that you have to guess at them, at those, that's maybe problematic right um, like if rob saw on his bet slip that the max available win on this market was $50, then maybe you would say, I don't know, I mean, $50 is nice but maybe it's better. So I disagree with them that when they use that as their justification for denying sharp action, obviously it's being used as a wedge issue to say to more casual players like you know those greedy ass bastards over there they're just trying to screw you and make the game less fun for you. It's not true. But on the question of like, can an advocacy group cover everybody? I would say no, a political party can't cover everybody. But again, if players can agree on 80% of stuff, there's plenty of room there. There's plenty of work that should be done on things that are issues that equally affect both recreational players and and sharp players that they can get behind without stepping on each other's toes. 

47:36 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
I've been betting for a long time now but I've now maybe just accepted that this is the state of the industry. 

47:50
And part of competing as a sports bettor with other sharp bettors is finding ways to get down, being able to mask action, finding inefficiencies in new markets that come out and things of that nature and listen. 

48:03
At the end of the day I'm more than happy to like take a step back myself and say listen, if this is for the good of 98% of bettors, I'm totally fine with that, even if maybe it corrupts an edge of mine over time. I think that's totally fair. But for me the emergence of SGPs has been really interesting because it was viewed as this casual recreational bet type let's get people playing lottery tickets into really high hold market. But I and I always just assumed that until I saw other sharps and friends of mine who were really taking advantage of SGPs on the pro side of things. And to me that's an extremely lucrative market nowadays and in some cases the big wins even go unnoticed at times, even when it should be very obvious that you've found a way to gain an edge over the sportsbook. So for me, selfishly and again I will reiterate, selfishly I would want to not take any chance of those opportunities going away in the short term. 

49:05 - Joe Brennan (Guest)
I don't think they will. Again, I think it's a rhetorical wedge issue that the sports books say I don't see the sports books doing that, they're not going to reduce their markets because it would reduce the efficacy of their SGPs, which is their primary profitability driver. But I mean, I do agree with you. It's funny how obviously the market adapts right, right. And one of the one of the sharpest guys I know out there. 

49:31
I was having a nice conversation with him a little while back and you know in his mind absolutely the kind of the these policies, the hostility that you know, that you know the um, all the tools that the sports books employ to try and squeeze out winners, uh, and sharp guys, uh, he says he sees that as much as part of his job, as the, as the handicapping, you know, and getting down, uh, so when cause? 

50:00
I asked him like, well, if, if, if these things were missing, would you bet more? And he said no, this is what, this is what makes it profitable for me, because not everybody can do it, and I thought that was that's actually for the sharp guys that I talked to, that's actually a minority opinion. Um, but that's this guy is, I, I think, probably an example of how things mutate and evolve in the marketplace, given what the market conditions are to meet it, and he seems to be doing just fine, doing very well meeting the market where it's at right now. That's not an argument, by the way, to allow those guys to continue to do it, but it is one that they're you know. The reason why they have SGPs and the way that they've really hammered parlays is, you know, to try and build a wall around them that makes it easier for them to achieve their profit margins, and I would say those walls are maybe not as solid or as high as they think they are. 

51:04 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
Those walls are maybe not as solid or as high as they think they are. Joe, with Prime, you obviously operated in the US regulated market, but there was the next conference in New York a couple of weeks ago where there were some figures that were being posted about the relative size of the regulated market to the offshore market and a huge percentage of betting is still happening offshore, offshore market and a huge percentage of betting is still happening offshore. 

51:33 - Joe Brennan (Guest)
Do you think that that gap will ever close or is offshore always going to be a major factor? I think the gap can close. Yeah, absolutely. When you look at the post-op business, the regulated market has every advantage over the offshore market. There's no excuse why the US regulated post-op marketplace shouldn't essentially push the offshore version into non-existence. When you look at credit operations, that's a little more difficult because right now, without regulators allowing a competing product in the US offshore credit markets are definitely going to continue to exist. 

52:21
It is interesting because there's obviously models in the existing casino and gambling industry for markers, casino credit, all those things for being able to do that. But you know sports, let's be honest, sports is a different category than if you're playing blackjack or back completely different slots or anything like that. You know sports. I can't speak for canada I though I bet I could. Um is is that you know, sports are kind of our civic religion? Yeah, how seriously do you guys take hockey? Um, I'm I'm not ashamed to admit I I got choked up watching at the end of shorezy, uh, last season. 

53:05 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
Elbows up, uh anyway, I don't even watch shorezy myself, so really, yeah, oh my god, are you kidding me? I'm not, uh, I'm not a shorezy guy. I, I people tell me all the time to watch, I just never have gotten around to it I think it's a brilliant show. 

53:18 - Joe Brennan (Guest)
All right, I kiso has done such a remarkable job in between all of like the lowbrow jokes, of really capturing what it's like to be an athlete at the end of their career. It's brilliant, I love it. But anyway, but that I mean we're talking about credit industry, we get into, we get into shoresy, but uh, I mean, because sports has this status, this almost like quasi-civic religion status, it's more difficult to say like, oh yeah, let's do credit, especially at this moment where I mean, how much did I go on about responsible gaming a few minutes ago? I'm like, well, you know, there are models of credit Like that just doesn't play in this market, at least not at the consumer. You can't be handing out like $500 credit limits, but maybe for those big whale customers you can do something different. 

54:14
It's something that I, you know, at Prime, we were thinking about for a long time. I've, you know, now that I'm not at Prime, it's something that I'm thinking like well, there's got to be a solution there. But it's something that probably has to be targeted to the high end of the marketplace, not anywhere near the recreational level, entry level, and certainly I wouldn't give it to anybody under the age of 35, unless they were a minted Bitcoin billionaire. Right, certainly I wouldn't give it to anybody under the age of 35 unless they were a minted Bitcoin billionaire. But yeah, it was interesting at that conference. Right before that conference, adam and I spent like the last couple of years saying that for every dollar that's bet in the regulated market, there's at least one dollar being bet in the unregulated marketplace. And we've gotten so much shit about that, only for the AGA to come out, like what, like a month and a half ago, and say, like it's $2. Like whoa, who's doing their numbers? 

55:14 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
I was honestly really surprised by that. I would have expected the. I would have thought like a 60-40 split towards regulated at this point. 

55:22 - Joe Brennan (Guest)
That would have been my rough estimate, but that was really surprising one thing it's interesting to to think about is like they didn't really contextualize that number very well because, okay, it's regulated versus unregulated right. So we normally like, of course we gravitate right to, like the offshore right or you know, the the street guys, pph guys, like that. But also unregulated is the Switch guys and DFS Plus guys, and now you could arguably say the performance contracts guys, and so if you add all that into the mix, how much of that is inflating that number? And there are enough internal gray markets in the United States before you ever leave our sunny shores to say that, yeah, there's an awful lot of liquidity out there bouncing around that doesn't have adult supervision on it. 

56:20 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
I'm going to give you a loaded question here because um often I'm very self-aware to realize that I'm often very critical of things without offering up a solution for them, and I know you've been very vocal about all the inefficiencies in US sports betting regulation. If you had the power to rewrite the rule book, what are the major changes that you would make within US sports betting regulation? 

56:52 - Joe Brennan (Guest)
It's probably unsexy stuff, but I think it's important stuff that you see, you know day to day in operations but that I also hear about day to day, whether it's you know talking to players or you know spend all that time on gambling Twitter or betting to Twitter and things like payouts. It's always it doesn't matter if you're a sharp guy or you're just some square who maybe got a big parlay win or you know he just went on a run or something like that. The amount of roadblocks that you hear about players encountering just to get a simple payout, uh, I think having like mandatory payout windows for operators, like once a once a payout request comes in from a player, you need to turn it around and get it to them within let's say, let's just pull a number out of there 48 hours, okay. I think it should be a lot faster. I think it should be instantaneous, okay, but let's say it's 48 hours. 

57:57 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
Well, to your point, joe. I've consulted in the offshore space before. I've consulted in the offshore space before. In the offshores that I worked for, there was always service level agreements with players SLAs where if you withdraw with crypto, you're getting your money within 12 hours. Like to me, that's already a competitive advantage that the offshore space has, especially dealing with crypto and getting those fast payouts. So to me that's like a no brainer. You know high level, yeah, like you want regulated to compete, they have to be able to compete with the speed of the payouts that are coming from offshore books. 

58:32 - Joe Brennan (Guest)
Yeah, and you know it's funny, you mentioned that Like one of the things that we spent so much time trying to get live in both New Jersey and Ohio. A lot of the things that we we wanted to make part of 1.0, we really couldn't. It's probably, like you know, prime 2.0, 2.5 or 3.0 is, look, if the customer that we can legitimately target and defend is that player, who he's either an existing serious player or he's a player that is, you know, came in as a recreational. He's now getting more serious. It's like you have to go and kind of meet those people where they're at right now, right. 

59:13
And if you're talking about, like, recapturing an offshore player, like crypto seems like a no brainer. You know, you've you've had so many guys who have been transacting in crypto offshore for so long. They don't think of it in terms of cash. They're not betting it in terms of cash, they're betting it in terms of crypto, right, and so, okay, well, let us take crypto deposits, right. Well, they'll be. Trust me, most of them will be happy to get their payouts in good old greenbacks, right, us dollars that's a. 

59:44
That's an advantage that the US market could have is repatriating, in a sense, a lot of the bankroll that players have had to put offshore and have had to transact in crypto. But like being able to say like OK, well, bring us your you know your poor, your tired, your hungry your USDC and your USDT. Well, bring us your poor, your tired, your hungry, your USDC and your USDT and we'll give you back US dollars when you cash out. Well, I'm sure some if there's some regulators listening to that might say like well, g Joe, that sounds an awful lot like money laundering. It's not. I'm talking about like after they play it guys. Come on. 

01:00:21
Right, but paying out in good, old-fashioned US dollars, that's a real advantage. 

01:00:29
But we can't get there right now because you know where we're at in the industry. 

01:00:32
I mean, and that's something that you know between when you, when you look at things like credit, when you look at cash deposits, while they have them in New Jersey, you know if you go to because you got to drive all the way down to Atlantic city to do it at the window it can be a real pain in the butt Sometimes doing it at the window because you're asking the casino staff, not the sports book staff, to cash in. You know there's other places where we can go and we can meet the player where we're at and we can recapture, repatriate a lot of that money that's being missed right now. But we're not getting to it just simply because, well, a the recreational sports books, they're not really pushing for it, right, they don't want that customer, they're trying to stay away from that customer that the states are not getting the tax, they're not getting the PCAT, they're not getting the regulate and they're not being able to get adult supervision on. So what does it mean for the integrity of the games? 

01:01:34 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
Earlier we talked about some states that have some really high tax rates and we're seeing I mean listen a lot of states on the early going. They structured the market to maximize tax revenue but we're seeing some of them realize that that approach is stifling competition within the state itself. Do you think that there will be a wave of states that are revisiting the frameworks that they put into place in the next few years? 

01:02:01 - Joe Brennan (Guest)
Unfortunately, I think the movement right now in states is to revisit the framework and ratchet it up. You have Ohio, where Governor DeWine doubled our tax rate from 10% to 20% in one year, and that was after the market was open two years, so that was a big step, and now he wants to up it to 40% after three years. We're heading in the wrong direction. I think, though, it may not be taxes that forces the issue, but a lot of the entities, the markets that we just talked about, like sweeps, dfs plus, and prediction markets, and you know, and then, of course, the continued existence and, in some places, frankly, models and growth of existing alternative models, in the face of what seems like an awful lot of hostility on the part of the states and their lawmakers seeking to raise taxes on the guys who are playing by the rules. Right, it seems incredibly punitive, doesn't it? It does, and it's a really disincentive to play by the rules when you levy punitive tax rates. There's a couple of folks in New Jersey right now, lawmakers, who, admittedly, they weren't around when we legalized all this, but they've made some really unfortunate comments like oh, the the industry hasn't been paying its fair share, like what? Take a look at jersey city, north jersey. Take a look at cherry hill you know that area. Take a look at atlantic city and all those jobs and all that investment and everything, everything that was done because New Jersey got there first and essentially became the Silicon Valley, if you will, of online gaming and sports betting in the United States. So for a New Jersey lawmaker to then have really the balls to say these guys aren't paying their fair share, it's like, okay, I get it. When you're hanging around the water cooler with the guys from Pennsylvania and the guys from New York and they're bragging about their 35 percent and their 51 percent gross gaming tax rates respectively, you kind of feel like you're a little shorted at 15 percent. But there aren't any. They don't have any of those jobs in Pennsylvania. They don't have that investment in New York Not even close. And so I think the combination of that, like you have, the states right now are reading the room very poorly. 

01:04:54
I think you just look at what's happened here in the last few weeks with prediction markets Wow, I mean, talk about a real over-the-top move. You look at how states like California and Texas are especially used their compact to their advantage because they wanted to do it on their terms. And now you just had Calchi and Robin Hood and Cryptocom and others just go over the top with this play that they're doing through the CFTC. You look at, what does that do for Florida, which gave essentially a monopoly to Seminole Indians and Hard Rock, and you know, now I guess they don't have a monopoly anymore. And at the same time this, you know, the the state licensed gaming operations. Like is this really the time for all these operations to get the tax crews tightened up on them, even more so when there's all these other options? So I just, I think, lawmakers, obviously it's a tough time for states. They have money coming back to them from the federal government. They expect it to get tighter. 

01:06:19
They're going to have to raise more of their money, but it's a lot of it is really lazy lawmaking, really lazy budgeting and you know they're trying to get it all from one place. I think it's interesting, as they're going after sports betting, which means nobody really read the economics or the commercials on sports betting, but they're not touching booze or weed or things like that, which are taxed incredibly low. I'm told yeah, they are Right. So again it's like why are we punishing? It really seems punitive. We're going to punish sports betting operators for playing by the rules. At the same time, you have all these other guys who are essentially slipping by them and saying like why do I want to do all this? When I mean ProfitX, formerly Profit Exchange, you couldn't have had a better example than that. Those guys saying like New Jersey, here's your license back, we're going to go and we're going to do our exchange as a sweeps operation and it's been a net positive for those guys. 

01:07:19 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
How long, joe, do you think that those will last the sweeps? 

01:07:23 - Joe Brennan (Guest)
That's a really good question. I don't think it's also as unassailable as some folks in the sweep industry seem to think they're like. Oh well, it's a federal. It's not a federal law. 

01:07:34
OK, it's in the tax code there. There's several states where you can't do it. Well, why? Well, because the states have specific laws against it, so there's nothing that prohibits the states from acting to enact specific laws that target sweeps. I don't think that necessarily everybody should rush to that, but in the meantime, I don't think that sweeps people should be trying to convince either their investors or their players or anything like that, that they have an unassailable position. It's a good time to be wary and a good time to work proactively with lawmakers to say, hey, better us in the tent than out. I think that the sweeps industry in particular is a great opportunity for innovation that's currently not really available for the regulated market, simply because of just the high upfront costs for licensing in order to launch new product. 

01:08:40
It's kind of a disincentive to do it and Sweeps not having that burden right now. I would like to see more Sweeps companies take more chances on developing unique experiences and not just carbon copying the existing industry. 

01:09:00 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. I want to talk to you about BetBash 2024. 

01:09:05 - Joe Brennan (Guest)
Oh, I knew we'd get to that one. 

01:09:08 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
Came up on this show. I'm at Bet Bash every year Me and formerly Johnny of the pod. We would do a recap every year. There was certainly a memorable point for a lot of people at last year's Bet Bash. It was a rant by you, joe. You called out people for being at the pool instead of in the seminar room. I've heard an audio. Um, somebody recorded that on their phone, really oh yeah, because I haven't. 

01:09:35 - Joe Brennan (Guest)
Uh, maybe you can send it to me they've. 

01:09:37 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
They asked me. I'll see if I could get approval to send it to you, but I've heard the whole thing. I listened to it again this week. I wasn't in the room, though, so I don't have the the context of of exactly how it went down, but it was met with very mixed reviews. Some people understood the messaging and liked it. Other people felt they were directly being called out. I'll let you give your point of view on that moment and how you feel about it. Looking back on that moment right now. 

01:10:07 - Joe Brennan (Guest)
Well, can we not call it a rant anymore? Can we just call it like impassioned oratory? Is that too self-indulgent? A passion? 

01:10:15 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
My vocabulary. I was always a math guy. Vocabulary not great, so I'm going to stick with rant for the remainder of this. 

01:10:23 - Joe Brennan (Guest)
You do that. I mean, I think it was like maybe a c plus on oratory. Uh, to my defense, I was. You know, I wasn't supposed to be in the rotation that day. You know I was coming out of the bullpen. I'm used to being used as a starter. You know, having more warm-up time um it was. 

01:10:41 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
it was also a tough time slot the way, like right before, the sports watch parties that were happening at the pool Right right. Yeah. 

01:10:50 - Joe Brennan (Guest)
I mean, if I'm being honest, it had crossed my mind that, oh, come on, I know what they're going to talk about. Do I really need to be there? You know, it's funny even today and thinking about it. I kind of went back and forth on this. I know what your reaction was. You referred to it as quote gross, which I thought was a very poor use of language. 

01:11:14
Did I say gross like inappropriate, offensive, truculent, you know, overly aggressive that, but gross. And anyway, you did just say you were a math guy right, I'm a math guy, I I don't look. 

01:11:35 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
I usually uh, this is not to be defensive if I said gross, I said gross, I I meant it at the time, but I usually can recall what I, I I say in my rants as well, and I I don't remember much about that one um so wait a second. 

01:11:50 - Joe Brennan (Guest)
You had a rant about my rant yeah I, I and that's being derivative I. 

01:11:55 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
I even I almost felt like you were. You were definitely not speaking directly to me in that quote unquote rant, but I felt like it was kind of like a direct shot at people like me who kind of have some influence in the industry. But I opted not to be there that day. I obviously was very outspoken about what I was doing that day, which was shaving my chest in the hotel room getting ready to go down to the pool. But yeah, I don't know, I felt at the time and I'm not as heated about it now but I almost felt like I was being called out, if that makes sense Not that I'm saying you were directly calling me out. 

01:12:38 - Joe Brennan (Guest)
Yeah, and this is kind of what I would say. For the last five months, rob, I have taken the attitude that you would probably expect from a Philly kid, which was kind of a well, look, if they can't take it, fuck them. Yeah, kind of thing, you know. And yeah, at times I'm kind of mystified how people will often lose the substance of something in the style of something Okay. But earlier today I was thinking about it and I was like you know what I think. 

01:13:22
In some ways, the reaction is that a lot of people may have been saying you know, joe, we, we expected more from you. You know, you know whether it is or not. Maybe I'm just rationalizing it this way, but it's like you know, there's only so many people who are out there, who are, you know, spending the time on this, and I do. I mean some guys are just out not like, hey, fuck you, you can't talk to me like that, right. But I wonder if there's also some people who were like you know, I heard you were this one guy and instead you're like this guy, you're yelling at me. You were, you're, you're supposedly a champion for us and you're yelling at us. You know, I, I'm disappointed. I thought I expected more from somebody like you, somebody who's given this level of deference and respect in the industry, which I really do appreciate, I really do, and they're right, they're probably right. 

01:14:33
It's kind of tough to admit that when you spend most of your life being a guy who's on his front foot and you spend all your time pushing against the resistance that sometimes you know, you, the last people we wanted, you want to yell at and be angry with, or your family, the people that you love. So, on that level, while I don't regret, I don't regret the point I was trying to make, which is look, you guys need to stand up. You're the most important part of this industry. The players are and you already have. There's nothing like what are strategies and how are you going to get more people? It's like you. You don't realize how much, how much power you already have available to you, uh, to make change. 

01:15:35
And I say this is somebody who was part of a to the under-resourced, to the to the point of almost being non-resourced small group of people who were just up against it and prevailed. I don't say that because I want to be carried off the field like I'm Rudy, but it's more of the players don't need a huge fundraising campaign. They don't need a huge fundraising campaign. They don't need a huge media campaign. They just need to be persistent and write and believe in what they're doing. And yeah, I absolutely you know, yeah, I wish I had done a better job and I'm really sorry. Sometimes I'm sorry now. 

01:16:25 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
Yeah. 

01:16:25 - Joe Brennan (Guest)
That I disappointed some people in that. I you know. Yeah, so I wish do what I? Would I take the whole thing back? No, absolutely not. Well, that's the point. Would I take yeah, would I take back certain off-speed pitches? Yeah, probably certain off-speed pitches. 

01:16:46 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
Yeah, probably so. In talking to you, joe, I think a lot of sports bettors share a lot of similar characteristics, but I see a lot of myself in you and the way that you speak and I think you're just passionate about the industry and I would have had the same reaction that you'd. I often do. I say things on my own. You know channels that people often say criticize and be like how could you say something like that? And I guess I take the quote unquote Philly mentality. It's like if you don't like it, fuck off. I'm just voicing my opinion and I'm entitled to it. To me, when I re-listened to that this week, I, I I didn't necessarily disagree with the point you were trying to make. I think it was extremely valid point. I think it was. It just ended up being overshadowed by the delivery is all. 

01:17:34 - Joe Brennan (Guest)
Yeah, and, and you know, I'm sure, sometimes when I'm yelling at my kids, right Cause I will admit to that, you know, call child protective services Sometimes I yell at them, yeah, what I? You know the point that you know. This is the problem. It's like sometimes the point that you make gets lost in all of the storm and drag right and I guess again, coming back to the end again, maybe I'm just stroking my own ego or something like that, but I'm saying like there's a lot of people who could have said what I said and nobody would have given a shit. Right, right, I said it the way I said it, and it upsets some people I don't know how many people, but it upsets some people and I guess I what I should take away from that is hey, joe, you're, you're no longer the guy on the street in Philly, you're not some guy chirping out on the field or something like that, you're not just talking shit with your buddies in a bar or something like that. There are people out there who, for whatever reason, grant you a certain amount of attention, a certain amount of respect, um, and came away from that. And if that was the first time that they met, saw joe brennan, then they must be like who the fuck is that asshole? Why does everybody think he's any big fucking deal, right? He just sounded like a fucking asshole to me and, yeah, yeah, I wish I, I wish I had a better delivery that day. But, you know, sometimes the pitches just aren't crossing the plate. 

01:19:21
So for the people that I did upset, I am sorry, but I do hope that what I was trying to say, the point I was trying to make, which is you guys are the most important constituency in this. If you get motivated, you're going to get what you want. You have the ability already, you have the power and leverage already. Just if 90 percent of politics is just showing up, show up, OK, I mean right now, the fact that PASPA got overturned by. 

01:19:59
I mean some days no kidding guys, no kidding guys it. I don't know. Maybe someday I really will finish writing the book about the group that was behind, uh, this effort in new jersey and just how small a group of people it was and how much it was that we got this done and who we're up against you it. I guess that's the other reason it's like I believe it so deeply. Um, because of it, I'm just some guy. You know I wasn't. I wasn't Ted Olson or anything like that, but I got Ted Olson on the field. You know, I got the Mariano Rivera of of constitutional law on the field and he closed the game out for us. 

01:20:40
So anyway, yeah, that's, that's where I'm at on that one buddy. 

01:20:47 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
All right, no, I listen. I wanted to give you a chance to explain it from your point of view. I, and I agree with a lot of what you said. I think if people just read a transcript of what you said and they didn't, they didn't have the tone with it I think you probably would have got a hundred percent approval rate. But you know what? 

01:21:04 - Joe Brennan (Guest)
There's part of me that wants percent approval rate. Um, yeah, but you know what? That's right? I mean, yeah, there's part of me that wants really hopes. You get the permission to send it to me. But then there's also part of me I'm like I don't know. Do you really want to listen to it, or is that bad? Um, because then I might come back and be like what are these fucking selenials got offended by that? 

01:21:16 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
fuck them up to you. I'll, I'll, I will reach out. 

01:21:21 - Joe Brennan (Guest)
No, no, I I think that's it we. 

01:21:23 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
We just let it live and let live, and that's it. 

01:21:26 - Joe Brennan (Guest)
No, no, I really want to. I want to hear it and I think you should be unflinching in self-criticism. It's strength, not weakness, to be like that, yep, well said. 

01:21:37 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
Before we wrap up, I want to get your thoughts on the future of betting here. There's been a lot of debate about uh, parlays and micro betting driving profit, profitability for sports books. That's kind of like the new trend obviously parlays in recent years. Um, and then talks about micro betting becoming this huge thing going forwards. Do you see that being the next trend that's coming and do you think the market will ever potentially shift back towards, let's say, more traditional betting over time? 

01:22:08 - Joe Brennan (Guest)
well one. I isn't it funny, uh, when you compare what the attitudes were, right when paspo was being overturned and you had all these companies entering the united states, you had the, you had the brits and the europeans, europeans coming over with a sprinkling of guys from Australia as well, and they were all telling us, like in-game bet, you know, in-running, in-game, it's going to dominate, it's going to be 90% of your handle and it's a betting product that was invented during the Roman Empire parlays. I know that dominates the industry, right. 

01:22:52 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
But you know what, in a sense, joe, like even now live same game parlays have become a big thing as well. So there's some truth to that and that in-game. I mean, if you look at the splits from in-game to pre-game at that time, to where they are now, there's no doubt that in-game is growing oh yeah, I mean, we, we see it in our own business. 

01:23:12 - Joe Brennan (Guest)
Yeah, right, uh, week over week, you, you see growth in the uh in the in-game business, um, but kind of like what I I referenced before, like one thing that's been observed in the past is that a certain percentage of players, as they age through the product, right from total new to more experienced player, they'll they start to move away from the parlay products and and deeper into singles. 

01:23:38
That, you know, they're becoming more sophisticated, a little more committed, and they realize that they're, that, you know, betting singles they're much more likely to be beaten. Yeah, you have, you have some really sophisticated guys who are going a level beyond that. They're finding a way to to beat SGPs. But I'll tell you, just in talking to a couple of them, I don't know, I think we should be having them, you know, working on nuclear fission not necessarily SGPs, because they're just they're there to say that their next level is an understatement. Um, you know, in game as it grows, uh, right now it's certainly going to be kind of concentrated on singles. I just think, because the the pace of us sports, north American sports, is such where and I think this was the thing that kind of held in-game back. Initially, because you're talking about really importing a model that was built around soccer, whereas everybody over there insists on calling it football. 

01:24:41
Use your feet Like great, I get it. I get it. But there's a reason why people sing during soccer matches, right, because nothing's going on. 

01:24:53 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
You're about to upset a lot of the following. 

01:24:55 - Joe Brennan (Guest)
Joe, you're upset well, I, you know, I, look guys, I, you know, I, I like beton, asian handicaps and corners as much as the next guy. Right, right, but Right. But let's be honest, there's, there's a lot of air in the game, right, and that gives you an opportunity to participate and drive liquidity in those markets. It's much more difficult when you talk about doing those things in game for basketball, football, hockey, yeah, oh, my gosh, right. My son was a longtime ice hockey player, played up the juniors, so I spent a lot of my time going like this, yeah, saying stupid things like skate and shoot it. So you know. Even even baseball, you know which is. You know our more sedentary game it's it's, you know which is. You know our more sedentary game, it's it's, you know, getting the, the micro bets in there, it's. How long can you keep a market open, generate enough liquidity to make it worth having it open, get the risk? So it's a good. And also the user experience. Like you know, just as soon as the market's open, it's down and the player can't get into it. That's really frustrating to want to come through the door if you're a player and then the door's locked on you, right. Some of those problems can't be solved on the operator side, on the product side, because it's governed by data, by latency. A lot of this stuff is governed by the contracts that the data companies and the broadcast companies have with the league. So it's difficult. But I do think, kind of going back to your original question, that you're going to see a certain percentage of players that, as they mature and maybe they want to take this a little more seriously and we're talking, like you know, single to low let's say it's maybe 10% of players right that are being acquired right now that are total noobs, will eventually get to the position where they say I want to take this seriously, right, they will. I mean it's mathematic. They will gravitate more towards betting more singles than parlays, just simply because it's easier to pick one event than, say, three events. But do I see wholesale change back to single game wagers? Not unless there's some sort of real product, user experience, innovation that drives it there. But I am hopeful that we do see more innovation, not necessarily so it sells more singles, just so that we see we move away from like everything looks like an Excel spreadsheet. Yeah, right, it's still not. 

01:27:38
One of the things I always say is I don't get slot machines right, but I do get that. All you do is you press one button and there's this big entertainment, instant stimulation. Yeah, you're like, wow, look at that. It's like it's interesting, whether you got money or not. You're like push that button and all of a sudden you got people talking to you and film clips of Willy Wonka and Three's Company and you know, lord of the Rings and all those other really loud things on the floor. It's really something when you walk through a casino floor. So just the act itself of doing it is kind of inherently pleasurable. You can't yet really say I haven't seen it, but if anybody is aware and wants to point some examples my way, I really do want to see it. Is there an example of a sports betting experience where just the act itself is inherently pleasurable? 

01:28:29 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
that's a tough one I can't think of one off the top of my head. If anyone can think of one, drop it in the comments below. I'd be interested to hear it, but off the top of my head, nothing. Um, joe, you mentioned innovation in the space, so I want to pick your brain on that a little bit. What, what do you think will be the the next major innovation in sports betting? Like are you? Are there any emerging markets or products or maybe pieces of technology that really excite you moving forwards? 

01:28:56 - Joe Brennan (Guest)
Well, I mean, the first thing I'll say is probably a negative experience, and that is I thought ESPN bet was a huge missed opportunity to create a unique betting experience. Here you have the leading sports content company globally, right? You have this huge access to library of live events, like they're running all the events that we're all betting on right, yep, yep, that we're all betting on right, yep, yep. And the best that they could do was just come up with a conventional branded you know, excel spreadsheet like sports book. And I think that there's an opportunity now, especially now that you've got the streaming companies you got Amazon, you got Netflix and others that are moving into this space, where you know they, they could potentially have an opportunity to more closely marry those experiences together, whether it's through exclusivity or, you know, throwing up a wall around it, whatever it may be. Um, I always God, it's the product name I utterly hate, but zone d-a-z-n. That's it. Yeah, the zone, yeah, like. Oh, my god, I hate, the branding's terrible. But you know what they've done with the boxing product. I'm a big boxing fan. Uh, with the boxing product that, you know, I always thought there's a huge opportunity there to be able to marry the the content part of it, the exclusivity part of it, with the betting aspect, and nobody's really done it yet. And there's a couple of people like, if you remember, like the Fubos and a couple others, they made noise about it but it never made it further in development than a PowerPoint presentation, right, yep, like they said they were going to do it but they didn't do it. So just I, always I I thought and I I will continue to think that espn and espn bet and penn should maybe call time and just do a major reset instead of this, like all right, well, we'll break up in 2026. 

01:31:00
Yeah, well then what else are they gonna to do? What's Penn going to do? You know who's the punter Pat McAfee. Is that the next fad? That we're going to have McAfee back, or something like that? You know what fad are they going to hook onto for their sports book after, after they get divorced from ESPN and ESPN? What are they going to do? 

01:31:23
Just go back to taking ads and they're like they've built, it's become such an integrated part of their content now, insufferable though it may be. I mean listening to some of their on-air people, you know, mike Greenberg, stephen A Smith and others talk about sports betting. It's like I've always said it sounds like listening to my parents freestyle rap. You know they technically can do it, but it just doesn't sound very good. It doesn't sound very professional, but it's become so integrated into their broadcast experience Like that. Just where are they going to go back to? Just running DraftKings and FanDuel ads? Probably not. So it wouldn't be such a bad idea for those guys to just say like, all right, well, we're just going to hit a hard reset and think, you know, let's start a Skunkworks up and how do we do something special with this? So I do think that that's an area of opportunity Now getting more practical. 

01:32:20
You know, where is innovation happening today? 

01:32:23
I think it's obviously most innovations happening on the player side, in part because you know of the cost and the fact of disincentive that you have on the licensed operator side, right, but it's, you know, making players better organized or helping them digest the data better, play around with it in different ways, the tools that are available to them. 

01:32:49
There's some really cool stuff out there right now. I mean, of course, that creates an issue for the operators, right. It's threatening to make the players better, right, but I also like that there's some garage band-sized developers out there building products and iterating and grinding it out and they're just doing some really cool stuff. Some of the stuff I see is like I'm like please stick with it, please stick with it. You might not be ready for primetime, but the fact that you can do this at such a relatively low cost, with none of the sunk licensing costs because you are on the player side, is where there's the most freedom right now. If you're on the operator side or the supplier side, oh God, it's like you know you want to do something. It's like running the a hundred yard dash, but the first thing you got to do is put like a 200 pound barbell over your shoulders. 

01:33:40 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
Oh shit, it's going to drag you down a little bit. 

01:33:44 - Joe Brennan (Guest)
Right, you know. But the other reason why I like watching that area is, yeah, there's some really good stuff on their own and, you know, you see some potential sometimes in some of the stuff that they're building for application on the other side of the counter. So maybe there's a way to, you know, to make it industrial grade, you know, for the operator side and you know, and the other thing is that some of them they're just flags being flown by really smart people that I, I think to myself, you know, keep an eye on them for future reference, right, because there's a talent gap in this industry right now. There really is. 

01:34:23
Uh, you had, you had at the outset, a lot of, you know, really interesting people, smart people, you know, people who are really good at building things that rushed into the industry and at first resistance, they just gave up and they went on to the next thing. Right, it was really disappointing Sometimes I think that's what LinkedIn's for for you to go on and say like, hey, that guy who was doing that really interesting thing, where's he at now? 

01:34:50
He's like oh great he's working at X, or his eyes working at Meta, or you know it's working for McKinsey. You're like, oh God what a waste, yeah. So I mean, I do think, if that's another thing that I'm really interested in trying to, there's some folks who are doing this right now, who are, you know, using their experience in the industry and their networking and everything like that to try and encourage innovation, innovation. But I think we do have to kind of work to create a launchpad, you know into the regulated marketplace that eliminates or vastly reduces that upfront cost on licensing and things like that I've had. 

01:35:46
I've had some conversations. God, I was really disappointed, um, when you had the turnover uh at uh, dge, because I'd had some a lot of great people left who I had some really great conversations with them about. Just this point, like, how do we make New Jersey kind of like an incubator of sort? Um, you know, dave Rebook was a great guy to talk to about this kind of stuff. He really got it. But I guess you know the siren call of playing golf every day. 

01:36:13 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
Can't be bad yeah. 

01:36:16 - Joe Brennan (Guest)
I don't blame him, you know, but I think it would be great if a jurisdiction like a. New Jersey or a Massachusetts or somebody like that, would try and find a way, you know, almost like a quasi public, private way of creating a launch pad so that they can become more of a magnet for innovation and creation, especially local job creation in their jurisdiction, creation in their jurisdiction. 

01:36:44 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
So anyway, On a personal level, Joe, you've been involved in legalization, running a sports book. Now player advocacy what's the next big thing that you're looking to do? 

01:37:01 - Joe Brennan (Guest)
I think I've hinted at it. So right now, every year I say to myself my New Year's resolution is say less and listen more. I usually fail miserably at that goodbye letter that you referenced earlier. I did say that I was committing myself to this kind of listening tour in the industry, talking to smart people. I'm going to qualify this as at least half of that. You and I have to have a follow-up conversation, Rob, where I ask the questions. 

01:37:42 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
Okay, I'm in for that. I love hearing myself talk, so don't worry about that, I'm in. 

01:37:48 - Joe Brennan (Guest)
But I want to talk to a lot of different people, especially people who don't normally get an opportunity to contribute to the process about you know what's you know industry 2.0 version going to look like here. I mean, I have my own experience and yeah, it is. It's a little more varied. I'd say that some other folks and I'm lucky that way, but it's still not. It still doesn't cover every corner. 

01:38:14
And I want to especially challenge maybe some of the assumptions that I have or some of the ideas I have. So there's that, but also as part of that I am. I've been working, been laying the groundwork for the last year or so at looking at ways of trying to come up with a solution to this liquidity problem, and it's not a ramrod that takes liquidity and forces it down fan king's throats. 

01:38:45
A ramrod that takes liquidity and forces it down fan kings throats. But I do think it's an appropriate goal to have to get as many willing participants into this marketplace as possible, and that's something like Telling lawmakers like you have players that are saying to you I want to be, be in, I want to participate in this license, regulated market and I'm being told I can't. That that's something that can't stand. But at the same time, you know as much as it's been fun kicking at fan Kings and beating my chest about it, those guys aren't just gonna, you know, say all right, I'm going to tie myself to a chair and everybody can step up and punch me in the face, uh, which is what it feels like some days when you're a sportsbook operator, right? Um, so I am very committed to to finding those solutions right now. 

01:39:37
Um, I figure that it will take up a significant amount of my time here over the the next or so, and I'm just happy that Mrs Brennan continues to indulge me with this stuff. She must just roll her eyes most days when she looks at me and like what are you so you're going to do what? Oh, okay, I thought your dream was to open up a sports book, a sharp sports book, in New Jersey. Okay, you did that. Now you got to move on and do something else. Okay, all right. Sure, yep, that woman is a saint. 

01:40:10 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
Yeah, I will say um, the significant others of, of, um people in the sports betting industry. They're just at another level with what they have to put up with. Oh yeah. 

01:40:23 - Joe Brennan (Guest)
There should be a hall of Fame for them. 

01:40:25 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
Yes, 100% yeah. Maybe you can advocate for that as part of your advocacy on Sports Gambling Hall of Fame. There you go, there you go. We like to end on something a little bit more fun, I guess, and non-traditional. It can be related to sports betting or just anything in life. But, Joe, I'd like you to give me one thing that you think is plus ev and one thing that you think is minus ev uh, yeah. 

01:40:54 - Joe Brennan (Guest)
So plus ev, it's definitely the quality of your relationships, um, and then maintaining loyalty and friendships and being more willing to help than to seek it. That absolutely I mean that may be too general and may seem a little too Hallmark greeting card from I would say the most is like the luck, equality and the long standing nature of some some of the relationships that I made. You don't, you don't need to have. You know hundreds of them. You know quite it's amazing what you know just a few people having a good relationship with them in this industry and being able to tap their wisdom and tap their perspective and everything and staying loyal to those people, you know, as the times change. 

01:41:56
I mean, this industry has changed again and again and again over the course of the last 20 years and it's funny that these same people always seem to be there slightly above and out in front of it and I'm just really happy that I've continued to have those relationships, those friendships more than anything else. 

01:42:20 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
Slightly hallmarky, for sure, but still a message that needs to be said. And uh, yeah, one one reason I love asking this question is you can go anywhere you want with it. So obviously that's important to you and it's important to me as well, so I'm glad, glad so negative ev right? 

01:42:35 - Joe Brennan (Guest)
um, as we escape the hallmark section, don't want, don't want us to turn into a taser's choice moment. Negative EV People who come into this industry and say, like build fast and cash out right, you see too much of it, and usually I'd say about 99% of the time they crash out, they definitely hit a wall, trying to be too crafty to the point of seeming dishonest or uninformed frankly sometimes only talking to people when you need them, right. 

01:43:17
We've all seen that in our, in our lives, like the, the person who you haven't heard from forever in a day, and suddenly they're there on LinkedIn, like. 

01:43:24 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
Hey man, how's it going? 

01:43:26 - Joe Brennan (Guest)
Now, if any of you people who I'm saying this about right now suddenly hear from me as part of, like, joe Brennan's walkabout listening tour of 2025. It's because I really want to hear you. Not necessarily because I'm gonna I don't have anything to sell Yet, I guess but but yeah, and kind of along the lines of the quality of your relationships, you should, you should make sure that you're not just talking to people when you need something from them. Right, uh, standing still right, maybe this is all the record. Like all the big operators right now, like how much more can they get out of sgp? Like what are we going to have next year? Like like s sgp, super, yeah, sgp. 

01:44:10 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
Like you know like I'm kind of interested in finding out how far this goes, honestly oh my god. 

01:44:15 - Joe Brennan (Guest)
It's like. It was like how many versions of angry birds, right, could you get? Yeah, right, how many. How many versions of warcraft could you get, like? 

01:44:24 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
it's like a hundred different versions of Candy Crush nowadays. They're all just a different skin, right? 

01:44:30 - Joe Brennan (Guest)
Sometimes you definitely got to step out of that stream and do something different, just like thinking like you've got it all figured out. I'll tell you, there's one thing I benefited from was starting my career career in general at a company that became synonymous with disaster, and that was AOL. Because when I was at AOL we're the biggest company in the world, we're the biggest online company in the world we had it made, but by the time I was left there in January 2005, you had already seen that that kind of ossification had set in, where people were reluctant to do things because they were afraid it would challenge the existing lines of business. Right, and as a result, I mean AOL literally is a pile of rubble down the street from my house. Aol literally is a pile of rubble down the street from my house. 

01:45:33
I even got a mason's jar full of the dust so I can remind myself that all empires fall. And so when people say, like FanDuel DraftKings, unassailable Lead, you know the race is over, or anything like that, I just look at it from my old guy position and I think to myself. I remember being in a room full of people who felt, who thought the same way, and they're now scattered to the every corner of the globe. Because the place we were at got pulverized into non-existence, that empire fell. 

01:45:58 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
Yep, so you still planning to be part of prime suspects pod going forward for the time? 

01:46:06 - Joe Brennan (Guest)
being until you know, adam and I decide that, like our weekly you know grind fest, I'll tell you what. The guy who really deserves a merit badge for that one is Matt Landis, who also does his props and hops podcast. Please check. If you're not going to look at us, please check out Matt, matt. I remember when Matt was first brought to us by the producers I was just like this guy's not going to last. You're sticking Matt, who's such a nice sunny California guy, in between these two frigging bears. But he's done such an excellent job and he's just what an excellent host he is. I mean it's amazing the stuff like the transitions he comes up with in real time. He got a good education out there at USC and for a lifelong Notre Dame fan, that's hard for me to say. 

01:46:59 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
Yeah, I know Matt well. What I really appreciate about Matt is just how positive he is about everything. I mean, it's a complete polar opposite of me, I will say, because I'm definitely a pessimist, but I've always appreciated that about Matt. And anyone can check out the Prime Suspects pod available wherever you get your podcasts. Follow Joe Brennan on Twitter at JoeBrennanJr J-R. At the end there, joe, really appreciate you joining us today. 

01:47:26 - Joe Brennan (Guest)
Rob, my pleasure. Glad we finally had a chance to talk. 

01:47:29 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
Yes, absolutely. Make sure you give Joe a follow. If you enjoyed today's episode, smash that like button down below. Make sure you're subbed here. On Circles Off we're back tomorrow with Circle Back. That's out at 8 am Eastern time. Catch you then. Peace out everyone it Peace out everyone. 

01:47:42 - Jacob Gramegna (Announcement)
It was like an hour in. You said I consulted for offshore sports books. Is that counting? 

01:47:48 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
I would say yes. 

01:47:50 - Jacob Gramegna (Announcement)
All right, yeah, yeah, you said it. Yeah, I did say it. I kind of like you said it like, hmm, you kind of disguised it, but yeah. Got it All right.