00:00 - Jacob Gramegna (Host)
Coming up on another highly anticipated episode of Circle Back.
00:04 - Geoff Fienberg (Host)
I'm just, you know, blessed when the game's on Apple TV that my grandfather isn't with us anymore.
00:11 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
Gambling is a detriment to society, so fuck you. Who cares but the?
00:16 - Kirk Evans (Host)
fact that he just like deleted the tweet but kept tweeting other dumb shit.
00:19 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
Yeah.
00:20 - Kirk Evans (Host)
Just like just bad luck, and he deserves to be dunked on.
00:23 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
I don't believe that sportsbooks are trying to make everyone think.
00:28 - Geoff Fienberg (Host)
Oh, Rob, Simp, Simp, hand the crown over.
00:32 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
I'm just going to say, I'm just going to come out and say it. I know how ridiculous this is going to sound Disclaimer.
00:38 - Jacob Gramegna (Host)
The content presented in this show is intended for entertainment purposes only. All opinions expressed are those of the host and do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of any individuals or organizations mentioned. Statements made about public figures or entities are based on publicly available information and are not intended to harm or defame any person or business. This show relies on fair use of social media posts, which are presented in good faith for the purpose of commentary and criticism. Viewers and listeners are advised to form their own opinions.
01:25
It's that time everybody. It's Circle Back here on the Circles Off channel. It's part of the Hammer Bag Network and presented by Calchi. This is the show where we uncover the latest trending stories from gambling Twitter. I am your host here on Circle Back. My name is Jacob Gurenja, lead producer at the Hammer Betting Network, but we have our usual cast here today Rob Pozzola, pro bettor, ceo of the Hammer Betting Network. We have Kirk Evans in the middle, seasoned NBA bettor, and on the left we have Jeff Feinberg, chargers, superfan, part of Mayo Media Network, avid golf bettor and golfer himself. How's everyone doing today? We had a nice weekend, good weather.
02:05 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
It was hot. I golfed a few times. I got like some massive sunburn on my neck, like I don't know if it looks red. Right now there's no amount of sunscreen that can prepare me for this type of weather, but I'm not complaining. It was a good weekend overall. Get out on the course, spend some time in the backyard Blue Jays are in like Heater, absolute heater.
02:25 - Kirk Evans (Host)
Where did it come from? I didn't even realize we were good. All of a sudden I'm seeing Jeff, we're posting, we're first in the division.
02:31 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
Yeah, amazing. I took Joey Toons out to a Yankees-Jays game. He was in town. He's a big Yankees fan. What?
02:39 - Kirk Evans (Host)
a game to be at.
02:39 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
Dinger dingers, just beauty.
02:42 - Kirk Evans (Host)
Beauty weekend. My invite got lost in the mail there, I actually mentioned him.
02:46 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
I'm like I'm thinking like maybe we'll go out for dinner with Kirk and he kind of like I think he's over the beef, All right. I really do, I really do Mending pensions, but I mean it's a slippery slope that doesn't give you like the leeway to go in again.
03:03 - Geoff Fienberg (Host)
Boys are buzzing, go in again. Yeah, boys are buzzing. Yeah, I am straight buzzing. Yeah about the jays. You know me, rob. The blue jays are the only local team I give a shit about yeah, my favorite team is the chargers, but I I have no sense of community around any other team other than the blue jays. I am literally like I am the lebr meme, like smiling through it all. I can't believe this is my life, yeah, yeah.
03:29
I don't have a meat, like to have the blue Jays be a mini wagon. It's incremental. I hope they're decent. That's like a hope we can contend and then it or, like you know, maybe contend, get, get me to week one of playoffs is like a week one of football. It's like my baseline for them and then for this just to happen, oh, I gave away my tickets for the weekend like a month ago to someone who helps take care of my kids. That move, that was jason right, and I was like so upset that, uh, this, they get to see max scherzer before me win tickets.
04:04 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
You know I want to make this like Blue Jays talk radio, but like summer baseball when your team is good, I think is one of the best experiences, because you can enjoy outdoor games at the ballpark, provided you don't have a dome stadium or whatever, and just like every game feels like it's so important, even when it's mid-season, right like we're halfway through the season at this point, but every blue jays game feels almost weirdly like a must win, even though it's not like you get so depressed after one loss. I I love summer baseball when your team is in the mix, to have like a game pretty much every night.
04:45 - Geoff Fienberg (Host)
They get like six days off in the year. Yeah, just adds like a level of um satisfaction to my life that I cannot get in other ways. I can't even get it through drugs and alcohol I can't. That being said, these fucking yankee fans, they're like uncles used to be cool. Yeah, like right like I'm sure their uncles were great sports fans. These yankee fans, oh, you guys are acting like you won the world series. Sorry, man, we're like first in the division for the first time in like eight years. We're just happy. No one I know is like we're winning the world series. No, we're just enjoying fucking summer. You guys got fucking nothing. Yep, okay, your uncles, your dads, your grandpas won. You don't win shit. And the most overrated entity in all the sports is a new york sports fan. The fact that narrative holds any fucking weight is laughable to me. I had a great July the 4th. I celebrate like I'm an American.
05:49 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
Yep, I will say this with the I hate the shaming Listen we've had. We've talked about this on the show before.
05:57 - Kirk Evans (Host)
The funny thing is, the last time we talked about it was Knicks fans getting shot on by Celtics fans. Exactly, it was the opposite way around. It was New York fans on the opposite end of the.
06:06 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
It's like act like you've been there. They haven't been there before. We haven't been there Like Toronto. Baseball has sucked since like the Donaldson-Bautista-Encarnacion era, A couple of wildcard moments.
06:17 - Geoff Fienberg (Host)
We don't win the division Even those years.
06:25 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
I don't think they were division winners. They were, because I actually just brought it up they were one of them walk off against baltimore in the play-in.
06:29 - Geoff Fienberg (Host)
Yeah, yeah, that's what I mean. One division in a decade. I don't think we've been in first place in the division in a decade at any point yeah so yeah, I don't know they're sorry, blue jays radio, but uh, thanks for the call. It was a good weekend.
06:44 - Jacob Gramegna (Host)
Sweep. Well, good weekend for sports. Maybe not quite. Well, I guess it got better for betters. This was a conversation that continued to dominate gambling Twitter. It was in regards to the One Big Beautiful Bill Act and its effect on gambling. We covered that topic extensively on the previous episode of Circle Back with myself, joey Knish, mr Peanut Better and Chris Dierkes, so go check that out if you want more information on that topic. But I'm sure everyone's seen it. But the sum a little bit.
07:14
It took a huge hit towards the tax implications for American sports bettors, not just pros but casual as well, and the American Gaming Association game american gaming posted this here, quote we recommend congressional leaders on the passage of the one big beautiful bill act. Our industry's ability to sustain quality jobs and deliver economic benefits is significantly enhanced by the tax policies of obbba. That supports consumers, encourage business, innovation and investment and strengthen uS competitiveness. We look forward to President President Trump's expected signing and will work closely with Congress in the coming months to address the changes to wagering deduction losses and further modernize the tax code. And they said the passage of the one big beautiful bill act will significantly enhances our industry's ability to sustain quality jobs, economic whatever this post, as you might imagine, was not met very well by bettors who were hurt directly by this bill and they quickly turned off all of the replies to this post. Plus ev analytics, notable in gambling twitter, said hidden replies alert on the AGA tweet. Ba Analytics at MLBK's Psychic says they blocked replies. They really are in on it.
08:34
We had Spinfluencer, who said the AGA is celebrating a bill that actively screws sports bettors. Ceo Bill Miller took home $2 million last year to help make that happen. And then we had the potential people trying to fix it. We had Dina Titus, a congresswoman who represents Nevada. I think that's the correct rule. She said on Monday I'm introducing the Fair Bet Act, the Fair Accounting for Income Realized from Sports Betting Earnings Taxation Act, to permanently restore the 100 percent loss deduction from gambling winnings. Uh, the bill that passed was going to change it from 100 to 90 instead. She says I welcome all other members to join this common sense fix. Mr peanut better, who was on that friday show, said beth, best july 4th news since 1776. Before we go to the last tweet here, uh, we'll start with you on this one, rob. What's been your take on how all this has unfolded and the changes that have followed to the bill being made public.
09:34 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
Yeah. So first and foremost, I will say the Friday show did a fantastic job of covering this content. I hate giving those guys props, especially Kanish. I think that that was one of the best shows we've ever had for Circleback in terms of like taking a topic that actually mattered in the moment and having some informed opinions on those. It's a little bit more challenging for us because we're Canadians and I don't want to say we're not impacted by this kind of stuff because we are. My betting partner is based in Illinois. He's already had talks of like I don't know what we're gonna be doing next year, 2026. Like I have to consult tax lawyers, so it has implications on me From the outside. Looking in, I think it's an absolutely insane, stupid bill. It also like we have this wasn't really mentioned. I don't know what the origin story was for this name of the bill the one big, beautiful classic is a classic Trump.
10:32
It's like a fucking meme. It's Trump, but it's literally the dump Like anyways, I can't get over that. Every time I hear it, it cracks me up. It does it cracks me up Congresswoman Dina Titus, if I pronounce that correctly pushing back against it.
10:49
Very noble, I think, from our perspective, maybe a little biased because we are betters, but I definitely don't think people should get taxed on phantom winnings, phantom winnings being losses basically, I mean you could lose and still be taxed overall in the long run. I don't think that's fair. No other industry in the world has anything like that where that would happen. So I love the idea of a pushback, but if I'm being a realist here, I mean I don't think this is really gonna lead to anything any like. We're not talking.
11:21
This is sports betting. Like. This is get the gambling industry. This isn't like fucking big pharma or oil or like this is not something that I think a ton of politicians are going to care about. If you think about election implications down the road, or like improving um, you know your your ratings within the public eye, I don't think a bunch of politicians are going to be like this is where I have to draw a line in the sand here and be all in on this. So I'm not diminishing the effort here. I think people should get behind it as much as possible, but from a realism perspective I don't see this having a dynamic impact on what's transpired over the course of the past week well, especially going back to the first tweet, it doesn't exactly seem like the sports books are particularly aggrieved by this addition to the bill.
12:18 - Kirk Evans (Host)
It seemed because, look, it's obviously horrible for pro bettors and, to reiterate, rob state, like it's a disgraceful provision, like the idea of taxing phantom gains is like obviously I'm biased, but I do believe if I was totally unbiased to this, if I heard this in any industry, that you'd be taxed on losses. It's just completely insane and absolutely should be revised. But yeah, for sportsbooks it's a bit of a more interesting question. Of course, again, I get called a sportsbook simp. I think, even if they look at this as good for them, 100%, they should be opposed to this.
13:01
It's a disgrace and has some really potential bad second and third order effects, like if you know, a big gambler gets audited and because, because no, losing better is gonna actually do this, right, no, losing better is gonna be like, oh, I wagered, you know, 10 million and I. Or, sorry, I won 10 million and I lost 10.1 million, right, oh, I actually owe taxes there. No gambler's ever going to do that. And if that gets caught in an audit these sports, but like it's just going to be a horrible look of someone who is a whale is going to be found responsible for not paying taxes on something, because obviously no whale is gonna be thinking to that. They owe money on gambling losses. So I think that's like clear to me why sportsbooks should be against this. But just to your point that it's possible that people don't care, it seems like the sportsbooks are kind of like they don't seem to care.
14:00 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
Before we get to je just the general discourse I I think collectively on the Friday show. I think we all agree if, especially because we're betters, this is an unfair bill, it really is an unfair bill. When you, when you think about how other industries are taxed, that the the general responses I've seen from people who are pushing back on the fairness would be one, gambling is a detriment to society, so fuck you. Who cares? And two, who's gonna pay taxes on this shit? Anyways, is what a lot of people say. Well, who cares if they're gonna tax it, like a lot of people are just not gonna file their taxes, which I think completely misses the point, because you're actually committing a crime when you're not filing your taxes properly, right? So, like I don't really understand the put, I don't understand how this was pushed through. I don't understand how a rational person can say it's not a big deal to the sports betting industry. And then, from the AGA perspective, the AGA is like the main lobbying body for US gaming that should include everyone, including players, and they very clearly take in a stance that the player doesn't matter here, so much so that they actually hid the replies.
15:21
There were so many negative replies and they're like we don't want to deal with this, we actually don't even want these to be seen, they're going to be hidden, which, to me, is like mind blown, like another layer of I. I I don't I honestly don't even know I. I feel like I'm living in a dream world with this, with this entire topic. It doesn't feel real to me. It it doesn't feel like I understand the way that world has trended over the last decade or so, or even longer than that, but it just makes no logical sense from any perspective other than like, okay, we're going to generate more tax revenue, but they're generating those projections based off of the current landscape. It's like what if people stop betting because they don't want to get taxed? Like that's not incorporated in these projections. It's not. This is nuts. It's nuts.
16:14 - Geoff Fienberg (Host)
I mean, I'm the least invested in this and I went like part of me when this happened was like, oh, there's gotta be like a nugget I could take from this and, like you know, just find a way to make fun of like pretentious pro sports bettors. And there's just no way. It is disgraceful. Nothing more disgraceful than the people who are supposed to have your back, apparently, in all of it abandoning. I don't understand the sports book perspective. I can't comprehend that. That not the brightest guy here. You said you wanted to go again. You guys can go longer. I almost have nothing to say on this.
16:51
This is almost too serious and too real yeah I'm here for when big natties are doing meme coin scams. Yeah, you know, I know I have no opinion on this. I wish there was a lane, I could laugh, but it's just so sad and unfair yeah. Go ahead.
17:09 - Kirk Evans (Host)
So I think just from the sportsbook's perspective because I don't think that this is being talked about and I think I kind of disagree with Flop on this because I think he really painted it doom and gloom for the sportsbooks and for recs. And again, it's objectively terrible for wreck bettors because you know if you end up having an even year you owe money in taxes you probably don't even realize that and accidentally commit like tax fraud. But for sports books the reason it would be good is because it could kill pro sports betting in the States Like no real pro sports better will be able to operate in the States with this law. So taking that out of the ecosystem. I could see and again, this is not me defending sports books at all, I still think unequivocally they should come out against this. But I could see how they could think it's a positive because in their mind they're thinking rex won't even know. This is a thing, but we can take as many pros out of the ecosystem as possible that's.
18:17 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
It's a fair point, but, like pro bettors, contribute to the ecosystem as well.
18:22 - Kirk Evans (Host)
Like lines are shaped off of pro bettors, but I think fanduel and dk, if they could snap their fingers, would take out all pros out of the industry definitely.
18:30 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
I don't know about fanduel like, especially because fanduel's offering decent limits on props like they have their own I, I don't know they can create a way just to go back to the poker scandal.
18:39 - Geoff Fienberg (Host)
Yeah, and you know, would I believe you know, never know the truth. But a believable theory on people folding certain hands was I'm only playing against the fish, yeah, right, I'm not playing against someone else who's sober, right or knows what they're doing. And now the sportsbooks have a lane to truly only play against fish. Right, only Right, play against fish, right only right.
19:04 - Kirk Evans (Host)
Like it's hard for me to really believe that all the pros will be taken out, but like the way it's written technically, that's like pretty close to what should be happening. So yeah, exactly that. That is like people have kind of been stunned that none of the big organizations or sports books have come out against this, and that's my reasoning as to why they wouldn't because they see it as and something else that hasn't been talked about Our line is going to be way less efficient if this happens.
19:34 - Geoff Fienberg (Host)
That's what I'm saying but like a Portnoy has to make him a guy. I'm just trying to think of someone who's very celebrity but gambles like he hasn't come out and said it. I guess he's really got the drafting stuff.
19:46 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
well, I will say, like there's been people from barstool who've put out uh videos or comments on, like this is bad. I saw one from jack mack right right, who I follow on twitter I, but to my knowledge, because I've tried, I searched for sportsbook tweets or what. There's like no public statements on this from any book, like even shouldn't a Floyd.
20:07 - Geoff Fienberg (Host)
Mayweather even be like this bullshit, like something, they just someone from that like else other than your Rufus Peabody's being like what am I going to do?
20:21 - Kirk Evans (Host)
Chamath mentioned it from all in yeah. Like cause, again something we're not talking about here. This is sports betting podcast. It's way worse for poker yeah, way worse for poker.
20:30 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
Poker is even tougher now to make you cannot like I don't even know what's the big one.
20:35 - Kirk Evans (Host)
I don't even know how like stuff like the world series of poker would operate, because you'd be sitting at the table. A lot of these people are trying to make money. Like how the hell you, you, just aren't going to make money.
20:45 - Geoff Fienberg (Host)
Yeah, it becomes impossible well, it's like the reason dfs isn't in ontario is because they wanted to tax it like a sports book, correct? Yeah, that's a different, that's like, but it's like, um, the reason like it just doesn't make any sense to play. They left the same reason now for a pro better, it won't make any sense to play.
21:07 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
Right. I can't remember which day it was last week where this got enacted. It was like Tuesday or Wednesday Someone yelled at us.
21:17 - Jacob Gramegna (Host)
I think it was the Monday or the Tuesday. No, it wasn't.
21:19 - Geoff Fienberg (Host)
Monday, because then people were mad that we didn't talk about it.
21:22 - Jacob Gramegna (Host)
And then clips would come out of our show.
21:25 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
It was after we recorded, I had a morning meeting last week with a sports book who was interested in a sponsorship on the hammer. Okay, I don't need to reveal who it was or whatever, anything like that I'm dead. No, no, no, it's not that it was. It was on wednesday morning. Okay, so start off the meeting as I typically do. We're just chatting like and I'm like you guys seen this bill or or whatever. They didn't even know what the hell I was talking about. This is like a major us facing sports book that had executives on a call that had no idea what this. So I don't like this.
22:02
This was very sudden, for sure, right, it kind of came out of nowhere. Where it was like I saw captain jack's tweets. I'm like what the hell is going on here? It really came out of nowhere and they didn't even know about it. They're talking to me about like, did you catch the final episode of bet the board podcast? I'm like, yeah, I did. I have some, really some thoughts on that as well, but like I don't. I just I think it maybe really just caught a lot of people off guard and before you even knew it, it kind of was like past, past and that was it. It's like what's a sports book gonna get from putting out a public statement at this point?
22:39 - Geoff Fienberg (Host)
yeah, well, yeah, are obvious provisions not made on bills all the time.
22:45 - Kirk Evans (Host)
Yeah, like it seems like it's possible.
22:52 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
I'm not that caught up on what like I don't know what happens. I think this truly doesn't affect enough people for relative to other bills that are passed for people to care.
23:05 - Jacob Gramegna (Host)
Like care, like again look at who's lobbying against it.
23:07 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
It's like spanky and and rufus and captain jack and poker players, but like too many people still no. But too many people don't give a shit about a pro sports better like derrick stevens, hasn't made a statement about it.
23:21 - Kirk Evans (Host)
Derrick stevens has tweeted aggressively against it.
23:23 - Geoff Fienberg (Host)
He's like the only classic that he would be the only one.
23:27 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
He's top shelf. He's the best. I'm a big fan of Derek Stevens, I like. When I walk into Circa I see him sitting at that long bar and I can just go and have a drink with him.
23:36 - Kirk Evans (Host)
But my understanding also is that it could be as simple as just like the IRS saying like we're going to interpret it this way instead of that way. So like I don't think it has to be like this grand thing. But yeah, I don't really know how it works, I don't know. Fluff seemed very confident that it's gonna not like that. They're gonna amend it in some way.
23:55 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
But it's a lot of time until 2020.
23:57 - Geoff Fienberg (Host)
I'm naive enough to think this is going to be amended I agree, almost. I mean I'm out. I have no skin in this, but I feel like even the people who are freaking out the most will be like giggling about how they felt or reacted to things this week when it's a nothing burger come 26 I have over.
24:16 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
I have heard some people draw some comparisons to. You probably won't remember this, but me and jeff will remember y2k, where there was, like this man, the last three months leading up to the new year, people didn't know what was gonna happen. Like, what's gonna happen, like the clocks are like planes are gonna fall out of the sky like no one no one knew.
24:36
It seems pretty ridiculous to hear those, those stories in hindsight, you look back on it, you're like this is hilarious and we might. We might look back on this and like can you remember the time where we thought sports betting as a profession was going to end? Ha ha ha. But it seems very real right now and Y2K in the moment felt very real. Yeah, like everything gets changed.
24:55 - Kirk Evans (Host)
You know it's like. I don't know if it's like you've overreacted because like it still was passed, the difference is there's no, like mainstream media, fear mongering, the sports betting thing like they were doing about Y2K for a year.
25:09 - Geoff Fienberg (Host)
But yeah, that's true, it's just the genuine people like Rufus, like Spanky, like a lot of guys, were friends with them.
25:17 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
Of course we're going to have their livelihood affected, but people just respond to them and be like why should I give a shit about you? Your profession contributes nothing to society. That's why I think there's an uphill battle, because that's the common viewpoint from people. Forget about the fact that rufus probably spends a bunch in the us every year on golf tourism uh, you know, eating whatever. Like lots of sports, better, betters, give back to charities. There's also lots of other professions, like musicians, actors, you know like okay, they contribute in the form of entertainment I don't think they're not like the arts.
25:54 - Kirk Evans (Host)
Okay, right, bad example, honestly.
25:55 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
Well, not necessarily like like health care professionals, we can say like they're a vital part of yeah I'm trying to think of it.
26:02 - Kirk Evans (Host)
This is like an entertainment, yeah type of thing. Yeah, well, it just yeah. I obviously agree with the point. Okay, got it, I don't.
26:09 - Geoff Fienberg (Host)
You could use me. I'm not really contributing much to society, why not?
26:13 - Kirk Evans (Host)
You're on the show? No, but there are people who actively. No, I'm just saying you negatively to society and make money off that like sure, whatever. Like loan sharks yeah, it's like whatever you could argue, maybe something, what? But like there are negative jobs in society as well. Like people a sports better, like isn't doing anything actively bad, it's just not really helping.
26:36 - Geoff Fienberg (Host)
It's kind of net neutral, like when tom selleck is trying to get old people to uh remortgage their homes right, yes, yes, very oddly, uh, like pinpoint example that you came up with there well, he even said the loan shark. I was thinking the money markets and like what might be even worse than like garnishing people's yeah, make the least garnishing, like such a percentage to help them out of a jam, right. And then I came to me of uh you, know, in canada they get kurt browning to do it.
27:06 - Jacob Gramegna (Host)
Before we close this topic, I wanted to bring this tweet up here from Harry Crane at Harry D Crane, who wants just all tax be removed from sports betting. He says a true fair bet act would eliminate taxes on gambling winnings entirely. The games are set up so the customer loses long term. When a customer plays a casino game or plays a sports bet, they are buying an entertainment product. Customers who happen to get lucky and win shouldn't be taxed for buying a product. Casinos report profits month over month. Those profits are already taxed. If the government needs more tax money from gaming, increase tax on GGR. What do we think about this one here?
27:43 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
I think it's a fair argument. I'm not necessarily sure I agree because, yes, while the the games are set up for you to lose long term, there are also ways for you to win. It's not like it's not like there's no way for you to gain an edge in that type of thing. I I'm fine. I mean, listen, we're again very different. We're subject to very different regulations here in ontario, so I've never had to experience that and I I'm very happy that I I'm in a province where you're not taxed on gambling winnings. With that said, it's a way to contribute to society, paying taxes for the profession. If somebody wants to be in an uproar about, hey, like you don't, it's like well, I do, I pay taxes on winnings in the United States, type of thing, it's an interesting tweet.
28:38 - Kirk Evans (Host)
Yeah, I think mostly with this tweet, and even Derek Stevens actually tweeted something with like asking for other stuff as well when he tweeted about it. Like to me, I'd compare this to like there's an earthquake and someone's like you know, cover all the things, like make sure, like all our valuables are safe, and then people are like you know what we should do? A renovation on the kitchen. It's like this is like a massive disaster. I don't feel like this is the time for. Oh, maybe we should just eliminate all taxes in the states on gambling weddings. Like maybe, maybe not, but like we're about to be, a law just got passed that in 2026, it's going to be only 90% of losses. So let's figure out that before we go jumping ahead to 0%.
29:19 - Geoff Fienberg (Host)
There's probably like a nice place on the bridal path. Rufus can buy Move up here with us.
29:25 - Kirk Evans (Host)
He would have to renounce the american.
29:27 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
You have to become a a citizen. Yeah, exactly, you'd have to lose your us citizenship, which not a lot of americans are willing to do, nor should they be asked to do that, which is absurd okay you still have to pay taxes, even if you live abroad if you're a us citizen.
29:42 - Kirk Evans (Host)
Yeah, also like realistically, like I would say the was like a polymarket lineup or a cal sheet market line for the sponsor, like by 2029, I would say it's probably pretty overwhelmingly likely that this will be repealed in some way, Just because, like there's going to be the 2026 midterm Not that it's a huge deal, but like probably in the shuffle it'll move. So like think about how valuable a us citizenship is to to renounce that and try getting canadian citizenship, for maybe you know, like imagine you do, you do all that and then mid-2026 it gets repealed and now it's not like you can go back on that.
30:28 - Jacob Gramegna (Host)
I was just joking I well well, people ask a model for how, how good of a bet it would be to become a canadian citizen right now model it out.
30:34 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
I mean that's something.
30:35 - Jacob Gramegna (Host)
I can see what it's doing.
30:36 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
Yeah, I will say, at least on this topic. Uh, you know dina titus, I believe that was her name. Yeah, listen, at least getting the ball rolling. That's very commendable. I mean, there's not a lot of people who are openly speaking against this or especially against it, and I hope it leads to something I do for all my American friends and for people that I work with, because it actually will have some impact on my livelihood as well, in like a trickle down effect as well. So I hope this does pick up more steam and in like a trickle-down effect as well. So I hope this does pick up more steam. And I do credit her for at least coming forward with the Fair Bet Act and trying to reverse it in some capacity.
31:10 - Jacob Gramegna (Host)
Just before we move on like producer note Rob, I see you've been pretty locked into your phone. Got something going on.
31:17 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
Yeah, I'm going to see Jurassic Park later on and we're trying to organize a showtime where everything can work out amongst my friends. I thought it was much more important.
31:28 - Jacob Gramegna (Host)
No no it's not.
31:30 - Kirk Evans (Host)
I thought that was like a bit that you guys had.
31:34 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
Every now and then I got my wife messaging me like I need you to respond right away. I take those seriously and it's just basically like we're trying to. The kids are a few kids are coming and whatever. I'm just trying to organize it Tease up the next topic.
31:47 - Jacob Gramegna (Host)
Well, I don't. Yeah Well, I mean something as uninteresting as Rob going to see Jurassic Park. You could find a market for it on Kalshi, our presenting sponsor. If you want to sign up to Kalshi, you can go to the link that is in the description and you can bet on Jurassic. Jurassic World Rebirth. Rotten Tomatoes score. The forecast when I pulled this up shortly before we started recording here, was 51.5. If anybody's unaware of the Rotten Tomatoes scores, how they work, it's the percentage of critics who rate it at least three out of five. So it's not necessarily how good it is, it's how many critics gave it a positive rating, and the expectation is only just over half will do that.
32:32 - Kirk Evans (Host)
Did you look at how this market works? When does this settle?
32:37 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
I think it's going to settle tomorrow, so right when this is coming out. But this is weird. So first of all, it's like a spoiler. This is a very average movie.
32:48 - Kirk Evans (Host)
Which is fine.
32:49 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
I wasn't going into this, thinking this was going to be. I'm a sucker for the Like. I've seen them all. I don't know what it is about. I like dinosaurs when I was a kid. I'm big into this. I like the music. The scores are pretty good, I've never seen a Jurassic World have you seen Jurassic? Park.
33:06 - Jacob Gramegna (Host)
I haven't either. I was going to say that, are you?
33:09 - Geoff Fienberg (Host)
guys joking. I've stopped watching them after two or three.
33:13 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
Well, that's fine, but the first movie was extremely iconic.
33:18 - Jacob Gramegna (Host)
I haven't seen it either I thought you would all gang up on me, but I'm glad I have Kirk on my side. I got you.
33:27 - Kirk Evans (Host)
That's why the raptors are named the right. Yeah, I do know that because they did the poll to name the team yeah, it was like the summer of the movie.
33:31 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
Yeah, but like this is good. This is 52 tomato meter, 269 reviews. I can't imagine like there's being reviewed any like this should be like a. I don't want to use the l word I don't use, but like who's? Reviewing jurassic world rebirth a week after it came out.
33:47 - Geoff Fienberg (Host)
I don't use rotten tomatoes or I wouldn't even review like a place, like a restaurant or what your people leave reviews. But I imagine if you're gonna write something, wouldn't it like be negative, like all reviews are critics.
34:04 - Kirk Evans (Host)
They're actually so like they will review all movies well you think the critics are good?
34:07 - Geoff Fienberg (Host)
the critics are so fucking pretentious they'll never give a movie that's like a fun popcorn movie, the like grace that it probably deserves.
34:17 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
I'm glad you brought that up. So there's two scores here, right? Audience score there's the tomato meter, which is the critics one, and then there's the popcorn meter, which is the user one. I want the popcorn exactly so this is a 52 tomatoes 72 pop.
34:31 - Geoff Fienberg (Host)
I'll probably enjoy this movie, you're gonna get blitted eat a big thing of popcorn.
34:35 - Kirk Evans (Host)
You'll have a ball exactly what's the volume traded here? Do you have that? What's that?
34:39 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
I was yeah, one uh that's true, I didn't. I didn't read it out for our audio listeners, so the forecast was 51 and a half for the score. No, no, but what's the volume? That's over a million dollars in volume.
34:51 - Kirk Evans (Host)
Jeez, I guess it makes sense, the reason this is critics is because I was thinking you could easily like hack this if it was the tomato. Like the other one of fans.
35:03 - Geoff Fienberg (Host)
You could just like push a lot of people.
35:05 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
So you could just push a lot of people, so it makes sense that it's critical. How long has it been out? For Movies come out on Wednesdays, right? So we're going on like five days. They do, I think movies come out on Wednesdays, am I wrong? Are they Fridays?
35:14 - Jacob Gramegna (Host)
I didn't know. There was a Saturday.
35:15 - Geoff Fienberg (Host)
No they come out Thursdays or Fridays, Thursdays or Fridays, no Thursday maybe. I don't know. I don't care.
35:22 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
The film industry.
35:23 - Jacob Gramegna (Host)
Google says June 11th when was June 11th?
35:27 - Geoff Fienberg (Host)
Oh, so it's been out a while. It's been out since June 11th, that's what it says.
35:30 - Jacob Gramegna (Host)
Oh sorry, that's the first one.
35:33 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
There's no way it was out on June 11th. Release date July 2nd.
35:37 - Geoff Fienberg (Host)
Sorry, july 1st, but I would say unless you got shitty weather, no one's going to the fucking movies in a summer afternoon. I guess it's good air conditioning.
35:50 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
I go to landmark cinemas. You know the shops at Don Mills how they have the full reclined seat. That's the theater I go to. You gotta book your seats, and they do sell out. We're gonna have to book the seats beforehand. That's why I'm responding to texts in real time, or else I'm uncooked.
36:07 - Kirk Evans (Host)
More specific to calci and exchange markets in general, like this would be would have been unimaginable a year ago that a million dollars was bet on the tomato meat or a rotten tomato score. Yeah, of jurassic world rebirth. Like the exchange landscape has been just a massive shift to sports betting and get good at pricing random ass shit.
36:34 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
Well, what, what? I listen, I cal she's our sponsor. Right, the full disclosure here. What I love about the product, though, is that it brings me back to traditional handicapping. You know what I'm getting at. When I sucked at betting back in the day, I used to just wake up in the morning. I'd go to I don't know covers or see the head-to-head match Scoresandoddscom.
37:01
Click the matchup See the head-to-heads the stats. And then I very quickly learned that, okay, I'm not gonna win doing that, but in these types of markets there's not, like there's not gonna be a sophisticated model, at least I don't think so. Maybe there will be. For a million dollars liquidity might be worth building. But for someone to bet the jurassic world rebirth rotten tomato score like I could literally handicap it in some weird way as dumb as that sounds and that I I find that exciting.
37:30 - Geoff Fienberg (Host)
With a market that big, is it not even worth it for some fucking engineer on the back end of tomatoes to fudge numbers?
37:38 - Kirk Evans (Host)
no, because a million dollars in volume, like in reality is much. It sounds a lot bigger like that's not like one person has bet a million, that's like I think it's. The total payout could be a million based on all bets taken at all, if picking all.
37:53 - Geoff Fienberg (Host)
If this is going to be a thing for all blockbusters, then maybe I'm.
37:59 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
I'm just like the way you're thinking jeff, you're looking for for an edge. I like that.
38:03 - Jacob Gramegna (Host)
Always scheming, always scheming. We're going to go to our next topic in just a second here, but another word from us for about 30 seconds, then we'll be back to the show. What's up everybody? Jacob, here You've got friends who bet. We all do Some sharp, some, let's just say, entertaining. Either way, send them our content, whether it's Circleback Forward Progress or one of our deep dive interviews. We're building content for people who actually care about betting. So help us spread the word. Share the video, tag a friend or send it in the group chat and if they ask for your documented record, first block them or maybe just mute them, whatever you feel is best. Following up our first topic a little bit, we have something from Benny Lapdance. At Benny underscore, lapdance, Great username, says, as a pro sports, better and advantage casino player. This is what my DK account looks like. I made about $210,000 and if taxed, 40% I'd take home Negative 210.
38:59
Sorry, no, it says about Approximately.
39:01 - Kirk Evans (Host)
I made 210. Oh sorry, I'm blind.
39:03 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
Keep going I don't even know what that symbol is called Got it.
39:08 - Jacob Gramegna (Host)
Got it To be fair. Monarch is on the floor for now for them, so it may be a bit tough to see, but I could see it. Okay. I'd take home about $126,000. With the passing of the big beautiful bill, I would be taxed as if I made about $1.5 million. I didn 0.5 million, I didn't. I made 210k. This would turn my take home to negative 384 000 dollars. The follow-up here from jesse morse md at dr jesse morse, who is well known on gambling twitter for he does the, the injury reporting right.
39:43 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
Yeah, he's actually been on this channel before a very old episode of 90 Degrees when G-Stack George was hosting.
39:50 - Jacob Gramegna (Host)
George.
39:51 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
Silfitis yeah, Jesse Morse was on the interview.
39:54 - Jacob Gramegna (Host)
Well, he doesn't have the greatest of reputations on gambling Twitter and his reply says wait, you spent $12 million to make $200K. Even if you put the $12 million into anma at five percent, you would have made 600k. And then spinfluencer said this is why you don't take sports betting advice from a doctor and trav at he hate me to underscore zero. Prominent gambling twitter as well says call the fight on the subject matter. It will never get dumber or have less understanding than this. Rob, can you go through this a little bit more? Describe where the error has occurred?
40:30 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
Well, here's the thing this guy, jesse Morse, got dunked on in a big way for this tweet. I totally understand why someone would get dunked on for this type of tweet, because in the sports betting community we understand that that 12 million dollars is rolled over. It's not just 12 million in cash that's put down up front to make 200k, it's rolled over. Now I actually think I'll give my full thoughts on on jesse morse after this. I actually think this was a huge overreaction, like okay, huge disagree, but keep going. Made a mistake with a tweet that. So I see this mistake made a million times over.
41:17
The thing is, jesse Morse is a I don't want to say a pick seller. I think he's like a fantasy seller. He kind of ingrained himself in the community as all these injury doctors did many years ago, and a lot of them have moved on to now selling in the space right. And I think when you add in that component, people want to dunk on him and I think that's entirely fair. I'm not saying that you're not within your right, fair, I'm not saying that you're not within your right.
41:48
I also think he made the grave mistake of deleting the tweet and pretending like it never happened, which is not the way to go about it. Somebody called him out on this and be like that's not the way it works Could have been a quick reply that said you know what? You're right, I erred on this one, move on with life. That also compounded to it. I find it funny. I really do. I thought it was hilarious. I could see myself in the past, having gone at people for this before. But I will say it is a very common mistake and if you're not affluent in sports betting, you probably could make that mistake is all I'm getting at.
42:27 - Kirk Evans (Host)
Yeah. So first, I know we talked about it a lot, but just to the first tweet that you had up, this is a perfect example of why the amendment to the bill is completely insane. You won $200,000 betting you would pay way more in taxes. Like it's just insane. No income in the history of earth has been taxed that way. So completely insane. But back to so I don't. I don't agree with you with the jesse moore situation because one, he is like the nut low of fantasy twitter doctors. I think he's hated by all the other ones, I believe. So he's super confident and a massive ass. Two, he double tripled and quadrupled down after this tweet, even though he deleted this one. Yeah, when you make a mistake on Twitter, this is true of Kelly in Vegas as well, when she got into these insane Twitter threads with the same thing about the bill, that's a little bit different.
43:31 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
So the same thing about the bill. That's a little bit different. So the only thing I'll say about that is like this is a fact, like he calculated this wrong. Yeah, kelly is stating an opinion that is extremely contrarian and I I strongly disagree with it. But when you're, when you're arguing facts and then you have betters telling you this is incorrect, then you, you should reverse course, agreed, agreed.
43:50 - Kirk Evans (Host)
I do agree that kelly's is more of an opinion, but still, at the same time, when all smart people are telling you how wrong you are, at least maybe reevaluate for a second. But yeah, just the fact that jet, like he was tweeting, like I responded to one of his tweets being like guess you guys should find a new hobby. Like Like I gamble, but like I don't do it seriously. But like he sells a pick package and like, or an injury package, like who do you think wants to use your injury package? People who want to win in betting. It's just like he tweets and talks with so much confidence but was so wrong. And then you know, if he had said I would agree with you. If he said, oh my bad, did the math wrong?
44:28 - Geoff Fienberg (Host)
yeah, sure, then overreaction, but the fact that he just like deleted the tweet but kept tweeting other dumb shit yeah just like just bad luck, and he deserves to be dunked on there's no grace, there's no equity, there's no equity that jesse holds with twitter, so you just turn quick. It's like Stephen A with the solitaire. I've been in sports press boxes before.
44:50 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
Yeah.
44:52 - Geoff Fienberg (Host)
Guys are just on their computer playing games, saying goodnight to their kids, calling home in line for the ice cream machine, missing a lot of the games.
45:01 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
Yeah.
45:01 - Geoff Fienberg (Host)
Right, stephen A got caught missing a lot of the games because he carries himself like how he carries himself and boom, boom. To Rob's point, like a lot of people could have said what Jesse said and they're just showing a bit more grace in the mistake.
45:21 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
There's compounding factors. He sells something in the space, so immediately, whether it's fair or not, that's going to open you up to more criticism when you tweet something dumb. That's just the reality of life. This kind of discredits him a little bit as a seller in the space of whatever it might be. Honestly, if you're you're purported to be sharper than the rest of the audience, you can't understand something like that. I think it's a little bit discrediting. But like it's ultimately that tweet in and of itself, I probably would have let that go or replied to it instead of everyone quote tweeting. It's just the double downs kill you like.
45:57
I said something on this show a few weeks back when we were talking um, uh, us open and I said it felt like this increased the variance a whole ton, like with the rough right. Rufus came in my mentions afterwards said it actually doesn't, it's the reverse effect. Okay, I don't really understand that. So I I kind of laid out my argument. I said this is how I see it. How do you see it? He explained it in a very succinct way and it's like I'm wrong. I'll move on. You're the subject matter expert here. I'm not going to pretend like I am. I think there's something in how we treat these discussions nowadays where, for whatever reason, people just like root themselves in an opinion and even when everyone tells them they're wrong, there's just like this back against the wall, mentality of like no, I'm gonna fight this to the death. I don't understand why that's the case. You know what that's called rovellian? That's a great great win, great one right there. I mean, I've had some history with, uh, some rebellion tweets just one quick last note here.
47:06 - Kirk Evans (Host)
Looking at this, the first tweet here, I didn't realize this till now. You're still, you're still evaluating the numbers in that. Well, look go back one jacob sorry, vast majority like legit 10 million in spent in casino play and this guy's a winner on the dk app yeah, probably hit a jackpot or something, no, but this is 12 million in play. He says he's an advantage player on the DK app Interesting Maybe, like rewards and stuff.
47:36 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
Yeah, I don't think DK has like some sort of error in a game or something like that. It's interesting.
47:44 - Jacob Gramegna (Host)
That is a good catch actually.
47:46 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
Sure, I just kind of assumed that would have been the I literally did not look at that chart and I've seen it a million times now and I did not read the numbers in it a single time. That just says a lot about who I am versus you, kirk.
47:58 - Jacob Gramegna (Host)
Attention to detail you talked earlier, rob, about how people have this negative perception of sports gambling, therefore aren't really going to care about the issues associated with betting, and that kind of is a bit of a theme for this next topic that we have up here from Pitch Profiler. At Pitch Profiler, so involved in baseball content, and the tweet reads sports gambling. This is in reply to Ken Rosenthal reporting on Luis Ortiz, placed on leave due to an MLB betting investigation, which we talked about also on the Friday show. So this is a quote tweet to that. Pitch Profiler says sports gambling is a societal cancer Full stop.
48:37
Roughly one in five people struggling with gambling addiction attempts suicide. Athletes routinely receive death threats over outcomes they can't fully control. Lates routinely receive death threats over outcomes they can't fully control and increasingly, players and those close to them are getting caught up in betting scandals, calling into question the very integrity of the games we watch. As sportsbooks expand, the crisis will only deepen. The only real winners are the executives at sportsbooks and casinos and their shareholders. There is no meaningful benefit to the public, only destruction, exploitation and the erosion of trust in sport itself. How did you react to this one when you first saw it, rob?
49:14 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
First I actually thought of Jeff, because we've talked about this kind of topic in the past before, with the amount of like advertising that's happening in the space and how it creates a slippery slope. Then I kind of got angry when I read it a few times over, because this makes it seem like there's nothing in sports gambling that is like redeemable in any way. Right. So I think a lot of the points that he makes are are apt like yeah, players receiving death threats, inexcusable Scandals that are happening because MLB pitchers throwing you know intentional balls, irredeemable, problem gaming. You know there's a lot of bad things that are associated with betting, but there are also good things and I'm not making this seem like those problems don't exist.
50:09
But there's a lot of people, a lot of people, who enjoy sports betting in a very recreational way, without problem gaming addiction. Right, that happens. Entertainment is a benefit to the public. Entertainment is a benefit to the public. We all pay for entertainment in some capacity. What, what? What is the point of making money if you're not going to use it for entertainment? A lot of us cherish those, those specific things.
50:39
So I understand the position, but's it's act like there. There's just no other perspective here and I don't know this person seems like they've been. I don't want to make like assumptions or anything, but it seems like there's probably been some sort of close personal situation potentially, or maybe they're just sick and tired of seeing all the fucking sports book ads everywhere. But the reality is there's a second side to this, do I think there's a lot of problems that sports betting can create for people? Absolutely, I've gone through betting addiction myself. I know people who have that's going to happen until the end of time. But there are people who are trying to make a difference. I would consider myself one of those. Nowadays, in the form of education. I consider Isaac rose berman another one who's been getting involved with legislators in terms of providing better regulatory policies in the space and stuff like that. So I I get the point, but like it, it misses the mark for me it actually hits the majority of the mark.
51:43 - Geoff Fienberg (Host)
I do agree with what you said. I got you know. Like in a group of friends where you do think everyone is just recreationally down the road, you find out someone battled some real fucking shit. Yeah Well, we all thought we were just there Sundays hanging out. You know, thought he just really loved fantasy football. No, like something deeper was happening there. But overall the problem is it's fucking glamorized and until it's not glamorized it's a cancer okay. In the same way, like there's no cigarette ads, it's behind you like no, they exist, but it's not like in your face. And I can make the point cigarettes communal, go outside. I have a smoke with six buddies. We talk shit, we catch up, I don't know, with a beer and a smoke. Right, there's a sense of community and friendship, sure, around that, and I know a lot of guys that smoke and have beers that obviously don't have any issues. But I could make, based on the same argument you made, I could find layers that say smoking is is, um, there's another side.
52:51 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
There's another side there's a difference, and I'm chatting with my buddies. There's a small difference. Every single person who inhales a cigarette is harming themselves in some way. Every single person who drinks alcohol is harming themselves in that way.
53:06
Like we know, medically speaking, that you are harming your body, there's a 100 certainty that you are causing bodily harm when it might be very small yeah, but it adds up over time, right and so, no matter what, you're indulging in an activity that is going to cause you harm in the long run period like liver, lungs, like those are going to be affected by those favorite team blows a 28 to 3 lead in something and you trust me, the alcohol is doing you a favor.
53:38 - Kirk Evans (Host)
But, but I think I don't disagree with you there but the thing about this is, I think none of us here would think that alcohol or cigarettes or gambling should be illegal, even if they cause societal harm. I don't think it's the government's place to say that people are not allowed to do it. I disagree with Jeff in the sense that the problem is the environment and the regulators. It's insane how many ads there are during sports games. It's crazy how little, like we've talked about, the regulators have the players' backs. So again, I think the comparison to make it illegal but keep it at least somewhat behind closed doors that you know it's not like, like right now.
54:34
The sports books are attempting to make everyone addicted and just happen to not, but like. If it was regulated properly, then I would agree there are benefits. And again, I just don't think it's really the government's place to say this isn't allowed.
54:50 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
Maybe I'm a bit naive, because I don't believe that. I don't believe that sportsbooks are trying to make everybody think.
54:57 - Geoff Fienberg (Host)
Oh, rob, simp hand the crown over.
55:02 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
I don't. I've been part of those conversations before.
55:06 - Geoff Fienberg (Host)
You are part of them at a high level, but there's a higher level and I'm not no man of the library.
55:13 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
Yeah, voodoo library. Whatever speech impediment.
55:18 - Geoff Fienberg (Host)
Um, I'm not there, but there are conversations, even above the conversations that you were involved in, sure?
55:27 - Kirk Evans (Host)
well, I and I even think I even think it goes beyond like I don't even think it's set. I don't think it's something that they sit at the board and say we want to make everyone addicted. I think it's just like a known general goal that they are moving to and I think, honestly, the best evidence I have of this is that I've seen a lot of big accounts yep on sportsbooks.
55:47
Oh yeah, I've never seen a big account shut down when it's 100 well, when it's when it starts going up, then they start asking questions so I've been part of shutting down big accounts.
55:59 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
When they're down, you generally would get a a lot of. I mean the people. Typically those people are addicted to gambling so they get.
56:09 - Geoff Fienberg (Host)
They probably wrote customer service saying they want to kill themselves. They would they and that's why you shut it down. You're not just shutting down because the guy sucks at gambling.
56:19 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
I'm sorry you would I've shut down accounts because they suck at gambling for someone who lost too much relative to what their profession would have been. Yeah, I've, I've. It's one thing if like a professional hockey player.
56:33 - Geoff Fienberg (Host)
So you are you. You like pretty much gave them all the rope and said hang yourself. And then he hung himself and you're like okay, you're done.
56:42 - Kirk Evans (Host)
I've honestly never sorry, but yeah, I've honestly never and I don't have that much experience with all these accounts, but I've honestly never. Sorry, but yeah, I've honestly never and I don't have that much experience with all these accounts, but I've seen accounts that are down massive amounts of money where the profession is like someone who makes way less than what the account is down, yeah, I've never seen it. But once it goes up and I've never and I've never not seen it when it goes up, also not be you would, you would have a lot of instance.
57:08 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
Listen, don't get me wrong. There are going to be sports books out there that they don't give a shit, that that is definitely happening. Like I'm not pretending that it doesn't happen. There's going to be sports books that maybe they have less market share. They catch a whale. They want to take that whale for every single dollar that they have. That's that I'm not like. I am acknowledging that that exists.
57:30
But you also will have situations where your host might say you know, come back and be like listen, this guy is not, should not be betting these amounts. It's very clearly affecting him in a really bad way. He texted me eight times last night or this and that we need to cut this person off. That's happened before as well. Now, not every player way. He texted me eight times last night or this and that we need to cut this person off. That's happened before as well. Now, not every player takes that. Well, some might say I'm glad you did this, really appreciate that. Some might be like fuck you, I've lost so much money, you're not giving me the opportunity to win it back. I, like you, know that's bullshit, but so, from that point of view like I.
58:05 - Geoff Fienberg (Host)
I would say that there's different circumstances for everything and different sports books, and we can't just lump them all into one and acknowledge it all as one and the sports books and the situation have just taken advantage of the facts on the ground and the moment in time, and by that I mean a lot of these sports networks. They're not as successful as they used to be, and it's it is so sad I do not watch SportsCenter anymore. We have like pretty much a Canadian one. I see the American one, but more access to the Canadian one. Odds are like. Odds are just up, I don't mean on the scroll on the bottom. It's like they just have odds when they're talking about the games. Yeah, I don't know, it just seems so disingenuous, it seems so. It's like cigarette ads in the 60s and at some point like they're gonna figure it out. But it's gonna. It's gonna ravage some frat houses before that.
59:03 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
Yeah, I like ravage some kids listen I. I get a lot of this tweet and I get your points I take issue with. Like there is no meaningful benefit to the public, because I think that there is an entertainment benefit and there's also a taxation. Like there are taxes that are generated from sports betting that go back towards the citizens. Like that happens. It's not like when when it was offshore right, everything offshore, pph. Okay, then we're talking about like the benefits are really slim at that point, but a lot of this is being redistributed back to society you know, the sports had it right in the past.
59:44 - Geoff Fienberg (Host)
The reason they didn't let this shit anywhere near it, like it wasn't a coincidence, that it was like the poison amongst the leagues I think that, okay, we just didn't.
59:57 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
I think we just didn't find a healthy media. We haven't found it yet. We certainly haven't. We steer too far in the opposite direction. It went from okay, people are betting, kind of we know that this is happening, but it's happening elsewhere. There, I think there was a real conversation that needed to be had of like we should regulate this and the conversation was.
01:00:15 - Geoff Fienberg (Host)
The leagues were like if it's happening, we should profit off it.
01:00:18 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
Well, sure, the nfl and the government as well, and the government too but the government should, in my opinion, they know that this bet, this behavior is happening. If you can provide a meaningful, um you know, put you know, kick back to your citizens, sure, but they allow them to advertise infinitely over and over and shove it down our throats. And I do think like, behind the scenes, there are people who are lobbying against that as well, like we're trying to get it back to a healthy middle ground.
01:00:52 - Geoff Fienberg (Host)
Um, I feel I mean you're gonna watch week one football. You'll be like we have not found anywhere close to no middle ground well, I agree with you. We're nowhere close and then we see, well dumb the regulators are, yeah, and maybe like a year or two ago, blindly like, okay, it's bad, but it's like brand new, they're going to rein this in. You see what they're capable of, and you're like we are nowhere close to that safe space of where it could and should be.
01:01:20 - Jacob Gramegna (Host)
I think we can agree on that, I just wanted to bring it back to the start on the addiction of how a lot of companies purposely try to make their apps addicting, whether it's like Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, Like the goal in a lot of conversations is to make the app as addicting as possible. And I do see some of the same sort of parallels that reflect on sportsbooks as well. Like the push notifications, like there's one sportsbook as well. Like the push notifications, like there's one sports book, If I win a bet, I'm going to get a notification within a second of it winning, telling me that I've got an extra, however much money in my account or others that will show like you know, it's a big game tonight and will show me like a really awful line and say you can bet on this. The Jays have won seven in a row. I think they make it eight. You can bet on them at this price sort of thing.
01:02:04 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
So of course they're trying to create more touch points with the customer. It's no different than than than if I download a game from the app store and I'm out of lives. They're trying to sell me less right exactly.
01:02:14 - Jacob Gramegna (Host)
So I'm wondering just from a from a perspective of the viewers here, because there's a bit of a divide here do you believe sports books are actively like having conversations on how to get their players addicted, or do you think that's not really the goal of what they're trying to push? We'll save that for the comments below.
01:02:30 - Geoff Fienberg (Host)
One small thing, because I've got to just be accountable from where the Rosenthal tweet came from. Accountable, but also going to plead ignorance, I guess the day after the show dropped where I said I believe this appears a lot like my NBA problem it's the baseball player, I will plead ignorance. And I did not know you could bet the first pitch of an inning. I did not know that. Once you know that, you could see how easy you know you just stuff one, like we saw.
01:03:03 - Jacob Gramegna (Host)
Buddy Dewey's still a really good pitcher giving up a couple pitches in a random inning to the bottom of the order.
01:03:10 - Geoff Fienberg (Host)
And I don't even know what the code is. If an inning starts and the first batter of the inning is 7-9, I'm spiking one. But obviously it's easy to catch too, because that has a sort of limit, because something like that has. So I got an 0 own. That just was really dumb. But I also didn't know you could bet on the first pitch of the third inning well that.
01:03:33 - Jacob Gramegna (Host)
That segues us quite well, because one of the commenters wants us to own, uh, some of the takes on some of the other stuff that we have here. We'll segue now into reading your comments from the previous show. If you have anything you want talked about on the next show or just something you want to discuss in the comments, please go down below and comment it. We always look at every comment and we like to bring some of our favorite ones up for the next show. And hey, while you're down in the comment section, make sure you've not done so already. You do smash that like button on this video. If you're listening in audio form, make sure you rate and review five stars and help us in the road to 20 000 subscribers by subscribing to these circles off channel. So here is that first comment in question. This was from at sports betting education, so it's kind of funny.
01:04:13
The guys on this show are so high iq. Thank you, uh. They are completely out of touch with the culture of regular people. No, thanks, uh. 1000 nba players. As cousins and brothers request, they rig player props. It probably happens all the time and most players just don't make it so obvious. Also funny that most. These guys probably have no clue how easy it is for a sportsbook to tell they're rigging their own player props. What do we think on this?
01:04:40 - Geoff Fienberg (Host)
I think I mean I'll. I'm not the smart guys talking about, but I think you're all all very aware of how easy the sportsbooks can pick it off now.
01:04:48 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
Oh yeah, I mean the first pitch. They probably just took a ton of volume on that one pitch and somebody just went and watched it and they're like, okay, this doesn't look right. And the second time it happened they're like, okay, this is a real problem. It's that easy. Easy, especially on the volume on that prop is so gonna be so low, there's gonna be it's a couple dudes drunk micro betting yeah, like 12 dollars yes, that's who bets that, the vast majority of games.
01:05:16 - Kirk Evans (Host)
I bet you that bet takes zero dollars. Sure, I have no for sure, most innings that is taking like there's probably so yeah I don't know what the volume, the biggest bet it's just like frap bros, micro betting for shits and giggles and then a massive one comes in and it's not that hard to tell.
01:05:33 - Geoff Fienberg (Host)
Yes, I do but has anyone even looked what the limit would have been like a month ago on anything like that?
01:05:39 - Kirk Evans (Host)
well, but limits are, you can't really know them.
01:05:42 - Geoff Fienberg (Host)
Like, yeah, fine I'm sure, from a vip.
01:05:44 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
Yeah, that's fresh di even a fresh no fresh, probably small, but I'm saying, like a vip, like these vip accounts, you can bet anything yeah, okay, fair, literally you could get five thousand bucks on one of those props if you in some accounts okay um, but what I was going to say is I don't really understand the first point of this because, unless I misspoke, I wasn't saying that other people don't do that.
01:06:06 - Kirk Evans (Host)
I can easily see other people, you know, if you have a cousin. I was just saying that's I know people in. Like I said last week, I know a hockey agent, I know someone who works in basketball. I just don't do that because I know I'm putting them in a shitty spot and I would never want to do that. Do other people do it?
01:06:22 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
I'm sure I would also push back on the notion that, like, every athlete is open to doing this for family, definitely Like. That to me is insane. Like, first of all, there are people I would be reluctant to ask family members to fix games for one. I'm sure it does happen. But the second thing is the athlete themselves, who is making like so much money in this league. He's not gonna fucking risk his reputation.
01:06:50 - Geoff Fienberg (Host)
So fucking cousin fernando can get out of a 200 debt on fan duel, like like think logically, I know, but it is funny to like visualize in your mind what like a cookout might be sure for like an nba player who's random, and it's like and you're, you're, fernando, and you're like. I got one of two options.
01:07:13 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
I could either ask buck for some cash and I've seen him yell at other people who ask him for a loan, or I could ask him to shave a rebound I, I, I get the point, I, I, I guess I would push back on people who think it's like as widespread, it's like this epidemic of players who are, you know, giving out information, I, I really don't think it's, it's happening very much I think players, families know how turned off they are by it and they probably are aware of some of like the personal messages they get yeah, and their dms about even nights they have great games when they didn't complete something.
01:07:50 - Jacob Gramegna (Host)
You gotta be a true nut low, I agree next comment comes from tony reyes 5256 says jeff, in that mcdonald's hat was the funniest damn moment. That was pretty good all timer from the last move. You haven't seen it. But he also says, like hope, apple tv buys mlb streaming and saves baseball by putting it on every person's iphone. So here's the thing I I wanted to open this one, um because so mls, by the way, is on apple tv exclusively, and this is the problem. I have an apple tv account and cannot watch mls games on apple tv because you need to buy another subscription within Apple TV to watch MLS games. So Apple TV buying MLB rights. You're not just going to be able to watch it with Apple TV subscription, you need Apple TV and you need the MLB game pass or whatever they're going to call it. But is there anything that we think is going to be able to revive MLB TV ratings? Like, what is it going to take here? I'm just Let us know in the comments as well.
01:08:50 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
I'm just so fed up with, like the current state of streaming. We've talked about this. Like the J's are in fucking first place. I'm trying to find the game. I'm going through all my. I should have known Apple TV. I probably should have just tweeted and somebody would have told me right away. I'm Googling it. I can't find it right away. Like it's taking me 10 minutes. Okay, I finally got it on Apple TV. I actually don't mind that Apple TV broadcast. By the way, commentators are not great, but I like that.
01:09:12 - Jacob Gramegna (Host)
I noticed it as well the reach on base probability.
01:09:15 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
Anyways, that's a mistake.
01:09:16 - Jacob Gramegna (Host)
I like that as well.
01:09:29 - Geoff Fienberg (Host)
But I'm just, you know, blessed when the game's on apple tv that my grandfather isn't with us anymore, the calls I would have been getting from my grandma, from my grandpa. Where's the game? We can't find the game, jeff.
01:09:46 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
Jeff, you don't know how hard this hits home with me.
01:09:48 - Geoff Fienberg (Host)
They'd be like 102 right now.
01:09:50 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
So don't worry I didn't just send them away the last couple years of my grandfather's life when he was at the retirement home. At least it was five minutes up the road from my house, but I'd get the call. Can't find the game. I know Inter's playing at 245. I'm like, oh, no, no, I'm like you press this button he doesn't know how to do.
01:10:11 - Geoff Fienberg (Host)
No, but I would go there and I'm like it's not on it's not on rise like the italian channel.
01:10:15 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
I'm like they don't have it today. I'm hooking up my laptop in there trying to get the wi-fi password to get a stream unreal that I will say the jays on apple tv.
01:10:26 - Geoff Fienberg (Host)
Everyone does their rotation. It was a perfect storm like the friday night off a four game sweep. People are liking the team. If there's six games under 500, no one is like complaining. It was like the worst possible time for them to be hit. Yeah, and I think the schedule comes out like almost before the season.
01:10:46
It does a perfect event and you know baseball is like the red-headed stepchild of important american sports and you know they're desperate for anything and that they took a bad deal from apple just to get on streaming and it subsequently might have cost them, or did cost them, their ESPN deal. But that's a whole other thing.
01:11:09 - Jacob Gramegna (Host)
I'm not doing a show on baseball ratings, but it's local Baseball is just local, why it could be confusing for Canadians that the Jays are always on a specific channel, sportsnet, except for a handful of games that are on Apple TV.
01:11:22 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
But that's always just been sports. You always knew which channel the game.
01:11:26 - Geoff Fienberg (Host)
One of the best days of the year and you're not searching in advance, like half an hour before.
01:11:32 - Jacob Gramegna (Host)
Raptors and Leafs are exactly 50-50 between TSN and Sportsnet. They do a draft. If anybody doesn't know, they do a draft before the season starts and they draft each game individually to get the ones they want for Sportsnet TSN, but for the Jays it's all Sportsnet, except recently now they've introduced the.
01:11:48 - Geoff Fienberg (Host)
Apple TV no Saturdays in that draft, though Saturdays are Sportsnets with hockey.
01:11:53 - Jacob Gramegna (Host)
For the Raptors, then I know they split it evenly and then they draft. I will say I cheer my favorite day.
01:12:00 - Geoff Fienberg (Host)
One of my favorite days of the year is whatever day hockey season ends, because that means sports net goes back to being full jays on regular sports net, yeah, which I care about last comment comes from jeff o'reilly.
01:12:13 - Jacob Gramegna (Host)
9751 says hitman ain't breaking 100 consistently with that swing. Uh, if anybody wants to go find the video of it, I uh, there's the timestamp 14221 of the previous episode. Uh, that the previous tuesday episode, so two videos ago on our youtube channel. If anybody wants to see it, it's not a? The timestamp 14221 of the previous episode, the previous Tuesday episode, so two videos ago on our YouTube channel, if anybody wants to see it. It's not a pretty looking swing, but, rob, he's a pretty good golfer, isn't he?
01:12:33 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
Listen. At the end of the day I don't care, I would kill to be five strokes better. That's what Hitman is roughly to me. I don't give a shit what the swing looks like. As long as I can score and yeah, it's not the prettiest swing I'll say that I think I have a better looking swing, but I would trade that for a worse looking swing in five strokes, so in a second. That's it. I mean like it's a shitty looking swing but it gets the job done, that's all that matters, that's all that matters.
01:12:59 - Jacob Gramegna (Host)
All that matters, all right. Final full segment for the show today comes from at ferris b, underscore 86. Ferris, very prominent on gambling twitter as well, says I've noticed this huge disconnect in baseball, but it's probably just as prevalent in other sports. Baseball content creators want people to pay for their content. But all the but? The creators think customers pay for it because of their love of baseball. Customers aren't paying for stats and info to say, oh, oh, neat, I didn't know that. They're paying for it because it gives them actionable info that they'll try to make money with, either directly or indirectly. It has created this environment where the creators want to be the morality police but ignore the real reasons pay for their content. Do any of you have experience paying for content? If so, is any of it not related to betting and actionable info You're talking about OnlyFans.
01:13:49 - Geoff Fienberg (Host)
What are you?
01:13:49 - Jacob Gramegna (Host)
talking about.
01:13:51 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
You have experience with that.
01:13:53 - Geoff Fienberg (Host)
No, I'm just asking, Like when he says paying for content, like I pay for pay-per-view movies, not porn, but like you know, you can buy things on the show.
01:14:00 - Kirk Evans (Host)
I think he was saying more like the Athletic.
01:14:03 - Geoff Fienberg (Host)
Newsletters articles patreon I absolutely pay for the athletic for one man. His name is daniel pauper. Uh, he's the beat writer for the chargers. They. No one gives a shit about the chargers in la. There's no like paper any. You could be an eagles fan and not need a subscription. You could be a cowboys fan and not need a subscription. As a chargers fan, I need a subscription because no one else talking talking about my fucking team.
01:14:26 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
But I don't consider the Athletic like a sports betting brand. I'm trying to decipher what Ferris is saying here.
01:14:33 - Kirk Evans (Host)
No, but I think that is what he's saying.
01:14:35 - Jacob Gramegna (Host)
Yeah, that's what he's saying.
01:14:36 - Kirk Evans (Host)
This is my understanding of this tweet. I agree it wasn't that clear to me. He's saying that there are so many paid subscriptions for beat reporters, statistics, stuff like that, yeah, and the vast majority of people who are willing to pay for that stuff are betters, which I was going to answer your question. I pay for a billion subscriptions to a lot of random things because, yeah, it can all be helpful and typically if you've got one actionable piece of info, it pays for years and years of the subscription. So it's all worth it. But then I think ferris is saying that these same people like to like be like oh, gambling so bad. Why do we have gambling when most of the people paying for their subs are gamblers?
01:15:20 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
I see, because I I interpreted it differently in the sense of like I see a lot of people who are putting content out there now and they're like this is this is not going to help you win, but it's going to save you time, or there's like a lot of actionable info in here or whatever. And at the end of the day, I do this is where I kind of disagreed with you guys on maybe the Amanda Vance topic, right. I kind of disagreed with you guys on maybe the Amanda Vance topic, right? I think Johnny filled in for me one week when I was in Mexico and he's like nobody's paying Amanda Vance because they think the pics are good. I strongly disagree with that. Like no one is paying. Maybe she's a bad example because she's an attractive female and maybe there are some people out there that might spend 250 bucks a month for the opportunity to potentially interact with her, right.
01:16:08
But I think ultimately in this space, if you're selling pics, data, newsletters, whatever anything that's gambling adjacent people are generally buying it with the expectation that it's going to help them win.
01:16:23
I think it's more prevalent in baseball, because there's not a lot of other stuff going on and a lot of the baseball content creators maybe don't necessarily put out picks. They put out like a daily, like here's 10 things you should be looking at for today's thing, and whenever there's pushback on the value they're like well, I'm not saying it's going to help you win, I'm just saying that it's like you can use it as part of your process. I think that's where this whole disconnect comes from in the betting space. But ultimately, I do think people are paying for subs at least bettors let's talk about someone who's betting every day that's paying for a sub. They're doing it because they are expecting to gain something from that that is going to help people win. And when I think where I think the disconnect is, is that most of the stuff that's created and out there is actually not going to help someone win yeah, I agree with what you said.
01:17:16 - Kirk Evans (Host)
Now we have a disconnect. On the disconnect, ferris write a tweet that we understand better, because I still think he's talking about baseball content creators, not like I think he's talking totally baseball content creators, not like I think he's talking totally out of the betting space, but the people buying it are betters. But I could be totally wrong. I do agree with you, though, that most people paying for info and I think Ferris is saying the same thing Like if you're paying for something fine and athletic subscriptions obviously different, it's like not that expensive and you get a lot of like sports, but like if you're paying for actual statistics, people are not buying that for the fun of statistics. They're trying to typically make money off that yeah I I don't.
01:17:56 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
I, I'm a. I'm a little bit confused now with your interpretation because I thought I had it nailed originally.
01:18:02 - Kirk Evans (Host)
Maybe we're gonna have to get back on the channel. Yeah, let us. We'll have to do a follow up a ghost writer performance on Kirk's Hammer.
01:18:08 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
Maybe he should do that. You know, we should reach out, I agree. I think, I think we could give him a platform. It's good content, for sure, yep.
01:18:18 - Jacob Gramegna (Host)
All right. Well, let's go to the final segment for the show. It is the chopping block. This is all the stuff that didn't warrant full scale segment we still wanted to touch on, and first of all we have Todd Furman, who wrote about the end of an era for Bet the Board. They had their final episode in the last last couple of weeks, maybe last week or so. Says after more than 750 episodes. There's an explanation to final episode as to why they are sunsetting the Bet the Board podcast. Rob, you actually mentioned this a little bit earlier on in this show. That we did, you listened to it and you have many thoughts.
01:18:56 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
Well, I had about a billion people reach out to me within like an hour of this episode dropping, saying you should really give this a listen. I'm not going to spend too much time on this because I actually might want to turn this into a larger piece of content at some point maybe a reaction to the whole podcast, because I think it might be worth doing. I've known todd firman since early 2010s. We used to go out to vegas once a year together. We were promoting Odd Shark at the time. We'd meet up, we'd have a good weekend.
01:19:25
He got, uh, what I considered to be like a pretty bad rap in the from a lot of the Seville guys at the time. Uh, I like Todd, I always have I don't really care what people think of uh of me for that, but like, personal relationships matter and uh, he's always been really good to me and we've got along really well. Pain insider, on the other hand, I never really liked I listened to bet the board quite frequently, uh, including sports that I really don't even bet because I just like the flow of the podcast. Like, for example, I used to listen to them do nascar stuff because I was trying to get into nascar and learn about it and I thought that they were pretty good with it.
01:19:58 - Jacob Gramegna (Host)
Can you describe a little bit more about, like, what the podcast was, not just for me, because I don't really know, but I'm sure a lot of people as well may not know.
01:20:05 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
Yeah, sure, I would say it's a pretty comprehensive betting preview for whatever sport you're going through. So Brad Powers used to appear for their college football show. That's the first I ever heard of Brad Powers. It was why our director of content, moreto, wanted to get him onto our network because he was really knowledgeable and did a bunch of good things on that show. With regards to this particular piece of content, it was them announcing that they're done. They're no longer doing the podcast and they cited many reasons, but mostly they said it's economic reasons. They cannot source the deals that they used to be able to source in the space and I'm paraphrasing this is an hour long, but a lot of it was. There's new content creators in the space that don't understand their value and their worth and they're taking really shitty deals. Number two sportsbooks are no longer willing to pay what they used to.
01:20:55
Back in the day, I experienced the biggest emotional roller coaster, I think, of all time listening to this podcast. There was extreme highs where I was like, yes, I totally agree. There was the lowest of the lows, where I've been triggered as much as I've ever been triggered in my life. The hammer was mentioned at about the half hour mark of this podcast not by name, but I'm just alluding. I can draw conclusions as to what was happening. I love transparent, honest content. I think that this was a very honest podcast and I do give them credit for putting that out there. I also think it was very self-serving and a lot of times really frustrated me in like the we're doing this for you guys out there. Like we're doing this podcast now so that the rest of you content creators over the rest of the summer can go source the deals that we're not going to get for ourselves, or like we don't want to leave you hanging coming into football season. And there was a lot that really bothered me about this where I need to expand on it a little bit more.
01:21:59
But I did enjoy the bet the board run, despite never liking Payne Insider because he always seemed to like never want to be there. Like literally every single podcast is like he was pulling teeth, like he always made a comment about not wanting to be there, which frustrated me. Like you never want to hear that from one of the hosts. But it is an end of an era. It was a huge pod. I like to listen to it in the background pretty regularly. That final episode, though, oh boy, did it ever trigger me at uh, certain points, and uh, maybe at some point I'll do a larger piece of content on it, because I, I think there's, I think I want to know what the thing that triggered you more most, as much as anything you've ever heard.
01:22:39 - Geoff Fienberg (Host)
We might need to go and listen.
01:22:40 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
I'll tell you right now like and. But it's about our business model at the hammer, right where, uh, for those that don't know, and I've always been open about this, but like, lots of our creators don't get paid for the content per episode. They get equity in the company they have. They own, uh, they own a portion of the company, right? Um, and to me, I don't know that nowadays, content businesses can exist with paying the rates that were once paid for content creators. You just don't. We tried that. The hammer tried that for four or five months. We almost went under. Literally can't do that because it just doesn't work in the current climate. Also, who are the most of our content creators? Pro bettors, semi pro bettors, people who don't give a shit about making a hundred bucks an episode. They would rather just share in the upside of the network potentially taking off like.
01:23:34
I don't approach these conversations like you know we're gonna be. We're gonna be barstool one day. I don't think we're going to be. I'm very open and transparent in these conversations of like. Here's my goals for the next couple of years. I'd eventually like to sell the hammer for X, y, you know, x dollars. Um it, it was like an attack on. Uh felt very personal at one point. So that's that's all I kind of really want to get at there, and it's almost like people are taking deals. That's it. I'll end it there, because I could go a lot further, but I'd like to organize my thoughts a lot better.
01:24:14 - Geoff Fienberg (Host)
I look forward to that episode. Me too. I'll listen to the show and then I'll look forward to your episode.
01:24:20 - Jacob Gramegna (Host)
That was a great promo to go watch their podcast.
01:24:23 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
Honestly, I think it's worth listening to. I really do. I think again.
01:24:29 - Jacob Gramegna (Host)
I'm repeating myself Last thing, because we've got to roll.
01:24:33 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
Being open with your audience. I like that type of content. I like the behind the scenes like this is how we're feeling. This is what was happening. I love that. That really, really appeals to me. The scenes like this is how we're feeling. This is what was happening. I love that. I that really, really appeals to me.
01:24:45
I just didn't agree with a lot was of what was said there. A lot of it is through their own personal experiences and I think they misrepresented the current landscape. Now it's like, yeah, we didn't want to work with this sports book because they wanted us to do x, y and z. I. I mean, I have sportsbook discussions all the time you can. You can lay down the law and be like no, and a lot of them will go for it, like our previous deal was with underdog. Underdog is not the perfect brand for this and they knew that. When they reached out and like I told I told them, I said we're gonna get comments of people who are gonna to get limited on your platform. He's like I want you to be honest the person I was talking to. I want you to be honest about that. I want you to tell people that we're a platform for recreational bettors and if you're a professional, probably look elsewhere, and that was the messaging we gave.
01:25:36 - Jacob Gramegna (Host)
I've spoken way too much on this now, but look forward to maybe a longer piece of content on this down the road the next one we have here is from alex caruso, who started a new series, day one of gambling to pay off my bills, and he was playing blackjack. He lost his first hand, so he martingaled, played a second hand and he said we have no choice but to double down. And he won the second hand. And you say what you want about our content, whether you like it or not, but this you can't tell me this is anything good coming out of caruso here well, since the world series of poker main event is happening now, I'll use a poker term, but alex caruso is the nut low.
01:26:14 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
That was literally what I was about to say the nut low of the space like I don't know, like this is not funny. Here's the thing. Like it's not a funny bit, no, like Trent's bit of like, ah, you know, like Timmy doesn't have Christmas gifts or whatever, how am I going to? And it's like Lion's Money line. It felt like a bit. It doesn't feel like a bit, it really doesn't?
01:26:38 - Kirk Evans (Host)
There's just no one in the gambling space who has more undeserved notoriety than Alex Caruso. He sucks man.
01:26:47 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
He just sucks, he's not funny.
01:26:49 - Kirk Evans (Host)
He's not good at betting. Nothing he does is entertaining. He's just the nutluck.
01:26:54 - Geoff Fienberg (Host)
In a future.
01:26:55 - Jacob Gramegna (Host)
In Kirk's opinion.
01:26:56 - Geoff Fienberg (Host)
Yes, in my opinion, hopefully there's a time in the future where behavior like Alex's is criminal. I agree.
01:27:08 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
What really gets me about this space is those who will seek engagement at any cost. I don't stand for that. There's a few other people I could name. We might as well just leave them out of the equation.
01:27:22 - Jacob Gramegna (Host)
But this is just brutal content all around. Lightning round Slightly. Plusy V posted a picket tracking sheet with a profit of $12,866 in June and said end of month recap all bets on limited accounts. And this rubs some people the wrong way.
01:27:40 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
Well, it rubs me the wrong way. First of all, it's impressive to make that much money off of limited accounts. Here's what I will say. It rubs me the wrong way when people bet on limited accounts because you're hurting an opportunity for someone else Like you are giving the sportsbook information for a fraction of the cost that they were letting you get earlier, and I understand I get it. Some people they'll take the 20 bet that they get limited to, but the sportsbook is is now using that information to move their markets and and they're like even more confident that the information they're giving you is.
01:28:21 - Kirk Evans (Host)
That you're giving them is good because they have you profiled for way longer. But it's hard for me to really like criticize someone for doing that. It's, honestly, something I never even thought of. Like the idea of like betting on a limited account never even like really crossed my mind. But yeah, people do it and make some good money off it. Good, good, good for.
01:28:38 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
But let's say, like me, me, you and Jeff all have, I don't know, a DK account or something like that right and we can all bet 500 bucks on a prop that we know you know is good. Now I get limited to 20 bucks and I still bet it. It's going to affect your ability to bet.
01:28:57 - Kirk Evans (Host)
For sure, right, but some people don't have like the want to churn and use other people's accounts and do stuff like that, so I think it's hard to blame them.
01:29:07 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
No, I know it's just frustrating. I agree, it's not the blame game, it's just frustrating.
01:29:12 - Jacob Gramegna (Host)
Next one is from Spring Football Zone, who posted a video of a CFL game between the BC Lions and Montreal Alouettes where there was a post-game brawl, and I want to throw to the dad here first Do you think it's damaging to have a brawl on screen for the children watching? What do you take on brawls in sports?
01:29:31 - Geoff Fienberg (Host)
No, I think when they happen they're pretty natural, so I'm for it. I don't know. I grew up watching hockey fights, bare-knuckle ice fights. They still do those, right. They do every now and then.
01:29:47 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
I'm just going to say, I'm just going to come out and say it. I know how ridiculous this is going to sound. We need more brawls in sports. There is something about a good brawl. It's listen. Whatever you could say, oh, it's not sport. Whatever you could say, oh, it's not spoilers, bad sportsmanship, the kids are what. I don't care we. There is something. I watched this clip like a hundred times over. I'm gaining something new every single time focusing on it. It's just entertainment. This is football. They're hitting each other over and over on every play, talking shit. It is only like fucking nine teams in the league they play. They see each other like every month. Give me a good brawl. Like what? Who is this?
01:30:26 - Kirk Evans (Host)
hurting. Exactly. There's nothing that makes sports better than the players like deeply caring, and there's not much that shows how much they care more than a good brawl. Like as much as it was probably maybe not great for their sport. Like, was there anything you've ever seen more electric on live tv in your life than khabib jumping into the crowd? I, I know like I've never seen anything like that.
01:30:50 - Geoff Fienberg (Host)
Even thinking about it now it gets it gets me fired up if you're in the a proper home, a good brawl should just increase your fandom exactly exactly when?
01:31:00 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
when are we gonna have brawl sponsored by sportsbooks? Do you think? You think they'll pre pre-select? Uh, each, each sportsbook will have a game. This brawl brought to you by first play to throw punch market we need more guys like uh keep talib, yes you know, you know, yeah, those are like people, like ripping off chains of the wide receiver on the line of scrimmage.
01:31:27 - Geoff Fienberg (Host)
We draw the line that, like Aaron Hernandez no, of course that's no murder.
01:31:31 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
Like you cause you do like a little ghetto and like thug brought in Even.
01:31:36 - Geoff Fienberg (Host)
Sometimes I think, like some of my favorite teams, the locker rooms are too like PG. Yeah, you need some like bad apples in there to keep everything. Yeah, like, listen, there's a balancing act. No, no, yeah, you don't need.
01:31:46 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
You don't need vontaze perfect, targeting every person's head over the middle of field. I'm not suggesting that, but you know what fucking marshawn latimore and mike evans want to throw down on the field because they're in a heated battle and it's in the heat of the moment. Go for it, like I. Colland Finnegan, was it Andre Johnson? Cortland Finnegan? I don't remember. Back in the day.
01:32:05 - Geoff Fienberg (Host)
Yeah, that was a good one, cortland.
01:32:06 - Kirk Evans (Host)
Finnegan for sure.
01:32:07 - Geoff Fienberg (Host)
And I? How do you put this? I think it's bad. I look at the teams that forbid to hire anyone with a rap sheet. I bet you it doesn't work out well.
01:32:19 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
Right.
01:32:20 - Geoff Fienberg (Host)
I agree, you need some. You can't have too much of it. You need some balls, but yeah, you need some.
01:32:26 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
I'm with you, jeff, you need some edge in that locker room. I'm going to send that note to Eager after the show today. Be like, make sure you got some guys with balls for the upcoming season.
01:32:37 - Jacob Gramegna (Host)
Yeah, some guys, a couple, you know on there's some offenses, you draw the line next we have ariel epstein, who does gambling content that hasn't really resonated with us in our audience in the past. Who says booking the hot dog eating contest at 71 and a half and landing on 70 that's how many hot dogs joey chestnut ate in his victory on the 4th of july, and landing on 70 makes me so happy for the public. They booked a great line and the public prevailed. Congrats everyone. Never forget it's always us first to books the fake smart guys on X think they're above you. Never let them dim your shine. Hope you enjoy your 4th of July. I have no idea what this, yeah what does this tweet even mean?
01:33:18 - Geoff Fienberg (Host)
Almost, I literally want to say she doesn't even believe what she is writing, but she is just playing up the like casuals versus I keep using the word.
01:33:31 - Jacob Gramegna (Host)
What is that? Public have the over and therefore they lost.
01:33:40 - Geoff Fienberg (Host)
This is like a manufactured beef. No puntors, guys that talk down to us entertainment folk. It plays well for her. I swear this is just intentional. I agree with you. She's not an idiot. I have no idea.
01:33:56 - Kirk Evans (Host)
She's not like a great pro bettor. She's not an idiot, she knows enough. I would say she's smart. I've heard her speak before.
01:34:02 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
I think she's intelligent. Yeah, she knows enough. I would say she's smart. I've heard her speak before. I think she's intelligent, yeah.
01:34:04 - Geoff Fienberg (Host)
So she knows exactly what.
01:34:05 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
But what did this tweet mean? I don't know. That's what I'm, but to Jeff's point, it doesn't have to mean anything. Yeah, it's just a dig at like the sharp community because it makes no sense. Like booking the hot dog eating contest at 71 and a half and landing 70 makes me like were there public bet splits where the people were on the?
01:34:27 - Kirk Evans (Host)
under. I would imagine I understand it's no different than like guys.
01:34:32 - Geoff Fienberg (Host)
the line on the football game was six. We had plus six. It ended at plus five. We took the books down. We're smart, like they're smart with their number, but we got it. Yeah, their number, but we got it it wasn't a good number.
01:34:46 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
I will see this tinfoil hat, uh, for a for a second here. Just a theory ariel epstein is very close with kelly in vegas. Uh, I've seen that over the years through twitter or whatever. I think this was a week where kelly got dunked on, it's a good dot by a lot of the sharps like that.
01:35:03 - Kirk Evans (Host)
It's a good dot you know what I'm saying, because it doesn't make sense out of nowhere.
01:35:07 - Geoff Fienberg (Host)
It's just like a random out of nowhere tweet.
01:35:10 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
Hope you enjoy your four.
01:35:11 - Geoff Fienberg (Host)
I I rob. I could literally go back to the word. I could literally just say anything pretentious, sharp, fucking betters, and I'd get likes I swear, I would just for picking anything, and you'd have more.
01:35:23 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
you'd have guys like Shipper in your replies as well, sure. You get all the engagement yeah.
01:35:29 - Jacob Gramegna (Host)
That was actually sent to us by Back to the Futures at Chasing CLV with hashtag Circle Back. So thank you there. Make sure you hashtag Circle Back Anything you want us to see for the show. Second last tweet man of the Vig at Vig Police. Not the show, uh. Second last tweet man of the vig at vig police not very, I mean. There's quite a few people who don't really like him that much on cammy twitter. But he says group of thugs completely ignoring traffic laws and popping wheelies on illegal atvs in boston. Such a shame they had. They held up traffic long enough for me to call the cops. Jeff nadeau, formerly of the friday circle back crew, says rat, you must be fun at parties. And Vig responded no, I prefer a city where people aren't selfish enough to be obstructive to others for their own amusement. What do you think about this? What?
01:36:11 - Geoff Fienberg (Host)
wouldn't Nadeau consider someone a rat for Involving police. Involving the police. I love Nadeau, but I'm curious what his line would be on where you wouldn't be a rat.
01:36:23 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
The behavior in this is so funny to me because I would never do what man of the Vig did, like I don't really like whatever, I guess if it was really really impacting your life, sure. But then Nadeau is on like the entire opposite, to call someone like a rat for like the guy that doesn't, like the guys hitting ATVs, I don't know, it's so the extreme polar opposite behavior.
01:36:46 - Kirk Evans (Host)
Like is vig 90 years old? Like, even if you're doing this, like who would they like? Genuinely, only a grandma would think to tweet this like no one actually knows vig's age, maybe he is, I might litter, and then, yeah, and the deal like this is like if you went on, ai, and we're like give me a man of the.
01:37:07 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
Generate a fake beef for me online. Put it in an image. This would be a rat.
01:37:12 - Jacob Gramegna (Host)
Last one up we have Weston at Guy and Cordfield who reports on a Steve Fezzik Vegas boot camp. Is that real? Hang on Every time. I think we've hit a new high in ridiculousness at Fezzik Sports parachutes in with a $1,495 boot camp and a PowerPoint titled Variance Happens Hashtag circle back. So for the second consecutive show we're ending on Fezzik. We are on. Last week Rob was praising him. This week we're on the other end. Is this real? Many questioned it.
01:37:44
Fezzik has promoted this I think earlier today at the time of recording. This is real. What do you think? Would you spend $1,500 for the Vegas boot camp with Steve Fezzik? I personally wouldn't. What's on the itinerary?
01:38:00 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
Well, it's called Variance Happens. Personally wouldn't. What's on the itinerary? Well, it's called variance happens. What are I mean?
01:38:07 - Jacob Gramegna (Host)
it's 14.95 is the cost for a course three days on variance yeah, august first to third, if you want to sign up, by the way, and send it like someone off camera, like it couldn't be me, like literally just sending in a um yeah like just to see, I love this, I love this, I love.
01:38:30 - Kirk Evans (Host)
Might be the only person there, though it'd be a dead giveaway when the reports get back to you, you'll know who it is I knew it was that one guy I think fezik has kind of realized like just like, don't tweet this stuff and like do it more, like quietly. Because, this is insane.
01:38:48 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
I don't want to say too much, just in case Fezz is watching with his lawyer on retainer right now, but I certainly wouldn't. I don't know. It's really hard to get enough value out of a $1,500 course. I don't know who the target demo is here. I don't know what's being taught.
01:39:05 - Geoff Fienberg (Host)
Rob, where is Spanky with the imitation Is the nicest form of flattery he gave the other one.
01:39:13 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
Because this was so under the radar that no one, even I, didn't know this till now. When is Bet Bash 10,? Well, I believe it's 12th to 15th.
01:39:22 - Jacob Gramegna (Host)
August 12th to 15th august, trying to under like oh yeah, 11 trying to, you're right I mean obviously I I'm not and there's no comparison.
01:39:30 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
I don't even know what steve's offering well, I think that's more expensive than bet bash, I think the call up like for us even the logo makes me think it might not be real.
01:39:41 - Kirk Evans (Host)
Yeah, I agree. I'm still not convinced this is real. I'm not convinced this is real.
01:39:44 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
He's tweeted about it today Okay so then I take it back. He's tweeted about it. It doesn't have a lot of views. He's not promoting it, I think for obvious reasons. He's not promoting it heavily because he knows what the public discourse is.
01:39:54 - Kirk Evans (Host)
How are you going to get people there?
01:39:57 - Geoff Fienberg (Host)
I don. It must kill someone like Fezzik that if George actually does what George claims he's going to do, he's going to make like 15 a week just for shits and giggles from people? Yeah, because people think it's funny. Yeah, just to be like one of the guys who can then retweet the pic for clout, like he's going to get a grand 15, two grand a week. It's such a what.
01:40:22 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
Like it's the. It breaks everything about this industry. It breaks what I said like 10 minutes ago, how people are paying for subs because they want to actually win in this instance.
01:40:32 - Geoff Fienberg (Host)
No, this is, this is a unicorn. Yeah, the george thing, george, having 20, 25, 15 subs yeah, that's a straight unicorn of the internet.
01:40:42 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
Yeah.
01:40:43 - Geoff Fienberg (Host)
Yeah, no one can replicate what George is going to try to do.
01:40:46 - Jacob Gramegna (Host)
Yeah, one might say many have tried to replicate and will try to replicate, circle back. But there's only one circle back, there's only one circles off. That's why you need to be subscribed to our channel, helping us on the road to 20,000 subscribers. If you did enjoy this episode, hit that like button, rate and review five stars If you're listening to audio form and, as always, use that hashtag circle back to alert us to more content and maybe we'll have some great stuff coming up for you with the Friday show. We'll see you there.
