STEVE RUDDOCK (00:01): You are listening to The Talking Shop podcast. Today’s guest is BILL MILLER, the president and CEO of the American Gaming Association. So Bill, why don’t you tell my listeners how you ended up at the AGA, why was your path there?
BILL MILLER (00:17): Alright, well, first I’m a shout out for your publication. I read it every day. I really enjoy it. I think that stylistically it’s great and an important addition to trade communications that we all get. So, well done. So my path to becoming CEO of the American Gaming Association, it’s a little bit of an odd one because I didn’t come out of the gaming industry, but I think about the relationships that I’ve built over time in my previous jobs. I spent 11 years as the political director for the US Chamber of Commerce. In that capacity, I got to know Sheldon Adelson pretty well. And then my immediate previous job was the chief lobbyist for a group called the Business Roundtable. And Business Roundtable is a trade association made up of CEOs, not companies, but CEOs of the biggest companies in America.
(01:21): And so at the time I was there, we had 204 Fortune 500 CEOs that were all my bosses. But then we’d have, we had a board that was about 12 or 13 people, but included, my last chairman was Jamie Diamond from JP Morgan Chase and had Rex Tillerson from ExxonMobil, Randall Stevenson from AT&T, Doug McMillan, CEO of Walmart. So it kind of spanned the kind of corporate landscape. And so I always had an appreciation for very strong personalities in a dynamic where you were dealing with the CEOs of the largest companies in the world. And I think that the BRT always viewed themselves and we viewed ourselves as kind of the board of directors of America, at least from an economic perspective. And so during that time at BRT, Gary Loveman, who was the CEO of Caesars, and Jim Murin, who was the then CEO of MGM, were both BRT CEOs.
(02:27): And so when this opening came, I talked to a number of different people and I had always said I was quite interested in running a trade association, but I wanted to do one that was dynamic, that it had real issues, it had complicated issues, was dynamic, and it was fun. And the kind of fit all of those boxes, and obviously, it was a pretty thorough process in terms of the vetting. Not surprisingly, there would be a lot of people that wanted this job. And I was fortunate enough to have a lot of support from people within the industry that knew me from both of my previous gigs at BRT and the Chamber. And so here we are and it’s worked out pretty well. I love the industry, I love the job, and I love the fact that it is dynamic and it’s always changing.
STEVE RUDDOCK (03:33): So speaking of dynamic and always changing, you came in 2019…
BILL MILLER (03:38): I did. My first day in January was the day that the Department of Justice rewrote the Wire Act and created a reinterpretation of the Wire Act. So I wasn’t there for the May 2018 Supreme Court decision on Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act (PASPA), but I was there for the outright. Now the administration has changed the definition of the Wire Act from what it was under the reinterpretation of the Obama administration, I think, which was in 2011. And so all of these states that were in the process of moving forward with sports betting legislation all had to stop. And they all said, oh, well, what the hell does this mean for us? I mean, does it mean that electrons that are bouncing across state borders violate the Wire Act? If so, then we certainly can’t even move forward with any legislation. And so for me, as a guy who spent a lot of time in state capitals and spent a lot of time up on Capitol Hill, I would say that I spent a lot of the first couple of months, number one, really digging in with our lawyers to better understand what we believe to be possible in moving sports betting legislation.
(05:01): And importantly, the consensus was among the lawyers was if the better, if the server and the actual licensed operator all reside within the jurisdiction we’re good, the electrons bouncing around of satellites are too far afield. And if the courts decided that electrons and kind of things that are beaming back and forth, you really would have a significant restraint of commerce. And so I think that that became the consensus opinion for state legislatures, many of which moved forward in that first year. And then some didn’t because as you probably know, many of the state legislatures, most of the time their 90-day sessions. And so your kind of state legislatures really excited about moving forward on sports betting because all these politicians, doesn’t matter if they’re Republican or Democrat, they knew their constituents were betting on sports. And so the idea that the Supreme Court had now given them a green light to move forward with it, tax revenue, jobs, protection for consumers, all good things, not surprisingly, you had people that wanted to move pretty quickly.
(06:27): This reinterpretation that was thrown in really was really through sand in the gears. And literally, my baptism by fire was trying to figure out, all right, how do we get the sand out? How do we better understand how we can take advantage of this important moment for the industry and move forward? And obviously, it took some litigation, it took New Hampshire and some important court decisions, but in essence, everybody kind of moved from super excited to, oh my God, we can’t do this because the federal government has just thrown a wet blanket on this to, oh, you know what? We can do it. And here’s the workaround.
STEVE RUDDOCK (07:11): Yeah, it was a situation where, well, you also had the lottery on your side, right? Because everything that they were saying would’ve impacted the lotteries as well, just even retail lottery, they just bounce stuff to clearing houses. But yeah, so you straightened that out. Then about a year later, just minor thing like this, I think it was called COVID-19, had vague.
BILL MILLER (07:35): Vaguely remember.
STEVE RUDDOCK (07:37): Whole ‘nother problem dropped into your lap.
BILL MILLER (07:40): And I think about that time, and yeah, I’d been here a year and I’ll never forget, I remember going to Chicago and it was like maybe, I don’t know, maybe the 12th, 13th, or something like that of March. And I went to go meet the guys at Rush because I didn’t really know them very well, although Greg Carlin, who was the then CEO was on the search committee. So I had kind of met him during that process, but I wanted to go out and see him. I wanted to go and meet the Rush team. They were in the process of building out what is now RSI. And so I remember going to Chicago basically to have lunch with Greg and Neil Bloom and some other folks there. And on the way in, we were having a conversation about Ohio and the governor who is going to shut down all the casinos and what do you think we can do about it?
(08:47): And I said, I don’t know, let’s have lunch and we’ll kind of talk about what it is that you see in terms of the AGA. And when we got out of lunch, I’ll never forget, Greg’s assistant said, Hey, Greg just wanted to let you know that they just canceled March Madness and the MLB season has been indefinitely postponed. And we just kind of laughed and said, I don’t think we need to call the governor and try and rattle his cage at this point. So yeah, it was a really challenging dynamic for lots of reasons. One, we have a thousand casinos in America, all of ‘em got shut down.
(09:31): But I think that we also saw what we have always seen in our industry that as members of the communities, that our industry does really respond well. And you’ve always seen it in sadly that the Gulf Coast, there’s a lot of hurricanes happen there. And so when hurricanes come, the casinos open up and even if they’re not open for business, they’re open from a civic perspective and they’re helping the community rebuild and helping kind with food and water and electricity. And I think that what you saw in COVID was the same thing. We became testing centers. I mean, we did drive-through testing, and I remember seeing a picture that was just amazing photo from Windstar.
(10:23): It was a line like a mile long of cars that, and Windstar was doing drive-through COVID testing. And obviously, in the early days, we didn’t have testing. And that was certainly problematic. No one knew what to do. I mean, in some of these cases, funny story was one of the properties, they’re open 24-7, they actually didn’t know where the keys were to lock the casino. And so there were many things that happened that were just unparalleled or unprecedented. And then for me in the AGA is significant, more than 50% of our revenue comes from our trade show, the G2E show that we do in Las Vegas, as well as the G2E show that we do in Asia. And obviously, both of those shows were almost immediately canceled in terms of we knew that they weren’t going to be able to happen because of the, nobody knew how long COVID was going to last.
(11:30): And so for us as an organization, my job had to be in the early days, Hey, we have to really buckle down here. We have to take a look at a budget, we have to take a look at staff, and we have to look at programming. We have to reorient programming and prioritization around doing everything that we can to get the industry reopened. And that needs to be our focus. And anything that is not oriented toward that, it needs to get put on a shelf until the economics change. And I think that one of the things I’m most proud of is, well, there are two things. Number one, we didn’t let anybody go at the AGA, and two, we actually put all of our focus on getting aid from the federal government for the gaming industry, which had never happened before. If you think about post a nine 11, 2008, 2009, financial disaster, Hurricane Katrina, Superstorm Sandy from the federal government, our industry was discriminated against and not included in federal aid packages.
(12:44): And in this one, we were treated the same as every other business in America, which was a watershed moment. And so I think of COVID as a pull your hair out, kind of, you just didn’t know what was going to happen. But then also a validator for the importance of the industry across the country because we weren’t just Atlantic City and Las Vegas, we had actual legislators in the house and the Senate, Republicans and Democrats both who said, Hey, this industry is really important. It employs a lot of people in my congressional district or in my state. And for us as an organization, it further validated the importance of the AGA because we could go and say, we need the same level of support that everybody else in America is getting, and look at what we’re doing in these communities to be the place where we’re at COVID testing center or vaccination centers. And we became both of those things during that time. So it’s one of those mixed times that was certainly unsettling. A lot of people died, a lot of people lost their jobs. The economic impact was pretty tremendous. But then I think about how we came through it and how the industry acted and performed and then recovered. And I think about that and it’s kind of amazing when you look back.
STEVE RUDDOCK (14:19): Yeah, it’s one of those situations where hard times help everybody see, I don’t want to say what’s important, but different priority levels. So you start to understand the actual scope of casino employment and how that impacts everything from infrastructure to trucking to advertising is all these different things that are associated with casinos. So if we look at, actually, let’s kind of just stay that topic, the AGA. So when I first came into the industry, it was a casino organization. That’s what it was. Not so much anymore.
BILL MILLER (15:05): Go ahead.
STEVE RUDDOCK (15:06): I was going to say, so what is the membership of the AGA? And obviously, it takes a little bit more to juggle the different interests.
BILL MILLER (15:14): Yeah, I think that the AGA of today is very different from the AGA 25 years ago when it was first formed, and it was five or so individuals and who represented almost the entirety of the casino industry. And their view was the view of the industry. And so at that point in time, really, the manufacturers, suppliers, they didn’t really have a voice or a seat at the table. And then eventually they did and they were included. And then a decision was made, I think an important and really powerful one for the industry and certainly for the association when tribal members were invited and included. And so the industry today and the association today is a much different one. And then as we got closer to a decision around PASPA, you had a lot of these European bookmakers who were really interested in the US market, but they didn’t really understand the US market.
(16:31): And I think that some of ‘em still don’t. Some people still talk about it as a national market instead of recognizing that it is really a state-by-state market and that there are many markets, many of which are bigger than many European countries, but that they wanted to better understand the market. And we at the A figured out a way to allow them to have a seat at the table where they could learn more about the market and create relationships. And then after PASPA happened, we kind of transitioned these guys into members themselves or invited them to become members. And so we have most of the sports books, the online guys, and so the dynamics are more challenging, but it’s also the AGA today is much more representative of the entire industry than what it was before.
STEVE RUDDOCK (17:33): And it’s speaking of different markets and different models for those markets. So you have some that are monopoly state run monopolies. You have others that are tethered to land-based casinos. You have others that are a mixture of tethering and online only licenses. Just in the grander scheme of things, is there a preferred market for AGA? So obviously now you have casino corporations, you have online only corporations, you have suppliers, you have technology companies like Geo Comply, you have all these different companies doing different things. Is there a specific model type? And then also I would say tacked onto this question is what’s best for counteracting the illegal market? So if we’re trying to bring people into the legal fold, how do we do that?
BILL MILLER (18:31): Well, I might park the second part of the question and say, I think that part of the beauty of the American system is it is built around existing equities, existing stakeholders, and so that when a new opportunity comes or a new vertical within the industry presents itself in those state capitals, those equities, and stakeholders, they get to work it out. And so I don’t know that, I wouldn’t say that I have a preferred dynamic. I think that the only preferred dynamic that I would absolutely articulate, and we’ll move into this in just a second, is a common view among these are some of the most competitive people. Because as you well know, this is not like the restaurant industry. If we are dissatisfied with the steakhouse that we normally go to, you and I and some other people can’t just go put our money together and start a new steakhouse with better ambiance, better stake, and better staff.
(19:41): We just can’t do that because of the scarcity of licenses and the difficulty in actually procuring those licenses, the process that it takes to get those licenses. And so when you have a dynamic like that, the competitive elements of being shut out is very, very, it brings out the most competitive dynamics of these individuals who run these companies and their shareholders and the dynamics that exist around each state and how that plays out. Then when a new vertical comes, whether it be in the sports betting space or i-gaming space or additional casinos, any one of those dynamics that would change what is the existing set of equities and stakeholders is going to ripple across that economic landscape with reaction from the people that are incumbents, that the incumbents that paid X amount of money in license fee, that pay y amount of money in taxes and employ Z amount of number of people and jobs. And so all those factors are somewhat unique in each of the individual states. And so I don’t know that I have a preferred, I do think that we’ve seen evolution in a number of different places, and I think that that will be the norm.
STEVE RUDDOCK (21:14): When you do add a new sector to the industry. So sports betting is obviously the one that we can look at and say, here’s how that changed the landscape a bit. Now we’re dealing with online gaming, so it’s going to be sort of the same thing, but I feel like there’s a little more resistance from the entrenched interests there because it’s not a one-to-one. I always say there was nothing to cannibalize with sports betting because outside of Nevada, there wasn’t any, right? So everybody’s adding
BILL MILLER (21:48): It’s all there. There was an illegal market to cannibalize against, and we should all be for that.
STEVE RUDDOCK (21:54): And now when you look at the online gaming landscape, the situation slightly different, I think we’ve been seeing a little bit more pushback from a little bit more division within your ranks on how that plays out.
BILL MILLER (22:12): Yeah, no, look, I think that the sports betting dynamic, as you mentioned, is a reasonably straightforward one. I’ve spent most of my life either I talked about being at the Chamber, being at Business Roundtable, I was chief of staff to a member of Congress for nine years. And so I’ve been in government or been around government most of my life. I don’t know that I’ve ever seen anything move as quickly as sports betting in the states of anything, of all of the years that I’ve been in government lobbying, government advising government. And so there’s a reason for that. Its politicians recognized that all their constituents were betting on sports and the illegal market. And so it was important for them to give their constituents a safe legal way that has much more consumer protections than either the mob or online offshore accounts that they would get tax revenue from it and create jobs.
(23:17): And so I think that that overlay was a pretty easy one. And the reason was because I think that those politicians all knew, and notwithstanding some initial resistance from the leagues, almost all, they’ve all come wrapped. And so they’ve all recognized that the integrity of the game is not at risk and actually creation of a legal marketplace and then data analytics that can identify anomalous betting behavior in the legal regulated market that doesn’t exist in the illegal market further protects that integrity. And I think that what we’ve seen, notwithstanding occurrences that have happened, the Alabama baseball coach or Jontay Porter or any Calvin Ridley, every one of those instances in my opinion, shows that the legal system works because the anomalous behavior flags it for the sports book. The sportsbook flags it for the regulator. Law enforcement gets in and the leagues come in or the NCAA in the case of Iowa or some of these other places.
(24:36): And so I think there is a deterrence that comes about from some of these more high-profile situations. And while for the individuals, I don’t really feel bad for, I don’t feel bad for Shohei Ohtani’s interpreter, I don’t feel, I certainly don’t feel bad for the Alabama baseball coach, for the kids in Iowa. Maybe that situation is one. And I’ve been actually pleased to see the NCAA kind of at least change and kind of bifurcate their sanction model where, hey, if you get a paycheck from the university or the Big 10, or if you get a paycheck from us and you violate our protocols around sports betting, we’re going to throw the book at you and we’re going to be very punitive. And if you’re a kid, even though if we’re telling you once a week, Hey, you’re a kid, but just because a kid, you are still a student athlete, don’t bet on sports, don’t bet on your teams, they’re going to be a little bit more lenient.
(25:46): And I think that that’s probably the right balance. But I also think that every time we have one of these situations that it creates a deterrence, a further deterrence for the participants. And I think that it’s part of the bumps in the road when in essence we’re creating a brand new legal industry across America. Of course, there’s going to be some bumps in the road with it because prior to legalization, people had been betting and they had been betting without anybody telling them not to bet, or maybe it was in some handbook that they got that said, Hey, here’s a 200-page handbook. And on page 154, there’s a don’t bet on sports page. Now there’s a higher degree of profile on it and there is more attention paid to it, which I think is a good thing.
STEVE RUDDOCK (26:49): Yeah, it’s one of those things where I find myself saying this a lot, which is sports betting wasn’t created in 2018. So the situations we’re seeing, I would say that, okay, it’s not Jontay Porter, it’s not Shohei Ohtani’s interpreter, but in 1998, something like that was happening. It was just happening and nobody was able to uncover it more so than, oh, this is a causal effect of legalization.
(27:24): And so when you look at, there’s two parts of that. So you have what is actually happening, which is the legal market is recognizing that these things are there. They’re able to use data, use paper trails to uncover them, but there’s also the public perception of this, which then drives a lot of public policy. Is there a way to, so the NCAA, which is kind of wanting to eliminate college player prop bets, and they’re having some pretty good success with that, although most of the states sort of already had a ban of that sort in place.
(28:04): What are the policy decisions where you’re like, this is fine? So look, college player profit’s, very small percentage of actual betting handle, but my fear, and I’ve expressed this in my newsletter, is when nothing changes. Because you can either bet those same things illegally, or if you bet on UMass instead of a UMass player and that player misses the free throws, you’re still going to be mad at that player. So it’s not really, I don’t feel like a prop on players is going to be the solution. So I wonder if there’s policy down the road that we’re like, oh, well that didn’t work, so we have to take another step.
BILL MILLER (28:48): Well, I guess I’ll maybe separate those a little bit and talk about the NCAA, their movement toward, in essence, fan/sportsbet behavior. And then as it relates to the student athletes, we couldn’t agree more like harassment of student athletes by other student, by other students or fans is inappropriate. And people that they can’t have fun with sports betting they shouldn’t be in it, right? They shouldn’t. But kind of decorum or fan behavior has been something that has always been an element of you can be kicked out of an arena or stadium for being overly my dad was. Right, exactly. And so this is a new wrinkle on that, and I think it’s important that the punishments for harassment of student athletes are punitive and severe. And it includes from the university’s perspective, from the sports books perspective, that there are real punishments, and they include banning people from arenas and stadiums.
(30:19): They include banning them from betting and being on platforms if they’re found to be harassing players. And so I think that we need to do we all, and I think about it, and I used to say this in every speech that I would give, say, Hey, look, our industry, we’re regulated, we’re licensed, our licenses can be taken away. We can be fined. But now in the sports betting space, at least we have a myriad of new business partners that are in this ecosystem. We have leagues, arenas, teams, broadcasters, all of which see financial upside to sports betting, but not necessarily obviously see their role in the responsibility. And that’s why we created our own kind of PSA campaign called Have a Game plan, and we have 30 plus partners, we just signed the PGA, and these guys are utilizing this platform to help make sure that the person who may not know what sports betting is but might want to do it, they get a better understanding on the front end.
(31:33): Because obviously when we move into areas of problem gambling, these are real problems and require significant resources. And so I think that when we are building out our plans to make sure that we’re continuing building and sustaining a long-term business, you got to make sure that you’re doing it in a responsible way. And I think about where we started, I mean right around pabo, we had buy-in from all of our members around a responsible marketing code for sports wagering. And then we further updated that code after we saw some things that we didn’t like and it included, alright, we, or things that we didn’t necessarily foresee. And so the code got updated. And I think that that’s the industry being front footed around self-regulation model. And I think that will continue to serve us well. I mean we basically self-band ourselves from advertising and marketing on college campuses.
(32:51): We prohibited ourselves from NIL deals with any athletes and student athletes. And I think that doing those sorts of things was the right thing to do. We actually and changed how the language in ads with regard to free bets, that term is not used anymore. That term is not used because the FTC came down or the FCC came down. It was because our industry association with our members came together and said, we need to update this because we do see reaction to this, whether it’s too much advertising or advertising that seems in some people’s mind to be deceptive. We need to act first because if we don’t act first, the government and policymakers will act and they generally don’t act with the precision of a surgeon.
STEVE RUDDOCK (33:51): Yeah, it’s usually an overreaction on that front, very much. Actually, speaking of advertising, I saw a Bloomberg article today, so this will let people know when we recorded this. So our Bloomberg article today that says that sports betting advertisements are coming down, I think it was about 21% year over year. Is that a function of just the market maturing? It seems like people lose sight of the initial outburst of legalization leads to initial outburst of advertising. So I’m in Massachusetts, so when we legalized and it launched, I was pretty bombarded. I had already had a FanDuel and DraftKings account from daily fantasy sports days that I hadn’t used in a while, but I was getting a lot of emails, but now I really don’t even notice. I remember my kids, my kids are teenagers, and they had said something like, they made a joke about somebody in a DraftKings advertisement. I’m like, oh, you don’t know who that is. And I think it was Lenny Clark Boston personality and then it was a joke to them at first and now they’re like, they don’t, it’s one of those things where they don’t see it and I don’t really see it anymore. So I’m wondering, are we going to even see more less advertising or more what I would say precise advertising?
BILL MILLER (35:19): Yeah, I think that the advertising thing, it was, look, we’re standing up a brand new industry and we have a very robust illegal market that exists, right? And so how are you going to move people? And we’ve done tons of polling. We do consumer behavior polling all the time. We obviously do policymaker polling, but what we found was when we would survey the public, they’d say we would much prefer to bet on a legal site than any illegal site. And then the second question might be, do you bet now? Yes. Do you believe that the site you bet on is legal today? Yes, despite the fact that in the state that they were in, it wasn’t legal. And so they would say, well, if it’s on the internet, it must be legal. And we had to. So I think about the advertising that the operators move forward with in the early days was it was an attempt to, number one, make people aware of the fact that there is a legal option.
(36:30): And two, obviously move those customers from the illegal marketplace to the legal marketplace. And I think that that has been a successful effort. I think that it doesn’t mean that if the illegal market is still alive and well, we did had an economist firm do a workup on us, and it’s a half a trillion dollars still the illegal market now that’s skill game machines and illegal i-gaming and illegal sports betting. It’s a whole host of illegal activity. But what we have seen is a pretty strong migration of people from the illegal market to the legal market. And I would suggest pretty strongly that advertising had a lot to do with it. And so now we move, we’re now two years away from the peak of advertising and we’ve seen a downward movement for advertising in the last two years because one, the operators have been successful in moving a critical number of people into their platforms.
(37:47): And then two, the cost of acquisition of each individual that you haven’t moved, it becomes higher and higher. And so there becomes a business imperative or a business rationalization that at the leadership level you have to say, is advertising still working for us or have we really been able to migrate the most of the people that we intend to? And I think that it’s a combination of both of those things that you can claim success and look, every time there will be the beginning of the college and NFL football season, the beginning of March Madness, the NFL, you’ll probably see a spike in advertising. And we see that today, but those spikes are less than they were in the early days. And I think that it’s those crazy progressive commercials, they drive me more crazy than anything else. And so I think about the comparative of what we are.
(38:56): I mean, we did a kind of study and we looked at, for every one sports betting advertising, there’s 31 pharmaceutical ads. So I do think that your point that you made earlier that you’ve kind of tuned them out, I think most people have, but when they were new, they were truly new and it was kind of an entirely new industry that was being kind of like, Hey, what is this? This is wild. They’re advertising sports betting on TV, and I’ve never seen that before. I’ve seen flow 8 million times. And so anyway, I think that there’s a combination of success and increased cost of acquisition.
STEVE RUDDOCK (39:50): I remember after New Jersey legalized online casino in 2013, there was a survey that was commissioned by some group and they were asking, which of these do you bet on in New Jersey? They asked New Jersey, and they listed like 30 things. One of them was online lottery, and it was, do you bet on these things legally or through the black market? And 13%, I don’t remember the exact percentage, but 13% said, I bet on them legally. And I’m like, there’s no online lottery in New Jersey. So that kind of explains that. And the survey was kind of based around now the need for consumer education on these different fronts.
BILL MILLER (40:34): Yeah, I think it’s working. And honestly, I think that the turnaround from the leagues and the kind of explicit partnership deals that exist between franchise franchises I think has all been positive because now somebody might say, well, I don’t think that gambling, that sports betting should be a part of a broadcast. Ultimately, that’s up to the broadcasts. But I think that trying to figure out how to make a incorporate sports betting into the sports fans experience, but also recognize that I’ve got two boys that are nine and 10 and they know what I do for a living, and they also know that they can’t bet on sports. And so I think that families have responsibilities too to make sure that they understand as delicious as they may make a doer’s commercial, my kids aren’t drinking doer scotch and they’re not going to bet on sports either. And so I do think that we’ve moved pretty successfully to kind of expose people to the opportunities. And I think that the leagues and the arenas and the broadcasters have all recognized some faster than others that they have a responsibility to not just make money on this, but to also inform the public and make sure that the public has understandings of what responsible gaming looks like and where and when it goes into the problem gambling that we have a collective responsibility.
STEVE RUDDOCK (42:32): I mean, we live in a different age now too. So if you are not interested in sports betting, you’re probably not going to see a lot of sports betting ads. I mean, I don’t bet sports, but I do Google a lot. So you would think I would get a lot of sports betting ads, but I really don’t because of the way they’re targeted. And most of the stuff I watch on TV is through streaming now. So the ads are a little more localized or targeted in the same way. It’s very, very rare that I see sports betting ad.
BILL MILLER (43:02): Yeah, it’s funny. I think that we do, and Nielsen does this and we pull their data that the advertising in the sports betting space is around 95% to the targeted audience of obviously 21 and over. But that’s pretty good. I mean, in terms of making sure that we’re, again, staying on the right side of regulators, staying on the right side of policymakers, and if adults find it annoying, then that’s okay, but as long as we’re making sure that what we’re doing is we’re protecting vulnerable populations and we’re keeping it away from underage, we’re doing our jobs.
STEVE RUDDOCK (43:41): So I know you have another meeting coming up, but before I let you go, I wanted to just kind see what’s the AGA, what’s the current situation, how are things going there, and then what’s the forecast going forward? I know that we have a big election year coming up and things always change after this. So I was wondering where are we and where are we going?
BILL MILLER (44:09): I think we’re in a good place. I think we’ve now, I think at 23 months in a row of record growth in the industry, I think that when the tribe, we don’t have tribal numbers in yet for 2023, but it looks like it could be 110 billion. And so we’re talking about an industry that continues to grow. We’ve now crossed a thousand casinos. Again, we’re at 1,005. And then in sports betting, we’re continuing to grow. There’s still certainly some states that for a number of different reasons, I’ve been difficult to move across the finish line. And obviously, there’s some significant dynamics in places like New York with three downstate casinos or a place like Texas where there’s a possibility of casinos and or sports betting. There’s still court action in places like Florida, although that seems more and more likely to be a not done deal, but mostly concluded.
(45:28): And then the biggest state of all is California and trying to figure out the dynamic between the tribal nations and the big online sports books. And so trying to figure out what that looks like and how that works are all, I would say things for the going forward in terms of the federal government and where we are today. Every now and again, we’ll hear someone who doesn’t like the industry, somebody who wants to ban advertising. And generally, a reporter calls me up and I say, well, they first thing you ought to do is look at the Constitution and First Amendment and what we’re doing and how we’re moving people from the illegal market to the legal market. And so don’t believe that a piece of legislation moving forward is number one. There’s very little chance of that. And then two, what can we do to get the federal government, particularly the law enforcement agencies to take a stronger view around the illegal market? And look, I don’t imagine that Merrick Garland, the attorney general, is going to start sending people to Malta or Riso and serving, arresting people. But from your time in the poker, DOJ has the power to shut things down.
(47:02): And Attorneys General, which we have been in contact with many and gaming enforcement division, have the ability to do cease and desist letters to the platforms that host these illegal operations. And so I see that as in our, that’s what we’ve been fighting probably the last year and a half, is the illegal market, both the online illegal market as well as these skill game machines. In places where I am, Pennsylvania and Virginia, they proliferate like weeds. And so having law enforcement recognize these things as threats to consumers and to the legal market that pays so much money in taxes employs so many people and creates economic activity in cities and towns that got left behind by other industries, is an important prioritization that we think needs to be given more priority. And so I would say that, look, the industry’s strong. We just finished our CEO survey in terms of sentiment.
(48:14): People still feel very good about where we are in the industry. I think there’s always a, when is this post-COVID euphoria going to stop? And when is there going to be a more normalization of numbers? And I think you’re starting to see that now, and you’re starting to see that in different regions in the country and as the states are reporting. But I would say that the industry continues to be very strong. We continue to be very vigilant in our attempts to make sure policymakers understand the benefits of the legal market and the dangers of the illegal market, and then make sure that what we’re doing in the space of responsible gaming and commitment to resources in the problem gambling space is robust. And I think that if I think about what we’re doing right now and what we’ll probably spend our time over the next couple of years, it’s probably going to be a lot more of the same.
STEVE RUDDOCK (49:17): And it is funny, from when I first walked into Foxwoods Casino to now, the industry has changed so much. So I was actually, I was at Mohegan Sun last weekend, didn’t gamble at all, but spent quite a bit of money because went to see Bert Kreischer and we went out to eat. And I always say to my wife, and even other people, I’m like the best dining experiences, you can go to a major city, but there’s a hassle to that. They’re at casinos, the best entertainment options, they’re at the casinos. So it’s one of those things where I don’t have to be a gambler to go to a casino anymore. And I think a lot of people are the same way.
BILL MILLER (50:03): Yeah, I think so. I think Las Vegas continues to be a gambling hub, but it’s also a global entertainment hub, and now it’s a global sports hub. I mean, from F1 to the Super Bowl to now professional franchises being based there. You think the change in Las Vegas as a specific, but I agree with you. I think about, I spent a lot of time traveling in places all over the country, and a lot of times I’ll do these, get to know gaming events, and it’s with the mayor and the fire chief and the local politician or congressman and other people in the community, and they say, man, before the casino came, this town was 30, 40 years dead because it used to be automotive or it used to be steel, or it used to be whatever. And when those people left, we had nothing economically.
(51:11): Now we actually have nice hotels, we have good restaurants, we have retail. And the fire chief says, and I’ve got three new fire trucks. And the mayor says, I actually now have money to do the infrastructure stuff that I needed to do that I didn’t have the money to do for the last 20 years. And it’s because of this casino. And so I agree that you don’t have to be a gambler to see the benefits as someone who can locally say, Hey, well, the casino actually has great shops now, has great places, great hotel facility, great spa, and great restaurants and entertainment.
STEVE RUDDOCK (51:57): Right near me. So Plain Ridge Park Casino, the Penn Racino in Massachusetts, new fire station, new police station, new, not City hall, but town hall. And what a difference that was all casino tax money that was just earmarked for local projects. So yeah, it’s not just like a ubiquitous thing that, oh yeah, you give back. No, if you live in a community near that, you’ll actually see the difference.
BILL MILLER (52:33): And I think that that’s one of the things to me in this job, at the end of the day, in my job, I’m storyteller. I’m telling the story of what this industry means. And look, people want to be critical of it, and we should take that criticism seriously and constructively. But when you’re able to go into these places and see in these communities, probably many of these communities that probably opposed the casino when they were thinking about it, right? They’re like, oh, we don’t want the casino in this town because whether it’s religious based or whether it’s any number of the stereotypical arguments that are made against us after we’re there, they have neighbors that work at the casino or have jobs that they didn’t have before the casino came. And as your point, it’s like the fire station has fire trucks and the local economy grows and the florist actually has business.
(53:37): I think that we have a primary economic role and then a secondary and a tertiary economic role. And they’re all really, really important. And I think that it also is incredibly powerful for us from a political and policymaker perspective, that when criticism comes of the industry, again, we should take it constructively and we should act on it when it’s legitimate. But we should also always remember to show what it is we mean in all of these communities where now 46 states in America have some form of gaming. And in the places where that happens, my old assistant, she left a month or so ago, she got her, no one in her family ever went to college. She went to college at University of Georgia on the Georgia Lottery. And so our industry is creating opportunities for people and all over the country that didn’t exist before we came into these communities. And so again, it’s great. I love this job. I love the industry, and I love what we’re doing and even the challenges.
STEVE RUDDOCK (54:59): So listeners, the casino revenue does not stay within the casino walls. One of the busiest restaurants in Springfield where MGM is the pizza place right across the street, one of the busiest gas stations in Connecticut is the one near Foxwoods. If you go down to Foxwoods, there’s hotels everywhere, not just Foxwoods hotels, there’s past westerns, there’s all these things. So yeah, it doesn’t just stay within the confines of the casino. So Bill, I really appreciate you coming on great chat.
BILL MILLER (55:32): It was my pleasure, and I’d be happy to do it again if you want.
STEVE RUDDOCK (55:36): Yeah, we’ll do another one on that. Like you said, the opposition. So I was there when Massachusetts was doing the casino proposals. That was fun. We should do a whole three hours on that.
BILL MILLER (55:46): Yeah.
STEVE RUDDOCK (55:49): All right, Bill. Appreciate it. All
BILL MILLER (55:50): Right. Thanks, man. Appreciate it.
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