August 15, 2024 • 45 mins
Sean Brace & Evan Davis sit down with Allan Stone from Acquire.Bet
With over a decade of experience driving growth for some of the largest RMG companies, Allan now leads the charge for Acquire.Bet & Intelitics.
Key Topics Discussed:
With over a decade of experience driving growth for some of the largest RMG companies, Allan now leads the charge for Acquire.Bet & Intelitics.
Key Topics Discussed:
- How does a player acquisition agency work
- Affliates in the world of Sports Betting
- Analytics & Marketing working together
- Ideas for content creators strategy
- Players the operators want
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:04):
All right, Evan, without further ado, let's get to an
episode six Behind the Vague, and we got a great
guest as always, but this is a little bit different
than our previous guest because we're gonna find a little
bit more from the agency standpoint, marketing meets analytics, and
our next guest president and co founder for Acquired dot
bet and Intellects dot com. Hopefully I pronounced that right.
(00:27):
That's analytics and intelligence combined, Alan Stone. Alan, did I
get that right, sir?
Speaker 2 (00:33):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (00:33):
Intelligence, yep, excellent.
Speaker 1 (00:36):
All right, Well, first of all, thank you for joining
us here and behind the vegue, President and co founder
for Acquired dot Bet. Of course, we're gonna hit on
a little bit of everything here, Alan, but right from
the jump, we like to get a little gauge of
our guest and find out who he is and where
he's from. But we do that from a question that
is as follows, tell us your favorite childhood sports memory.
(01:02):
I see you're a new Mexico Lobo fan, so I've
been doing some digging there talking about the mount West.
You guys are actually the second college football game this
season ready to go off. You're going up against Montana State.
I believe slight underdog, but if you wouldn't mind bring
us behind the curtain for Allan Stone, a young Allan Stone.
Speaker 3 (01:20):
Your favorite childhood sports memory, sir.
Speaker 2 (01:24):
Favorite childhood sports memory, man, I eight to do it,
but I got to go back to you know, I
played college football, but I got to go back to
the glory days of high school football. Senior year going
into play Trinity High School US an to day, number
three team in the country. We're two touchdown underdogs, and
we changed up our offensive game plan. I'd been playing
(01:46):
defense all year. They put me back at running back
and I rushed for two hundred yards and two touchdowns
and we ended up taking them, taking them down by
two touchdowns twenty eight to fourteen. So that's probably probably
the highlight of my high school career, but definitely one
of my favorite memories as a child man.
Speaker 1 (02:02):
Yeah, I love it, Evan, And our first one that
goes back to his record books.
Speaker 3 (02:09):
I like that.
Speaker 2 (02:09):
There.
Speaker 3 (02:09):
That's a nice little pull, Alan.
Speaker 4 (02:11):
Yeah, I don't.
Speaker 5 (02:13):
I don't have my own athletic accomplishments out my own
memories or of any of our other guests, I don't think.
Speaker 4 (02:20):
So this is our first one.
Speaker 1 (02:22):
I like that and also, Allan, you brought up the
two touchdown underdog. What year are we talking about? And
how to hell did you know what the spread was?
Speaker 2 (02:30):
That's two thousand and two, and we knew the spread
because our coach, our coach put it up. He was like,
look they I mean it was you know, it's kind
of like the classic dabos. Hey, man, they don't respect us.
They don't they think they're going to wipe the floor
with us. You know, they're rolling into this game thinking
it's a warm up for their next game. You know,
we used it as we use it as fuel, right So,
(02:52):
And I mean, look, I don't care what anybody says
Texas high school football. Everybody knows the spreads in Texas
high school football, man, that is the talk of the
town from Wednesday until Friday night kickoff. Everybody's like, Oh,
who's got the who's got the edge, Who's who's who's
got who, who's got money on who? Right?
Speaker 1 (03:06):
So, so essentially Friday night lights, is that what we're
talking about with you?
Speaker 3 (03:11):
And in your high school career.
Speaker 2 (03:13):
Yeah, yeah, Friday Lights Dallas. I was an art in
Texas Arlington Lamar High School in Texas.
Speaker 1 (03:18):
Yeah, we dang that is that's bread and butter high
school football right there.
Speaker 3 (03:24):
You're not lying about that? Excellent?
Speaker 1 (03:26):
All right, Well we've got a lot to discuss with you,
all right, So first of all, please acquire dot bet
bring us on the inside.
Speaker 3 (03:34):
What is acquire dot bet let's start there.
Speaker 2 (03:37):
Yeah, soquire dot bet is a We are a user
acquisition agency. We do a couple of different there's a
few different things that we do, but the sort of
core businesses we help operators acquire customers and we do
that a few different ways. One is have a an
affiliate network of partner network that we operate on behalf
(03:57):
of the operators. So we work about thirty five hundred
different publishers worldwide, work with about four hundred operators worldwide
at this point, just driving them traffic, making that connection
between Hey, you know you've got a side that focuses
on cricket in India. This is the operator that wants
to that you should be working with to push players too.
(04:17):
Writ And we also have an internal agency, so we
actually brands come to us and they want us to
help them optimize channels, usually Meta, Google, PPC, TikTok basically
any of the programmatic biddable media placements. That's where we
really focus energy on. And then we have a number
of own operated properties, so we have our own publishing
(04:41):
properties where we're focused on. Really, what we're focused on
is sort of the mill idea that a lot of
people don't focus on. So if you look at how
operators tend to spend their budgets, they fall into sort
of one to two ends of the spectrum. Top a
line sort of branded national campaigns and then really hyper intent,
(05:02):
very specific organic SEO through their affiliate partnerships with you know,
the guys like Better Collective and gamin dot Com and
rike Tech and those guys. So our focus is that
middle round. It's the hey, where are there signals that
we can get around sports enthusiasts and people who maybe
are into gaming or betting that being targeted or reached
(05:25):
on either of those two spectrums. It's that sort of
middle ground, if you will, So.
Speaker 5 (05:30):
Take take us inside a bit, if you will, and
take one step back and talk to us about sort
of the whole affiliate world within within sports betting and
and you know how this functions and and how these
companies are monetizing when they essentially are being able to
send traffic to regulated sports books in the US.
Speaker 4 (05:52):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (05:52):
So mean, look, the affiliate world in the US sports
betting community is a little bit interesting because the whole
premise is, Hey, as an operator, can I align with
partners who have reach into the audience that I want
to engage with my product? And there's a lot of
different ways you can do that, But the affiliate model
is a great and really attractive one, and I think
(06:13):
one that's actually significantly highly underutilized this space. And the
reason's attractive is because you're you're it's a lower risk model, right,
You're paying for performance. You're you're going and you're delivering
a partnership. You're creating a partnership with someone who's going
to deliver you not just eyeballs and clicks, but actual
paying customers. And that's what you pay them for, is
those customers they actually deliver, you know, clicks to a
(06:36):
landing page or anything like that. So yeah, I mean,
the affiliates, the afilliate model is really great one. It's
been around a long time in a lot of different industries.
You know, the gaming industry really sort of pioneered it
in the early two thousands, I would say they drove
a lot of the sort of initial in the international markets,
the initial sort of really interesting growth, but then it
(06:56):
kind of stagnated for a lot of different reasons. We
don't have enough time to go into those reasons. But
so now with the US market being regulated and opening up,
it's it's still a very attractive business model, and it's
still a really attractive partnership model for a lot of operators.
But there are a lot of hoops to jump through
now in order to make that happen.
Speaker 3 (07:17):
And I see that you guys are acquired.
Speaker 1 (07:19):
I bet was just up for it was on a
short list for an e GR Global North American Awards.
Speaker 3 (07:25):
Nice work on that one. Great right up, Allan is
a tremendous, tremendous follow on LinkedIn.
Speaker 1 (07:31):
I don't say that often. There are a very few
things you know, LinkedIn is it had its moment. But
I think you did it right. You're you're absolutely crushing
it right now. So I would recommend anybody that's listening
go follow Alan on that one. I want to pick
up what you said underutilized.
Speaker 3 (07:47):
Why do you say that it did that? The affiliate
way is underutilized in the sports gambling space.
Speaker 2 (07:56):
Oh man, So it's a it's really sort of it's
a deep question. And the reason I think it's underutilized
is there's been a handful of guys who've done a
very good job of creating very large, successful businesses as
affiliates that are commanding a certain type of view of
(08:19):
what affiliates are and could be. And I think that's
very narrow minded. And so when a lot of times
when operators hear the word affiliate or or performance partner,
they immediately go to, you know, a publicly traded European
based SEO, sort of heavy type of a business, right
(08:39):
where again very high intent users, but also very expensive
users and very expensive users because because of that high
intent they obviously are valuable users, but also because there's
a limited number of guys who have cornered that traffic channel,
if you will, they sort of drive the market up
(09:00):
in terms of competition. And so a lot of times
when again, when when when an operator here's the word affiliate,
what they think is okay, cool, I know who the
affiliates are in the space. It's a you know, a
handful to two dozen guys that they've seen on organic
control page one through five of Google, of all the organicistings,
and the reality is that's those are great partners and
(09:20):
you should be doing business all those But really the
affiliate world, the affiliate universe, is much broader than that
there are If you look at other verticals and you
look at those types of partnerships and other verticals, they
represent maybe twelve to twenty five percent of their affiliate business.
And when I say that, what I mean is the
high intent organic SEO affiliates. The rest of their affiliate
(09:41):
business are Tier one, Tier two, Tier three, programmatic, performance
network ad buyers. You've got email you know, guys who
have email distribution. You've got guys who have you know,
a lot of discord communities right that are affiliates. Essentially,
you've got a lot of really interesting apps that maybe
(10:03):
pop up that are content or some other free to
play either data or gaming community, and they could also affiliates. Again,
you're never going to see those guys ranked in the
top five on Google or page one through three on Google.
But they are still a very uh you know, they
still have a very thriving community of traffic and players
(10:24):
that those operators should be interested in speaking to and
reaching uh and they are, you know, third party arbiters
of where should you, as a player, based on what
you're interested in be playing your dollars? Where should you
spending dollars? Where should you be focusing your share of
wallet between all of the different operators that might exist
(10:45):
in the market that you that you live in.
Speaker 4 (10:47):
Right, So, so tell me you've got another company in
televiex and.
Speaker 5 (10:54):
How do or analytics, how did how does that company
sort of factor into what are doing here with acquire Bag.
Speaker 2 (11:03):
Yeah, so Antalytics is really angine. So we originally built
Antalytics to be our internal data warehouse and bi tool,
and we started building that platform back in twenty twelve,
and we for the longest time it was our sort
of competitive advantage, if you will, right, it was the
thing that gave us a competitive vantage over any of
our computers, sort of carved out our stake in the
(11:26):
space in terms of what we were doing. Very uniquely.
We realized around twenty nineteen twenty twenty, we realized that
in order for the operators in North America to be successful,
they needed better technology than what we're currently being provided
to them from a marketing technology perspective, and the reason
for that is there's a couple of reasons for that.
(11:48):
One is all of the the shell sort of broad
market martech just isn't built to service gaming because it
is very unique in terms of what's required from a
regulatory perspective, required in terms of how they engage with
customers and also how they actually mechanically, how operators actually
mechanically run the business. And the existing gaming specific platforms
(12:11):
were very heavily built fifteen twenty years ago to service
the European market, which again is very different than what
the North American market is. And so as the North
American market started to pick ups, team, what we saw
was there was a there was a need from an
operator's perspective to put to bring to market a Martech
that was very much focused on what are the problems
(12:33):
that operators in North America specifically are needing to challenge,
needing to solve today and can we solve those problems?
And we had already done a lot of legwork again
trying to answer a lot of these problems internally, and
so we decided to repackage what we built internally, brought
in a proper CTO, spent two years just rebuilding the
platform as a true SaaS sort of multi tenant scalable
(12:57):
system that operators could license from us, and we could
give them the data and power that we've been using
to scale our business to Again, you know, not to
throw out crazy numbers, but we do more volume on
a daily basis in terms of new user acquisition than
most operators do on a daily basis, just because of
(13:17):
again our worldwide footprint and what we've built over the
last twenty years. Right, So, yeah, it was really the
way that antalytics fits into all that is it is
the technology system that allows arders to go out and
create those partnerships and understand where am I spending money,
what am I getting in terms of a return based
(13:38):
on new customers, but not just that, what are those
customers actually doing inside of my product that's driving value
so can't so then they can make more intelligent decisions
on where do I spend my dollars today to ensure
that I'm going to get a return on investment from
the players I'm acquiring five six, seventy nine to twelve
months down the road up to you know, five years
(13:59):
down the road of those plays is going to stick
around and become those really long term, valuable customers that
I really want to go and get as an operator.
Speaker 6 (14:07):
So take take us inside of that last thing that
you just said a bit if you can, because you know,
we all know that not every customer is created equal
for any business, right, you have some customers that spend
more and something that spend less, obviously, but but there's
a lot of differences beyond just how much are people wagering,
(14:28):
right in terms of operators differentiating like what customers do
I want?
Speaker 5 (14:33):
How do I market to these customers? So take us
take us into and out a job if you can,
and what what are those differences?
Speaker 2 (14:42):
Yeah, and it's really interesting because it depends on the
operator and where they're at in their business cycle and
where they're at in in terms of market Right. Are
they in one state? Are they in multi state? Are
those multi states regionally clustered? Are they spread out across
the US? Right? So there's a lot for ways that
you can sort of attack that. But to your point, yeah,
(15:03):
not every customer is created equal. And part of what
we wanted to build and the reason we build the
technology that we did was to give the operators and
insights to say, hey, you might have a partner who's
delivering you players for much lower cost than what you're
used to seeing. But those players are returning on that
lower cost, not at the same rate that everybody else is.
(15:25):
But you're still our positive. Why would you go and
just and kill that campaign because oh, well, they're not
hitting this month, one tier, Well they're not hitting that
one year, but they cost you fifty percent less than
what everybody else is costing you. So net Net, actually
that customer fits the return profile that you're actually looking for.
On the flip side, we see the exact inverse on
(15:47):
the flip side, where it's like, hey, you might have
someone who's got pockets of customers that are very expensive
to acquire, but they're going to return five times your
average lifetime value because of their behavior, socioeconomic demograph, and
maybe even just the type of relationship that that partner
has with those players, like literally walking in a bunch
of high rollers or a bunch of you know, a
(16:09):
bunch of really savvy betters, right, And so really our
job from the technology perspective is to help unearth those
insights for the operators so then they can take that
and they can now use that to say Okay, I'm
going to go and find more partnerships that have players
who look and feel like this, and there's really a
(16:29):
way for them to determine that until that partners deliver
them players. So that's where it becomes critical in terms
of our platform to understand what is the behavior of
the players and how does that behavior map to the
historical performance of all the other players you required that
look like profitable players or that are profitable players for
you as as an operator. What's really interesting is this space.
(16:53):
You know, one of the reasons we built the technology
is because if you look at the sports betting industry
in the broader in the context of a broader gaming industry,
Whi's very interesting and EIK about real money gaming is
there is no defined product set right. There's not a
you know, buy widget A for X dollars or buy
(17:14):
widget B for dollars. Any player could come in and
they could deposit ten dollars, they could deposit ten thousand dollars.
You have no idea of knowing what that's going to
look like unless you have prior betting signal from that customer.
There's no way to understand some runs propensity to gamble
based on their socioeconomic and demographic data other than have
(17:36):
they given you the signal that they've gambled before. Like
any other space, they can go, oh, you live in
this zip code, you have this income, you drive this
type of car. I can assume that your purchase being
able to be like this. Betting is very unique in
that you could have two guys that look exact same
on paper, right, all the data checks the same, but
this one guy, for whatever reason, just has a risk
(17:57):
profile that says, you know what, I'm going to take
a thousand bucks week and put it on whatever team
I want to and I can do that, I can
afford it, and that's entertainment to me, whereas the other
guy's like, no, no, I'm going to spend a thousand
bucks a week on dinner and wine with my wife,
and that's that's just is what it is. And there's
no way to get that signal other than to see, oh,
this player has actually bat before, and so our jobs
(18:18):
to say, okay, how do you start to look at
what are those signals? How do you identify the right signals?
And then how do you make sure that the traffic
that you're acquiring from your partners is delivering as many
of those players as possible that are giving you those
signals to say, Okay, yeah, these guys are going to
be long term valuable customers for us. And then to
do that at scale. And when I'm by scale, we're
talking you know, five hundred million to a billion clicks
(18:39):
a month across you know, a million different sites delivering
a few million play a month. Right, So that's that's
what's really becomes interesting. You can do anyone can do
that on a one or two or three or four
partner basis, but to really get that done at scale,
and to achieve that scale, you've got to be able
to leverage technology for sure.
Speaker 5 (18:58):
Do you just have like an army of that nerves
that's basically like cranking the stuff out and behind the
scenes or what's happening here?
Speaker 2 (19:07):
Uh yeah, I mean you could say that, yes, But
interestingly enough, interesting enough, we over index for people who
are very good at computer science encoding, but are also
happy to be I hate to use the term but djens, right,
like guys that are guys that love sports, betting, guys
that love sports, guys that love anything. Where there's a
(19:29):
highest codard, there's a it's you know, it's a running
joke in the office that every everyone in our offense,
if you're to look at them, it's like, oh yeah,
you fit the profile of a sports better and be
like a crypto trader. That's really what a lot of
the guys in the office are are really obsessed with.
So it's kind of nice because we're in the mindset
of the customer too, right, We're in the customer and
ultimately the player, right. So it's a lot of fun.
(19:52):
So intriguing.
Speaker 4 (19:54):
So where does all come from?
Speaker 7 (19:55):
Like your your you know, Friday Night Lights in Texas, Mexico,
Lobo and now and now launching and running this incredibly
complicated you know, analytics needs marketing site for sports betting platforms,
like what's what?
Speaker 4 (20:10):
How did how did a get to be?
Speaker 2 (20:13):
You want the long story? Yeah, yeah, yeah, I mean
it's it's it is. I mean, look, it's it's really
this crazy intersection. So all right, So in college early
two thousand's ended up running a backhouse poker game with
my with my college roommate. So that was my sort
of introduction to betting. Had a background just from a
(20:35):
family business of finance and data and computer science, uh.
And then in college was exposed very early on to
digital marketing. So I was part of a me and
a buddy actually started buying on Google Ads within what
we were one of the first one hundred to start
buying when Google released their paid ads platform, the PPC platform.
So did a bunch of different stuff. Fast forward, fast
(20:57):
forward twenty ten. I had in the digital advertising space.
So once I got the bit by the digital advertising bug,
I was just there right And the business I had
done up to that was all sort of consumer finance
domestic got in twenty ten one of my business customers
who ended up becoming my partner, Warren Jolly, he's my
(21:18):
owner in these in these businesses. He and I went
to dinner and we're just talking about, Hey, what's what
are you doing? What are you up to? What's next?
I really have a plan. He at the time, I
think was running like six or seven different businesses, and
one of them happened to be this gaming business called
cap casinophillyproms dot com really old legacy domain that was
(21:40):
a clear that was basically like a forum for website
moderators in the betting space. And so I came in
and took a look at that business and just fell
in love with it. It was like, oh man, I
love sports, I love betting, I love mark digital marketing.
This is the ven diagram of all those things coming together.
And so that's when we started out, and we were
(22:00):
very early on buying. We started buying ads on Facebook
before there was any type of regulation for gaming. It
was just wild West, And we started buying ads for
all of our international because again, nothing invests at that point.
You know, this is this is post PASSPA, right, like
there's a posts you I goa there's nothing U pre passed,
but there's there's nothing that we can do domestically. So
everything we're doing is internationally. And just again car saw
(22:24):
the saw that hey there's already these really big guys
that control se O, and saw the big branded what
we call above the lines, like, well, that's not our universe.
Great our universe. We can carve out this little niche
where it's like, hey, it's digital, but it's not SEO.
So we got to do a little bit more work
to identify and then warm up those customers before they
actually do take action in the betting platforms. And just
(22:47):
kept doing that and ding that doing that, and you
know went through the Facebook up and down, Instagram up
and downs, TikTok, Twitter, and now we're buying, We're buying
across all these platforms, and then it is we you know,
we always had an I for the domestic market, but
everything we were doing was international, and as soon as
the US market started open up, we were we were
there really quick, really early. So remember New Jersey. I
(23:10):
think we got vendor certified New Jersey in twenty thirteen
on the iking side. And then you know, as soon
as as soon as the past per appeal happened and
everyone started going big on sports betting, that's we had
already identified that anyone that's going to be in sports
betting in North America needed to have a differentiated martech
stack and data setup. And so that's why we really
(23:31):
went heavy on our on our inside, we already had
the traffic machine running. It was just a matter of
turning on you know, the taps in the US market.
But really the innovation was on the data side, on
the on the last product side, that was like, hey,
how do we get as many operators in North America
to use our technology as possible to equip them to
be successful in North America.
Speaker 5 (23:51):
Now, now you said this earlier, right, the Europe's been
around for a while, but the North American market has
been different and different in a lot of ways, different players,
different operators, and different service providers like you guys.
Speaker 4 (24:06):
So what is it about?
Speaker 5 (24:09):
Because that's sort of the one thing that I think
we here in America forget is we all say, oh,
this industry is six years old.
Speaker 4 (24:15):
Well it's it's not. It's a lot older than that,
and it's been a lot older than that. And yet
time and again we see.
Speaker 5 (24:23):
These companies that have been successful abroad trying to come
into the US and really struggle, whether they're operators or
service providers. So what is it that's been so different?
Because you're you're an American company, but you, as you
just said, you started out really servicing other countries. What
what is it about this market that's been so different
and it made that transition so challenging for a lot
(24:45):
of companies that are trying to do it.
Speaker 2 (24:49):
That's a great question. Uh, And this is one of
the things I would say that the you know, five
years from now, they'll probably be a Harvard case study
on it. But in terms of in terms of where
we sit and when we when we diagnose, Hey, why
did you know why was it that supergroup bet Way
decided to pull out of the North American market? I
mean literally probably the largest, if not one of the
(25:11):
top three largest company world and they pulled the plug
on it. You know, there's other examples, right like why
didn't barstool work? Right? What? There's so there's a lot
of different ways said. I think if you were to
boil it down to the core, it was I think
that those operators severely underestimated the impact of season long
(25:37):
and DFS would have a North American player mindset. I
think they severely underestimated how much different their product needed
to be in North America to be attractive to those
sports betters who have been conditioned for the last thirty
years on season long and dfs. And you know, one
of the things we talk about is in North America
(25:59):
the two biggest sort of regulated betting nationwide products are
lottery and fantasy. So when sports betting legalized here, it
was like, you have a very immature audience and you
have a bunch of guys. I mean, look sports betting
in Europe, in the UK, is you go for three
hundred years, right, Ladbrokes and Wynnmill are two hundred and
fifty plus year old brands. It is a very mature,
(26:22):
very different market mindset for sports betting than than North
America is. And I think you're starting to see what's
interesting is taken this long. But you know, we actually
just I just had a conversation couple of guys about
the operators are just waking up to same game parlay
micro betting. These are not flash in the pan, you know, Oh,
(26:44):
it's a Choschki product of the day. No, Like, if
you look at the performance of these guys across states
and across markets, you're seeing like, oh, holds going up
across the board. Well, why is that? Well, because those
products are a higher hold product. Well why is it
that so interesting? Why do the coms in North America
want and demand those products? Well, because your top one
percent of one percent of betters are still the old
(27:06):
school traditional money line spread type best right, the sharps.
But the vast majority of the North American market is
not there yet. They're just not educated enough and they're
not the industry's not maure enough to put them into
that category. They're looking for the five dollars same game
parlay that's going to pay them, you know, fifty thousand dollars, right,
(27:27):
like those sixteen leg they're lottery tickets. Man Like, at
the end of the day, it is, it is what
it is. And why is that, Well, it's because they're
an immature it's an immature product. It's an immature market.
So it's a simple product. But also that's what the
North American betting market has been for the last fifews.
Like you want to go buy bet legally in North Amarka.
You play the lottery in just about every state. Right.
(27:49):
Or if you're a sports fan and you're like, want
to engage in sports outside of just watching the sport,
how have you done that? You've done season long and
with daily Fantasy, and those are both. You know, season
long is different because not really any money trading hands,
so to speak, Right, But dfs also put them in
that mindset of multiplayer I mean dfs essentially the mechanics
of it, it's very similar to the same you know
(28:10):
to a parlay, right, you're picking you're picking player performance
based on it's not based on outcome, it's based on
player performance over a number of games, So why wouldn't
that fit the profile of a North American player? And
I think that's where number one, that's where they're wrong
from a product perspective. I think number two where they
went wrong is from North American consumer engagement. I think
(28:31):
they were trying to use the tactics that they use
to reach their customers in Europe right above the line
big brand partnerships with with big media attribution companies, which
are very attractive here because the biggest media companies in
the world are based here, Right, But the North American
consumer does not engage media in the same way that
the European consumer does. From that perspective, right, it's very
(28:53):
much you know where these guys ignored, is they They
ignored all the I say, ignored the use that term
very broadly, But they didn't put the right to effort
energy into understanding where can I reach that customer? Is
it Facebook? Is it talk? Is it a discord group?
Is it a Reddit thread for Michigan Wolverine betters? Right, Like,
(29:13):
there's a very much that I would say, it's a
much more decentralized approach to reaching the North American betting
market that you don't that you don't have in Europe.
It just doesn't. It doesn't functions they can go and
get those media deals. I think the other thing that
people miss too when they look at North America versus Europe,
they think, okay, well North America. If you look at
(29:35):
all of the US, they sort of because we're a
single nation, They're like, okay, well the US market, Well, no,
the US market is actually a lot like the European
market in that each state is like its own country.
And that was one of the first things that we
tried to educate the operators who we were working with
that were coming over it, like, hey, you look at
the US as a total country, you need to look
at like New Jersey's the same size as Sweden. Okay,
(29:56):
so who are the biggest operators in Sweden? What are
they doing there? And then that's the that's you have
to pack New Jersey like you have to literally be
boots on the ground in New Jersey and attack New Jersey.
Same thing. Every time a state opens up. We would
sit there and ask these operators, when this new market
opens up in Europe, do you just open a new
desk and then just say, oh, now we can services market? No,
(30:17):
you actually have an office in that market, VIP managers
that sit in that market, with traders who sit in
that market, with you know, banking guys that sit in
that market, because every market is different, and I think
that they just assumed, oh, the US is the US
is the US? Well no, no, Like New Jersey is
very different than Pennsylvania, which is very different than Michigan,
which is going to be very different than Arizona. You
have you have to have a very distributed and multi
(30:39):
state approach in order to be successful. And I think
people just thought, oh, I'll sponsor the NHL. It's fine,
I'll get it. Just like, that's just the wrong. You're
just burning cash, man, You're burning cash. So sorry, that
was really long winded, but that's I mean, that's where
we live.
Speaker 8 (30:56):
I think it's look, I've seen the I mean, I
think getting into the psyche of the American gambler is
incredibly interesting.
Speaker 4 (31:08):
You know you talked about lottery.
Speaker 5 (31:09):
Well, not all lotteries created equal, right, I mean, when
like I don't play the daily number like ever, but
when the power ball hits you know, half a billion, Yeah,
I'm buying a ticket, right because I want that.
Speaker 4 (31:20):
I want that jackpot.
Speaker 9 (31:21):
I want to I want to go after that big sum,
just like a saying, well, I don't want to bet
a dollar on an even money money line. I want
to bet a dollar on a you know, eight game
parlay where I could win one hundred, right, And and
we see that in even like in brick and mortar gaming.
Speaker 4 (31:35):
I mean the rise over the last fifteen twenty years
of what.
Speaker 5 (31:38):
You know, what we call like carnival games, right, like
the all of the table games, like the Texas hold
on table.
Speaker 4 (31:43):
Game and the you know Cree stuff, right, and all
that stuff, I mean Spanish twenty one, like that's all
those are all higher hole games.
Speaker 5 (31:51):
But we have side bets and all of those types
of things that go on to that, which again are hot,
very high hold. But that's where the jackpots are, and
that's what everybody, that's what gets everyone's blood going, and
that's what they want to do.
Speaker 4 (32:03):
And for an individual better to bet an extra dollar on.
Speaker 5 (32:07):
A you know, blazon seventh bet is kind of like irrelevant, right,
Like it's not going to move the needle for them.
Oh I just lost a dollar because that bet didn't hit.
But if you're a casino, that's taking those bets in
from you know, gazillions of times. I mean, that stuff
really adds up.
Speaker 10 (32:23):
So when you talk about same game parlays and all
of those kinds of things that have really caught on
in the US, I think it's because they're feeding into
that desire for folks to take those lottery tickets metaphorically
and go after these long shot, higher ods bets.
Speaker 2 (32:39):
Yeah. And I think the other thing that's interesting, and
this is a little bit more and this again, we
just try and educate people on this. The operators when
we talk to them, is like, hey, there's two things
that lead into a very competitive market in the US. Right,
the US is already the US sports betting market's already
competitive from the jump. But the other thing that people
need to keep in mind is that US words best
(33:01):
are the most valuable customers that you can reach online.
Their propensity to spend is higher than any other customer
segment that exists anywhere else online. You don't think that
AMX and GMC and Budweiser and Procter and GET. You
don't think that those guys are trying to read that
same audience. So you've just taken a very competitive vertical
(33:22):
and now stack on top of that that every other
big top you know, Fortune one hundred brand is trying
to reach that same audience. And they are ten years
ahead of you in terms of sophistication, thirty of you
in terms of experience, and they are light years ahead
of you in terms of no regulation in terms of
what they can and can't do and can and can't say,
whereas an optor are very much you know, I don't
(33:44):
want to say hamstrung because it's required, but very much
have a higher barriered entry because of all the regulatory requirements.
I mean just the disclosures on the promotions alone, like okay,
cool and what's interesting. And again it's funny because like
we talked to operators and you're like, oh man, it discloses.
But yeah, dude, but look at all the farmer articles,
Look at all the farmer ads that run their disclosures
make yours look like a drop in the bucket, man, Like,
(34:07):
so it can be done, right, it can be. But
that's where it's like, it is almost that it's so competitive.
And this is where I go back to that product differentiation. Guys,
if you really want to be competitive in North Americans,
operator You can't just come to the market with a
me too product because right now, the core sports betting products,
even the products we're talking about right the same game
parlay as microbetting, like the product's commoditized. Any operator can
(34:29):
go and license simple bet. Any operator can go and
put the same game parlay products in their in their
in their in their product.
Speaker 1 (34:37):
Right.
Speaker 2 (34:38):
The difference is and this is where we're going to
start to see this and I think I think Fandolo
and DraftKings have done a good job of this up
to this point because they're digital natives, right, they were
born out of digital. They're not a brick and mortar
trying to do they're digital natives. The real competitive advantage
for the creators and come when they realize it's all
about personalization and it's all about data. From a product perspective,
(35:00):
How personalized can you make my product experience as a
better when I'm on your product so that I'm engaged
with that product in a way that is going to
keep me around and keep me sticky and as is
as intuitive as TikTok or Instagram's app is. Right at
the end of the day, you're competing for attention across
(35:20):
not just you know, a lot of everyone says share
of wall at share of wall at share of wallet. Well, yeah,
you can focus on share of wallet in the betting space,
but really you're looking at share of wall in terms
of attention across a consumer's attention span throughout the day
because they've got a very limited screen time. You know,
it's not limited they have. They have a limited time
that they're spending on their screen. How do you make
sure that your product is as an intuitive and is
easy to use and as engaging in interesting use as
(35:41):
those other products are, so that they want to they
want to use your product and that have to say,
you know, there's there's ways to do that properly. But
that's where we I think that's where again go back
to the original question, which is why are the European
operators Why is that it's been so hard for both
European operators trying to come to the US and brick
and order betting companies trying to go online. It's like,
(36:03):
you got to be you got to understand the consumer
mindset and you've got to be product oriented first. And
that product orient in the sense of, oh, I've got
this great market now that I've opened up for this
obscure port. No, no, no, Like, how are you going
to make your product as intuitive and easy to use
for the customers possible? And the example I always give is, hey,
I've bet on the Cowboys, and I've bet on a
(36:26):
handful of other things. If I log into your app,
why is it that you're showing me a US Open promo?
I've never bet on golf before in my life. I've
never looked at odds on your site. Like, I get it,
the US Open's coming up, you want to promote it,
but like, so what I've never engaged with that content? Right?
Like why is that what you're pushing to me? Right?
Or even like, hey, I've bet on boxing when I
(36:47):
throw it? When I open up your app, why are
you not? Like why are the first five bets in
my spread not boxing oriented? Right? Maybe you do, oh well,
hey it's MMA, Okay, it's boxing adjacent. Maybe I'm more
likely to engage with that then I would be in
you know, a horse race, right, it's like or or
you know, uh, you know some European women's basketball, right like,
(37:11):
but that's sort of what's interesting is you start and
you start to do this sort of product dissection of
these products. Like, guys like you open your TikTok feed.
I mean that algorithm is the best algorithm that's ever
been created in the planet, which is, hey, I'm a
video that I know is interesting to you because of
your prior viewing experience, but also because of everything that
everyone that you've engaged with has also engaged with. Right,
(37:34):
It's like, well, nobody's done that in betting. Nobody's figured
out Like, okay, cool, let me look at your betting behavior. Now,
let me put a betting experience in front of you
that speaks directly to your behavior. And every now and
then I'll drop something in, right, but it's not going
to be something that's overwhelmingly intrusive. It's like, okay, cool,
I know what your betting behaviors like to put the
bets in front of you that I know you're the
(37:55):
most likely to engage with. Right, Like, someone comes in
and all they do is same game parlays right, well,
and my entire appics on you on your sportsbook. Better
be same game part of us. And then every now
and then, hey man, there's a really interesting spread on
this game you want to play? Oh sure, I'll go,
I'll go pick the line on that. But like again
it's just like well and the proof and that is
(38:15):
look the look at the companies that are gambling adjacent,
that are single product oriented. So you know, I don't
like call it out brands, but I will, but like
price Picked, Price Picks is a single product. They're single,
they're not real money, they're obviously social stakes whatever you
want to call it dfs, but their product experience is
one experience, right, Like you go there and you get experiences.
(38:38):
So they know that they know what those users want,
they know what these users expect, and they just continue
to feed those users with exactly what it is that
those users are engaging with their core product experience. So
that's where it's again sorry to rent, but those are
the two areas where I think the operators have just
failed effictly just understanding the North American consumer and then
(38:58):
really really really going in on how do we make
our product as engaging and as interesting as possible?
Speaker 3 (39:07):
Excellent, fantastic across the board.
Speaker 1 (39:09):
Alan, I know we took up taking up a little
bit of your time here this morning, but if I
could selfishly, I want to know just quickly on this
because you deal a lot with socials. You know what's happening.
You just talked about TikTok and the algorithm. You know personally,
just from the content creator space, is there one that's
more profitable than the other. Is there something in the
(39:30):
future that you think, you know, if you're just starting
out whether again, I'm not talking about operator, I'm talking
about you know, people that are Jimmy's and Joe's out
there that are listening right now. Is there something that
you would be more specific to push that you think
is the next movement coming up here?
Speaker 2 (39:47):
Yeah, and I touched on it. It's it's these decentralized,
like hyper targeted groups of customers. Right. So, I think
if I was starting out today and I wanted to
create a site that going to allow me to build
a user base and then monetize that user base, I
would be focused on very hyper focused on three space channels.
(40:08):
One is TikTok because it's just it's still just so
wide open. I mean, it's just so there's it's so
wide open, and the amount of really engaging content you
can put out there for sports on TikTok is huge
because there's just so much you can do so much
to build a very hyper targeted on that platform. The
second would be Discord, So I would literally set up
(40:31):
my own Discord and I would I would go and
I would use talk to drive users into Discord group
that is hyper targeted around very specific sports related UH clusters,
so acc SEC, h NFC, North, NFC, South NFC, like
there's there's we've have've yet to see anyone really laster
(40:53):
sort of decentralization. And then the third, the third channel
I would really sort of go after, would be would
be ready. I mean it was, It's like, dude, there's
so much in Reddit. There's so much. It's it's a
massive audience hyper engaged. You can create really interesting and
hyper targeted, hyper targeted audiences and content. So it just
(41:15):
makes your job as a as a as a marketer,
and as a as a person trying to build an audience.
It just makes it super easy because you can talk
specifically to that market. You don't have to create this
crazy broad content that doesn't engage with anybody. It just
hits the key words. You can go in and say,
you can speak directly to that audience and have them
be hyper engaged. I mean again, we used everything that
(41:37):
we use data. Right, So there's not hyperbole, it's not
me guessing, is literally what the data has shown me,
which is efficiency TikTok. Right, Like, it's just you get
so hyper efficient with these micro influencers. And that's one
of the things I think that the industry's missed again
just because they don't know if they have enough manpower.
But we see way stronger return on engagement and return
(42:00):
on return on ads find ROAs we call return on adspin.
We see way way way higher turns on micro inslancers.
People who have five like we're talking sub ten thousand,
like two to five thousand people, but that audience is engaging.
They trust that customer and it's authentic. Right. The engagement
that we get from those types of deals is astronomically
(42:22):
hired some big branded partnership with some celebrity influencer who
does one tweet to their million customers and then it
is what it is. Right, there's I can tell all
day long, show you all day long examples of that
Twitter TikTok. I mean, it's just it's it's crazy, it's crazy.
Speaker 1 (42:38):
That's that's what we call a million dollars worth of
game right there, Evan Davis just dropping gems on us. Man,
fantastic stuff, Allen, This this was tremendous. Look like I said,
he gave us forty there, Evan, you close up shop
with you, sir.
Speaker 2 (42:52):
No.
Speaker 4 (42:52):
I look, I think this stuffs fascinating, right, And because.
Speaker 11 (42:58):
I think Alan, you know as well to anyone in
this industry, that everyone says we're in like the second
inning here, and no one believes it because you start
to see what are we seeing?
Speaker 4 (43:10):
What we're seeing operators.
Speaker 5 (43:11):
Leave the US not enter and so it looks like, oh,
we turned the page and now we're contracting and we're
a mature market. And I think that anyone on the
inside of this will tell you that's absolutely wrong. And
I've got to imagine you've got your eyes set on
what hell this is going to continue to evolve over
the next five to ten years.
Speaker 2 (43:32):
Yeah, I mean, I think Fanatics hasn't entered the chat
and everyone's like, yeah, but look what happened to Barstool
and no, listen, Fanatics is a different beast. The amount
of data and the fact that they're so hyper targeted
on getting customers to purchase if they even bring a
minutia of that sophistication to betting it's going to be
(43:53):
they can take really significant market share very quickly. And
you know, I think, yeah, I mean I can comment
on the those stuff all day long. Like to me,
barstool still has massive opportunity because nobody else has the
reach that they have into those sort of hyper targeted
groups I talked about right, Like, if you look at
barstools spread in their network, I think what their I
think their mistake was they just went too early. I
(44:14):
think they should have let that their audience mature a
little bit more, let them get out of college, let
them get let them get a job, and then start
to figure out how to monetize that audience. But yeah,
I think I agree with you, Evan. I think it's
you know, when we look around and yeah, you start
to see some of this and it's like my big
bet and I people hate it when I say it,
but my big bet is number one and two will
not be number one and two in the next five years.
(44:37):
It just is what it is. I you know, one
of them will fall and I to be honest with you,
the way that sort of the moves are going and
both of those arenas. I think both of them could
fall out of the top two positions.
Speaker 3 (44:48):
Yeah, very interesting, very interesting.
Speaker 2 (44:50):
It's a long it's a long shovel. That's my money, No,
look at it.
Speaker 1 (44:56):
There's a lot of things that have changed, and who
the hell can predict tomorrow, let alone five years.
Speaker 3 (45:00):
I would be totally in agreement with you on that one.
Speaker 2 (45:02):
I'm pretty sure Evan would.
Speaker 3 (45:03):
Be as well. Alan can't thank you enough, sir, continued success.
Speaker 1 (45:07):
We'll definitely be touching based down the road, and I
mean it, learned a ton here today on this episode
of Behind a VEG.
Speaker 3 (45:13):
Thank you very much for a few minutes today.
Speaker 2 (45:15):
Yeah, thank you guys for having me on, Thanks for
letting me rant appreciate it.
Speaker 3 (45:19):
Excellent stuff.
All right, Evan, without further ado, let's get to an
episode six Behind the Vague, and we got a great
guest as always, but this is a little bit different
than our previous guest because we're gonna find a little
bit more from the agency standpoint, marketing meets analytics, and
our next guest president and co founder for Acquired dot
bet and Intellects dot com. Hopefully I pronounced that right.
(00:27):
That's analytics and intelligence combined, Alan Stone. Alan, did I
get that right, sir?
Speaker 2 (00:33):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (00:33):
Intelligence, yep, excellent.
Speaker 1 (00:36):
All right, Well, first of all, thank you for joining
us here and behind the vegue, President and co founder
for Acquired dot Bet. Of course, we're gonna hit on
a little bit of everything here, Alan, but right from
the jump, we like to get a little gauge of
our guest and find out who he is and where
he's from. But we do that from a question that
is as follows, tell us your favorite childhood sports memory.
(01:02):
I see you're a new Mexico Lobo fan, so I've
been doing some digging there talking about the mount West.
You guys are actually the second college football game this
season ready to go off. You're going up against Montana State.
I believe slight underdog, but if you wouldn't mind bring
us behind the curtain for Allan Stone, a young Allan Stone.
Speaker 3 (01:20):
Your favorite childhood sports memory, sir.
Speaker 2 (01:24):
Favorite childhood sports memory, man, I eight to do it,
but I got to go back to you know, I
played college football, but I got to go back to
the glory days of high school football. Senior year going
into play Trinity High School US an to day, number
three team in the country. We're two touchdown underdogs, and
we changed up our offensive game plan. I'd been playing
(01:46):
defense all year. They put me back at running back
and I rushed for two hundred yards and two touchdowns
and we ended up taking them, taking them down by
two touchdowns twenty eight to fourteen. So that's probably probably
the highlight of my high school career, but definitely one
of my favorite memories as a child man.
Speaker 1 (02:02):
Yeah, I love it, Evan, And our first one that
goes back to his record books.
Speaker 3 (02:09):
I like that.
Speaker 2 (02:09):
There.
Speaker 3 (02:09):
That's a nice little pull, Alan.
Speaker 4 (02:11):
Yeah, I don't.
Speaker 5 (02:13):
I don't have my own athletic accomplishments out my own
memories or of any of our other guests, I don't think.
Speaker 4 (02:20):
So this is our first one.
Speaker 1 (02:22):
I like that and also, Allan, you brought up the
two touchdown underdog. What year are we talking about? And
how to hell did you know what the spread was?
Speaker 2 (02:30):
That's two thousand and two, and we knew the spread
because our coach, our coach put it up. He was like,
look they I mean it was you know, it's kind
of like the classic dabos. Hey, man, they don't respect us.
They don't they think they're going to wipe the floor
with us. You know, they're rolling into this game thinking
it's a warm up for their next game. You know,
we used it as we use it as fuel, right So,
(02:52):
And I mean, look, I don't care what anybody says
Texas high school football. Everybody knows the spreads in Texas
high school football, man, that is the talk of the
town from Wednesday until Friday night kickoff. Everybody's like, Oh,
who's got the who's got the edge, Who's who's who's
got who, who's got money on who? Right?
Speaker 1 (03:06):
So, so essentially Friday night lights, is that what we're
talking about with you?
Speaker 3 (03:11):
And in your high school career.
Speaker 2 (03:13):
Yeah, yeah, Friday Lights Dallas. I was an art in
Texas Arlington Lamar High School in Texas.
Speaker 1 (03:18):
Yeah, we dang that is that's bread and butter high
school football right there.
Speaker 3 (03:24):
You're not lying about that? Excellent?
Speaker 1 (03:26):
All right, Well we've got a lot to discuss with you,
all right, So first of all, please acquire dot bet
bring us on the inside.
Speaker 3 (03:34):
What is acquire dot bet let's start there.
Speaker 2 (03:37):
Yeah, soquire dot bet is a We are a user
acquisition agency. We do a couple of different there's a
few different things that we do, but the sort of
core businesses we help operators acquire customers and we do
that a few different ways. One is have a an
affiliate network of partner network that we operate on behalf
(03:57):
of the operators. So we work about thirty five hundred
different publishers worldwide, work with about four hundred operators worldwide
at this point, just driving them traffic, making that connection
between Hey, you know you've got a side that focuses
on cricket in India. This is the operator that wants
to that you should be working with to push players too.
(04:17):
Writ And we also have an internal agency, so we
actually brands come to us and they want us to
help them optimize channels, usually Meta, Google, PPC, TikTok basically
any of the programmatic biddable media placements. That's where we
really focus energy on. And then we have a number
of own operated properties, so we have our own publishing
(04:41):
properties where we're focused on. Really, what we're focused on
is sort of the mill idea that a lot of
people don't focus on. So if you look at how
operators tend to spend their budgets, they fall into sort
of one to two ends of the spectrum. Top a
line sort of branded national campaigns and then really hyper intent,
(05:02):
very specific organic SEO through their affiliate partnerships with you know,
the guys like Better Collective and gamin dot Com and
rike Tech and those guys. So our focus is that
middle round. It's the hey, where are there signals that
we can get around sports enthusiasts and people who maybe
are into gaming or betting that being targeted or reached
(05:25):
on either of those two spectrums. It's that sort of
middle ground, if you will, So.
Speaker 5 (05:30):
Take take us inside a bit, if you will, and
take one step back and talk to us about sort
of the whole affiliate world within within sports betting and
and you know how this functions and and how these
companies are monetizing when they essentially are being able to
send traffic to regulated sports books in the US.
Speaker 4 (05:52):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (05:52):
So mean, look, the affiliate world in the US sports
betting community is a little bit interesting because the whole
premise is, Hey, as an operator, can I align with
partners who have reach into the audience that I want
to engage with my product? And there's a lot of
different ways you can do that, But the affiliate model
is a great and really attractive one, and I think
(06:13):
one that's actually significantly highly underutilized this space. And the
reason's attractive is because you're you're it's a lower risk model, right,
You're paying for performance. You're you're going and you're delivering
a partnership. You're creating a partnership with someone who's going
to deliver you not just eyeballs and clicks, but actual
paying customers. And that's what you pay them for, is
those customers they actually deliver, you know, clicks to a
(06:36):
landing page or anything like that. So yeah, I mean,
the affiliates, the afilliate model is really great one. It's
been around a long time in a lot of different industries.
You know, the gaming industry really sort of pioneered it
in the early two thousands, I would say they drove
a lot of the sort of initial in the international markets,
the initial sort of really interesting growth, but then it
(06:56):
kind of stagnated for a lot of different reasons. We
don't have enough time to go into those reasons. But
so now with the US market being regulated and opening up,
it's it's still a very attractive business model, and it's
still a really attractive partnership model for a lot of operators.
But there are a lot of hoops to jump through
now in order to make that happen.
Speaker 3 (07:17):
And I see that you guys are acquired.
Speaker 1 (07:19):
I bet was just up for it was on a
short list for an e GR Global North American Awards.
Speaker 3 (07:25):
Nice work on that one. Great right up, Allan is
a tremendous, tremendous follow on LinkedIn.
Speaker 1 (07:31):
I don't say that often. There are a very few
things you know, LinkedIn is it had its moment. But
I think you did it right. You're you're absolutely crushing
it right now. So I would recommend anybody that's listening
go follow Alan on that one. I want to pick
up what you said underutilized.
Speaker 3 (07:47):
Why do you say that it did that? The affiliate
way is underutilized in the sports gambling space.
Speaker 2 (07:56):
Oh man, So it's a it's really sort of it's
a deep question. And the reason I think it's underutilized
is there's been a handful of guys who've done a
very good job of creating very large, successful businesses as
affiliates that are commanding a certain type of view of
(08:19):
what affiliates are and could be. And I think that's
very narrow minded. And so when a lot of times
when operators hear the word affiliate or or performance partner,
they immediately go to, you know, a publicly traded European
based SEO, sort of heavy type of a business, right
(08:39):
where again very high intent users, but also very expensive
users and very expensive users because because of that high
intent they obviously are valuable users, but also because there's
a limited number of guys who have cornered that traffic channel,
if you will, they sort of drive the market up
(09:00):
in terms of competition. And so a lot of times
when again, when when when an operator here's the word affiliate,
what they think is okay, cool, I know who the
affiliates are in the space. It's a you know, a
handful to two dozen guys that they've seen on organic
control page one through five of Google, of all the organicistings,
and the reality is that's those are great partners and
(09:20):
you should be doing business all those But really the
affiliate world, the affiliate universe, is much broader than that
there are If you look at other verticals and you
look at those types of partnerships and other verticals, they
represent maybe twelve to twenty five percent of their affiliate business.
And when I say that, what I mean is the
high intent organic SEO affiliates. The rest of their affiliate
(09:41):
business are Tier one, Tier two, Tier three, programmatic, performance
network ad buyers. You've got email you know, guys who
have email distribution. You've got guys who have you know,
a lot of discord communities right that are affiliates. Essentially,
you've got a lot of really interesting apps that maybe
(10:03):
pop up that are content or some other free to
play either data or gaming community, and they could also affiliates. Again,
you're never going to see those guys ranked in the
top five on Google or page one through three on Google.
But they are still a very uh you know, they
still have a very thriving community of traffic and players
(10:24):
that those operators should be interested in speaking to and
reaching uh and they are, you know, third party arbiters
of where should you, as a player, based on what
you're interested in be playing your dollars? Where should you
spending dollars? Where should you be focusing your share of
wallet between all of the different operators that might exist
(10:45):
in the market that you that you live in.
Speaker 4 (10:47):
Right, So, so tell me you've got another company in
televiex and.
Speaker 5 (10:54):
How do or analytics, how did how does that company
sort of factor into what are doing here with acquire Bag.
Speaker 2 (11:03):
Yeah, so Antalytics is really angine. So we originally built
Antalytics to be our internal data warehouse and bi tool,
and we started building that platform back in twenty twelve,
and we for the longest time it was our sort
of competitive advantage, if you will, right, it was the
thing that gave us a competitive vantage over any of
our computers, sort of carved out our stake in the
(11:26):
space in terms of what we were doing. Very uniquely.
We realized around twenty nineteen twenty twenty, we realized that
in order for the operators in North America to be successful,
they needed better technology than what we're currently being provided
to them from a marketing technology perspective, and the reason
for that is there's a couple of reasons for that.
(11:48):
One is all of the the shell sort of broad
market martech just isn't built to service gaming because it
is very unique in terms of what's required from a
regulatory perspective, required in terms of how they engage with
customers and also how they actually mechanically, how operators actually
mechanically run the business. And the existing gaming specific platforms
(12:11):
were very heavily built fifteen twenty years ago to service
the European market, which again is very different than what
the North American market is. And so as the North
American market started to pick ups, team, what we saw
was there was a there was a need from an
operator's perspective to put to bring to market a Martech
that was very much focused on what are the problems
(12:33):
that operators in North America specifically are needing to challenge,
needing to solve today and can we solve those problems?
And we had already done a lot of legwork again
trying to answer a lot of these problems internally, and
so we decided to repackage what we built internally, brought
in a proper CTO, spent two years just rebuilding the
platform as a true SaaS sort of multi tenant scalable
(12:57):
system that operators could license from us, and we could
give them the data and power that we've been using
to scale our business to Again, you know, not to
throw out crazy numbers, but we do more volume on
a daily basis in terms of new user acquisition than
most operators do on a daily basis, just because of
(13:17):
again our worldwide footprint and what we've built over the
last twenty years. Right, So, yeah, it was really the
way that antalytics fits into all that is it is
the technology system that allows arders to go out and
create those partnerships and understand where am I spending money,
what am I getting in terms of a return based
(13:38):
on new customers, but not just that, what are those
customers actually doing inside of my product that's driving value
so can't so then they can make more intelligent decisions
on where do I spend my dollars today to ensure
that I'm going to get a return on investment from
the players I'm acquiring five six, seventy nine to twelve
months down the road up to you know, five years
(13:59):
down the road of those plays is going to stick
around and become those really long term, valuable customers that
I really want to go and get as an operator.
Speaker 6 (14:07):
So take take us inside of that last thing that
you just said a bit if you can, because you know,
we all know that not every customer is created equal
for any business, right, you have some customers that spend
more and something that spend less, obviously, but but there's
a lot of differences beyond just how much are people wagering,
(14:28):
right in terms of operators differentiating like what customers do
I want?
Speaker 5 (14:33):
How do I market to these customers? So take us
take us into and out a job if you can,
and what what are those differences?
Speaker 2 (14:42):
Yeah, and it's really interesting because it depends on the
operator and where they're at in their business cycle and
where they're at in in terms of market Right. Are
they in one state? Are they in multi state? Are
those multi states regionally clustered? Are they spread out across
the US? Right? So there's a lot for ways that
you can sort of attack that. But to your point, yeah,
(15:03):
not every customer is created equal. And part of what
we wanted to build and the reason we build the
technology that we did was to give the operators and
insights to say, hey, you might have a partner who's
delivering you players for much lower cost than what you're
used to seeing. But those players are returning on that
lower cost, not at the same rate that everybody else is.
(15:25):
But you're still our positive. Why would you go and
just and kill that campaign because oh, well, they're not
hitting this month, one tier, Well they're not hitting that
one year, but they cost you fifty percent less than
what everybody else is costing you. So net Net, actually
that customer fits the return profile that you're actually looking for.
On the flip side, we see the exact inverse on
(15:47):
the flip side, where it's like, hey, you might have
someone who's got pockets of customers that are very expensive
to acquire, but they're going to return five times your
average lifetime value because of their behavior, socioeconomic demograph, and
maybe even just the type of relationship that that partner
has with those players, like literally walking in a bunch
of high rollers or a bunch of you know, a
(16:09):
bunch of really savvy betters, right, And so really our
job from the technology perspective is to help unearth those
insights for the operators so then they can take that
and they can now use that to say Okay, I'm
going to go and find more partnerships that have players
who look and feel like this, and there's really a
(16:29):
way for them to determine that until that partners deliver
them players. So that's where it becomes critical in terms
of our platform to understand what is the behavior of
the players and how does that behavior map to the
historical performance of all the other players you required that
look like profitable players or that are profitable players for
you as as an operator. What's really interesting is this space.
(16:53):
You know, one of the reasons we built the technology
is because if you look at the sports betting industry
in the broader in the context of a broader gaming industry,
Whi's very interesting and EIK about real money gaming is
there is no defined product set right. There's not a
you know, buy widget A for X dollars or buy
(17:14):
widget B for dollars. Any player could come in and
they could deposit ten dollars, they could deposit ten thousand dollars.
You have no idea of knowing what that's going to
look like unless you have prior betting signal from that customer.
There's no way to understand some runs propensity to gamble
based on their socioeconomic and demographic data other than have
(17:36):
they given you the signal that they've gambled before. Like
any other space, they can go, oh, you live in
this zip code, you have this income, you drive this
type of car. I can assume that your purchase being
able to be like this. Betting is very unique in
that you could have two guys that look exact same
on paper, right, all the data checks the same, but
this one guy, for whatever reason, just has a risk
(17:57):
profile that says, you know what, I'm going to take
a thousand bucks week and put it on whatever team
I want to and I can do that, I can
afford it, and that's entertainment to me, whereas the other
guy's like, no, no, I'm going to spend a thousand
bucks a week on dinner and wine with my wife,
and that's that's just is what it is. And there's
no way to get that signal other than to see, oh,
this player has actually bat before, and so our jobs
(18:18):
to say, okay, how do you start to look at
what are those signals? How do you identify the right signals?
And then how do you make sure that the traffic
that you're acquiring from your partners is delivering as many
of those players as possible that are giving you those
signals to say, Okay, yeah, these guys are going to
be long term valuable customers for us. And then to
do that at scale. And when I'm by scale, we're
talking you know, five hundred million to a billion clicks
(18:39):
a month across you know, a million different sites delivering
a few million play a month. Right, So that's that's
what's really becomes interesting. You can do anyone can do
that on a one or two or three or four
partner basis, but to really get that done at scale,
and to achieve that scale, you've got to be able
to leverage technology for sure.
Speaker 5 (18:58):
Do you just have like an army of that nerves
that's basically like cranking the stuff out and behind the
scenes or what's happening here?
Speaker 2 (19:07):
Uh yeah, I mean you could say that, yes, But
interestingly enough, interesting enough, we over index for people who
are very good at computer science encoding, but are also
happy to be I hate to use the term but djens, right,
like guys that are guys that love sports, betting, guys
that love sports, guys that love anything. Where there's a
(19:29):
highest codard, there's a it's you know, it's a running
joke in the office that every everyone in our offense,
if you're to look at them, it's like, oh yeah,
you fit the profile of a sports better and be
like a crypto trader. That's really what a lot of
the guys in the office are are really obsessed with.
So it's kind of nice because we're in the mindset
of the customer too, right, We're in the customer and
ultimately the player, right. So it's a lot of fun.
(19:52):
So intriguing.
Speaker 4 (19:54):
So where does all come from?
Speaker 7 (19:55):
Like your your you know, Friday Night Lights in Texas, Mexico,
Lobo and now and now launching and running this incredibly
complicated you know, analytics needs marketing site for sports betting platforms,
like what's what?
Speaker 4 (20:10):
How did how did a get to be?
Speaker 2 (20:13):
You want the long story? Yeah, yeah, yeah, I mean
it's it's it is. I mean, look, it's it's really
this crazy intersection. So all right, So in college early
two thousand's ended up running a backhouse poker game with
my with my college roommate. So that was my sort
of introduction to betting. Had a background just from a
(20:35):
family business of finance and data and computer science, uh.
And then in college was exposed very early on to
digital marketing. So I was part of a me and
a buddy actually started buying on Google Ads within what
we were one of the first one hundred to start
buying when Google released their paid ads platform, the PPC platform.
So did a bunch of different stuff. Fast forward, fast
(20:57):
forward twenty ten. I had in the digital advertising space.
So once I got the bit by the digital advertising bug,
I was just there right And the business I had
done up to that was all sort of consumer finance
domestic got in twenty ten one of my business customers
who ended up becoming my partner, Warren Jolly, he's my
(21:18):
owner in these in these businesses. He and I went
to dinner and we're just talking about, Hey, what's what
are you doing? What are you up to? What's next?
I really have a plan. He at the time, I
think was running like six or seven different businesses, and
one of them happened to be this gaming business called
cap casinophillyproms dot com really old legacy domain that was
(21:40):
a clear that was basically like a forum for website
moderators in the betting space. And so I came in
and took a look at that business and just fell
in love with it. It was like, oh man, I
love sports, I love betting, I love mark digital marketing.
This is the ven diagram of all those things coming together.
And so that's when we started out, and we were
(22:00):
very early on buying. We started buying ads on Facebook
before there was any type of regulation for gaming. It
was just wild West, And we started buying ads for
all of our international because again, nothing invests at that point.
You know, this is this is post PASSPA, right, like
there's a posts you I goa there's nothing U pre passed,
but there's there's nothing that we can do domestically. So
everything we're doing is internationally. And just again car saw
(22:24):
the saw that hey there's already these really big guys
that control se O, and saw the big branded what
we call above the lines, like, well, that's not our universe.
Great our universe. We can carve out this little niche
where it's like, hey, it's digital, but it's not SEO.
So we got to do a little bit more work
to identify and then warm up those customers before they
actually do take action in the betting platforms. And just
(22:47):
kept doing that and ding that doing that, and you
know went through the Facebook up and down, Instagram up
and downs, TikTok, Twitter, and now we're buying, We're buying
across all these platforms, and then it is we you know,
we always had an I for the domestic market, but
everything we were doing was international, and as soon as
the US market started open up, we were we were
there really quick, really early. So remember New Jersey. I
(23:10):
think we got vendor certified New Jersey in twenty thirteen
on the iking side. And then you know, as soon
as as soon as the past per appeal happened and
everyone started going big on sports betting, that's we had
already identified that anyone that's going to be in sports
betting in North America needed to have a differentiated martech
stack and data setup. And so that's why we really
(23:31):
went heavy on our on our inside, we already had
the traffic machine running. It was just a matter of
turning on you know, the taps in the US market.
But really the innovation was on the data side, on
the on the last product side, that was like, hey,
how do we get as many operators in North America
to use our technology as possible to equip them to
be successful in North America.
Speaker 5 (23:51):
Now, now you said this earlier, right, the Europe's been
around for a while, but the North American market has
been different and different in a lot of ways, different players,
different operators, and different service providers like you guys.
Speaker 4 (24:06):
So what is it about?
Speaker 5 (24:09):
Because that's sort of the one thing that I think
we here in America forget is we all say, oh,
this industry is six years old.
Speaker 4 (24:15):
Well it's it's not. It's a lot older than that,
and it's been a lot older than that. And yet
time and again we see.
Speaker 5 (24:23):
These companies that have been successful abroad trying to come
into the US and really struggle, whether they're operators or
service providers. So what is it that's been so different?
Because you're you're an American company, but you, as you
just said, you started out really servicing other countries. What
what is it about this market that's been so different
and it made that transition so challenging for a lot
(24:45):
of companies that are trying to do it.
Speaker 2 (24:49):
That's a great question. Uh, And this is one of
the things I would say that the you know, five
years from now, they'll probably be a Harvard case study
on it. But in terms of in terms of where
we sit and when we when we diagnose, Hey, why
did you know why was it that supergroup bet Way
decided to pull out of the North American market? I
mean literally probably the largest, if not one of the
(25:11):
top three largest company world and they pulled the plug
on it. You know, there's other examples, right like why
didn't barstool work? Right? What? There's so there's a lot
of different ways said. I think if you were to
boil it down to the core, it was I think
that those operators severely underestimated the impact of season long
(25:37):
and DFS would have a North American player mindset. I
think they severely underestimated how much different their product needed
to be in North America to be attractive to those
sports betters who have been conditioned for the last thirty
years on season long and dfs. And you know, one
of the things we talk about is in North America
(25:59):
the two biggest sort of regulated betting nationwide products are
lottery and fantasy. So when sports betting legalized here, it
was like, you have a very immature audience and you
have a bunch of guys. I mean, look sports betting
in Europe, in the UK, is you go for three
hundred years, right, Ladbrokes and Wynnmill are two hundred and
fifty plus year old brands. It is a very mature,
(26:22):
very different market mindset for sports betting than than North
America is. And I think you're starting to see what's
interesting is taken this long. But you know, we actually
just I just had a conversation couple of guys about
the operators are just waking up to same game parlay
micro betting. These are not flash in the pan, you know, Oh,
(26:44):
it's a Choschki product of the day. No, Like, if
you look at the performance of these guys across states
and across markets, you're seeing like, oh, holds going up
across the board. Well, why is that? Well, because those
products are a higher hold product. Well why is it
that so interesting? Why do the coms in North America
want and demand those products? Well, because your top one
percent of one percent of betters are still the old
(27:06):
school traditional money line spread type best right, the sharps.
But the vast majority of the North American market is
not there yet. They're just not educated enough and they're
not the industry's not maure enough to put them into
that category. They're looking for the five dollars same game
parlay that's going to pay them, you know, fifty thousand dollars, right,
(27:27):
like those sixteen leg they're lottery tickets. Man Like, at
the end of the day, it is, it is what
it is. And why is that, Well, it's because they're
an immature it's an immature product. It's an immature market.
So it's a simple product. But also that's what the
North American betting market has been for the last fifews.
Like you want to go buy bet legally in North Amarka.
You play the lottery in just about every state. Right.
(27:49):
Or if you're a sports fan and you're like, want
to engage in sports outside of just watching the sport,
how have you done that? You've done season long and
with daily Fantasy, and those are both. You know, season
long is different because not really any money trading hands,
so to speak, Right, But dfs also put them in
that mindset of multiplayer I mean dfs essentially the mechanics
of it, it's very similar to the same you know
(28:10):
to a parlay, right, you're picking you're picking player performance
based on it's not based on outcome, it's based on
player performance over a number of games, So why wouldn't
that fit the profile of a North American player? And
I think that's where number one, that's where they're wrong
from a product perspective. I think number two where they
went wrong is from North American consumer engagement. I think
(28:31):
they were trying to use the tactics that they use
to reach their customers in Europe right above the line
big brand partnerships with with big media attribution companies, which
are very attractive here because the biggest media companies in
the world are based here, Right, But the North American
consumer does not engage media in the same way that
the European consumer does. From that perspective, right, it's very
(28:53):
much you know where these guys ignored, is they They
ignored all the I say, ignored the use that term
very broadly, But they didn't put the right to effort
energy into understanding where can I reach that customer? Is
it Facebook? Is it talk? Is it a discord group?
Is it a Reddit thread for Michigan Wolverine betters? Right, Like,
(29:13):
there's a very much that I would say, it's a
much more decentralized approach to reaching the North American betting
market that you don't that you don't have in Europe.
It just doesn't. It doesn't functions they can go and
get those media deals. I think the other thing that
people miss too when they look at North America versus Europe,
they think, okay, well North America. If you look at
(29:35):
all of the US, they sort of because we're a
single nation, They're like, okay, well the US market, Well, no,
the US market is actually a lot like the European
market in that each state is like its own country.
And that was one of the first things that we
tried to educate the operators who we were working with
that were coming over it, like, hey, you look at
the US as a total country, you need to look
at like New Jersey's the same size as Sweden. Okay,
(29:56):
so who are the biggest operators in Sweden? What are
they doing there? And then that's the that's you have
to pack New Jersey like you have to literally be
boots on the ground in New Jersey and attack New Jersey.
Same thing. Every time a state opens up. We would
sit there and ask these operators, when this new market
opens up in Europe, do you just open a new
desk and then just say, oh, now we can services market? No,
(30:17):
you actually have an office in that market, VIP managers
that sit in that market, with traders who sit in
that market, with you know, banking guys that sit in
that market, because every market is different, and I think
that they just assumed, oh, the US is the US
is the US? Well no, no, Like New Jersey is
very different than Pennsylvania, which is very different than Michigan,
which is going to be very different than Arizona. You
have you have to have a very distributed and multi
(30:39):
state approach in order to be successful. And I think
people just thought, oh, I'll sponsor the NHL. It's fine,
I'll get it. Just like, that's just the wrong. You're
just burning cash, man, You're burning cash. So sorry, that
was really long winded, but that's I mean, that's where
we live.
Speaker 8 (30:56):
I think it's look, I've seen the I mean, I
think getting into the psyche of the American gambler is
incredibly interesting.
Speaker 4 (31:08):
You know you talked about lottery.
Speaker 5 (31:09):
Well, not all lotteries created equal, right, I mean, when
like I don't play the daily number like ever, but
when the power ball hits you know, half a billion, Yeah,
I'm buying a ticket, right because I want that.
Speaker 4 (31:20):
I want that jackpot.
Speaker 9 (31:21):
I want to I want to go after that big sum,
just like a saying, well, I don't want to bet
a dollar on an even money money line. I want
to bet a dollar on a you know, eight game
parlay where I could win one hundred, right, And and
we see that in even like in brick and mortar gaming.
Speaker 4 (31:35):
I mean the rise over the last fifteen twenty years
of what.
Speaker 5 (31:38):
You know, what we call like carnival games, right, like
the all of the table games, like the Texas hold
on table.
Speaker 4 (31:43):
Game and the you know Cree stuff, right, and all
that stuff, I mean Spanish twenty one, like that's all
those are all higher hole games.
Speaker 5 (31:51):
But we have side bets and all of those types
of things that go on to that, which again are hot,
very high hold. But that's where the jackpots are, and
that's what everybody, that's what gets everyone's blood going, and
that's what they want to do.
Speaker 4 (32:03):
And for an individual better to bet an extra dollar on.
Speaker 5 (32:07):
A you know, blazon seventh bet is kind of like irrelevant, right,
Like it's not going to move the needle for them.
Oh I just lost a dollar because that bet didn't hit.
But if you're a casino, that's taking those bets in
from you know, gazillions of times. I mean, that stuff
really adds up.
Speaker 10 (32:23):
So when you talk about same game parlays and all
of those kinds of things that have really caught on
in the US, I think it's because they're feeding into
that desire for folks to take those lottery tickets metaphorically
and go after these long shot, higher ods bets.
Speaker 2 (32:39):
Yeah. And I think the other thing that's interesting, and
this is a little bit more and this again, we
just try and educate people on this. The operators when
we talk to them, is like, hey, there's two things
that lead into a very competitive market in the US. Right,
the US is already the US sports betting market's already
competitive from the jump. But the other thing that people
need to keep in mind is that US words best
(33:01):
are the most valuable customers that you can reach online.
Their propensity to spend is higher than any other customer
segment that exists anywhere else online. You don't think that
AMX and GMC and Budweiser and Procter and GET. You
don't think that those guys are trying to read that
same audience. So you've just taken a very competitive vertical
(33:22):
and now stack on top of that that every other
big top you know, Fortune one hundred brand is trying
to reach that same audience. And they are ten years
ahead of you in terms of sophistication, thirty of you
in terms of experience, and they are light years ahead
of you in terms of no regulation in terms of
what they can and can't do and can and can't say,
whereas an optor are very much you know, I don't
(33:44):
want to say hamstrung because it's required, but very much
have a higher barriered entry because of all the regulatory requirements.
I mean just the disclosures on the promotions alone, like okay,
cool and what's interesting. And again it's funny because like
we talked to operators and you're like, oh man, it discloses.
But yeah, dude, but look at all the farmer articles,
Look at all the farmer ads that run their disclosures
make yours look like a drop in the bucket, man, Like,
(34:07):
so it can be done, right, it can be. But
that's where it's like, it is almost that it's so competitive.
And this is where I go back to that product differentiation. Guys,
if you really want to be competitive in North Americans,
operator You can't just come to the market with a
me too product because right now, the core sports betting products,
even the products we're talking about right the same game
parlay as microbetting, like the product's commoditized. Any operator can
(34:29):
go and license simple bet. Any operator can go and
put the same game parlay products in their in their
in their in their product.
Speaker 1 (34:37):
Right.
Speaker 2 (34:38):
The difference is and this is where we're going to
start to see this and I think I think Fandolo
and DraftKings have done a good job of this up
to this point because they're digital natives, right, they were
born out of digital. They're not a brick and mortar
trying to do they're digital natives. The real competitive advantage
for the creators and come when they realize it's all
about personalization and it's all about data. From a product perspective,
(35:00):
How personalized can you make my product experience as a
better when I'm on your product so that I'm engaged
with that product in a way that is going to
keep me around and keep me sticky and as is
as intuitive as TikTok or Instagram's app is. Right at
the end of the day, you're competing for attention across
(35:20):
not just you know, a lot of everyone says share
of wall at share of wall at share of wallet. Well, yeah,
you can focus on share of wallet in the betting space,
but really you're looking at share of wall in terms
of attention across a consumer's attention span throughout the day
because they've got a very limited screen time. You know,
it's not limited they have. They have a limited time
that they're spending on their screen. How do you make
sure that your product is as an intuitive and is
easy to use and as engaging in interesting use as
(35:41):
those other products are, so that they want to they
want to use your product and that have to say,
you know, there's there's ways to do that properly. But
that's where we I think that's where again go back
to the original question, which is why are the European
operators Why is that it's been so hard for both
European operators trying to come to the US and brick
and order betting companies trying to go online. It's like,
(36:03):
you got to be you got to understand the consumer
mindset and you've got to be product oriented first. And
that product orient in the sense of, oh, I've got
this great market now that I've opened up for this
obscure port. No, no, no, Like, how are you going
to make your product as intuitive and easy to use
for the customers possible? And the example I always give is, hey,
I've bet on the Cowboys, and I've bet on a
(36:26):
handful of other things. If I log into your app,
why is it that you're showing me a US Open promo?
I've never bet on golf before in my life. I've
never looked at odds on your site. Like, I get it,
the US Open's coming up, you want to promote it,
but like, so what I've never engaged with that content? Right?
Like why is that what you're pushing to me? Right?
Or even like, hey, I've bet on boxing when I
(36:47):
throw it? When I open up your app, why are
you not? Like why are the first five bets in
my spread not boxing oriented? Right? Maybe you do, oh well,
hey it's MMA, Okay, it's boxing adjacent. Maybe I'm more
likely to engage with that then I would be in
you know, a horse race, right, it's like or or
you know, uh, you know some European women's basketball, right like,
(37:11):
but that's sort of what's interesting is you start and
you start to do this sort of product dissection of
these products. Like, guys like you open your TikTok feed.
I mean that algorithm is the best algorithm that's ever
been created in the planet, which is, hey, I'm a
video that I know is interesting to you because of
your prior viewing experience, but also because of everything that
everyone that you've engaged with has also engaged with. Right,
(37:34):
It's like, well, nobody's done that in betting. Nobody's figured
out Like, okay, cool, let me look at your betting behavior. Now,
let me put a betting experience in front of you
that speaks directly to your behavior. And every now and
then I'll drop something in, right, but it's not going
to be something that's overwhelmingly intrusive. It's like, okay, cool,
I know what your betting behaviors like to put the
bets in front of you that I know you're the
(37:55):
most likely to engage with. Right, Like, someone comes in
and all they do is same game parlays right, well,
and my entire appics on you on your sportsbook. Better
be same game part of us. And then every now
and then, hey man, there's a really interesting spread on
this game you want to play? Oh sure, I'll go,
I'll go pick the line on that. But like again
it's just like well and the proof and that is
(38:15):
look the look at the companies that are gambling adjacent,
that are single product oriented. So you know, I don't
like call it out brands, but I will, but like
price Picked, Price Picks is a single product. They're single,
they're not real money, they're obviously social stakes whatever you
want to call it dfs, but their product experience is
one experience, right, Like you go there and you get experiences.
(38:38):
So they know that they know what those users want,
they know what these users expect, and they just continue
to feed those users with exactly what it is that
those users are engaging with their core product experience. So
that's where it's again sorry to rent, but those are
the two areas where I think the operators have just
failed effictly just understanding the North American consumer and then
(38:58):
really really really going in on how do we make
our product as engaging and as interesting as possible?
Speaker 3 (39:07):
Excellent, fantastic across the board.
Speaker 1 (39:09):
Alan, I know we took up taking up a little
bit of your time here this morning, but if I
could selfishly, I want to know just quickly on this
because you deal a lot with socials. You know what's happening.
You just talked about TikTok and the algorithm. You know personally,
just from the content creator space, is there one that's
more profitable than the other. Is there something in the
(39:30):
future that you think, you know, if you're just starting
out whether again, I'm not talking about operator, I'm talking
about you know, people that are Jimmy's and Joe's out
there that are listening right now. Is there something that
you would be more specific to push that you think
is the next movement coming up here?
Speaker 2 (39:47):
Yeah, and I touched on it. It's it's these decentralized,
like hyper targeted groups of customers. Right. So, I think
if I was starting out today and I wanted to
create a site that going to allow me to build
a user base and then monetize that user base, I
would be focused on very hyper focused on three space channels.
(40:08):
One is TikTok because it's just it's still just so
wide open. I mean, it's just so there's it's so
wide open, and the amount of really engaging content you
can put out there for sports on TikTok is huge
because there's just so much you can do so much
to build a very hyper targeted on that platform. The
second would be Discord, So I would literally set up
(40:31):
my own Discord and I would I would go and
I would use talk to drive users into Discord group
that is hyper targeted around very specific sports related UH clusters,
so acc SEC, h NFC, North, NFC, South NFC, like
there's there's we've have've yet to see anyone really laster
(40:53):
sort of decentralization. And then the third, the third channel
I would really sort of go after, would be would
be ready. I mean it was, It's like, dude, there's
so much in Reddit. There's so much. It's it's a
massive audience hyper engaged. You can create really interesting and
hyper targeted, hyper targeted audiences and content. So it just
(41:15):
makes your job as a as a as a marketer,
and as a as a person trying to build an audience.
It just makes it super easy because you can talk
specifically to that market. You don't have to create this
crazy broad content that doesn't engage with anybody. It just
hits the key words. You can go in and say,
you can speak directly to that audience and have them
be hyper engaged. I mean again, we used everything that
(41:37):
we use data. Right, So there's not hyperbole, it's not
me guessing, is literally what the data has shown me,
which is efficiency TikTok. Right, Like, it's just you get
so hyper efficient with these micro influencers. And that's one
of the things I think that the industry's missed again
just because they don't know if they have enough manpower.
But we see way stronger return on engagement and return
(42:00):
on return on ads find ROAs we call return on adspin.
We see way way way higher turns on micro inslancers.
People who have five like we're talking sub ten thousand,
like two to five thousand people, but that audience is engaging.
They trust that customer and it's authentic. Right. The engagement
that we get from those types of deals is astronomically
(42:22):
hired some big branded partnership with some celebrity influencer who
does one tweet to their million customers and then it
is what it is. Right, there's I can tell all
day long, show you all day long examples of that
Twitter TikTok. I mean, it's just it's it's crazy, it's crazy.
Speaker 1 (42:38):
That's that's what we call a million dollars worth of
game right there, Evan Davis just dropping gems on us. Man,
fantastic stuff, Allen, This this was tremendous. Look like I said,
he gave us forty there, Evan, you close up shop
with you, sir.
Speaker 2 (42:52):
No.
Speaker 4 (42:52):
I look, I think this stuffs fascinating, right, And because.
Speaker 11 (42:58):
I think Alan, you know as well to anyone in
this industry, that everyone says we're in like the second
inning here, and no one believes it because you start
to see what are we seeing?
Speaker 4 (43:10):
What we're seeing operators.
Speaker 5 (43:11):
Leave the US not enter and so it looks like, oh,
we turned the page and now we're contracting and we're
a mature market. And I think that anyone on the
inside of this will tell you that's absolutely wrong. And
I've got to imagine you've got your eyes set on
what hell this is going to continue to evolve over
the next five to ten years.
Speaker 2 (43:32):
Yeah, I mean, I think Fanatics hasn't entered the chat
and everyone's like, yeah, but look what happened to Barstool
and no, listen, Fanatics is a different beast. The amount
of data and the fact that they're so hyper targeted
on getting customers to purchase if they even bring a
minutia of that sophistication to betting it's going to be
(43:53):
they can take really significant market share very quickly. And
you know, I think, yeah, I mean I can comment
on the those stuff all day long. Like to me,
barstool still has massive opportunity because nobody else has the
reach that they have into those sort of hyper targeted
groups I talked about right, Like, if you look at
barstools spread in their network, I think what their I
think their mistake was they just went too early. I
(44:14):
think they should have let that their audience mature a
little bit more, let them get out of college, let
them get let them get a job, and then start
to figure out how to monetize that audience. But yeah,
I think I agree with you, Evan. I think it's
you know, when we look around and yeah, you start
to see some of this and it's like my big
bet and I people hate it when I say it,
but my big bet is number one and two will
not be number one and two in the next five years.
(44:37):
It just is what it is. I you know, one
of them will fall and I to be honest with you,
the way that sort of the moves are going and
both of those arenas. I think both of them could
fall out of the top two positions.
Speaker 3 (44:48):
Yeah, very interesting, very interesting.
Speaker 2 (44:50):
It's a long it's a long shovel. That's my money, No,
look at it.
Speaker 1 (44:56):
There's a lot of things that have changed, and who
the hell can predict tomorrow, let alone five years.
Speaker 3 (45:00):
I would be totally in agreement with you on that one.
Speaker 2 (45:02):
I'm pretty sure Evan would.
Speaker 3 (45:03):
Be as well. Alan can't thank you enough, sir, continued success.
Speaker 1 (45:07):
We'll definitely be touching based down the road, and I
mean it, learned a ton here today on this episode
of Behind a VEG.
Speaker 3 (45:13):
Thank you very much for a few minutes today.
Speaker 2 (45:15):
Yeah, thank you guys for having me on, Thanks for
letting me rant appreciate it.
Speaker 3 (45:19):
Excellent stuff.
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