Will sports betting become legal in North Carolina this year? // Big Rock Fishing Day 1

This is the best of the Adam Gold Show Podcast. Brought to you by Coach Pete at Capital Financial Advisory Group.

Visit us at capitalfinancialusa.com. This is the Adam Gold Show. I wonder if they're listening to this on Catch 23, Michael Jordan's boat. Big Rock is here. Josh Goodson can be, if he'll agree to it, our Big Rock correspondent. He joins us from Moorhead City.

Sir, thank you very much for your time. Apparently, somebody's already dragged in a qualifying blue marlin. Is that true?

That's true. I'm calling in from Atlantic Beach. I'm literally five minutes or so from the Big Rock landing.

And the good thing about being down here is the Big Rock social media is great. We knew that the boat is Mercenaria. That's the name of the boat that was coming in. They hooked up around noon. I still had kids on the beach. That's a whole different conversation.

Kids on the beach. Yes. I don't even want to get, you've probably been there, done that, got the t-shirt, but I was like, we're not going to make it down there for the weigh in at 145, but literally they just got off the boat and it came in at 572 pounds. And actually having caught the first blue marlin over 500 pounds, regardless of what happens the rest of the week, they have $777,000 in their bank account, which is actually, would also be good for the seventh place payout in the live golf tournament down in London this past weekend as well. We were discussing on Friday, whether or not there was a rival Saudi backed fishing tournament. So 572 does sound like it might even be a winning number.

Yeah. I actually pulled up the last few, last year, the winner was 656 pounds. There was a 914 pound fish in 2019, which is kind of crazy. Beyond that, uh, this, this fish would be good enough to win in 2020, 2018, 2017.

Basically it's kind of right. It's definitely right in the ballpark of the winning fish. And if it goes on to be the winning fish, I believe they could, I saw where they could win an additional two and a half million dollars.

So almost walk away with not, not Charles Swartz will money, but, but close to it. Yeah. It'd be like more, uh, Henny, uh, the plus this money that would be money. Exactly. That was tremendous. Uh, that, that dude, you know, if they had given out world, I, why am I still talking about this?

If they had given out world rankings points to, uh, to the live, the pluses would have gotten more world rankings points for his second place finish than he had ever gotten in any event in his career. Uh, so do you have an interest? Did you, uh, did you wager essentially on any of these boats? Potentially. Yeah.

Uh, so the way that it kind of works is generally a lot of these boats are a lot of these boats, especially the local ones. The boat that called the big fish today, mercenary is actually based out of, uh, cherry stone, Virginia, which is in, it's actually the Eastern shore of Virginia, which my question is like, is the Eastern shore of Virginia. We just, do we, do they just call that Maryland? Kind of like we just called the outer banks, Virginia. Yeah.

Right. There's no, there's no delineation, but a lot of the local boats down here that are based out of Moorhead that you could literally go on. Any day of the week, right. And do an offshore fishing, you know, venture and such with your friends and family, a bunch of those boats basically ask for, um, investors or financial backers for the week. And generally, and also to pay for the, to, to be a part of this tournament. You also have to pay the entry fees to get into all of the different competition competitions that ended up being around between gas. I, uh, beverage of your choice. And then I'm basically getting at all of these, uh, tournaments. It could be anywhere from 25 to $40,000, I guess, just based on the taste of the boat that you're on.

But I may have a small, uh, stake or, uh, I'm invested in, in, in, in one boat. I'll put it like that. That's uh, that's good. How was the, uh, the captain's party on Saturday night? It's wild. It's, uh, it is, it's like the jungle at East Carolina last night, but basically with, with a bunch of, uh, Guy Harvey t-shirts visors and, uh, sunglass, bad, bad, bad sunglass pants. But it's, it's always a good time.

It's, it's over there in Moorhead city. Like we, we, uh, came down Saturday and then yesterday we were just kind of milling around as well. And it, there's a lot of people down here.

A lot of folks I'm here. The weather's great today. It's about a hundred degrees inland. It's about 90 out here, but I think they're scheduled to have.

Weather all week. And, um, Jordan, it's funny, Jordan's boat was actually not listed today on the list of participants, but there were some social media chatter that they actually had voted a Marlin and then put one back and such. And like, do you think Jordan gets mad when the, but when the fish isn't big enough, he fires the captain. Do you think he like kicks them off? Is there a guy floating out there in the middle of the ocean right now? Like, because he knew Jordan knew the fish wasn't big enough.

That's, that's always the question that I have whenever they, they catch one, but then they have to release it, you know, not too, not too far after. If, uh, if Kenny Atkinson is paying attention to big rock, uh, he shouldn't, he should not get not, don't get too comfortable. We want, uh, we want Jordan to, to, uh, to boat a big, uh, a big fish. Um, I think Jordan probably names the fish like after failed draft picks. Oh, this one's, uh, this one's Adam Morrison. This one's Kwame Brown, right?

Absolutely. And, uh, this is coming today. I was, I was, I was expecting for them to catch a fish today because I think the anniversary of the, of the, of the flu game was like yesterday or the day before his flu game against Utah.

That's right. I expected him to come out and do something, but maybe, maybe he's fishing right now and he's going to come back and play, uh, play 18 with at Beaufort country club or Morehead country club with Curtis strange lately. I know Curtis strange is always down here as well.

Oh yeah. They got a golf mat. I bet they got a golf match, uh, set up at some point over the next couple of days. I'm not sure Curtis plays golf during big Rocky. I mean, I think Curtis is just all about all about fishing. Yeah, he's, he's all about fishing. He is, he is.

He's, he's basically the, the unofficial spokesman for, uh, for the big rock tournament. Adam gold here from my man coach Pete DeRuta with the capital financial advisory group. We are talking retirement.

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So let's make sure to not ignore it. The next 10 people will do for you your very own tax and retirement plan that will help you minimize taxation all the way through retirement. 800-661-7383. All you got is call or you can text Adam to 21000 for coach Pete DeRuta. So what other divisions, if you will, are there other than the blue Marlin division? So they had the ladies, there's like a ladies angler tournament that actually happened over the weekend that just happened. And in that one, you can have a bill fish, dolphin, all kinds of things. There's a bunch of different things that again, like you have to pay to be in all of these and most of the big boats will pay to be in all of the single things.

There's biggest blue Marlin. You can get points each day as well. It's kind of bizarre. People just think if you go out, you have to catch a fish, bring it in and weigh it for you to get points. But no, you can go out there, catch something.

I assume there's probably either an honor system or you're taking a picture or something like that. But there's a bunch of catch and release things. And once you do that, you're actually also getting points at the same time of the most fish you can actually catch, almost like a Bassmaster type set up as well. So there's a bunch of different divisions, dolphins, big fish, blue Marlin, wahoo, tuna, you name it.

There's all kinds of different things you can be a part of throughout the week. I'm a little uneasy with the ladies angler tournament. I think that's patronizing. Like I half expect those people to expect the women to not only bring in the fish, but then come home and cook it. Cook it? It bothers me.

Scaled it, deveined it, all that. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I mean, give me a side.

I need some grilled asparagus or something. I don't know. I just kind of bother. Just like what they did in the European tour this week. Men and women in the same event.

I got no problem with it. Didn't a lady win by like nine shots? She just blasted the field, I think, in that event as well. Lynn Grant, 24 under par, nine better than Mark Warren and Henrik Stenson. Yes, it was a runaway.

An absolute runaway. All right, Josh, when does Big Rock come to an end? It's over the end of the week, Saturday, and it was funny. I was actually just before I jumped on, I was just watching the interview with the boat. They literally just docked 30 minutes ago. So the boats can fish every day except for one over the next, between Monday and Saturday.

They have to take off the day. And it was funny, whoever was interviewing the captain basically said, so when are you going back out? And the captain at first said, well, we may go tomorrow.

And I was just thinking to myself, I was like, you just won three quarters of a million dollars and you're leading the Big Rock. To be sure, you're going to let your Monday get in the way of your Tuesday tonight and have a big old party. There's no way those guys can be going out tomorrow with all the money they just won and all the excitement they just had. But it goes all the way through Saturday. And again, all the boats can fish every day except for one.

And they can kind of choose whenever they want to take off. Is there a better time to go fishing than when you're hungover? That's true.

That's true. Because then you can actually get out on the water and keep drinking again. And I think being out on the ocean and the salt air, the osmosis effect kind of helps. You don't ever really get sick. You never get hungover. You just kind of keep going as if the hangover never happened. Just keep the buzz going. You bring up a good point.

You bring up a good point. All right. Well, if you'll allow us, we'll check in with you again, sir. Sure. Appreciate it, guys.

Keep the kids safe. Josh Goodson out at the ocean from Sports Channel 8. Thanks, man. Thanks, guys.

All right. When we come back, and actually this would have been really good for Josh to weigh in on as well. Remember a few weeks ago we talked with the folks at WRAL about the future of sports wagering in the state of North Carolina? Remember how we were this close to getting the vote?

Right? The House had it. The House is going to push it through.

The House is going to vote. And then sometime in the fall, we would be able to wager on football games. Where exactly are we?

We'll discuss that next. On with the crossbar! And the Hurricanes have won the Stanley Cup! Bennett Conlon with Sportshandle.com joins us on the Adam Gold Show. If you are a UVA fan, maybe you read his stuff when he worked for the Daily Progress. It's our friend David Teel's old stomping grounds.

Appreciate your time. And I was particularly caught by your story at Sportshandle.com. North Carolina legislature, still hopeful, or legislator, still hopeful sports wagering bill can pass. There's not a lot of time. Where are we in this story?

Yeah, you're right. There is not a lot of time left. So it's kind of getting down to crunch time here at the end of the month, obviously being the end of the legislative session. There's some hope that a bill that passed the Senate last year still has a chance to get through the House in the next two weeks or so. So what needs to happen is the House Judiciary Committee needs to discuss that.

They meet every Tuesday, so you're looking maybe Tuesday the 14th, tomorrow from when we're talking is a possibility. I talked to a representative or an assistant for Representative Jason Sain, who's kind of leaving the bill through the House. And his assistant had said that if everything goes according to plan, it should be heard this week. So there's still hope they can do that on Tuesday.

It was Sain's understanding a couple of weeks ago. It would then have to go through another couple of committees before reaching the House floor. So there's probably three committee stops and then the House floor.

That's if everything goes according to plan. And as you mentioned, they're running out of time a little bit here, but they've got two weeks and at least a little bit of hope left that something can happen. I would argue that I don't have nearly as much faith as the representative does that this is going to get done before June 30th. That's the end of this legislative session.

I mean, I probably should know the answer to this. It's my state. If it doesn't get heard in by the 30th, if it doesn't get voted on rather by the 30th, are we talking about the fall before we even revisit the issue? Yeah, you're looking at the next legislative session. So it kind of all start over is my understanding, which I know is why some of the stakeholders wanted to get it addressed now. But it seems like it's taken a while. So like the last year, for example, that the bill passed through the Senate and the bill was able to carry over and still have that passage and go straight to the House.

2022-2023, I don't believe that's allowed. So I think they would have to start over, get it through the state Senate and the House once again next year. So it would certainly be a bit of a delay, which is why I know some of the stakeholders and I'm sure sports betting operators are hopeful something will happen in the next couple of weeks. But yeah, I can certainly understand where you're coming from and kind of agree with that as well, because they wanted to talk about this bill and get it discussed in the House early in the session. It's been a couple of weeks and they still haven't done it. So they're taking their time. And for them to do something here in the next two weeks, they kind of got to get the ball moving here this week.

Or it seems pretty unlikely, in my opinion. Yeah, we spoke to one of our own reporters. I'm talking with Bennett Conlon from sportshandle.com.

Spoke to one of our own reporters here about this issue about two or three weeks ago. And there was optimism then, obviously. And still with all the optimism, they probably weren't going to have mobile wagering up and running until the middle of football season.

So now we're talking about no football season. And when I look at sportshandle.com, I see these stories. Indiana becomes fifth state to clear $8 billion in sports wagering handle. Illinois sports wagering operators clear $70 million in April revenue. Iowa, the latest state to surpass $1 billion in 2022 sports wagering handle. We're leaving a lot of money on the table, Bennett.

Yeah, I think that's certainly something that's interesting, right? You look at the states where you do have $1 billion worth of money being wagered on sporting events this year, which is certainly a lot of money. And then depending on the tax rate, you're bringing a certain number of millions into the state. I think that was another area, too, where some people probably debate in North Carolina because the bill has got a proposed tax rate. I think it's 8 percent of adjusted gross revenue or something along those lines.

And it's pretty low compared to other states. So I think there's there's room there to maybe debate that. But I think one of the issues is that some of the people trying to push it through this session had the idea that it would go in without 8 percent. And then they could adjust in a later bill in hopes of sort of getting it through. Now, I don't know how how likely that is or how some representatives would feel about that possibility.

But yeah, there's a lot still up in the air and not a lot of time to do it. So it's one that North Carolina is certainly leaving tax revenue on the table. I mean, isn't New York's tax rate for sports wagering revenue like a 25 percent or something like that? New York's got a really high one. I think some of that is just because the size of the state, they can do a little bit.

And the sportsbook operators are hoping to do anything to get into the state. But yes, it is. It's way up there. And other states, 10 to 15 percent, really common somewhere in that range. Eight percent was kind of surprising when I saw it in the bill and how people sort of been OK with that. So I think it's one that you could certainly go higher. And the sportsbook operators are still going to want to come to North Carolina. So I think adding a few percentage points and bringing in more tax revenue seems to make sense from my perspective.

Yeah. By the way, also the owner of the Carolina Hurricanes, Tom Dundon, would like nothing more than to have a sportsbook inside PNC Arena. And to that end, Maryland sportsbooks post another double digit win rate for May. Like people aren't good at gambling. We should probably take advantage of that at the state ledger level. Bennett Conlon from sports handle dot com.

This just came up because it's brand new. PGA Tour suspended 17 players. There will be more because more will leave the PGA Tour and go to live.

How is that or how can that input impact wagering on golf? Yeah, it's interesting because I think some states, a handful of states have approved betting on the new tour. So the live golf tour and the guys is sort of, you know, defected from the PGA Tour and gone over there. Some states haven't quite done that yet, but you get to a point where you can have multiple tours. We already do have multiple tours. You could add another one in the mix in terms of what people are betting on. I guess you can make an argument that if there's a lot of people moving away, you could potentially have that new tour generating more handle and more interest among betters compared to the PGA Tour.

I still think that's a ways away. I mean, you look at obviously still very, very early with what live golf is doing. But that first tournament where Schwartz won compared to what you got in the PGA Tour with Rory McIlroy kind of staring down Justin Thomas and a pretty dramatic weekend to win that in the PGA Tour. It's still a better product, the PGA Tour right now.

So I think that's one that'll be interesting to monitor for sure. Also, what the majors decide to do with who's allowed to play in the U.S. Open is allowing everybody. So from that perspective, you know, if you're a sports better, you still can bet on Phil Nicholson, which I wouldn't advise, but you can still bet on Phil Nicholson this week if you want. So I think from that perspective, if they're allowed to play in the majors and everyone can play, those are still going to generate the most interest among betters and sort of casual fans. And you could still bet on everyone.

But on a week-to-week basis, it'll definitely look a little different. Can I wager on somebody getting thrown out of a press conference at live events, so in Portland at the end of the month? Am I allowed to wager on that? I don't think they've got that level of prop betting up yet, but it would certainly be an interesting one.

It's minus money. It's going to happen. It's going to happen again because they don't like anybody asking difficult questions. We had two people escorted out of press conference. Actually, one never really got in to the press conference. That was the one with Alan Shipnuck, who wrote the book. His Mickelson book is out. Anyway, that was certainly interesting.

All right, I thank you very much for your time. Bennett Conlon, sportshandle.com. Hopefully we can do it again. Do you have a Stanley Cup Finals suggestion?

That's a tough one. I mean, it's hard to really go against the athletes for the way they're playing, but it'll be an interesting one. I think it'll be competitive.

I've kind of leaned in some of these recent competitions and across different sports. Some of the favorites have been really tempting throughout, where you look at a heavy favorite and they just keep playing well. I'd probably lean the Avalanche, but Tampa Bay seems to have some sort of just mojo where they can never die. Who really knows, but I'll take Colorado. Tampa Bay is plus money. It's so tempting. It's so tempting to take the two-time defending champs at plus money.

I don't know. And after the Colorado Avalanche win Game 1, because I anticipate them winning Game 1, it'll be even more plus money. Even more tempting. Bennett Conlon, I appreciate your time.

sportshandle.com. We'll talk again. Yeah, of course.

Thanks for having me. This is the Adam Gold Show. Off of the crossbar! And the Hurricanes have won the Stanley Cup! June 19th, 2006. But it all started May 6th, 1997, with the announcement that the Hartford Whalers were coming to North Carolina. It's a story of transition, of heartbreak, of figuring it out on the fly. The Cane's Corner look at the 25th anniversary of the move. Presented by the Aluminum Company of North Carolina. Listen now. Find Cane's 25th anniversary wherever you get your podcasts.