Let me bring in my friend Brian Murphy, WRAL sports investigative reporter. Excuse me, for those people who are looking, like, why does gold have two peaches on the desk in front of him? I love a good peach. I love a good peach, Brian. I want to talk to this golf thing, man.
Holy cow. I'll be more than happy to talk about it. I've already done a Zoom conversation with news. I told them you could just punch up the show because we're going to be talking about this for the first few minutes. All right, we'll get back to Liv, but let me ask you this question because I know that we are poised to have a vote in the state legislature in the House on the sports wagering bill. So give me the latest.
Where are we? Yeah, two o'clock. The House is going to vote. We all think they're going to vote to concur with the Senate changes to House Bill 347, the sports wagering bill. They'll have to vote again tomorrow. Again, another quirk because this is a revenue bill and it increases taxes or has a tax component to it. And then it'll go to the governor.
The governor this morning once again reiterated that he is supportive, generally supportive of sports gambling. So no reason to think he won't sign the bill. All right, so we have to vote twice? Explain why we have to vote twice in this? They had to vote twice in the Senate as well. Bills that have a revenue component that raise revenue require two votes. Real quick, did the vote change in the Senate? Was there a different or was it the same yays and nays? The numbers were off by one.
I think one senator was missing the second. OK, like I don't have to vote this time. I just voted to avoid them sneaking like tax increases or tax cuts in while, you know, somebody is off that at some some event or something.
I totally understand. Brian Murphy, WRAL sports investigative reporter, you said the House agreed to the changes. Just refresh our memory. Were the changes significant that left this in doubt? I don't know if it left it in doubt, but there were significant changes. They upped the tax rate from 14 percent to 18 percent. They added in-person betting at sportsbooks around the state, including possibly PNC Arena. They added horse racing to the bill. So there were some pretty significant changes made. They changed.
They added a couple more schools, including East Carolina, Appalachian State, the schools that get money, the athletic departments that get money from the revenue. So significant changes to the bill. But I think they were working with the House all along. So there are no surprises. I think the House cleared the vote by about 19 earlier this session.
And I imagine we'll have a similar vote today. So the tax rate going from 14 to 18 percent and that is on the operators. That's not on the people who win, correct? Correct.
Yeah. We're all going to win all of our bets. You will have to pay taxes on your winnings. I think it's if you win six hundred dollars or more, you will have to file some taxes on that. But no, the 18 percent is on the operators gross gaming revenue.
So that's money taken in minus winnings paid out. And importantly, in the Senate bill, they did away with deductions for promotions and credits. So we may see less lucrative credits in North Carolina or promotions, you know, bet five dollars, win one hundred fifty that you see on TV all the time. They have less less of that in the state because they did away with that. They can no longer write those off on their tax. My my guess and we're talking with Brian Murphy, WRL sports investigative reporter, is that the operators understand the long game here. We'll still see those.
They may maybe they just last for a shorter period of time. But when we do finally get mobile and in-person wagering in the state, I think we'll see those at least for a period of time. We're still targeting early January for a start.
Yeah. So the bill is that's another change in the bill. It can start it can start no sooner than January 8th, 2024. But they have given the Lottery Commission up to a year from when the bill becomes law to get sports gambling live in the state. So we could be looking at like mid-June or early June of 2024.
I don't think it'll take that long, but there is some wiggle room built into the bill to get to give the Lottery Commission time to get all the regulations in place to sort through all these applications they're going to get to award the licenses, et cetera, et cetera. Why? Why? Why? Why? Why? Why? Why?
Why? You know, a lot of states, you know, Vermont just passed this this year and they don't start till January. So I think, you know, a six to nine month lag time is is pretty reasonable, at least based on what other states have done. I know Maryland took almost two years to get it up and running. You would think I know they don't want to give anybody, you know, a head start in the market. The other thing is this added to the application that if you partner with a entity, so if you partner with PNC or any partner with the hurricanes, that has to be marked on your application. I do wonder if it's going to take time to get those partnerships put together before they can submit their applications. I don't know.
I think we're all guessing at this point. I know lawmakers want to get it up and running as soon as possible. But so I just wouldn't write that January 8th date in in Penn at the moment. All right. So, gosh, we were hoping to get it in place before the college football national championship. But June also takes us all the way basically through this, I guess, a year from the time the governor signs it. Right. Would be right.
Would be the window. So let's just assume that the governor signs it. Let's say Friday.
Is it possible he signs it Friday? Yeah. All right. Almost almost likely.
All right. So we're talking about the ninth of May. So next June 9th, at least it would be for the it would be before next year's Stanley Cup finals when the Hurricanes are hosting the the Arizona Coyotes. Actually, they won't be in Arizona. They'll be the Montana Coyotes. I have no idea. The Houston Coyotes.
Or the Austin Coyotes. More likely. All right. Do you want to do what you want to weigh in on live? I've been I've been railing about this. I don't know. There's so little information about this tour. Do you have do you have any broad thoughts on what this means?
Sure. I won first. I was shocked when I saw the news. I thought it was like fake. I thought that I saw it on.
I had to go look it up. I do wonder if and obviously I heard your comments that you think the PGA Tour really, really got beaten badly on this one. I do wonder if Liv realized they were never going to get TV ratings for this and they were never going to sell those teams.
You know, the four aces and all those things. And that the PGA Tour realized they were never going to be able to compete with the endless pit of money that the Saudis have. And so they waited him out and got a better deal. That's the only way I can make this make any sense from the PGA Tour side is that the deal just became too good to pass up what the Saudis were offering. Well, yeah, the Saudis are offering a lot of money.
There's there's there's no question about that. And are they offering more now than they were a year ago or two years ago? I mean, honestly, I don't know.
I don't know that they were offering anything. I thought, in my opinion, the each week we dive into the mind of the con artist and covering the secrets behind the biggest Ponzi schemes you've never heard about. We're not talking about Bernie Madoff or Charles Ponzi.
That's right. Those guys have been covered to death. The Ponzi playbook will focus on those fraudsters who have swindled millions from unsuspecting investors.
Subscribe to the Ponzi playbook wherever you get your podcasts. What Greg Norman was trying to do was basically trying to take the best players. He thought Norman absolutely thought however many months ago, you know, 18 months ago, February of last year, I believe he thought he could get essentially the best 40 players in the world to go play live for. I mean, ridiculous numbers of cartoon money because the public investment fund of the Saudi royal family at that point was worth six hundred and twenty trillion dollars. It's a fake.
It's a fake number. So it was worth so much money that he just thought, well, I can just get all these guys and can do what he always wanted to do, which is finally grind the ax and destroy the PGA Tour. And it's been Norman's goal ever since he was humiliated.
Now, this is almost 30 years ago. I'm going to take like the Rory's of the world at their word that this was about legacy and the tour and human rights to some degree. But basically, the leadership of Liv and the PGA Tour have been lying all along. Well, not out to destroy the tour. And the PGA Tour, you know, doesn't care about all the things they said they can. Well, now they just took all the money. There's no question that the PGA Tour is two faced here.
I'm not even arguing that. But the and this is where I'm going to I'm going to try to catch up with somebody who would know the legal ramifications of this better than I. But five days ago on June 1st in the USA today, there's a story Endeavor, which it has its hands in wrestling and UFC and I believe IMG as well. And they off they were basically working on a deal to put a billion dollars of investment into live golf, essentially allowing the Saudis to back away some from because that was obviously hanging over. Everybody was the was the Saudi angle to this and the PGA Tour discouraged them from doing so.
Now, if I'm being sued in, you know, if I have an antitrust lawsuit filed against me and I am discouraging a client from investing in a competitor, I just don't know how you how you survive that. So I think because we have no idea what the structure is. I think this is about legal avoidance and nothing, nothing else. That's why the players had no clue today. Right.
Until it happened. I can't imagine the PGA Tour or the Saudis wanted to go through discovery on this. Yeah, probably probably not. I mean, the Saudis weren't doing it. They weren't open.
They weren't opening their books. And the PGA Tour would have would have had to. But as long as you can't it can't be proven that you are what were they going to get the PGA Tour? Maybe some some tax avoidance or some tax shenanigans.
But as long as you weren't discouraging and conspiring against the competitor from being a competitor, you were probably OK in terms of antitrust. And now, I guess not. I also want to know when Rory got wind of this or when Tiger got wind of this, because they have started to change their tune a little bit. They have not been as vocal about it.
And I wonder if the the the rank and file got a heads up one minute before. But I wonder if the top echelon got got word because Rom, you know, Rom earlier this week was talking about how Sergio Garcia should play in the should play in the Ryder Cup. But I wonder if I believe that guys just because you mentioned the Ryder Cup, I believe that most people thought about that all along. I mean, John Rom, he wants the European side wants to win. Whether Garcia is good enough to be a valuable part of the European tour, a European team or not remains to be seen.
But I think Rom wants to win. So, yeah, Garcia or Ian Poulter can be part of that team going forward because, you know, they were legendary parts, you know, pieces to their puzzle. Brooks Koepke, Dustin Johnson should both be on the U.S. team.
We shouldn't even be having a debate about that because it should be about the two, you know, one continent and one nation. But I don't believe I'll be surprised if Rory knew about this. I'll be really surprised.
I think he's he's been tired, frustrated by his play and tired of talking about it. Yeah, that's what it's my read on it. But I could be wrong. I've been wrong before, Brian. I don't want to tell anybody this, but I have been wrong to think it's fascinating. I can't wait to see sort of what comes out, what what you know, what what the new what it what it looks like. I'm just not sure anyone has an idea what it's not. You would think that there would be some structure, nothing. We have no idea what it is. We have no idea how many is one event. Is it just going to be one event? I have no idea.
Whisper: medium.en / 2023-06-06 18:02:50 / 2023-06-06 18:08:25 / 6