When will NC be able to gamble legally?

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We don't know exactly when that is, but let's talk about it briefly and also talk about what you can bet on when we eventually get it. Brian Murphy, WRAL sports investigative reporter. A man who is, I believe, still leading our fantasy football league. Although I took you down. I told you I would. I took you down. You called your shot there.

Yeah, we were both decimated by bye weeks. Nobody cares though, Brian. Actually, and I don't either. Do we have any clue at all when this might start? We know it won't start in the second week in January, but is there a possibility that we get this by Super Bowl Sunday or by the NCAA basketball tournament?

What do you think? We don't have a date. We just know that January 8th, which is the first allowable date by law, won't happen by then. Although there was a clue, I think, yesterday into how quickly they want to get this done. There was this fight over fantasy contests. Those prize picks constitute a fantasy contest or gambling. There's been a big fight about it behind the scenes. Rather than have that fight, they just simply took the definition of fantasy contest out of their rules to speed this process up. They knew that would probably get involved in litigation and you'll be a whole fight about it. So rather than deal with that fight, they said, we want to get this thing rolling as fast as we can. We're just going to pull the definition out of our rules and let other states make a determination.

Let's see how this plays out. But they did that with the emphasis of like, we want to get this up and running as fast as we can, and we don't want to have kind of secondary fights about it. Brian Murphy, WRAL SPORTS investigative reporter, is joining us. So when you say we get a clue as to when it might start, I don't know, maybe I missed it.

I didn't hear the clue there. Sure. I think the clue is they want to move as quickly as they can, and they're not going to get involved in this other stuff.

And so, you know, they're trying to remove as many obstacles as they can. The next big thing is to get applications from these operators. Okay. The problem is in order to get an application from an operator, they have to sign what's called a written designation agreement with the Carolina Hurricanes or the Charlotte Hornets or the Charlotte or Carolina Panthers. So how quickly those teams move may actually, you know, impact how quickly the lottery commission can move as well.

Because if you don't have one of those written designation agreements, you cannot get a license. Right. Yeah. I mean, we know the big players. Is there anybody that you know of that might be a smaller player that is trying to get a license to operate? Well, what's interesting is I got a copy of all of the public comments that were made during the first ruling. And one of them was from, I think it's called Sports Trade, who says, hey, can you guys get rid of this written designation agreement? There's no way we can afford to cut a deal with one of these teams.

The original bill didn't call for these written designation agreements. So why don't you guys just scrap that? And the commission had to say, well, unfortunately, that's out of our hands. They put that in the new state budget. They added a provision to the law and there's nothing we can really do about that. So there are some smaller players who would like to get in here. Right. You know, they're saying, hey, I'm going to have to cut a deal for $10 million over 10 years, probably with one of these big franchises or golf courses here in the state. And we can't afford to do that. So I thought it was a little bit of insight into how that process is going to play out.

All right. Let's talk about some of the things you can or can't wager on. Brian Murphy is here, WRAL sports investigative reporter. Now, the normal wagers will all be, you know, without getting into sports here, you can bet on, you know, just somebody to win. They call those money line wagers. There are spreads. There are totals. There are prop bets.

They're all called something a little bit different. I hope you're OK. You know, there's so all of the normal stuff that we're used to, you can do for people who do parlays, you can do that. You can do teasers, things like that. Is there was there anything in here that surprise you that we can't do?

No, I mean, I thought they took the most expansive view of all this. One thing I was looking for in Virginia, you cannot bet on the NFL draft. I don't know why, because of the way their law is written, you can't bet on like because no other players get drafted.

Brian, you know, whether before Georgia, you know, number of Georgia players in the first round, over, under four and a half or whatever. North Carolina, you will be able to bet on draft stuff. And that's for the NFL draft, NBA draft, probably NHL draft. I doubt the baseball draft, but and you can also bet on awards. So MVP, Rookie of the Year, all that stuff, which gets talked about a lot now.

But there is, there was nothing in there. The one thing that I thought was missing was the NWSL or the MLS. But my understanding is that may be tucked under the FIFA guidelines for soccer, that since they're a FIFA league. You can bet on soccer. It says you can bet on soccer.

What would I do? I do a soccer bet almost every day here on our Place Your Bet segment. Were you surprised that you couldn't wager on esports?

Because in most places you can. Yeah, the esports thing is kind of a different category. They said they're going to accept applications from operators that say, hey, we want to be able to take bets on you name the esport and then they will evaluate it on a sort of a case by case basis.

I don't think they either they don't know enough or there's not kind of the standard leagues enough, at least at this point, for them to give a blanket. OK, you can whatever you want to do in this league, you can take wagers on that. There will be esports. You will be able to bet on esports. It's just not that's sort of in a different category at the moment.

All right, a couple of things I want to get to before I have to say goodbye to Brian Murphy, WRAL sports investigative reporter. Have you ever seen Highline? I've never seen Highline, but I know it's popular in South Florida. Oh, it's huge in South Florida.

I've been to Highline. I'm positive it's fixed. So I'm kind of bummed that we actually could could wager on it because I think it's ripe. Anybody from South Florida who is listening right now understands. Oh, yeah.

Yeah, it's probably it's probably fixed. It was also big in Connecticut when I was when I was a kid growing up. Are you are you pumped up to bet on PES Apollo? OK, round two. Name something that's not boring. Laundry. Oh, a book club. Computer solitaire. Huh?

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I have talked to Sebastian Ajo about this. Maybe I'll get some tips from some of the guys in the Cane's locker room on this one. I think that's great that we can bet on that. That is definitely narrow casting to just the hurricane's dressing room at the at this point.

That is just so funny. I bring this up because we are in the midst of the semifinals and soon to be finals of the Cricket World Cup. But cricket will be you can wager on it here. And it's an enormous sport. I think the Indian Premier League is maybe the most popular cricket league in the entire world. And there's a big cricket population here, right?

That's what I was going to say in Morrisville and sort of Western Wake County. There may be a lot of people who know enough about cricket to to reasonably put money down. I do want to point out one thing. Just because they're on the catalog does not mean any of the operators are going to give us lines on on Pessapallo. It's still an operator decision. FanDuel can say I'm not taking your high live bets. So there's is there dog there's no dog racing though, right?

I can't bet on the Flagler. No, dog racing is specifically like eliminated in the in the legislation. So and they haven't they haven't yet made it to the horse racing part of the rule. OK, no power. We still have horse racing to come.

OK, no power. Well, maybe if we had parimutuel horse racing, then we could then dog racing will be will be put as part of that. You can bet on badminton. I know how much you're excited to bet on badminton.

These are like the pandemic games, right? When when the pandemic was happening and people were so desperate to bet, they were betting on badminton and cricket and things like that. We've been on the Korean Baseball League, the KPL. That's like the first thing back. All people like we were watching Korean baseball.

It was it was phenomenal. I mean, I'm just excited to put some money down on Joey Chestnut. That's the one that's gross.

That's the one that stood out to me now. OK, so last thing here, because competitive eating is going to be on the ballot or on the, you know, available to you if whoever the operator is chooses to offer a betting line and they will for the hot dog eating contest. I don't know if they'll do it for the cream pie eating contest or whatever they're the competitive eating is. But do you think they will offer at what point everybody else will vomit? No, but they do. I mean, I think the big bet in that because Chestnut is such a heavy favorite.

There's no money to be made. None is the over under on the number of hot dogs that he eats. Seventy one. Seventy one and a half. What's the record? Can you tell me the record? I think it's seventy four.

Yeah, I was going to say seventy four. I don't I don't know why I know that. It's gross. It's all of it's all of it's gross. All right, Brian, I appreciate I appreciate me you letting me waste however much of your time today.

No problem. Brian's going to like, you know what? I don't think I want to do it today. The next time I call Brian, he's going to go, you know what? Maybe not. Maybe maybe let's maybe let's not.

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