John Martin of Maryland Lottery updates Nestor on holiday and mobile sports wagering promotions and progress.
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
lottery, maryland, week, holidays, sports wagering, people, mobile, game, ravens, tickets, bet, 31st anniversary, friends, money, talking, responsibly, thinking, play, retail, promotional
00:00
wn st Towson, Baltimore and Baltimore positive. We are moving to Maryland crabcakes. We’re out on the road we’re doing to Maryland crabcake tour stops this week for the holidays. And for our 31st anniversary on radio, which happens next Tuesday on Friday will be a families on Friday morning with Dan Rodricks, who put together the best stage show I’ve ever seen in Baltimore. And I’m looking forward to talking to Dan about that also Roslyn from the Maryland lottery gonna be joining us on finally getting a crab cake with us. A fade these for the holidays. We’ll be talking to Jamie about shipping Maryland crab cakes as well. It’s all brought to you by the Maryland lottery conjunction with our friends at Goodwill and when donation 866 90 nation you buy to get two free and 0% financing. And then next week I’m really excited about this. So excited. I’m gonna invite John Martin to this one. We are going to be having a little bit of a hammer Jack’s reunion, a little bit of a rock and roll reunion. Little bit of a Dundalk for you and you were going to be a Costas next Thursday in the afternoon with the queen of Dundalk. The Rock and Roll Hall of Famer from the Go Go’s Gina shot the drummer gonna be joining us along with the hammer Jack’s documentary folks. I’m in the hammer Jack’s documentary. I’m looking forward to that. I’m gonna let my rock and roll air out. That’s next Thursday. It is all brought to you by the Maryland lottery and the Maryland crab cake tour. This guy hasn’t had a crab cake with me in a long time didn’t come out to Costas at some point last year. 31 years I’m on the radio John Martin next week. It’s I had to shave to make myself feel younger today. How are you man?
01:27
Thankfully, shaving doesn’t affect my age at all. One way or the other. I think it’s too much great. Hey, you know what? While I’m breathless just hearing you talk about your week coming up. Wow, that’s a lot going on there man.
01:37
Well, it’s the holidays and I gotta get out in front of it. The football fix Pittsburgh week. I’m trying to take my mind off the fact that Lamar is not healthy. So we’re trying to find other things to get spirited about for the holidays. But you guys have all sorts of holiday promotions going on. We got sports wagering happening. I’ve been participating in that a little bit. It is amazing though. I go out and I talk to people. I was with a friend of mine son yesterday. He was 30 years old. He’s not he’s not one of the ones you can’t put the lottery ticket in the in the slot and stalking but he said to me, Morocco I made money on Morocco today. I’m like you made money on Morocco. Did you say what air plus 130 and PKS I figured I put 10 bucks on it I want 13 bucks and I’m thinking people are winning they
02:17
are Yeah, they are they are they are they are Hey, you know what jump on holidays first off let’s let’s get let’s get Jen taken care. Of first you realize Nestor and I know you do and I know she does. We are now in triple digits on both Mega Millions and Powerball making those
02:32
million on the one right? Well, we’re getting close to four right
02:35
379 Mega Millions as we speak and 100 million on the Powerball. So those things hopefully we’ll roll with boy what a Christmas in New Year’s that would be if these things God has been some some really big numbers so that’s get me started on
02:49
everything I would quit and everything I would do and everything by fire.
02:53
But you know what? Because it is the holiday time we are dusting off our annual Let It Snow promotion for our pick three, pick four and now pick five players. It’s as easy as 345. Go ahead. Take what I did there, you know, easy as 123 but it’s as easy as 345 Pick three, pick four, pick five. So you buy one of those pick tickets now through December 25. And on a random basis, you may be fortunate enough to win an instant win. Three options, your $2 instant win voucher, your $5 instant win voucher or if you’re really lucky you get a free $5 snowflake cash fast play ticket with top prize up to $50,000 if you’re really really lucky. So look for that in your retail operation or wherever you purchase your your Maryland lottery tickets responsibly.
03:48
You know, my wife markets friends invited me up to Sunbury to go to the ice cream factory one day I want to come down and I want to sit in the room with all the folks that come up with these promotions and have ideas for this because I’m thinking I must be whiteboarding them. We should give people this and somebody’s like, yeah, that’s a good idea, right? I mean, you’re always coming up with ideas or you’re borrowing them.
04:09
Well, it’s a little of both but but the room you really want to be in is the room where we say now that now that’ll never work. No, no, that’ll never work. So yeah, no, we have some fun and yeah, because we are sharing group here if nothing else at the Maryland lottery and gaming Control Agency Mr. We share ideas with other states they share with us. So if something goes well in another jurisdiction, and we think you know what, we could Maryland eyes that and do it here. That’s the way the that’s where the industry works
04:39
off the script then like what’s the best lottery idea you’ve ever heard? But you were in a room you’re like oh my god, that’s revolutionary. What way?
04:48
It’s a rare right? Yeah, yeah, there are some that are so revolutionary that they they just kind of lay an egg when it goes out there and they’re not accepted by players. But But I tend to go for the naming things. There was a scratch off ticket for the holidays several years ago, and it wasn’t ours and I wish it was it was called a wreath of Franklin’s say that real fans
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of Franklin’s a wreath of Franklin’s Okay, so that’s $100 bills. I get that right
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but but say Aretha Franklin’s, Aretha Franklin’s Aretha Franklin
05:22
rvsp ctfo That was wonderful. I knew you’d made me laugh this morning. I open things up because you’re all serious today. You know, I tell you something
05:33
will make you laugh. What Why is it why is it that why?
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Am I wasn’t Benjamin’s
05:40
Yeah, right. The ravens are fortunate enough and I say that with air quotes to be playing both Christmas Eve and New Year’s Day How was that possible? The Maryland lottery is proud to be there and ravens walkers were at every homes game for the Ravens but wow. To have those two holidays be both in town I guess that’s good news, isn’t it?
06:00
You know what? I’ve talked a lot about crowds and the Ravens and tickets and game day and all that and I thought Christmas Eve who would want to go to a game on Christmas Eve? It is like oh my time like people are like if you have tickets if you have tickets, I need tickets. I need tickets. Apparently the Christmas eat game is a really it’s a bigger game than I thought it was. And even though it’s the Atlanta Falcons, there’s a lot of demand on the Christmas Eve game.
06:24
Hey, you You’re in no position to be saying Oh, it’s just the Atlanta Falcons now, pal. I mean, they all count.
06:30
I know we play Cleveland next week. i i That’s why I’m having Ross on next week. Good move.
06:37
Good move. We’ll see how that goes. And then of course, January 1, New Year’s Day. You know Steeler week this week, but January 1, the ravens and the Steelers here in Baltimore.
06:49
I had Mike Flynn on this week. Former senator was a several 35 team. He’s actually bringing his boys up for the game. He said his boys have fallen in love with the Ravens. He lives in Boston, and his kids all want to come to him and New Year’s Day. They are going to be in Baltimore for that. So they are bringing some some alums back for the Steelers game and certainly these next couple of weeks. We’ve talked a lot of football here for the next five weeks in Division. These games look like when the schedule came out. We’re like Cleveland a sneak Pittsburgh I’m Mitch Trubisky. Oh, these will be easy games and then all of a sudden there’s nothing easy about the National Football League. It’s even harder to wager on if you gotta get points one way or another
07:23
you know it is and and what we’re seeing so far. I mean, next week, we will announce our revenue numbers for the first month the first partial month of mobile wagering here in in the state of Maryland and I don’t have the official figures yet but I but I’m already seeing some things here in reading the tea leaves. So it’s it’s it’s going to be somewhat we expected the the retail the nine locations that are open for brick and mortar come on in spell and place your bets here. They did a little less than what they did the previous month, there’ll be probably in the 30 to $33 million range. of their total handle and net about 700 million to the state blueprint for Maryland’s Future Fund. So we expected that when mobile started we expected that to take a little hit
08:18
right a lot of folks aren’t going to go to Greenmount station anymore. They’re just going to bet on that that people that were betting in bricks and mortar the first eight months they’re going to take advantage of this thing, right? I mean, they’re not going to be bricks and mortar people. I don’t want to say any more they might come in for dinner above cracking whatever they do, but but it again, my my friend the other day just in Piquet’s just looked down on his phone and said Alright, 10 bucks on this, like it. It’s becoming too easy. I would think to do it on your phone to think Well, I gotta get in my car and do it anymore. And that’s probably why people were after you and everybody else for months is trying to make it easier. And I’ll say something else about sports wagering your last couple of weeks because I did I follow the news and the industry is it goes the US playing in the last game they play when they lost that the amount of money bet on the US here and I’m thinking to myself, boy World Cup must have really stimulated sports wagering here in a weird way beginning right around Thanksgiving, that this is a once every four years tournament we’ve never had any thought about betting in in America for years and years and years. And it came on in the middle of football season. I’m thinking they’re probably a lot a lot. A lot of people are betting on the World Cup every day that just it’s never been played this time of the year. So there’s probably a little stack on for the rollout here the first month, right?
09:39
Oh, and it’s that that is absolutely the case. And it’s you know, because they are so intertwined, it’s going to be hard to really extract which which events really contributed most but but again, what we’ve seen already with the mobile side and again the official numbers will be out on Monday, December 12. We’re seeing that is probably going to be about 80 85% of the market as we thought before again, we’ll roughly do in the low 30 million on the mobile or on the retail side but mobile will be you know, upwards of 180 million plus when you look at the total handle and again, that’s the money that comes in once you pay out the winners. What’s left is the hold. And that is typically in the low teens, you know might be 10 to 14% that the the books are holding. And then on the retail side of course there is no promo play. On the mobile side there is significant promo for free money to sign up right? I mean, you know when and we’ve talked about this before and everybody knows that you know from radio and TV and web and social media. There’s just so much being inundated and spent, you know, we’ve only had eight and a half days in November. We started November 23. But we also had November 21 was kind of a half day, warm up our control demonstration day so an eight and a half days to be upwards of you know the numbers we’re seeing just shows you the pent up demand and the power of the promotional engine that these now seven entities are are rolling out and what it means to Maryland. In the near term is that there’s not a lot of money trickling over to the blueprint for Maryland future front from mobile. Most of these entities these seven mobile sportsbooks are putting in more promotional money than they’re netting out. Let me give you an example. On the retail side for a while keep the numbers and the percentages clean. A million dollars comes in at retail. They pay out $900,000 Their hold is 10% they have $100,000 They have no promotional play, we get 15% of that. That’s $15,000 That goes to the blueprint for Maryland’s Future Fund on the retail side. Now flip the script to the mobile side. It’s a bigger market that they bring in $10 million. They pay out 9 million. Again the percentages are still going to be about the same 10% they have a million dollars left. But they have spent $2 million. I’m sorry, they have Yeah, they have a million dollars left. They have spent $2 million on promotions. You gotta you got 1 million just spent two.
12:33
Well, anybody can see the math that if you’re getting $200 free to make a $10 bet. You can see there’s $190 of money in there. That’s not taxable. Right. I mean, so that’s really but this is a short term issue. This is a three month short, Super Bowl. Everybody that is going to sign up is going to sign up right?
12:52
It is a you would hope and it is a short term issue but but it’s a short term issue because of the regulations we put in place. The original law said unlimited promo play because back in 2021 That was the industry standard. A lot of a lot of other jurisdictions that unlimited promo play. And then as those states got into what they were starting to pump the brakes and trying to work that back we had the foresight when we put the regulations and say you know what, we’ll give you that unlimited promo play for the first year. But in the second year, you got to 20% cap which means you licensee sportsbook, you better manage your resources because that cap was predicated on what you netted the previous year. So if you continue to have month after month losses, you will show no revenue at the end of the year. So 20% of zero is zero so you’ve just now given yourself nothing in a promo
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box. You just want to make money too. Sure. Yeah.
13:54
So you know we you’re right i this this thing will level out. Probably not until after March Madness, but it will level out and the sportsbooks will say well wait a minute. We can’t keep doing this otherwise we won’t have any promo dollars at all next year. So we’ll see some of that come back in line but I think people in in the media people who maybe don’t follow this closely as you do are gonna look at this and go Whoa, what happened? Well, nothing happened. This is all we knew was gonna happen literally. Part of the rollout. You know, it’s what any business does in any marketplace trying to get customers in terms of getting their market share and it does predictably by by by the bigger entities, you know those so what let’s see what happens after several months, so I wouldn’t be too concerned. Let’s get through the football. Season. Let’s get through March Madness is kind of catch our breath in the spring and see where we’re at for the second half of calendar 23 And then we’ll be in a much better position to year from now.
14:51
Always love talking to John Martin from the Maryland lottery. We will be giving away some ravens scratch offs on Friday. It fails as part of the Maryland crab cake tour in conjunction with our friends at Goodwill in winter nation also next Thursday, doing a rock and roll and 31st anniversary celebration. I barely look 31 Hey, I want to go off the script one more minute because this morning early in the morning, probably because I’m out on LinkedIn and I got 25,000 people to follow me and you’re one of them and liking this and that Arizona a lot of the day you have the Arizona lottery wrote a letter and you can go read it. Check it out on LinkedIn, just about the state of sports wagering in his state and lottery in his state and the money and where all the money goes in the millions of dollars that feed the fun that you’re talking about. But he also mentioned the fact that we can now bet sports Mobley and my friends betting on Morocco maybe next week as well. Is there a point where the lottery will come on like that? And aren’t there states where you can buy a lottery ticket online on mobile?
15:47
Yeah, and again, that’s a jurisdiction by jurisdiction. Proposition there are 11 lotteries around the country that offer a mobile AI lottery option in their portfolio. We are currently not one of them.
16:01
And that’s an Annapolis issue right. That
16:03
would have to be legislated. All right. Yep. That was very
16:06
realistic or not realistic in your from where you’re sitting.
16:10
Oh, I think I think mobile sports wagering makes it more realistic. I think. I think the pandemic makes it more realistic. You know, these other 11 jurisdictions, and some of them have sports, mobile sports wagering. They all did well during the pandemic because people could continue making their lottery purchases. We of course, we’re, we’re bound by by brick and mortar locations, although we did pretty well too. It could have been a better nappy tip
16:38
dramatically during that period of time. I would think it probably tripped at least a little bit, right. It dipped a little bit
16:43
initially and then over time it it did kind of leveled out and then it actually took off towards the end of the pandemic.
16:49
People had to go out to get food and do things and you know, if they’re out there trying to do normal things, even with a mask, but it was definitely a weird time. I didn’t think so much about that. Well, and
16:59
absolutely, and other entertainment options were closed off. I mean, it couldn’t go to movie theaters. They couldn’t go to concerts. So some of the sports venues were even limited in in, in people attending in person. So so as a as a release or as an entertainment option. The lottery was just kind of a constant. So I think going forward, whether it happens in 2023 2425, who knows? But I think you’ll see a migration for a lot of lotteries, not just Maryland, looking at all available platforms because we’re here to provide revenue to our states and states are always challenging us with with ways to continue to do that.
17:36
Now Martin is here to wrap things up with you by allowing you to talk about the holidays you talked about. Holiday. scratchbuild Ross is bringing me some holiday scratch offs to giveaway next week over cost this as well, but the cautionary tale. You know, my wife was leaving to go with her lawless younger sister, you know who’s now 46 years old, but who broke state laws in New Hampshire back in the 1980s. And we want to make sure folks aren’t doing anything stupid with the scratch offs that I’m giving away as well as failures on Friday. Well, again,
18:04
I mean, the lottery tickets, whether they’re scratch off tickets or any game in the lottery, you must be 18 or older to participate. So please, they are not toys for children. They are gifts for adults. Just play responsibly gift responsibly during the holiday season. Have some fun with it, and and you’ll be fine.
18:24
There’s nothing better than when I gift a Maryland lottery ticket like this to some lady Pappas and she stands up screaming. I want $50 And I’m thinking what if they want $100,000 Because every week you have these people sitting in their car scratching and saying, I can’t believe it’s real.
18:39
I tell you what, if you if you handed out $100,000 Wonder Pappas, I guarantee you she would not jump up and scream I want $100,000 She would discreetly put it aside. Maybe leave a healthy tip and then get out of there. It’s typically what happens but yeah,
18:56
well they come and see you and you get the purple bow is out and take pictures in the body of rugo room and have a great great week. I’m gonna see Rosalind Friday data families finally getting her cracked. I’m gonna send her one to go for Greg for Northeast as well her husband, a longtime listener here at am 1570 and i hope you have a good week and I will check back in again next week. And you’re gonna have numbers next week. Right literally, we’ll
19:16
have numbers. We’ll have lots more to talk about next week. Nestor,
19:19 you’ve already undersold me on the numbers because all these promotional plays so I’m not expecting the big timpani but I’m looking forward to well to hear and how we’re doing and the rollout of this has been exciting for everybody. So John Martin is here. He is the director of all things Maryland lottery and gaming. But not Suarez. Even though things are coming online here. Make sure you’re out up. We’re gambling responsibly. I make a lot of people a couple of weeks ago download this and download that. Hold up. Stay within your means. It’s the holidays. I am Nestor. I’m staying within my means I’m gonna have to crabcakes it fails and it costs us next week as part of the Maryland crabcake tour. We are wn st am 1570 Towson Baltimore and we never stop talking. Baltimore positive
