 And we're good to go. Great. Thanks, Dave. Good afternoon. This is a convening of Massachusetts Gaming Commission. We are doing this meeting by virtually double-debar roll call. Good afternoon, Commissioner O'Brien. Good afternoon. I'm here. Good afternoon, Commissioner Hill. Good afternoon. I'm here. Good afternoon, Commissioner Skinner. Good afternoon. And good afternoon, Commissioner Mayer. Good afternoon. All right, we'll get started. Today is February 28th, and that is my oldest child's birthday. He's celebrating with him this evening. Looking forward to it. It is public meeting number 505. And we have just a couple of items today, rather special meeting. And so we'll get started. Turn it right over to the Deputy General Counsel, Teresee. Thank you so much. And Director Bant. Thank you. Yes. Thank you. Good afternoon, Madam Chair and commissioners. So on your agenda today, we have Wynn-Vett's final cessation report and request to approve its cessation of operations pursuant to 205 CMR 258.05. Jennifer Roberts and Jackie Crum are here for Wynn-Vett. Did you have any questions for them along the way? On January 24th, Wynn-Vett submitted to the commission a notice of intent to cease operations in Massachusetts as of February 23rd, with a draft cessation plan as required by 205 CMR 258. On February 8th, the commission approved Wynn-Vett's cessation plan in accordance with 205 CMR 258.03. On February 21st, the commission reviewed Wynn-Vett's cessation progress report and did not request any amendments or impose any conditions on the cessation plan at that time. 205 CMR 258.051 requires that when a sports wagering operator has completed all actions called for in its cessation plan or on the approved cessation date, whichever is earlier, the operator submit a written report to the commission notifying the commission that it has completed all actions necessary for cessation and requesting that cessation become effective. Wynn-Vett submitted its report pursuant to this section on February 23rd. Following receipt of the written report, 205 CMR 258.05 requires the commission or its designee to issue a written decision approving or denying the cessation request. And the cessation is ultimately not effective until such written decision approving the request is issued. In your packet, you have Wynn-Vett's final cessation report and a draft written decision. With respect to the report, we walked through the majority of these items last week when we're viewing their progress report but I'll still walk through all the items in the final report now. On February 12th, Wynn-Vett removed all sportsway during markets and stopped accepting deposits. At the same time, they sent out notice to patrons regarding their cessation of operations and advising patrons how to withdraw funds, how future bets or parlays would be settled, what would happen with their Wynn rewards points and directing patrons to FAQs. Also on February 12th, they posted notice of cessation on their social media accounts and website and they posted updated FAQs. As of February 22nd, as of February 22nd, 75% of all Wynn-Vett patron funds had been withdrawn from accounts. Wynn-Vett has reached out to all relevant patrons about the settlement of futures wagers and parlay legs that will remain unsettled after their 30 day wind down period has elapsed. As of February 22nd, the date of the writing of the report, they had resolved over 85% of these wagers and as of the end of the day yesterday, that is up to 92% resolved. As was discussed at the commission meeting on February 21st, Wynn-Vett has been offering an amount for these settlements that's based upon a fair market valuation of the same bet in the Massachusetts market, which includes at a minimum the original amount wagered return to the patron. They've converted outstanding bet credits from the Wynn Rewards Loyalty Program to cash and they've credited the accounts of patrons with those bet credits. They sent reminders to patrons to withdraw their funds from their accounts on February 20th and 26th and they'll continue to send reminders on March 4th and March 11th. Once all patron accounts are resolved and closed, they'll begin working with MGC's IT division to carry out the steps in their decommissioning and data retention plan. They've satisfied all current reporting obligations and they'll continue to meet all financial reporting obligations. They notified their vendors of anticipated cessation on January 29th and then they sent an additional notice on February 15th, notifying vendors and suppliers that those doing business solely with Wynn-Vett would need to surrender their license within 10 days of Wynn-Vett's surrender of its license. And then finally, they published notice in the Boston Globes online and print editions with their run period of February 14th to 18th. Sportsway during IT finance and legal have all reviewed Wynn-Vett's final cessation report and are satisfied that Wynn-Vett has complied with its cessation plan and completed those actions necessary for cessation. We do recommend imposing one condition on the approval and this is related to the settlement of futures and parlays. So given that they're still in the process of resolving some of those settlements of futures wagers and parlay legs, we would recommend that the commission approve Wynn-Vett's cessation request subject to the condition that patrons with futures wagers and parlay legs that will remain unsettled after the 30 day wind down period has elapsed, continue to be offered a settlement amount that is based upon a fair market valuation of the same bet in the Massachusetts market, which includes at a minimum the amount wagered return to the patron. So of course, as I said, this is the process that Wynn-Vett has already been following and this was contemplated in the cessation plan, but where there are still pending settlements and you'd be approving the ultimate cessation, the condition would just memorialize that process and make the commission's expectations and understanding explicit. So happy to take any questions. Questions, commissioners. Excellent job, Carrie, thank you. Well, I think that's good news. There's no questions. We understand Carrie's proposal that perhaps we catch a condition. The 30 day wind down period, is it today? I'm sorry if I didn't know that or hear that. It's 30 days from the date on which notice was provided to patrons. So Jennifer, you may know that date exactly after you've had better than I do. Yeah, we're slating that to be March 14th. Okay, so March 14th, so 15 days, right? Where we would have a condition attached. We've got 15 days to take care of 8% of these betters, these outstanding bets. Nice work. Madam Karen. I just want to state for the record that I am a little apprehensive voting for this without all of our consumers coming to an agreement with WinBet. However, with the language that's been proposed by Carrie, I think I can live with it moving forward and hope that we can settle these bets sooner rather than later. Madam Chair, I have a question to Commissioner Hill's point. Carrie, is it possible for us to get an update after March 14th to see where we are? Yeah, I think you can certainly request that of WinBet, assuming Jennifer's amenable to that. And I just want to note as well that the cessation plan itself that the commission approved did, there was sort of this expectation that this wouldn't all be resolved by February 23rd that it would continue after that date. So completely understand wanting to have an update, but just sort of noting that I think this is not a surprise that they're not completely done by me. Not a surprise, Carrie, but certainly a concern. Of course. Carrie, I did raise a question with you offline, the recourse, because Commissioner Hill has the patience, best interest at heart, of course, priority for all of us. And I said, nice work because you're down to 92%, which is just the last couple of days, it was 75%. So the work has been done. If Commissioner Maynard has asked for an update, if they weren't able to meet the 100%, and that might even be on the patient plan, right? We just don't know how this could be resolved, but assuming that somehow it's a dispute, what is their recourse that we can understand for the patients? So I ask that I'm not really sure if it's fully prepared and that's a time, Carrie. My understanding, and Jennifer correct me if I'm wrong, is that if they are not able to come to a mutually agreed upon amount, Wynn-Bett will essentially send to the patron the amount that they had offered, which is based on that fair market valuation. Is that accurate, Jennifer? Yes, we can proceed with that mechanism. We've done everything to reach out to patrons and we have not received response from some patrons. So of that 92% or the remaining 8%, we're still waiting to receive response and confirmation from some of those patrons. Thank you. Other questions? Commissioner O'Brien or just Tammy? Nope. Okay, so. Madam Chair, I'm ready to make a motion if you are. I'm digesting one thing. So thank you. I'm all set. Thanks. Commissioner, I just had to read one more thing. Thank you. If you want to move. Yep, so with that said, I move that the commission approve Wynn-Bett's sensation request pursuant to 205 CMR 258.05, subject to the condition that patrons with future wagers and parlay legs that will remain unsettled after the 30 day wind down period as elapsed continue to be offered a settlement amount that is based upon a fair market valuation of the same bet in the Massachusetts market, which includes at a minimum the original amount wagered return to the patron. I further move that staff be authorized to issue the written decision approving WSI US LLC doing business as Wynn-Bett's request to cease operations in the Commonwealth as included in the commissioner's packet and discussed here today. I have a second. Second. Okay. Any questions on that motion? It's really proven with a condition attached. All right. Commissioner O'Brien. Aye. Commissioner Hill. Aye. Commissioner Skinner. Aye. Commissioner Maynard. Aye. And I vote yes. So five zero for our records in terms of reporting back, I'll let Carrie and Jennifer work that out. At this point in time, we are concluding our relationship with you. Turni Roberts, thank you for your work. And we wish Wynn-Bett much luck if you really wind down. So thank you so much. Thank you, Madam Chair, members of the commission and commission staff. We have, it's been an honor to have participated in the Massachusetts market, even if briefly, and we have appreciated all the cooperation and collaboration with the commission. So thank you. Thank you. Okay. With that said, we're all set then to move on to our next presentation. And again, thank you, Jennifer. All right. So item number three on our agenda, going to turn to Minister Bushman. We have a presentation today. Morning. Yes, we do have Jake, I see from DraftKings and they will present their quarterly report from Q4 of 2023. Thanks, Crystal. Good morning, Madam Chair and commissioners. Good afternoon. Firstly, today I'm joined by Christina Akkes, who's our vice president of IEB. Jared Hess, our director of communications and Julie Hines, senior manager for responsible gaming. With that, I will share my screen. Please let me know when you can see and I'll get started. Sorry, I couldn't hear. I couldn't hear if I was going to. All set. All set. Great. Okay. Okay. So starting with revenue, I won't go through each box, but the total for Q4 revenue for DraftKings was $92,160,224 during Q4 and that was at a whole percentage of 9.8%. This resulted in $17,976,581 in taxes collected for the state. I will leave the slide up for a few moments just so that you can view the October, November, December breakdown. And with that, I'll hand it off to Christina to talk about workforce diversity. Thank you, Jay. Good afternoon, everyone. So really just recapping kind of our progress throughout the year. We're definitely continuing to make gains in regards to hiring from a diversity standpoint. We have grown diversity in both gender and ethnicity from 2022 to year-end 2023. Current population is at 27% female, 32% BIPOC. Our hiring rates are above the percentage of our current representation. So really showing a lot of strides there and continuing to move towards expected goals for 2025. So we are focusing a lot of our programming this year, though also on internal roles in regards to leadership as we want to continue to increase our diversity representation and leadership roles. Jake, on the next page, it breaks those down. So as you can see, from just a senior leadership standpoint, really wanting to focus continued efforts on ethnicity diversity across our US footprint as well as mass two sets. And then globally really looking at more of the gender splits and ensuring that we are developed to develop talent, but also from a succession planning standpoint. So within our talent management process, we're looking at going function by function to develop succession plans that ensure diversity and equity within our processes. Next slide, Jake. Sorry, the presentation's stuck there. Mm-hmm, it works. That's great. Questions, questions on this? Okay. Supplier diversity. So this year is, you know, last year we were focusing a lot on just trying to understand where we were and make sure that we were tracking. I mentioned we have, we're successfully onboarding supplier IO to help us manage both tracking and identifying suppliers within our local areas and globally, really to ensure that we can really make more progress to hitting our goals. Our national goals for supplier diversity are 5% by year end of 2025, specifically within mass, we've reached 10% but our national efforts are a little bit behind at 0.6%. So some efforts that we have, one, we're launching an executive committee to inform and drive results internally. We get a lot more traction when we have kind of more hands-on, more leadership, especially in the areas where we're seeing higher spends so that we can make real movement here. I actually have a meeting next week with John Fitzpatrick at the supplier diversity program office. So thank you for sending that information. I think that'll be very helpful from a local standpoint as we continue to, we're at 10% but we want to of course continue to grow. And I think it's been very specific within the minority business spending versus like our women owned businesses and even veteran owned businesses. So that's where we want to make sure that we're continuing to diversify in that space as well. So next quarter really hope to be able to provide some additional insights in regards to the conversations and meetings we have with the SEO office and how we can integrate that into our executive committee and forward plans. And so you could see here, as I mentioned, quarterly really more progress in the minority owned businesses versus veterans and women. So that's again, wanting to diversify the supplier diversity that we have especially within mass. And next slide is just the percentage breakdown for visibility. Thank you. I'll turn it over to compliance. Thanks Christina. So quickly going through underage slash minor access. So through October, we identified and reported five cases of suspected underage access three during November and two during December. Each of these were reported to the commission. Any questions for the data on that? In terms of your all set? Sounds like you can fix. Thank you. And with that, I'll pass it over to Julie Hines for responsible gaming. Excellent. Thank you so much, Madam Chair, members of the committee. I would just like to introduce this in terms of the Q4, the VSD application of self-exclusions. We have 330 as of Q4 2023 as a comparison to 121 at the end of Q3. So moving forward on that, was there any questions? So commissioners, am I right that this number is much higher than we saw with others? Lady Crystal, you can explain it. Higher than we saw from the other sports racing operators but they excluded on draft teams because it automatically applied to the other operators. Did I hear that during one of the presentations? Commissioners, see you nodding. Are you right? Yeah, my understanding was is that certain operators where, and Crystal can correct this, but certain operators are including only the ones that come through their app versus ones that exist across the state. Right, because if it's on our list, we've essentially already know, but some operators have their own VSE exclusion that may or may not apply to ours. And so they provide that additional data. So is this drafting or do you not know? So in Massachusetts, we use the state list. So anyone who comes to us from the state exclusion list, but then also has an account with draft kings will form part of this number. Okay. How many were unique to draft kings? I think is what the chair is trying to sort out here. Yeah, so that's, sorry, maybe I can explain that a little bit better. So we leverage the state list. Like if you go through the draft kings, self-exclusion, user experience, we will direct you to the state list. So all of our excluded customers are on the state list. That doesn't mean that numbers might not vary from operator to operator, because not all of those people might actually have accounts with every operator. They also think maybe what the elevated number looks like, because what I'm seeing from this, Jake, and you may just want to verify what I'm saying. It looks like you guys are including a total number since launch. And I think other operators are only including that quarter, because this says as of Q4, and I've noticed that the last few are higher and higher. So I think this is a cumulative number. Is that correct, Jake? Yeah, that appears to be correct. I mean, let me check if we can get the sense on, but that appears to be correct. So that's the total all time, as opposed to just the one enrollments for this quarter. So I did see the difference, and I wondered if that was the case. So where there's probably more activity during the last quarter because of the split calendar, perhaps, I'm guessing that's correct. You should be able to see the difference, I guess in any case, between Q3 and Q4. Yeah. For Q4 specific number. Okay, so that's a good, that's still a really good number. The Delta is a good number, from my perspective. Here's Julie. Something else just to call out here as well, I'm going to share a number of submissions. Is one member with players? Sorry, I'm getting an echo. Are you all getting an echo now? We are. Apologies. Let me go ahead and do it. Everybody can hear me now? Yeah. Sorry, I'm in an airport. Lots of technical issues today, my apologies. Something else just to call it is, when a player does self exclude from another state as well on a platform, that will also apply to Massachusetts. So those numbers would not, of course, appear on the state self-exclusion list. Okay. Are we good to move? Yeah, thank you for taking time on this such an important tool. And so I just wanted to understand how it works. Thank you to you both. Moving forward, I believe the next slide is for relation to limits. So you may remember our last quarter, we did have some discussion around the limits utilization. We continue to see deposit limits as being the greatest uptake of our tool utilization among our players. However, the uptake was lower this quarter than it was last quarter. Looking back over time, we do see that historically a little bit of a lull in the tool utilization in Q4, mostly in relation to more casual players that may have uptake in the month of August and September when NFL season starts. And even looking at Q1, I could see that the tool utilization up took before, like during the NFL playoffs in the Super Bowl, we did see more casual players utilizing those tools than as well. We now have a banner on our main carousel. So as players enter into the app, they will see, in addition to promotional offers, they will see a call to action to engage with our limit setting tools. This was activated in December and we will continue to do so throughout the year of 2024. We will engage with more, you know, more assets with our creative teams. We have more in play that we look forward to discussing with the commission in Q1. But we did notice in December 2023, we had 22,692 clicks. Early data, however, did not show a demonstrable uptake and tool uptake. We were really proud to also offer our under 25 players a continuous CRM send. So what that means is the player engages with us from the first week of onboarding on day three, the new player email, you could see there on the left, offers our players general tips around responsible gaming, invites them to set deposit wager limits, maximum single wager limits and time limits on app. We also then have a player pop-up that comes up on day 14 of the activation. And that's around myths and truth around responsible gaming issues and really trying to engage with that myth busting with our 125 players. And then on a continuous basis, on a bi-monthly basis, we have pop-up with our players around just general tips around betting responsibly and looking at our responsible gaming resources. Hi, this is Commissioner Reinevich's question about the pop-ups. Yes. If this is something that you don't wanna go into in this session, we can do it in executive, but my concern with hearing pop-up, although it's a laudable thing to be RG, is it coming in a time, do you do the pop-ups even when the person hasn't engaged with the platform in a while? Like, is this sort of prompting them to remember the app? So if the engagement with a pop-up, if the person would naturally be in on the app, so... So this is pushing out. This only comes up when they're in and engaging? Yes, that would be correct. The new player email, we do have player emails that come out during the first week of onboarding with our players, and this would be one of those emails during that first week. And then, yes, the other pop-up, the person has to be logged in and engaged with the app. And I'm sure I know the answer to this, but have you contemplating defaulting under 25 limits and then having them have to actively remove them? Sure, yep. I know we had another licensee who actually under 25, they had actual hard set caps, daily limits on under 25, and you're talking about reminding them they have that option. Has there been any discussion, given the literature about the brain development under 25, whether you want to default caps on under 25 where they would have to actively go and remove them and change them? Madam Chair, Mr. O'Brien, that is a question, that's a good one, and that's certainly something under consideration. I don't know if, Jake, if you have anything else to add there. Not as of this moment, no, but it's certainly something that we can take up with the responsible gaming team and provide further information in a future meeting. Thanks, I would appreciate that. Thank you, Commissioner. Our final slide is regarding our external engagements and responsible gaming funding. We do provide global funding, so to speak, with that blocker in the amount of $15,000, that blocker for just as a refresher, that is an anonymous free tool for anybody to use and they have over 80,000 sites and counting both regulated and unregulated sites that are blocked, so we're proud to support them. Cambridge Health Alliance Division on Addiction, which you're all very familiar with, we have provided funding to them in the amount of 325,000. They have worked with us around data science in addition to our training and education programming and drafting state council funding program. We're a proud sponsor of all of the state councils who engage with us, including the Mass Council on Gaming and Health. Very appreciative of our ongoing partnership with them as well. Epic Global Solutions is we have lived experience trainings that we are really proud to offer for our employees on a quarterly basis, in addition to more micro learning experiences that we have on our intranet, our employee intranet. And it really, we've gotten a lot of feedback from our employees just around how engaged they feel, how empathetic they understand a person with lived experience. I mean, we keep in mind that we have engineers and people from all aspects that might not even be experienced with the gaming realm. And so, especially in an online experience. So it's really helpful. We found that we're proud to continue that ongoing engagement with Epic. The International Center for Responsible Gaming, you know, up in Beverly, we have provided $70,000 of funding for them to continue research. And speaking of research, Kindbridge Research Institute and ongoing partnership with them with their 50 by four veterans program in addition to their MRAP for the Military Research Associate Program with Kindbridge Research Institute in the amount of $100,000. And then finally, Kindbridge Behavioral Health in the amount of $60,000. We do have a growing partnership with them to offer a free resource for players to be able to have sort of a soft handoff after our platform self-exclusion process. And of course, we're active members of the AGA and the NCPG. Okay, moving on to the lottery. As you might have seen recently in the news, DraftKings has entered into a definitive merger agreement to acquire Jack Pocket, which is subject to customary closing conditions. Upon the closing of this deal, this would of course provide us with an opportunity to work much more closely with the Massachusetts Lottery. And then if no questions there, I'll hand it over to Jared Hess to talk about community outreach. Great, thanks Jake. Yeah, I just wanted to take a few minutes to walk you through some of our community initiatives during Q4, especially in Massachusetts. In honor of the holiday season this year, we instituted a holiday give back initiative. So employees in all of our offices were given the opportunity to nominate and vote on a charity to receive a $10,000 donation that was local to their community. In Boston, our Boston employees selected Closing the Gap Foundation, which is a Massachusetts based nonprofit that's focused on supporting individuals and families that are affected by cystic fibrosis. So representatives from the charity were invited to our holiday party on the next slide. You can see photos from a check presentation when we gave them the donation as part of our holiday office party, which we were proud to do in Massachusetts. On the next slide, we hosted folks at our Army Navy game on December 9th at Gillette Stadium, which was great to have it here in Massachusetts. In addition to hosting our friends at Vets and Tech, who we run our Tech for Heroes program with, we also invited graduates from the Tech for Heroes program, so veterans who have gone through our training program to attend the game, get to experience that as well, and also invited and hosted several DraftKings employees who are veterans at the game. So it was a great opportunity for all of our veterans employees and people who have participated in our veterans program. In October, we also were a major sponsor of the Boston Celtics Shamrock Foundation, Tip-Off Gala. This year was hosted October 5th at Encore, and we raised, or the foundation raised $1.5 million to invest back into the Boston community. So we were proud to be a charitable partner for that event. And then in October this year, for the fifth consecutive year, we ran our Pinkham campaign. So this is a partnership that we have with the Larry Fitzgerald Foundation. So every October, we offer free Pickham contests for our customers. And we say that we'll donate $1 for every entry into each pool throughout the weeks of October. So once again, we raised, we're donated $100,000 to the Larry Fitzgerald Foundation, again to support breast cancer research and funding. And then as we have for several years now, we continued our Tech for Heroes program throughout the year. In Q4 in November, we trained our 800th veterans to this program. So again, through Tech for Heroes, DraftKings trains veterans and military spouses in high demand tech skills with the opportunity to introduce them into the tech community and help them find employment. So for Veterans Day, we ran a sectoral free to play contests, continue to raise money for the Tech for Heroes program, which we've donated over $2 million through since 2018. Thank you. Thank you. Take down the PowerPoint. We'll reconvene it. Thanks. Thank you everyone for your time. Well, reconvene as a group. So just so we can make sure our questions are all answered. Thank you. Thank you, Jake and team. Richard's questions were correct. I see no one leaning in. So I want to thank you. This is a nice presentation. Thank you for the significant charitable work that you're doing. We asked about community engagement. Oh, I can say from my perspective, I think it's really important. Thank you. Thank you very much. Okay. And Julie, thank you. Good luck. Safe travels. Thank you everyone for your time again. Thanks, Jake. Pistol all set? All set. Okay. Dr. Bann, are you all set? Okay. Richard, do you have any updates? No. Do I need a motion to adjourn? But let me check in with Todd. You've been quiet. All set? Yes. Thank you. All set. And Jackie has hung in with us this whole time. Thanks, Jackie. All right. Motion to adjourn? I'll adjourn, Madam Chair. Second. Thanks. Any questions or edits on that motion to adjourn? Commissioner O'Brien. Aye. Patricia Hill. Aye. Patricia Skinner. Aye. Patricia Rader. I vote yes. Five-zero. Thanks, everyone.