 new year we're going to go streaming in just a minute. I'll set. I'll set. Okay, great. Thank you. Good afternoon everyone. This is a convening of the Massachusetts Gaming Commission. We are holding this public meeting on a virtual platform so we will do a roll call. Good afternoon, Commissioner O'Brien. Good afternoon. Happy new year. I am here. Thank you. Good afternoon, Commissioner Hill. Good afternoon. I'm here. Good afternoon, Commissioner Skinner. Good afternoon. I'm here. Great. And good afternoon, Commissioner Maynard. Good afternoon, Madam Chair. I'm here. So happy new year, everyone. We've already had a public hearing related to the un-kethered category three applicants this morning. And I think all of us are keeping DeMar Hamlin in our thoughts and prayers. You're all involved very closely with the sports industry and last night's game. Get home for us fans and for those who are in the industry and then of course for his family. And I'm thinking of his mother. So I'm going to call to order this public meeting at number 418. It's January 3rd and we're just at 135. And before I turn to our general council, I'm going to provide a few introductory remarks. Some of them are going to be very familiar to you, but it's important we have a new applicant and new members of new stakeholders who are attending and new basis. It's nice to see you all. So today as we begin our evaluation of these applications, we as commissioners are reminded of our principal responsibility to ensure the public confidence and the integrity of the gaming industry here in Massachusetts and the strict oversight of the gaming establishments and now sports wagering operations through rigorous regulation. We are reminded that the MGC's licensees will be held to the highest standards of compliance, including an obligation to maintain their integrity. As we've said in the past, the award of a gaming license in the Commonwealth is a peerless privilege and our laws require gaming licensees to be held to those highest standards on a continuing basis. The MGC mission commits us to creating a fair, transparent and participatory process that engenders the competence of the public and its participants. The process is to benefit the Commonwealth while minimizing potential or realized negative or unintended consequences. With that understanding, the MGC and all of its powers are created by statute. We must follow the process required by the legislature and to shed further light on that. I'm going to turn to general counsel Grossman. Good afternoon, Todd. Good afternoon. Thank you, Madam Chair. As we've discussed on a number of occasions now, suitability is an important part of this sports wagering licensing process, regardless of the category of license being evaluated. The statutory construct is somewhat complex in that Chapter 23N has language that is before you now, which is slightly different from the familiar language in Chapter 23K. It's this complexity that we must deal with now and the statutory scheme with which we must apply. Significantly, the timing of the full suitability investigation and determination are different under the two statutes. Chapter 23K, as we'll all recall, required full suitability before licensure of the casino gaming operators. Chapter 23N allows for licensure prior to completing this complete review, although the decisions are subject to further review as described in the regulations in which I'll discuss in further detail momentarily. For the mobile operators who have not gone through suitability the way casinos have, Chapter 23N directs a temporary license before full suitability. Currently, we're engaged in the public meeting process, which deals with the statutory presumptive granting of some sports wagering licenses under 23N and the temporary licensure of mobile sports wagering licenses under Chapter 23N. Our proceeding today is not an adjudicatory hearing. Review of any license for final or durable suitability would take place at a later time after a thorough investigation that would include an informed determination of any individuals or entities which bear on an applicant's suitability and after full consideration in a properly convened adjudicatory hearing. In the interim, an applicant may be deemed eligible to operate under a temporary license. And Chair Judd Stein, with that I believe you wish to conclude your introductory remarks. Thank you, Attorney Grossman, and thank you to my fellow commissioners and to the entire MGC team for your commitment to our mission. And with that, I'd like to just give the brief overview of today's agenda. First, you'll hear, again, from Attorney Grossman, who will review the statutory and regulatory framework that will guide us as we evaluate the application. Then, Hand Sports Interactive, excuse me, LLC, or PSI, will present its application for a Tethered Category 3 online sports wagering license. After PSI's presentation, we'll hear from GLI, the IEB, and RSM relative to the technology, suitability, and finance components of the application. And that will lead us to a section by section analysis of the application during which the applicant will answer our questions. Staff members and our legal team, in addition to GLI, IEB, and RSM, will also be available to answer questions. And to ensure that we have time to reflect, finalize any personal notes, memorializing our impressions, and following up with any unanswered questions, we may break as needed after consideration of each section or number of sections. Then after any further questions, for purposes of review of the Category 3 application, I'll seek from the group comments and assess as to whether we have a consensus regarding the quality of the applicant's response to that section. Did the applicant not meet expectations relevant to the standard of review outlined by General Counsel Grossman? Did the applicant meet expectations, or did the applicant meet expectations? And at any time during this public meeting, permission may determine that the executive session is required for us to fully review and evaluate certain information in the application as set forth in the agenda. Should we vote to go into executive session with the guidance of our legal counsel? At this time, it is anticipated that the public session of this committee meeting will reconvene today at the conclusion of any such executive session. And then after our review of the application, we'll consider whether we wish to proceed with our determination process fully on part or defer that decision entirely to another day. So with that, let's turn now to item number two on the agenda. Back to General Counsel Grossman. Thank you. Thank you, Madam Chair, and good afternoon to you and to all the commissioners and to all who are joining us. And of course, happy New Year to everyone. We're here today. And as the chair mentioned into tomorrow, so that the commission may evaluate the applications received for category three tethered sports wagering licenses from Penn Sports Interactive LLC, which operates the Barstool Sportsbook brand. And tomorrow, scheduled to commence the evaluation of the applications submitted by FBG Enterprises, UPCO LLC, which would operate under the Fanatics brand. Both of these applicants have applied as a tethered operator to Plainville Gaming and Redevelopment, which is of course the entity that operates Plainridge Park Casino, the category one licensee. Prior to commencing the review, however, it will be useful to once again set the stage by walking through the legal provisions and principles that will inform the commission's decision making. And so with that, I'll highlight a few of the provisions of the Massachusetts Sports Wagering Act, which has been enacted in chapter 23 and of the general laws and then a number of sections of the commission's recently adopted regulations. So I'll begin with chapter 23 and in the first place to look is section 63, which says that the commission may issue a category three license to any entity that offers sports wagering for a mobile application or other digital platform that meets the requirements of this chapter and the rules and regulations of the commission. Provided, however, that the commission shall issue no more than seven category three licenses that are not connected to a category one or category two license. In the present manner, the applicants are each connected to a category one licensee, specifically again, Plainville Gaming and Redevelopment, which is that category one operator. The entity was previously awarded a temporary category one license by the commission on December 20th. We've used this term tethered to describe the connection between the category one licensee and the category three licensees. And since the two applicants before you today and tomorrow are tethered applicants, you'll recall that that means that the seven license limit does not apply to these types of license. Before we look to the commission's regulations that govern the licensing process for category three applicants, let's establish what a category three sports wagering operator license is. And that term is defined in chapter 23 and section three to mean a license issued by the commission that permits the operation of sports wagering through a mobile application or other digital platforms approved by the commission. And just to place the present applications in context, it's important to recall that this category one license holder, such as Plainville Gaming and Redevelopment, is permitted to conduct sports wagering operations through not more than two individually branded mobile applications or other digital platforms approved by the commission, provided that the mobile applications themselves shall be qualified for and issued a category three license. So the applicants before the commission today and tomorrow seek to operate one of those two digital platforms that go along with the Plainville Gaming and Redevelopment category one license. So now let's have a look at the commission's rules and regulations that have to be met by the applicant in order to be issued a license. And here the best place to start is in 205-CMR-218, which as you know, is the section that sets out the application requirements, standards, and procedures. The process itself has of course already begun. An administrative sufficiency review was performed upon the submission of the suitability portions of the application. And then the commission convened a public meeting a few weeks back in order to receive public feedback on the tethered category three applications. Momentarily we'll walk through the factors and standards that the commission has set out for the award of a license. But prior to doing so, there are a few other provisions and principles that are important to recall. First, the regulations provide that the commission shall analyze the factors and considerations set out in the regulations, but need not do so in any particular order or give any individual factor any particular weight. And in fact, can assign a factor no weight at all if deemed appropriate. And next you'll recall that the regulations provide the commission may require or permit an applicant to provide additional information or documents as the commission deemed appropriate in its review of the application. So if you're evaluating the information provided in an application relative to a particular factor, and you determine that further information is required, you may direct the applicant to provide it. Similarly, if during the course of the commission's evaluation, the applicant observes that there is additional information that was not provided that may be of use to the commission, it may request an opportunity to do so. Further, it's noteworthy that again, the present review is being conducted as part of the regular public meeting process under the open meeting law, and not it is an adjudicatory proceeding. This means a number of things as previously mentioned, including that all deliberations must take place in public, and that if necessary, the executive session provision of Chapter 30A may be utilized. As it pertains to the instant matter, Section 21A7 of Chapter 30A allows the commission to move into executive session to comply with or act under the authority of any general law. In the present situation, there is a general law that gives the commission authority to move into executive session. Specifically, Section 6i of Chapter 23N provides that applications for operator licenses shall be public records under Section 10 of Chapter 66. Provided, however, the trade secrets, competitively sensitive, or other proprietary information provided in the course of an application for an operator license under this chapter, the disclosure of which would place the applicant at a competitive disadvantage may be withheld from disclosure under the public records law. In sum, if there is any specific information that the commission would like to discuss, but that the applicant identifies as falling within that provision, and the commission agrees, it may move into executive session to discuss that specific information. While the statutory provision in Chapter 23N relates to the public records law, and not to the open meeting law, to require that the subject information be discussed publicly would nullify the whole purpose of the provision which is designed to protect such information. Accordingly, application of the executive session provision at reference is appropriate in this circumstance. And finally, before moving into the factors themselves, it's also important to recall that any finding the commission makes must be supported by substantial evidence. This term is defined as such evidence as a reasonable mind might accept as adequate to support the conclusion. So when making a determination as to whether there is support in the application to find that a specific factor has been satisfied, or that it has not been satisfied, the commission will have to ensure that there is substantial evidence in the record to support the conclusion. The one exception to this rule in an area which a heightened standard is applied relates to the review of an applicant's suitability. By the terms of Section 215 of the regulations, any durable finding of suitability must be supported by clear and convincing evidence, not just substantial evidence, which is a slightly lower standard. Our jurisprudence tells us that clear and convincing proof exists when the evidence induces in the mind of the fact finder a reasonable belief that the facts asserted are highly probably true. And the probability that they are true or exist is substantially greater than the probability that they are false or do not exist. And for evidence to be clear and convincing, it must be sufficient to convey a high degree of probability that the proposition to be proved is true. And it must be strong and positive and full clear and decisive. So those are the two standards of review that may be in play here as part of these hearings, if you will, that will be subject to your evaluation. Now let me lay out the factors included in Section 218 of the commission's regulations that you will be reviewing. When we get to this part of the proceeding, the commission has, of course, reviewed these applications factor by factor. You will call that the commission included subfactors under each of the factors themselves. Prior to engaging in final deliberations relative to a particular applicant, it'll be helpful to outline each of those, so I'm not going to do that right now. The factors are all included in Section 218.06, Subsection 5. Each factor falls under the umbrella standard that the commission included in the regulations, which directs that in determining whether to award a sports wagering operator license, the commission will evaluate the application to determine whether a license award would benefit the comment. So that is the main standard that will have to be met in order to award a license. In reaching that conclusion, the commission is provided that it will consider the following factors. And of course, you'll recall that the application itself was designed to solicit information within these categories. Number one, the applicant's experience and expertise related to sports wagering. Two, the economic impact and other benefits to the commonwealth if the applicant is awarded a license. Number three, the applicant's proposed measures related to responsible gaming. Number four, a description of the applicant's willingness to foster racial, ethnic, and gender diversity, equity, and inclusion. Number five, the technology the applicant intends to use in its operation. Number six, the suitability of the applicant and its qualifiers. We'll come back to that one momentarily. And number seven, any other factor in the commission's discretion. So those are all the factors that will be reviewed as part of this application evaluation. You'll recall that there are a few additional factors that the commission included in the regulations relative to category evaluations. However, those considerations are specific to untethered applicants, not to the tethered sort before you today. I'd also just like to again circle back to the suitability factor for a moment. As you know, the commission adopted section 215 of the regulations to govern suitability determinations. And it included provisions allowing for two types of suitability findings. The first is the durable finding of suitability, which means relates to the so-called final determination. And secondly, it created the preliminary finding of suitability consistent with the statute. You may choose to award a durable finding if you conclude that an applicant and each of its qualifiers has demonstrated their suitability by clear and convincing proof after having undergone a property investigation. Neither of the entities before you today and tomorrow have gone through that process. Accordingly, you may consider that second type of finding in these matters, the preliminary finding. You may award that finding under the regulations. If the applicant has satisfied section 215.012, based upon a certification submitted by the applicant and an investigatory report submitted by the IEB. If you find an applicant to be preliminarily suitable, that makes them eligible to request a temporary license under the process described in section 219 of the regulations. The entity would not receive a full license at this juncture. This process, you'll recall, is intended to allow the commission the customary full thorough background investigation opportunity and a supplemental suitability determination to be made at an adjudicatory proceeding, which will be conducted by the IEB and the commission respectively. So those are the factors the commission must consider in order to determine whether to make a licensing decision. As you work your way through the evaluation though, it has become clear that conditions of licensure may be appropriate in a particular area. For example, you may find that information relative to a particular factor is lacking. In that event, it does not necessarily mean that the applicant cannot be awarded a license. It may simply mean that an area may be required to be supplemented with an appropriate condition. License conditions are described in section 220 of the regulations, and we'll talk more about those as we proceed through this evaluation. You'll recall though that there are a number of automatic conditions like an obligation to obtain an operation certificate prior to commencing operations and that an operator must comply with chapter 23 and of the commission's regulations. But there is also that provision that allows the commission to impose any other conditions that it determines are appropriate to secure the objectives of chapter 23 and 205 CMR. Once the commission has made its way through all of the enumerated factors, but before any final decision is made as to whether to award a license, the commission can shore up what those final conditions will be in the event that it is inclined to award a license. Once that's done, the commission may decide whether we'll award the category III license outright upon a durable finding of suitability, or it may enter that preliminary finding of suitability and determine that the applicant is eligible to request a temporary license while a complete suitability assessment is performed, or of course it may deny the application for failure to meet the requirement of the regulations or for having violated section 60 or 9 of chapter 23 and to be clear, once again, recede of that category III license in the fashion that commission is reviewing today and tomorrow, whether temporary or full does not permit for the untethered mobile operation just tethered as one of the two digital or mobile operations associated with the category I license. At this juncture, if an award is made, a written decision will be prepared and issued commemorating the commission's decision. Keep in mind once again that the award of the license or temporary license does not mean that the licensee has the green light to commence operations. It simply means they are eligible to work towards the award of an operation certificate, which is a prerequisite to conducting sports training operations. That process is described in section 251 and requires submission and approval of such things as internal controls, including the house rules and compliance with any of the conditions that may be imposed as part of any award of a license. And with that, Madam Chair and commissioners, I will conclude my introductory remarks and turn the matter back over to you, Madam Chair. And Madam Chair, you're on mute. That was so 2022. So we're going to move now. Thank you, Attorney Grossman. We're going to move to item number three, where PSI or Penn Sports Interactive will give us their presentation of their application and our demo. Thank you. So I'm not sure who is actually going to leave. So, Chris, I see you. I will leave, Madam Chair. Good afternoon. Good afternoon. How are you? I'm well. Thank you. Good. Thank you so much. Good afternoon, Madam Chair, commissioners and commission staff. We are pleased to be back in front of you today for Penn Sports Interactive's category three license hearing. We appreciate the thoughtful discussion that we engaged in as part of the category one hearing. And we're excited about the opportunity to offer online sports betting in the Commonwealth, in addition to our retail operation. We have a number of Penn Entertainment and Penn Interactive team members on the call to provide a detailed overview of Penn Sports Interactive's application and subsequently answer your questions. I would also like to note that our CEO and president, Jay Snowden, is available to join the hearing as part of a public or an executive session, should the commission have any questions that you would like for him to specifically address. And with that to kick it off, I will turn it over to Benji Levy, who is the head of Penn Interactive. And you met Benji briefly at the end of our last call on December 20th. And so with that, I'll hand it to Benji. Thanks, North. And good afternoon, Madam Chair, commissioners and commission staff, and happy New Year, everyone. My name is Benji Levy, and I'm the head of Penn Interactive. In my role, I oversee Penn Interactive's division, including operations for the Barstool Sportsbook and the SCORE, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Penn that was acquired in 2021. I assumed my current role in June of this year and have overseen three Barstool Sportsbook online launches in Kansas, Maryland, and most recently in Ohio. I have extensive experience in the online sports wagering and sports media space, having spearheaded the launch of the SCORE's Mobile Sports Media app, as well as its betting product, the SCORE Bet, which debuted in the U.S. in 2019, and then in Ontario, Canada in 2022. It's been a rewarding experience working in the nascent North American sports betting industry since the repeal of PASPA in 2018. I've been privileged to work alongside industry leaders, including accomplished colleagues, partners, and regulators, as legalized sports betting has grown across the U.S. And I'm pleased to represent Penn today as we present our application to operate online sports wagering in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Many of my colleagues have been working with MGC staff over the last several months on sports wagering-related items, and we appreciate the Commission's time, guidance, and thoughtful deliberations in bringing legalized sports betting to the Commonwealth. Presenting with me today will be Aaron Chamberlain, Senior Vice President of Regional Operations for Penn, Justin Carter, Senior Vice President of Regional Operations, and Chair of Penn's Diversity Committee. Chris Soriano, Chief Compliance Officer for Penn, Sam Hagerty, Deputy Chief Compliance Officer and Regulatory Affairs Counsel for Penn, Michael West, Vice President, Legal, Strategy and Business Affairs for Penn, Josh Pearl, Senior Director of New Markets and Strategic Initiatives for Penn Interactive, and Trey Atkinson, Director of Operations for Penn Interactive. We appreciate the opportunity to supplement our application with today's presentation and to address any questions the commissioners may have. On behalf of the entire Penn team, we look forward to demonstrating that Penn Interactive would be a beneficial addition to the Commonwealth's newly legalized sports betting market that will positively contribute to the Commonwealth's economic development. If the Commission grants PI the privilege of a license, we plan to build upon the strong foundation we already have in place in Massachusetts through Plain Ridge Park Casino and achieve similar operational excellence as a highly accomplished sports wagering provider. Following the review of our background and expertise, we will present our commitment to responsible gaming and diversity, equity and inclusion followed by a technology overview and a product demonstration. Our complete Category 3 operator license application was submitted to the commission on November 21, 2022 by a secure file transfer. We have redacted certain information from the application made available for public viewing. These redactions were made based in reliance upon the Massachusetts public records laws. Specifically, some information was redacted due to exemption C covering unwarranted invasions of personal privacy, exemption G covering trade secrets, and exemption N covering records related to the safety of persons buildings or structures. Additionally, we have redacted some information from the public version of our application due to federal securities laws covering the release of certain financial information to investors. Based on the redactions, there may be some information in our complete application that we will not be able to discuss in a public setting. We will of course be responsive to questions regarding redacted portions of our application in an executive session. One small housekeeping item before we proceed, this slide contains our safe harbor disclosure regarding any forward-looking statements that may be made in today's presentation. Penn Entertainment Inc. is a publicly traded company on the NASDAQ global select market. Penn is a leading provider of integrated entertainment, sports content, and casino gaming experiences that serves customers and communities across North America through a portfolio of well-recognized brands. Our company has evolved from a regional casino operator into a cutting-edge technology-driven omnichannel entertainment provider with a demonstrated record of operational excellence. This slide provides an overview of our operational footprint. Penn and its subsidiaries have extensive experience and expertise as a sports-wadring operator and maintain exceptional standing in the jurisdictions in which we operate. Overall, Penn operates 43 properties across 20 states, including 29 retail sportsbooks. Penn Sports Interactive currently operates online sports-wadring in 60 jurisdictions and online casino operations in 5 jurisdictions. Our business is far-reaching, engaging millions of customers daily through our owned and operated properties and platforms, and employs tens of thousands of team members as part of the Penn family. We're proud to deliver best-in-class entertainment experiences in so many communities, including here in the Commonwealth. I would also like to highlight that Penn Interactive employs 27 team members in Massachusetts with the Commonwealth serving as the base for our in-house iCasino content studio, Penn Game Studios, based in Greenfield. The following slide is an overview of our corporate structure. Under the parent company, Penn Entertainment is Penn Interactive Ventures LLC, which I'll refer to as Penn Interactive or PI. Penn Interactive is a wholly owned subsidiary of Penn Entertainment and houses the company's digital business. Penn Sports Interactive LLC, or PSI, is a wholly owned subsidiary of Penn Interactive that is submitted for licensure to offer retail and online sports-wadring services in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Additionally, Plain Ridge Park Casino is a wholly owned subsidiary of Penn Entertainment. Penn intends for Plain Ridge Park Casino to assume responsibility of day-to-day operations for retail sports-wadring in the Commonwealth. The next slide provides additional detail on the relationship between PSI and PPC. PSI will provide a turnkey solution for PPC's sports-wadring operation, including equipment, systems, and services. PSI will also provide training and ongoing support to PPC as needed. This operational structure mirrors how PSI works with Penn's many of retail sports books across the country. In accordance with this proposed structure, PSI has applied to be a sports-wadring vendor to provide these items to PPC. Of note, the equipment and systems provided to PPC by PSI will be manufactured or otherwise supplied by licensed vendors in accordance with MGC's Sports-Wadring Vendor Guidance. As an example, the kiosks PPC intends to use are manufactured by Novamatic America Sales, and the sports-wadring system to be implemented would be supplied by Cambie. The sports-wadring system and necessary equipment are currently being certified by GLI in accordance with the commission's issued guidance. To reiterate what North previously shared during his presentation on retail sports-wadring operations, PPC will assume responsibility for employing the sportsbook staff and running daily operations, including the acceptance of wagers, cash handling, maintaining surveillance, revenue audit, recording, and other obligations under their Category 1 license. Penn Sports Interactive has contributed incremental taxable revenue in each state in which it offers online sports wagering, and we look forward to continuing that trend in the Commonwealth. Our estimates of wagering volume, market share, and gross gaming revenue are provided with the unredacted version of our application. We would please to answer any specific questions regarding this information in executive session. As outlined previously and as further detailed in our application, PSI is backed by our parent company, Penn Entertainment. As highlighted in Penn Entertainment's recent third-quarter earnings presentation, and again shown here, Penn Entertainment's reported record revenues, EBITDA, and cash flow for the last 12 months ended September 30th and maintains a healthy balance sheet in liquidity position with 2.7 billion of total liquidity as of September 30th, including 1.7 billion of cash and cash equivalents. This liquidity will further allow us to invest in our growth and continued success in Massachusetts. I would now like to turn the presentation over to Chris Soriano, our Chief Compliance Officer, Sam Hagerty, our Deputy Chief Compliance Officer, and Regulatory Affairs Council, and Michael West, our Vice President, Legal Strategy and Business Affairs, who will discuss our commitment to responsible gaming. They will be followed by Justin Carter, Senior Vice President of Regional Operations and Chair of Penn's Diversity Committee to address diversity, equity, and inclusion. He will be joined by Aaron Chamberlain, whom the Commission knows is our Senior Vice President of Regional Operations with oversight of our facilities in the Northeast, including Plain Ridge Park Casino. In addition to her operational leadership role, Aaron also chairs our Women Leading at Penn program. Thank you. Thanks very much. Good afternoon, Madam Chair and Commissioners. For the record, Chris Soriano, Chief Compliance Officer for Penn Entertainment. Happy New Year, and it's great to be back with you all again. As you're aware from our prior presentations and our experience, we work with stakeholders both internally and externally to ensure that Penn maintains a top-of-class responsible gaming program. It's a core value at Penn to provide gaming in a responsible manner, and it's a pledge that we make to our players, regulators, and other stakeholders. As part of PPC's Category 1 presentation, my colleague North discussed Penn's company-wide commitment to responsible gaming. We take responsible gaming very seriously at all levels, and I'd like to begin by reviewing some of our policies, programs, and initiatives. We maintain a Corporate Responsible Gaming Committee, as well as responsible gaming committees at each property and at Penn Interactive. These committees include executives from various divisions around the company in order to promote a culture of responsible gaming and to stay current on RG-related issues in our industry. Promoting RG is a priority, and if awarded an online sports wagering license in Massachusetts, we plan to join PPC as a partner with Game Sense. We look forward to working with Game Sense to effectively reach both retail and online audiences. Responsible Gaming is embedded across our organization. All Penn employees are required to undergo responsible gaming training, both during onboarding and at least annually, with customer-facing employees receiving additional RG training on a quarterly basis. We consistently monitor research and industry learnings in order to continue evolving our training programs and educating our team members. I'd also like to highlight that Penn voluntarily employs what we call an exclude one exclude all policy. If a patron self-excludes at any one of our properties or online gaming sites, we will employ our best efforts to bar them from gambling at all of our casinos and online gaming sites, including retail and online sports wagering. As part of our Responsible Gaming Commitment, we maintain an array of Responsible Gaming partnerships and participate in numerous public-facing RG initiatives. Our Responsible Gaming partnerships include the American Gaming Association, the National Council on Problem Gaming, the International Center for Responsible Gaming, and the Responsible Gaming Council, as well as local organizations in five states. In connection with our American Gaming Association partnership, multiple Penn corporate employees sit on the AGA's Responsible Responsibility Committee. Penn and Barstow Sports Book are also official partners of the AGA's Have a Game Plan campaign, helping to advance responsible sports wagering. We work closely with our partners to ensure that our contributions support local problem gaming organizations to fund youth education, outreach in underserved communities, treatment, and mental health provider education. We remain committed to identifying new opportunities to partner with accredited organizations, foster discussions around RG, and share best practices to ensure the continued safety and well-being of our patrons and staff. If we were to be granted an online sports wagering license in Massachusetts, Penn Interactive would explore partnership opportunities with local Massachusetts RG organizations alongside Plain Ridge Park. We're also consistently evaluating and identifying ways to strengthen our Responsible Gaming goals. As part of that approach, we utilize independent third party consultants to provide input on the efficacy of our RG program and our efforts to reach audiences that typically may not be as responsive to traditional RG messaging and methods of communication. In addition to the extensive RG measures that Penn Entertainment has in place, Penn Interactive also maintains stringent RG guidelines and practices. We implement policies and procedures for responsible gaming into our control activities, actively train all of our employees on these policies and procedures, and regularly evaluate all of our policies, procedures, and training programs to include current RG research and best practices. At Penn Interactive, we have a dedicated RG team that works closely with all departments across our operation to develop and implement standard operating procedures that proactively protect players. The RG team monitors player interactions to ensure players are not experiencing harm and continually conducts audits and employee training to ensure all aspects of Penn Interactive's Responsible Gaming program are being adhered to throughout the organization. Our Responsible Gaming Programming also extends to various multimedia platforms. We feature three dedicated Responsible Gaming social media accounts, all with dedicated monthly advertising spend. Through these accounts, which feature responsible gaming and problem gaming educational content, PI collectively reaches approximately 10.9 million social media users. In fact, since July 2022, we've engaged paid social media to further bolster a responsible gaming message and have seen limited usage drives by 51%. We believe this is an area of opportunity to work with GameSense, leveraging our media reach and our ability to create authentic responsible gaming content that complements traditional responsible gaming messaging. Under our Responsible Gaming Program, Barstool sportsbook users have access to a suite of resources and responsible gaming controls such as session, deposit, and aggregate wager account limits, temporary timeouts, and reality checks on time spent on the platform that allow them to implement controls to keep gaming fun. Our RG program also includes various automated and manual checks and alerts to ensure that players are using our services responsible. Notably, two Barstool sportsbook responsible gaming features single wager limit and withdrawal control, which reach developed for single jurisdictions have been implemented across all of our jurisdictions. Later during the project product demonstration, my colleague Trey Atkinson will cover these resources in a bit more detail. At Penn Interactive, we strive to engage with consumers and promote responsible gaming to new audiences across various platforms. We recently began a partnership with GamePlan, an innovative sports and technology company to educate student athletes on game integrity and career opportunities through a new e-learning platform. Over 140 colleges across the United States use GamePlan's interactive platform, which provides student athletes with e-learning and professional development. As part of our GamePlan partnership, Penn Interactive has worked with responsible gaming experts to produce a responsible gaming focus podcast that was designed to help educate and reach, excuse me, student athletes. As previously mentioned to the commission, Barstool sportsbook recently achieved an accreditation under the responsible gaming council's world-class RG check program. Electing to voluntarily undergo this rigorous accreditation process demonstrates our unwavering commitment to responsible gaming and player protection. For us at Penn, responsible gaming is not about checking a box. It's at the core of our business. The responsible gambling council's review and analysis of our operation was an intensive and worthwhile process to further ensure that we're always prioritizing and promoting safe and responsible play. By way of background, the responsible gambling council is a respected independent nonprofit organization. RGC has been a leader in the prevention of problem gambling for more than 35 years. We were pleased to work collaboratively with the RG check team of experts on this thorough review of our operation. The RGC developed RG check in consultation with policy makers, gambling providers, players and people who have experienced gambling harm. The accreditation process helps gambling operators evaluate, monitor and manage all aspects of their RG strategy and provides operators with invaluable insights and an actionable roadmap for continuous improvement. The RG check program is widely regarded as one of the most thorough responsible gaming accreditation programs in the world. Operators who undergo the process are evaluated across nine categories that look at over 200 metrics. We are extremely pleased to have received this highly regarded accreditation, further reinforcing that our approach to responsible gaming is thorough, wide-ranging and most importantly readily available and beneficial to our patrons. Further, we plan to share the full RG check report with Director VanderLinden and would be interested in meeting with him and his team to discuss any feedback they may have. In three years, we plan to apply for reaccreditation through the RGC and would be interested in implementing any of Director VanderLinden's or the commissioner's feedback during that process. I'd like to emphasize that we have and will continue to be proactive by investing in valuable training and resources to ensure that we're providing the safest possible environment for players to responsibly enjoy gaming. Penn is committed to being at the forefront of responsible gaming including through player education, awareness and safety. The culture of compliance and responsible gaming is prevalent throughout the organization including at Penn Interactive and Barstool Sports. Thank you for your opportunity to present on this issue and to continue discussing our RG program I'd now like to introduce my colleague Sam Hagry. Thanks Chris. Good afternoon Madam Chair and Commissioners. I would like to address responsible advertising at Penn Entertainment and Penn Interactive. Before we launch our online majoring project in the new market, our compliance team conducts a thorough review of all statutory and regulatory guidance pertaining to advertising. Our compliance team also develops specific training materials for each state to ensure that our marketing teams and third party advertising partners are aware of all requirements specific to the state. Further, our team ensures that all marketing materials are compliant with the American Gaming Association's Code of Conduct for Responsible Gaming as well as the AGA Responsible Marketing Code for Sports Waituring. At Penn Interactive we have in place a dedicated marketing compliance team. This dedicated team is fully integrated into all of our operational processes so that they are in a position to guide and review all marketing including advertisements and materials, promotional offerings, social media activity and live events. As it relates to PI's paid digital advertisements are vetted and approved vendors employed demographic and geofencing controls which allow PI to limit the visibility of such advertisements to persons 20 point plus and presidents specified states where sports wagering is legal. Further, any database scheduled to receive received direct targeted advertisements will undergo a process to suppress underage persons as well as excluded persons across the Penn Entertainment Network in accordance with our exclude one exclude all policy as Chris referenced. We look forward to collaborating with Game Sense and the Massachusetts Responsible Gaming and Research team to produce responsible gaming focused materials specific to both retail and online sports waiting. We will also partner with PPC's local Game Sense advisors to provide problem gambling resources in person over the phone and online. Social media monitoring and engagement continues to be an area of emphasis across our responsible gaming program. Our compliance team is trained to flag and proactively respond to social media accounts that use language that may be emblematic of problem gambling behavior regardless of whether the user is a varsal sports book customer. Our team will initiate contact gather more information and provide responsible gaming tools and resources accordingly. The work of PI's compliance team also extends to working closely with Barstool Sports the media company on all aspects of marketing compliance. My colleague Michael West will cover that relationship in greater detail following this portion. In closing, I will review some of the policies PI implements regarding responsible advertising. As a leader in responsible gaming, Penn holds itself to a high standard and sets its own internal policies that encompass industry best practices, state regulations, and the AGA code of conduct for responsible gaming and responsible marketing code for sports waiting. We structure agreements with any marketing affiliates to include pen compliance oversight and monitoring over all advertisements. Presented here on the slide are some general do's and do nots that PI follows with all of its sports wagering advertisements in according with the AGA's codes and which we will continue to follow for all advertisements within the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. I'll pause here to give you some time to review this slide. To further illustrate Penn and PI's commitment to grow and evolve its responsible gaming practices, Penn will not use the term risk-free in any retailer online sports wagering marketing materials targeting the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. In fact, to demonstrate our commitments to responsible advertising and gaming and after hearing the concerns of the MGC and those of other jurisdictions where we operate, the term risk-free has been removed from all Penn gambling marketing materials. Thank you for your time and to further review the comprehensive R&G practices and policies we have in place with Barstool Sports. I would like to introduce Michael West. Thanks, Sam. Good afternoon, Madam Chair, commissioners, commission staff. Happy new year. My name is Michael West and I serve as the principal liaison between Barstool Sports and Penn and Penn Interactive on all gaming regulatory matters. Chris and Sam just walked through Penn and Penn Interactive's industry leading responsible gaming policies, trainings, tools. These are of course courts and Penn's responsible gaming efforts and the foundation of Penn's online and brick and mortar gaming offerings. What I would like to highlight is our relationship with Barstool Sports and how our relationship with media company builds on that responsible gaming foundation. Even prior to Penn's investment in Barstool Sports, Penn and Barstool Sports began discussing how best to educate Barstool's teams on the necessary expectations as part of this highly regulated gaming industry. Penn's legal and compliance department collaborated with Barstool's executive team to create a comprehensive training program to offer this education. Almost immediately after our initial investment and six months prior to the first Barstool Sports book even launching, I personally conducted approximately 20 training sessions and trained every Barstool Sports employee. At the first training session, which was attended by all the Barstool Sports on-air talent, Barstool Sports CEO, Erica Nardini and founder Dave Portnoy each personally joined and stressed the importance of Barstool's compliance with the responsible gaming guardrails that we established in this training program. Since that time, Barstool Sports and Penn have collaborated to train every new employee on the guardrails with refresher training conducted at least annually and written reminders provided periodically. Penn has also allotted time during almost every Barstool company-wide meeting to discuss responsible gaming and again stress the importance of compliance with all gaming laws and regulations. This training program has evolved greatly over the last three years and we will continue to update and refine the training as we in the industry continue to evolve. Coupled with this training program is oversight. Penn and Penn Interactive's compliance departments closely monitored Barstool Sports gambling content and gambling presence on social media and we often collaborate with Barstool Sports on what is and what is not appropriate. The few times where these gambling guardrails have come into question, I can assure you commission that the resolution was swift and without pushback and oftentimes prompted by Barstool Sports employee reaching out to us for guidance. On top of this day-to-day content oversight, either myself or Chief Compliance Officer Chris Soriano report to the Penn Compliance Committee for our Board of Directors quarterly on Barstool's compliance with the guard with these guardrails and any matter the compliance committee wishes to address. As our CEO and President Jay Snowden shared during PPC's Category 1 hearing on December 20th, Barstool Sports gives Penn's responsible gaming efforts an authentic voice that can better help reach our patrons. Jay provided examples of Barstool's responsible gaming efforts and I would like to further provide context as to how responsible gaming is incorporated into their day-to-day content. First and foremost, as Jay mentioned when he last spoke, Barstool does not promote the Barstool Sportsbook and casino or any Penn gaming offering on any medium until we have been able to confirm that the expected audience will meet or exceed the age requirement as set forth in the AGA's marketing code. Next, Barstool Sports ensures that its audience sees, hears, and is familiar with the 1-800-gambler hotline number. They utilize this number regularly in gaming content in addition to and on top of any jurisdictional requirements. Penn Interactive supports this effort by solely utilizing that number and jurisdictions where that is permitted and prominently displaying it in an easily readable quite face. Next, Barstool Sports does not feign sports betting expertise or gambling success. They track their gambling picks. They post them on social media platforms. They do not hide from their gambling losses and they are transparent with their audience on their success or lack thereof. Penn Interactive and Barstool Sports also collaborate on, as Chris and Sam alluded to, what is to my knowledge, the only operator-led standalone responsible gaming social media platform. In addition to the main Barstool Sportsbook social platform, which also incorporates RG content as well. On the slide before you, you will see some of the examples of the post that we utilize to get our message out to our patrons. In addition to the scheduled programmatic responsible gaming content that airs across Barstool Sports channels, Barstool Sports on-air personalities also utilize the lessons learned in our training program and their own experience in the gaming industry as gamblers to regularly incorporate organic responsible gaming messages into their original content. As just one example, in the last 12 months alone, part of my take, the nation's number one sports podcast, has organically mentioned responsible gaming in some form or fashion approximately 70 times. As we previously highlighted, Barstool Sports' gambling content is entertainment focus. That approach is different from how others in the industry talk about gambling. Barstool Sports has a unique platform to speak to gamblers in an authentic voice and in a fashion that we believe resonates more effectively. To be clear, deposit limits are exclude one exclude all policy. The RG check certification that Chris ran through, these are of course the core tools and controls that are most effective at protecting our patron from developing problem gambling habits. The Barstool Sports ability to amplify the importance of responsible gambling bolsters are highly accredited responsible gaming platform. We are almost three years into the relationship between Penn and Barstool. I am very proud of the culture of compliance that we have developed collaboratively with Barstool Sports. Penn Interactive and Barstool Sports have dedicated hundreds of hours to developing a system and workflow that make responsible gaming a priority across our operation. Echoing Jay's prior comments, we know that we're not perfect, we have made mistakes in the past, we own those mistakes, we've learned from them, and we strive to continue to be an industry-leading responsible gaming. Thank you for your time. We will next turn to our diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts with Justin Carter leading off that section. Thank you, Mike. Good afternoon and happy new year. Madam Chair, commissioners, commission staff, I'm Justin Carter. I'm the Senior Vice President of Regional Operations. As mentioned before, I'm Aaron Chamberlain's counterpart, and I'm also the Chair of Penn's Diversity Committee, which really guides and leads Penn's diversity efforts across the company, and I'm really, really encouraged by the way the commission has emphasized diversity, equity, and inclusion as part of the application process, and I'm more than pleased to review Penn's comprehensive DEI efforts and our goals moving forward as we go through the presentation. Really, supporting and encouraging diversity is one of Penn's core values, and we're focused on fostering diversity across the business. It also includes our strong support of our nation's heroes, our active duty military veterans versus funders, and I'm proud to lead the DEI Committee alongside a really amazing group of team members across the organization and a diverse group of team members who really help put our efforts in the motion. The Diversity Committee at Penn was founded in 2020, and it really was founded to put our long-standing commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion at the company into action, and we're actively working to champion diversity, equity, and inclusion across the organization, and more importantly in the communities where we operate and expanding our engagement exposure to diverse companies and vendors across our organization, and I'm really pleased to start to highlight some of our most recent and ongoing diversity efforts around the company. As you see there, as you see on the slide, we're really proud of our HBCU STEM Scholarship Program, which was established and actually a couple years ago, and we've dedicated more than $4 million over five years to fund STEM scholarships to HBCUs that operate in our communities and enhancing the support associated by creating internships with the company. We recognize that STEM careers make up a growing part of jobs in our economy today, and with this program we have made a strong commitment to narrowing the gap of representation in STEM builds and empowering our students and our HBCU students, and it's really going to happen for years to come, so we're extremely proud of the HBCU STEM Scholarship Program at Penn, and we really want to establish STEM scholarships and internship opportunities with not just the schools that are part of the STEM Scholarship Program, but we have partnerships with 35 HBCUs across the country in the areas where we operate, and ongoing collaboration with HBCUs facilitates career opportunities and participation in our internship program, which is our Leadership Excellence at Penn program, acronym LEAP, which provides hands-on training, mentoring, real-world experience to recent college grads and students that are just about to wrap up college who are interested in building long-term careers in our gaming industry. Also, we've launched the Internally, the Diversity Scholarship Program that supports the children of our team members. This program awards a million dollars in tuition scholarships annually at our company. In 2022 alone, we awarded 47 college students the Penn Diversity Scholarship, and of these 47 students, I'm extremely proud to report that more than half of the students were first-generation college students, and it's amazing to see that, and it's really near and dear to our senior leadership's heart because there are members of our senior leadership team, quite a few who are also first-generation college students, so we're really proud as an executive team to provide this opportunity and as a DEI committee across the company to the children of our team members. Next, I'd like to talk about our support and highlight our support about military, and as a company, we're extremely passionate about honoring and supporting our nation's heroes, and this extends to our recruitment efforts, our team member recognition, and our ongoing charitable and community support. In 2021, Penn launched the My Heroes Program, which is an exclusive, fully integrated extension of our My Choice Awards loyalty program that honors active duty military veterans and first responders. Really, a lot of thought has gone into the development of the program to make sure it's not only meaningful, but best in class and really, really representative and supportive of the heroes in our communities, and I'm really proud to report that we're thrilled about the program's early success. We've reached more than 100,000 members in the first year of operating the program, and to celebrate that milestone, we donated $100,000 to veterans and first responder programs in our local communities earlier this year. We expanded the My Heroes Program to recognize and engage internally our own Penn team members who are veterans active duty military and first responders, and what this program has done is it's created a network of ambassadors across the company that will develop programs and really commemorate and celebrate our military team members throughout the year, and it really deepens our relationships with the local veterans and our first spinal groups in our communities in areas where we operate. One other thing we do, Penn proudly participates in a number of programs that support and empower active duty military veterans and military families, and one of those is the U.S. Chamber of Commerce's Foundation's Hiring Our Heroes Program, and also the military spouses employment partnership and the Army's partnership for youth success programs. So we also fund programs for young veterans who wish to pursue higher education. One of these is the Harold Cramer Memorial Scholarship, which is in memory of a long-standing board member with Penn, and also the Military Scholarship Fund, which was established in partnership with Penn State Berks, which is right on the doorstep of our corporate headquarters in Wild Missing, Pennsylvania, and with that intro, I'd really like to introduce my colleague, Erin Chamberlain, who highlight and continue talking about how we prioritize DEI across the company. Great. Thank you, Justin, and good afternoon, Madam Chair and commissioners. As Justin said, I'd like to expand a little bit more on our DEI efforts, and we're really focused on building a diverse workforce here at Penn, Penn Interactive. So to that end, we've created a platform of programs geared toward helping our team members grow their careers in very powerful ways. I wanted to highlight two of those programs for you here today. First, we offer an emerging leader program, which I think many of you will recognize as North has spoken about this before. We have implemented this at Plain Ridge Park. This is a program that is designed to equip our frontline, hourly, and newly hired corporate team members with valuable leadership skills, and also to provide additional paths for the advancement of diverse team members. Of note, our digital division under Penn Interactive has already graduated two classes of future leaders through the ELP, and 40% of those graduates were female and 27% of them were diverse. Additionally, we are committed to providing career development paths for women to increase representation and leadership positions. To action this, we created Women Leading at Penn, again, a program I know you all are familiar with based on our work at Plain Ridge Park. And as you know, this program is focused on inspiring and encouraging women to pursue leadership roles at all levels across the organization. This highly successful and very engaging program provides a framework for our executives to champion growth and development at the property, the corporate, and the interactive levels for all of our members of WLP. Through WLP, we also offer mentorship and cohort programs that create an ecosystem for our diverse and female team members to thrive at Penn. Overall, Justin and his diversity committee are working very closely with Penn and Penn Interactive leadership teams to grow these programs. We continue to facilitate open, honest dialogue with our team members on the programs we offer and how we can improve them going forward. In fact, we're in the process of doing that right now for WLP and planning out 2023. This has enabled us to really make a significant progress over the past few years, as Justin described. But we also recognize that we have a continued opportunity in front of us. And we look forward to continuing to push to drive change in our business, but also in our industry and in our communities. Like I said, the work is not done, but we have done some great things and we're really proud of what we have done. So it's a great feeling when we are able to garner recognition from reputable organizations that cover our industries. A few examples that we wanted to highlight for you today. Forbes magazine recently ranked Penn as the top publicly traded gaming company in their list of America's 500 best employers for diversity. The prominent all-in index named us the top commercial casino operator for diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging. And with female members comprising 44% of our corporate board of directors, we were named a champion of board diversity by the Forum of Executive Women, which is Greater Philadelphia Region's premier women's organization. And we were also honored by the Women's Forum of New York at their annual breakfast of champions for leading the way to gender balance on corporate boards. And so while our DEI efforts of course are always evolving, this external recognition does reinforce the progress that we've been making as a company. And as part of this ongoing progress and ongoing commitment to DEI and to creating a diverse, welcoming, and inclusive workplace, the Penn Diversity Committee partnered with our talent development team to create and launch a multi-part diversity training program with a defined curriculum for all team members, all people leaders, all executives. This program focuses on topics such as inclusion and unconscious bias, allyship, and is mandatory for all of our team members across Penn and Penn Interactive. In addition to training our team members, we're also focused kind of outside of our floor walls. We really are working to help develop a pipeline of diverse technology talent. As part of the HBCU STEM scholarship program that Justin just described, PI is creating specific technology-based internship opportunities for these students. These dedicated internship positions will provide valuable real-world experience for HBCU students who are pursuing degrees in technology fields. And we believe that increasing access through this program is just another important way that we can directly help promote social and economic equity. We've also enhanced our ability to attract and hire diverse talent into Penn and Penn Interactive through a minority interview initiative, which we call the Penn Way. This was established in early 21, and it's a policy that ensures that anytime we have an open executive role, we must interview at least one female and or ethnically diverse candidate. And as a leading technology company with a growing engineering and product team, it's really important to us that we're supporting and engaging with organizations that empower and provide resources to groups that have typically been underrepresented in the technology industry. To that end, PI has teamed with HopeWorks, which is an organization that provides opportunities for unemployed and disadvantaged young adults, helps them find fulfilling careers in the technology industry. We've actually hired four employees from HopeWorks, provided HopeWorks participants exclusive internships, as well as a platform to network with and learn from our Penn Interactive team members. Additionally, we have engaged with the Launch Code Foundation, which specializes in technology industry recruiting, training, and job placement for people of non-traditional and diverse backgrounds. Our team was pleased to work with Launch Code to host networking events and to participate with them in their talent acquisition training sessions. And finally, to actively diversify our workforce, we're also focused on sourcing candidates through recognized professional networks, such as the Black Professionals in Tech Network, and also participating in events and career fairs that are helping to bridge the gap for underrepresented communities. Our team is continually measuring the success of our partnerships, the success of our recruiting efforts, and looking for opportunities to further optimize outreach and success regarding our DEI hiring practices. At this time, I would like to turn the presentation back to Benji, who will share more regarding PI's employment commitments. Thanks very much, Erin. We know that women and diverse candidates have historically been underrepresented across the sports and technology industries, and increasing our diverse employment numbers at Penn Interactive is an intense area of focus for us. Diverse teams perform better and are more innovative, and we are committed to moving the needle through inclusive practices to foster a diverse workforce. What we still have work to do as we strive to exceed tech industry benchmarks, we are pleased with our progress to date. Across PI, 27% of our team members are women, and 27% of our team members are diverse. As Erin just shared, we have a number of partnerships in place which are key to building an inclusive workforce and to supporting career journeys from underrepresented demographics. In order to further increase representation of diverse team members, we have enhanced our employment benefits to include the opportunity for hybrid or remote work, wellness programs, parental leave benefits, tuition reimbursement, and a professional development yearly stipend. We're also focused on increasing mentorship in the workplace, as well as facilitating networking opportunities to provide meaningful paths for success. Over the last year, we focused on further optimizing our campus recruiting strategy through a DEI lens, both in-person and via virtual events. This is an area of opportunity, and will continue to be proactive in our outreach to colleges and organizations as we build a balanced workforce. Penn Interactive has proudly built an inclusive and supportive workplace with a strong culture. We earned recognition as a top employer of choice in the Bristol Associates Spectrum Gaming's annual casino gaming executive satisfaction survey, and in consecutive years by top workplaces, which is regarded as one of the nation's most credible employer recognition programs. PI and its expanding business plays an increasingly important role in the overall Penn ecosystem. PI leadership is working closely with our DEI committee to grow in the already successful initiatives that we've reviewed and create additional ways to increase representation of women and diverse team members. Based on what we've outlined and the foundation we have in place, we're confident that we will continue to make great progress in this area. Now I'd like to bring Justin back to continue to discuss our DEI commitment. Well, thank you, Vingy. In looking at the overall business of our diversity committee, we also continue to lead a corporate-wide supply of diversity initiative to really coordinate all the efforts around the company and develop new opportunities for diverse businesses, regardless of jurisdictional requirements, which is something that is really important to us is increasing supply of diversity, not just because it's required, but because it's what we do here at Penn, and we will continue to strive to get better and better at it. And to date, this effort has resulted in more than doubling our diversity spend with businesses owned by minorities, women and disabled individuals, and also veterans. And we really do recognize the enormous responsibility and opportunity related to the businesses who we choose to partner with to support our operations. And as demonstrated, we've made significant progress to date. We plan to increase diverse vendor spend in Massachusetts on an annual basis, and we also plan on working closely with Plainman's Park Casino, the relationship between PI and Plainman's Park, to accomplish these efforts. Excuse me. And one of the things that we've done to really bolster these efforts is we've expanded our team, and what we've done was we created a role of supply of diversity strategists. And this person is responsible for overseeing and establishing the overall supply of diversity program, and is really designed to expand economic development in every community where it can operate. And as part of that program, our areas of focus and what our supplier diversity strategist, what she's really focused on is identifying diverse suppliers with the capacity to conduct business on a national level, creating mentor protege programs to help suppliers grow and become stronger business partners with Penn, and also identifying opportunities with larger categories of spend to increase the utilization of diverse suppliers. And to date, I'm also happy to report that this program is off and running, and I couldn't be more happy with the early success that we're seeing. And as part of the program and part of what the diversity committee and strategists, what we partner with in terms of organizations around the country, we partner with national and local chapters of the National Minority Supply Diversity Council, the U.S. Black Chamber of Commerce, and also the Women's Business Enterprise Council. And to be quite transparent when it comes to diverse spend, this is an area where we need to improve, not only as a company, but as an industry. And this is an area that our leadership team is laser focused on and dedicated to resources so that we can make a larger impact and provide opportunities to diverse suppliers, not only across the country, but in the Commonwealth. And that's what we really, really plan to do. And we're excited and encouraged. And I just want to thank the commission, Madam Chair, commissioners, all for your time. And once again, for your commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion, and everything you do in the application process. And I really want you to know that Penn Interactive is going to be a leader on this front, hopefully for years to come, which would support. Thank you. Thanks, Justin and Aaron. I would now like to introduce Josh Pearl, our Senior Director of New Markets and Strategic Initiatives to brought an overview of our technology platform. Thank you, Benji. Good afternoon, Madam Chair, good afternoon, commissioners. We'll briefly turn our attention to technology, where I'll provide an overview of Penn Interactive's online platform before my colleague Trey Atkinson leads a demonstration of our product offering. This slide, which is similar to the slide shared by GLI during Category 1 presentations outlines PSI's current solution. Our digital platform consists of integrations that connect services from various licensed vendors, allowing us to offer our patrons a best in class online sports wagering experience via web, Android, and iOS, and in compliance with all regulatory requirements. We offer a wide variety of sports wagering options, including pre-match and in-game markets, and an array of player and team props for sporting events around the world. In total, and subject to jurisdictional requirements, many of which we are accustomed to in Massachusetts. The Barstool Sports Book offering includes over 5,000 wagering markets spanning across 45 men's and women's sports. Now to touch briefly on a few of our partners, we maintain a nationwide partnership with Canby to provide the sports wagering platform, experience risk and trading, integrity monitoring, and other services required to offer both retail and online sports wagering. Canby is a leading international sports wagering supplier and maintains licensure in over 35 U.S. and international jurisdictions. Over 25 of those are in the United States. Canby has applied as a sports wagering vendor in Commonwealth. We also have a multi-state partnership with the leading supplier White Hat Gaming to provide the player account management system, also known as the PAM, for our online sports book. White Hat Gaming maintains licensure in over 15 U.S. and international jurisdictions. In addition, PSI also employs an industry leading engineering and product team that has worked with Canby and White Hat Gaming to build the Barstool Sports Book into a best-in-class digital offering. Working together with Canby and White Hat, we have regularly launched our platform on day one, the market opens, most recently in the past year in the states of Kansas, Louisiana, Maryland, and most recently in Ohio. In every state we operate online sports wagering, our platform meets GLI 33 standards and any additional state regulations or statutory requirements. PSI, Canby, and White Hat Gaming undergo regular testing with GLI before entering the states, and we also undergo other required audits such as system integrity assessments with GLI subsidiary, bulletproof solutions. Additionally, PSI works with the nation's leading geolocation provider, Geocomply, to ensure that all wages are placed within state borders and in compliance with the Federal Wire Act. We also partner with Know Your Customer, KYC provider, Aristotle, to verify patron identity and product registration. I would also like to note that all of our ancillary service providers required for online wagering or licensing jurisdictions were required. Ahead of each new state launch, our licensing team carefully reviews jurisdictional licensing requirements. We work closely with our service providers to ensure timely submission of their applications, many of which are in the process in the Commonwealth. And with that, I will hand it over to Trey Atkinson to give a product overview of our web-based partial sportsbook offering. Thank you. Thanks, Josh. I will now share my screen. Can everyone see my screen? Yes. So is this large enough for everyone to see this? If you could make this finally bigger, that would be great, Josh. Is that helping you? We're trying to solve some. Also have... Yeah, that's good. Great. That's good. Good afternoon, Madam Chair. Good afternoon, commissioners, and happy new year. My name is Trey Atkinson, and I'm the Director of Operations for Penn Interactive. Today, I'll be walking you through the online Barstool sportsbook platform. I'll give a demonstration of our KYC and registration process. I'll walk through a successful login, demonstrate our responsible gambling resources and limits, the customer support function, discuss account security settings, provide an overview of the cashier, and then discuss promotions and that placement. As we're viewing today, I am sitting in Philadelphia, so you are looking at the Pennsylvania production environment. This largely looks, as it would look, and any jurisdiction that we operate, obviously with some unique state-specific nuances. One large one in particular is that online casino is live and operational in Pennsylvania, so that would not exist, and that would not be apparent or appear anywhere in the Massachusetts version of the online Barstool sportsbook platform. With that, I will now walk through a registration process. This is the standard registration process with the landing page that a patron would be taken to in any state that we operate the online Barstool sportsbook platform, and I will walk through the standard registration process and enter in all the necessary fields. Start by entering an email address, a valid email address that was created today. Enter in a unique username. We only allow one account per individual, so all of the usernames must be unique so that there is no duplicate account and or duplicate username for any patron on the platform. Next, we have to create a password, and you'll see there are standard criteria here for individual passwords. One unique security feature that we have is there are standard Rolodex passwords that, if you were to attempt to enter that, we would tell you that that password is too common, so you have to have a unique detailed password as part of this process. I'm going to zoom out for just a second so I can see this full page, and I can zoom in individually if there are any questions or you'd like to see anything closer. With that, I will change the password, meet all the unique specifications. Here's where our patron would enter in any promotional code that they have obtained. Then they would proceed to the next step. You would not be able to proceed to the next step again if you were entering in a username that already exists and or an email address that wasn't valid or if the email address already exists on the platform. Patrons are then requested to enter in their legal name. For this exercise, we'll be entering in generic information going to demonstrate a KYC fail during registration and show the limitations that would be placed on an account at that point in time. Patron would then be requested to enter their date of birth in. Obviously, you have to enter in the entire date of birth if a patron were to enter in information that would make them under 21 years of age. See a red banner here. If I attempt to continue with the registration process, it will not allow me to continue with registration until my date of birth makes me 21 years or older. Obviously, if you were to put a fictitious date of birth in here to bypass this blocker on the registration, you would fail the KYC process again because that date of birth is not going to correlate with the rest of your personal identifiable information that you provide. A date of birth making me over the age of 21. If my gender identity is part of this, players are then required to enter in the last four of their social security number, which takes us to the next piece of registration where I would enter in my address. Again, for this process, we're just entering in generic information through the degree. Players would input all of their address. We're currently working on a VPN, but we have software that would repopulate that address based on, as you begin typing this, populate the city, state, and zip code again to prevent errors and or incorrect spellings of information as players enter their information. Here, I would then enter a phone number, which will take me to the preferences setting. Here, we have marketing information. Currently, this is not being used for any promotional or targeted marketing. It's largely for data analytics on why individuals may be signing up for a barstool sportsbook account. You'll see here, we have a link to our responsible gambling page, which if you were to click on this on the web version and or the iOS version, it will take you and iOS or Android, it will take you to our responsible gambling page. Again, which we will cover in depth once I am able to successfully log in. Lastly, you'll see two security settings here. The first being, email me every time there's a successful login. Again, that security setting is each time you were to log into your registered account, you will receive an email to your registered account email address. Again, alerting you to potential suspicious logins or if you were not the one logging into your account, you would be alerted at that point in time. You'll also see enable secure login, which is two-step verification. This is not default enabled largely because we offer that via SMS and call options. We don't want to enable that and have you not be able to receive a text message if that's not your preference versus call. But again, you can enable that feature here if you choose to do so, and you can enable that feature at any point in time once you have created your account. We'll proceed to the final page of registration. Here you have all the information that's been input. If you were to be realizing that some of your information is correct or you need to make a change, you can click on that. It will take you back to that page and then once you've reviewed it will bring you back to the final page. Lastly, you'll see the terms and conditions and checkboxes as we refer to them. These are all state specific and can be customized to meet any requirements or any checkboxes that any jurisdiction or regulatory body would prefer to have here. You'll see the terms and conditions which again can be clicked and take you directly to those terms and conditions and the pen entertainment privacy policy. You're confirming that the information you've provided is accurate. This is a Pennsylvania specific checkbox here. We'll see that this requires them to confirm that they are 21 years of age and will not allow anyone else to use their account. Again, another state specific Pennsylvania checkbox here. If anyone were to create an account in Massachusetts now, when we go live, you would be required to recertify all of these Massachusetts specific checkboxes before you were able to access your live production account in Massachusetts. With that, I will check all of these boxes and I will submit as if I was registering. Here, you'll notice I believe the phone number that I have there already exists. You'll see at this point in time patrons either get the issue you're creating. There's an account that already exists with that information or if it was entirely unique information, it would say we're unable to verify your identity at this time. This is a pop up that players would see if they can contact support at that time to address the issues that they are having with registration. If the player genuinely entered their correct information in and were to fail registration for a number of different reasons, they would be prompted to upload documents related to their identity, whether it be a government ID, a passport, a social security card. Again, to get to the conclusion that we can reasonably assess that this is the correct identity that's related to this individual. With that, I will then log into my specific test account, production test account that I have in Pennsylvania and can demonstrate the functionality on the app as it relates to login here. You'll see this is an example of the multi-factor authentication at login, SMS text code to my phone to verify, and then that will allow me to log in. So I'm now logged into a production test account that functions in the same way as an end user account and any of our jurisdictions at this point. This is the standard landing page. Obviously this is the web version. I'll zoom in so you can see this a little better. This is the standard landing page on web. It looks very similar on iOS and Android. Obviously adapted to a degree to better fit all the necessary information on the screen. So you have a landing page of all of your menu preferences. We will start with the responsible gambling protection page and I'll work through each of these menu items here. Once you click on the responsible gambling and protection page, which again can be accessed through this link, as well as anywhere that you see the responsible gambling logo on the site. So if I were to click on that logo, it will take me to the same landing page. We'll see an overview of pen entertainment and pen interactives commitment to responsible gambling. At the very front we will always surface the terms and conditions that are specific to the individual state where the individual is accessing the account. Below that we'll see a list of drop downs for various different responsible gambling and player protection information. Pen interactive has categorized using the drop downs again to allow players to quickly and easily scroll and access particular pieces of information they're looking for versus a lengthy page of just text. So we'll start with the tools to manage gaming activity. So these are state specific tools and links that we provide in each jurisdiction. We would obviously work closely with the MGC on any information that they would like to be posed here. We would also, again, if there are jurisdictions that don't have specific links or specific pamphlets or external hyperlinks that they would like us to put here, we'll typically include national responsible gambling resources as part of this process. Again, these are all I'm accessing in Pennsylvania. So these are all PGCB specific links that are being surfaced here. Under that we have help and support. Again, a constant theme of this presentation is all this is going to be unique and can be altered for each jurisdiction again to reflect the necessary regulatory information here. These are our national responsible gambling resources that would be in place and available in every jurisdiction that we operate. Again, all of these are active hyperlinks. So if you were to click on any of these on your mobile device and or web device, you will be taken to that individual link. Here we again, we have Pennsylvania specific responsible gambling information related to compulsive gambling and self exclusion in Pennsylvania. Next we have limits. We see a hyperlink here which would take you to the specific limits page where you would set those responsible gambling limits. But for the responsible gambling and player protection page, this is meant to serve more as informational to give you an understanding of what these specific limits are, what the functionality of those limits are, and how you would utilize those on your account. I will, as we finish this responsible gambling and player protection page, I will actually go to the limits page and can walk you through each limit and the setting of those limits. As Chris Soriano mentioned earlier, we have at Pen Interactive and Pen Entertainment for those jurisdictions that have offered unique, self unique time, unique responsible gambling limits associated with their online sports wagering rules. When technology is able to be implemented across the board, we have taken the opportunity to implement those responsible gambling limits, not just in that specific jurisdiction, but across all jurisdictions that we operate. Again, those in particular being the maximum single wager limit and the withdrawal control limit, which limits the player's ability to cancel a withdrawal once they have initiated it on their account. Again, I will cover the limits more in depth as we're walking through each limit and the placement of those. Here you would have information on the self exclusion process, again, being unique to whatever jurisdiction you're currently geolocating in when you log into your app. There would be information on the specific regulatory requirements around self exclusion. There would also be information here and any jurisdiction where a patron can self exclude via their online sports wagering app. Again, a hyperlink here that would take you to the Pennsylvania Gaming Control Board's voluntary self exclusion program. Similar to the limits, this is an informational overview on timeouts and your ability to place a timeout on your account and the impact that has on your account and other necessary information, such as contacting customer support, should you want to remove your funds from your Barstool Sportsbook account during that time, noting that you cannot reverse the suspension once you have enabled it on your account. While that temporary suspension is in place that you will not receive any new marketing offers or incentives. I'll try to interrupt this, Kathy. And commissioners, feel free to ask questions that you want with respect to the presentation. I might be getting this wrong, but we have now a reg that's underway regarding the cooling off periods. Commissioner Bryan, you can remind me, but we've worked quite hard on figuring out the amount of time a player would get noticed back that their cooling off period is expiring. And we see here that you've got three days, one week, two weeks, or four weeks. That's a finite, those are finite options. I think we've seen other applicants who are now come, maybe even licensees that can almost do any time that you want. Is our regulation going to be problematic or technology if we are, I think what was it, Commissioner Bryan, 72 hours for one week? No, for anything more than four weeks? Well, if it was less than that, we weren't, it was just too short to get a notice. Right. And I'm trying to think if it was, I've got the original draft. I don't know if legal has the amended. I know it started off with seven days prior to a 30 day, 10 period. But then when people came in with the ability to do shorter times, I think we did greater than two weeks to a month was like a 72 hour. And then I think was it less than two weeks? There wasn't a notice. I don't know if Mark or Carrie or anybody's on who remembers the specifics of how we changed that. Commissioner, are you referring to the length of time of the cool off or of the notice period at kind of in advance of the end of the cooling off period? Both. And so it was both. Yeah. And if the cooling off period requested was less than two weeks. Right. My memory is we didn't have a notice because it didn't, there was worry about sort of getting desensitized, getting pinged too much. But I think there's two issues worthy of discussion there with regard to the email kind of notifying patrons of the cool off. That's not something we do currently. And that's one of our G measures because ultimately our view is that patron would be aware of when they're coming off cool off. And in a way, advising them that they're coming off cool off could be perceived as almost a remarketing of the platform. And so we don't do that. We allow patrons to be aware of when their own cooling off period ends. And if they want to come back to the platform at the end, we're happy to welcome them back, but we're not actively inviting them back to the platform. We see that as an RG practice. As relates to kind of the length of the periods, ultimately that's something that we, as you know, we do have fixed time periods here currently in our platform. We can accommodate additional fixed time periods in our platform. And then that will just be a kind of a question of working with our PAM provider at White Hat Gaming to implement that and just considerations relating to timing and market open and when those regs get finalized. And Madam Chair, if I may just add to Benji's comments. I believe the latest regulations in our records, it was a meeting a few weeks ago, they were changed to 72 hours, one week, two weeks, three weeks and four weeks. Does that align with your understanding? Yes. And now, you know, we're learning, right? And this is an opportunity to ask the questions. And I really appreciate your response. Is it Levy or Levy? Do I say Levy or Levy? I apologize. I really appreciate your input because the regulation will come back to us, but I, you may need to explore that one again, I think. And Madam Chair, if I may. And I believe one of the other category three licensees also may have mentioned that this is not something that they do either in terms of the notification ahead of time. Yeah. Thank you, Mr. Pearl. I think that that's right. So very helpful. I was going to ask you to show us the mechanics, but I'm not even sure you have that capacity today of how I will, I will show you, I will show you the mechanics of placing the limits and what are available, but not obviously not the mechanics of being notified. Yep. As Benji mentioned, that we would work with White Hat Gaming and we can build those other time frames. So if they are set at 72 hours, one week, two weeks, three weeks, four weeks, we can build that state specific. I see that. For example, there's another state that has a minimum of 30 days. And so in that state, we have built our solution to meet that requirement. Very helpful. Very helpful. And what I was trying for interrupting your change. Not at all. Feel free to interrupt at any point. If you'd like to discuss or would like clarification. And the only thing I was going to note when we got to limits was again, that three days or 72 hours, one week, two weeks and four weeks are what you're seeing there are specific to Pennsylvania. We have timeout or cool off that range from 72 hours to 120 days. Again, depending on the specific jurisdiction that you're geolocating in, the specific timelines of your timeout will change based on the regulations there and obviously those associated timeouts. Because it says three days, one week, two weeks and four weeks here is not specific, but that's the only functionality that exists. That is just specific to Pennsylvania. Thank you. Very, very helpful. Commissioner, I don't know if you had any follow up questions on that particular issue. I asked the commissioner of Ryan's health because her memory is always 100% out of the line. Okay, thank you. Then to wrap the responsible gambling player protection page up, you have a close account here option that's going to take you to customer support and generate an account closure process where we would follow standard operating procedure to permanently close your account by your request. We have a complaint section. Again, this is going to be state specific. This is generic language for Pennsylvania. There's no specific complaint information. But if there was a specific form and or a regulatory contact or email address that was needed here, that would be captured here for complaints or complaints against the operator. Unauthorized account use. These are general, these are bullets from our terms and conditions related to, again, not providing access to anyone under the age of 21 or a prohibited patron. Discussing our in-house risk team and how they are reviewing and monitoring unauthorized use of player account or unauthorized access, noting that players are prohibited from placing wagers on behalf of another person, particularly those under the age of 21, and noting that players must protect the confidentiality and security of their account as well as obviously players can review their transactional history in their account in the account information section if they believe any transactions or any information on their account had been made without their approval without their knowledge. And then lastly, just the account information section which provides an overview of things like how to change your password, how to enable secure login, another link to our terms of conditions and privacy policy, federal restrictions and prohibitions. And then if there are any state specific prohibitions, we would include those there as well. There are no questions. I'll go actually into the limits section and can give you an overview there. So here we have all the limits that we were just covering. I'll go down through each one of these and provide the functionality. So here is a deposit limit where you can set daily, weekly or monthly limits. For each of these responsible gambling limits, the general overview is that any time you are making a limit more restrictive, so if I were to take my daily deposit limit from $150 to $120, making it more conservative, those changes can always go into effect immediately. If you are making a more liberal or less conservative change to your limits, that limit is going to have to go the duration of the limit before you can then, before that change goes into effect. So you'll see here, I just got a check-in. I'm about to cover this limit as well. This is a responsible gambling limit that you have to set on your account for either 15, 30 or 45 minutes. That is a check-in that pops up. You must acknowledge this before you continue with anything else on your account. It provides the current time of day, how long your current session is, and any wagering that you've done as part of this process. Again, you cannot click anywhere else. You must acknowledge this before you proceed. So for the daily limit, again, if I were to change my daily limit to $120, it's going to become immediately in effect, again, because it's more conservative. One other process we have in place is not only if you're making a more liberal change, not only do you have to wait for the duration of that limit before it goes into effect, you also have to come back here and approve this new limit. So just because if you change your limit from $150 to $300, it doesn't immediately go into effect at the end of that duration. You also have to, again, come back and approve and acknowledge that that limit is in fact what you intended to place. Next, we have the single wager limit. Again, that's a single wager that you're placing on your account. You can set this at any dollar volume and or turn no single wager limit on. Again, if I'm making this more conservative, it's going to go into effect immediately. A total wager limit, you can set a daily, weekly, or monthly total wager limit. Again, that's going to operate in tandem with the single wager limit. You cannot broach your single wager limit at any point in time. And if you have a monthly total wager limit, you cannot broach that as well, depending on how you have that set. We have a time limit. Again, even if you have a daily time limit set, it's how many hours of the day you would like to have restricted access to your Barstool Sportsbook account. Commissioner Skinner, I know during one hearing you pointed out if there were, if it was possible to have functionality that was less than an hour, that's not something that we again currently have in place. I apologize. That's not something that we currently have in place from a time limit standpoint. But again, we're always looking to enhance in advance our responsible gambling controls. So if there was any discussion around that or there were proposed rules, again, that is something we would work with the commission on to comply with that requirement as well. But as it stands currently, the minimum amount is one hour and it will go up to 23 hours. We have the check-in interval, which is what I was just discussing. I have my current check-in interval at 15 minutes. You can set that at 30 or 45 minutes. You do have to have this check-in interval, that limit set at all times. You cannot turn that off. And then lastly, the withdrawal control limit. This prevents patron from disabling the withdrawal once they have initiated that on their account. And then lastly, with the discussion of timeouts, here is what we have from a timeout standpoint of three days, one week, two weeks, four weeks, and 90 days. And again, as you see here, this is Pennsylvania-specific. It can be configured to any specific timeframes and it varies across each of the jurisdictions that we operate based on the regulatory requirements there. I'm not willing to place a timeout on my account or that would promptly end this demonstration. Any questions on the responsible gambling limits? With that, I will proceed to our contact support page. So here you'll see our landing page for customer support. We have a variety of articles that will take you to FAQ links for depositable draws, responsible gambling, sports betting, account information. You can also click contact us or click the support widget in the bottom right hand. We will do a demonstration of contacting customer support. Our customer support team operates 24-7, 365 days. When you contact support, again, we will surface potential FAQs that may help to address your question, but you can also select contact us. Then you'll have a request a callback feature, a live chat feature, and a leave a message or send an email feature as well. All of each of these three options will always go to a live agent 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year. We'll demonstrate the live chat as that's over almost 80% of the customer support interactions that we have currently. Adam, Chair? Yes, Mr. Hillel. You knew I was going to ask this question, I'm sure. Can you just be a little clearer what happens when I contact live support and if I need somebody to call me back, I think that was what I saw as one of the options. How long is it going to be before I get a callback? I heard you say you have 24-7 live chat, but does that mean at one or two in the morning if I have an issue with a deposit or, more importantly, getting money back? Am I going to get a call back at that hour or am I going to have to wait until eight in the morning or nine in the morning? You would get a callback at that hour. If you're contacting at three in the morning, the likelihood and the speed of that callback is likely going to be faster than if you're calling at 9pm just before kickoff of Monday night football. The callback time, again, varies just depending on the ongoing issues and the queue, but the fastest and what we recommend and promote is obviously contacting via chat. Again, you can request a callback as well. We're answering a chat just under 10 seconds. Again, you can see a live agent has just joined this chat and you can access this chat not only if you're logged into your account, but also if you were logged out. If you were having an issue at 3am, you were concerned that someone had hacked or compromised your account or you were in distress, you wouldn't need to log into your account. You could contact customer support in the same way that I have just done here. You provide your date of birth and username and they can suspend your account if you believe something has happened to your account. If you don't want to have access to your account, if you're concerned from a responsible gambling standpoint, they can take action on your account. The live agent on the other end can take action on your account at that time. Thank you, Madam Chair. Before you go on, actually, this is Commissioner Ryan. I have a couple questions if we're going to talk about this during the demonstration. Am I correct that to get a call, you have to do it via the email or the chat? There is no direct number, right? There is no inbound number. You can request a callback in that customer support chat. Can you tell me what languages you have in terms of live chat and or the live call that you would get back? We currently only offer this in English as that is what our product offerings are in all states. Again, we're not opposed and are always looking to advance and enhance our unique product offerings. If there was any other language options that the commission would like us to consider, we're happy to have those discussions and investigate that with our third-party providers as well. Can you tell me where your call center is based out of? So our call center is based out of Cherry Hill, New Jersey. Okay, great. Thank you. I have a follow-up to Commissioner Skinner or Commissioner Mayer. Do you have a follow-up? Not at this time. I don't have a follow-up. My question was, first of all, I think I heard you say that you don't have to log in, so this must just be straight. You can go to the home page and there's a way to get. If you were to download the app or if you went to barcelsportsbook.com and you were to click on customer support, it will take you through this landing page and this chat widget would function the exact way, whether you're logged in or not. So that's really, really helpful. So my question is, I know that we were sort of thinking of complaints, although Commissioner Hill, you sort of leaned into the idea. I do want to, you know, the idea of addressing whether your account is hacked, that's very emergency-based, but I also am thinking of the RG issue, that the person who's in distress. Is that the same access for service if I were in terrible distress over a situation related to my gambling? It would be the same access, and we provide extensive responsible gambling training for all of our live agents that are answering chats, doing callbacks, answering emails. So if you contacted with a responsible gambling question or you were in distress and made that known, they are equipped and ready to provide a number of different resources to provide you links, hotlines, walk you through that process. If you want to, if you said I wanted to immediately suspend my account, they can take that action for you. Once you confirm your account information, there's a number of different responsible gambling tools that they, that each of our live agents have been trained on and would walk the person through during that time. Thank you. Any additional questions as it relates to customer support? I think we're all set. Thank you, Troy. I will go back to this page and then next we'll go to the account preferences. So this is where a player can change a number of different customizations and settings on their account, the first being odds to set a variety of different odds on their account if they would like the option for a view apply all. Again, this is if you selected four different NFL games, when that populates in your bet slip, you can select or deselect the option to enter in $5 and have that applied to one wager before you apply to each wager before you place it. Again, that's a setting that can also be turned off as well. The last being review odds changes. So this gives player the ability to customize their settings, particularly when it relates to live betting on whether or not they want to be asked for approval when they go to place a bet. If there were any odds changes during that time, if they would like to automatically accept higher odds regardless of those changes in the bet slip or if they want to accept all odds changes regardless of that change as they're placing a wager. Again, here's the multi-factor authentication information. Again, when I was logging in, you saw me do this via text. There's also a callback option so that when you go to log in, you would generate an automated call. We would provide you a code to log in with during registration. You can change that verification phone number, but not without also doing multi-factor authentication to change that phone number as well. Here are direct mail communications. This gives players the ability to turn on or off email and direct mail communications on their account, which would generate automated logic in our back office so that that player would be exempt from any communications moving forward. I have no questions. I'll cover briefly some of the account information. Here is the general account information page. Again, you'd see your full name, username, email address. You can edit your account info, but the majority of the info and any information that is input as part of the KYC or registration process cannot be changed. Again, that's because you have been verified based on that information, so we do not allow you to change that without contacting customer support and providing documentation to support that change. Here you'll see the landing page for how much cash or sports book or casino bonuses in your account. Again, casino bonus would not be here for any jurisdiction that does not have online casino, and then a general overview of lifetime deposits, withdrawals, and then net gains or profit loss. I will briefly zoom out so it populates correctly and then walk through the cashier. This is the cashier, similar to everything we've discussed so far. This is fully customizable and will be jurisdictional specific. These are Pennsylvania approved funding methods here. Obviously, in Massachusetts, credit card would not exist here. Typically, as we're preparing for an online sportsbook launch, we would, in submission to our internal controls, and as we're configuring the cashier, credit cards would not be included, similar to how we have set up our cashier in Tennessee and Iowa currently. Not only would we ensure that any credit card funding option doesn't show up in the cashier itself, we would have onboarding calls and then periodic calls with each of our payment service providers. Again, to also ensure those secondary payment methods, the secondary credit card funding is being blocked here as well. So we would have a call with our debit and credit card provider. We would have a call with Sightline. We would have a call PayPal. Paypal, their company policy is to block credit card deposits. We would also have a call with our online banking provider and have them block all the bank identification numbers that are associated with credit cards so that if a player accesses the cashier in a jurisdiction that prohibits credit cards, those funding options would not be available, not only in our cashier, but in the secondary payment methods as well. Any questions on that? As I know, that's been a subject of discussion in the years. And just briefly, obviously withdrawal, this is the similar set of the cashier. The withdrawal functionality currently is based on my account and the activity on my account. I have the option for online banking, cash at casino, or a mail check withdrawal. Again, this would function in the same way. Online banking would require you to log into your online banking financial institution and provide those credentials there in their secure portal. As the final part of the demonstration, I will walk through some of the just a brief wagering overview. So if I click on sports here, it will take you to all of the events that we have on the Barstool Sportsbook online platform. For the demonstration today, we'll go to NCAA College Football. Again, this is the only event that is upcoming. But if you would see a list of events here for college football in particular and based on the prohibitions in Massachusetts, I thought it was helpful to show this. So Pennsylvania, Pennsylvania has similar restrictions against NCAA player propositions. So one thing you'll note here is there are no individual player propositions in Pennsylvania. And this is similar to how it would look in Massachusetts given that those types of wagers and markets are not allowed. But you'll see in each of these and in all of the events and offerings, you can move through various different markets and wagering opportunities for players. For this one now, I'll just select a money line wager and a point spread wager. Again, depending on the offerings, you'll see various pieces of information here about how legs cannot be combined. Again, because I'm betting on two conflicting pieces of information here, this is how the wagers would populate into your bet slip. You would have a number of different options here. You can place individual straight bets on these options. Players have access to customized parlays. You can access a teaser depending on the offerings there, as well as a round robin. Again, for this demonstration, we'll just place a $10 wager on TCU. Then you'll see the bet acceptance there, the wager ID that you could provide to customer support if you have any questions or need any information, the date, time of the wager, potential payout, et cetera. This then populates in your active bet slip where you can see all of the wagers that you have active currently. See, I've been running a number of different tests on this, and this is where you also have the functionality to cash out that wager, again, which would settle the wager for this payout amount, and it would move to your settled bet slip, which, again, is right here to show all of the settled wagers on your account. Again, going to provide you the transaction ID if you had questions or wanted to provide customer support, they can look up the specific transaction based on this ID and answer any questions you may have. Can you do a parlay bet for me, please? Yep, I will go back to sports where we have more options here. Thank you. Yep. Again, here's the landing page. We'll see various different sports and the individual games and offerings there. We'll add selecting, we'll go to basketball and double a basketball. We'll add the Mississippi State. We'll add a Kansas leg. We'll add a Kansas State leg. So here is your standard parlay. So if I were to turn it into a parlay, you'll see the payouts and odds there and the odds changes. Again, you can also, it will also populate all of these straight bets if you want it. And then if you had a number of different offerings and you didn't want to parlay all of them together, but you were working through your bet slip, you can go here for customized parlays and you can add individual teams and mix and match parlays. Again, this is going to populate different teasers that are available to the player and then obviously ground wrap as part of that as well. Is there any other wagering and or sports betting information that I can demonstrate or provide? If not, the one final thing I'll cover quickly is our promotion screen. So these are all proved promotions that we would populate here. Players will be able to scroll through this, click on any of any individual promotion. It's going to take you to that promotion page. If there's an opt-in requirement, it would show here. Our high level overview of the terms and conditions would show here on all of the necessary pieces that the player would need to do to satisfy the promotion, anything that would need to be done or any action that they would need to take. And then obviously all of the states that would be allowed there. Players also have access to the very detailed terms and conditions that outline all of the information. You'll see at the top of these terms of condition that for every jurisdiction we operate, we populate the specific responsible gambling information for that jurisdiction as well. So the players have immediate access to that. If there are no further questions, that was the, that is the conclusion of the product demo. If there are any questions or anything that anyone else would like to see, I'm happy to walk you through that. Any questions, commissioners? Before I take sit down. All right. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you very much, Tray. And Madam Chair and commissioners, that now concludes our presentation. And we would be happy to answer any questions you may have. So this is a good time for us to take a bit of a break. And then we'll have GLI and our IEP and RSM come in and give us a little bit more information. And then we'll move into our questions. I know that it's 3.38. So commissioners, what would you like to do? Just need about a 10 minute break at this point, Madam Chair. Makes sense. Okay. So we'll come back at 3.50. Thank you. And thank you for an excellent presentation. Very much appreciated. Eileen, I'm afraid to talk about the weather because that will be the whole news story for the next. However, it's very cold on the North Shore and very rainy. So yeah, you've probably noticed that my attire has gotten a little more outdoorsy as the meeting has gone on. I can't get over how chilly it is. I'm in a pretty chilling room. So I went and looked for a little update on that Buffalo player, but I don't see any yet. So hopefully everything's going well. Sounds like if they don't see change over a certain number of days is when it starts to look not as promising. So sad. It reminds me of like hockey, you know, like I've heard about baseball players and hockey players having that happen, you know, where the the hit is timed in the middle of a second just right in between the beats. But yeah, it happened at Cornell to a long stick lacrosse player. Yeah, lacrosse is another one. My son got there and it was so tragic. It made national news. It's really, has there been an update guys? Have they been reluctant to look? No, no for the news, right? No. Okay. I'm sure with HIPAA rules we're probably not allowed to learn a lot either. No, I just I'm just hoping that you hadn't read that something that okay. No, no, but it it is the finite level. You know, as athletes, right, that fine with just the heartbeat it gets in it. All right, let me see. Dave, you can go ahead and take down the screen saver please. Okay, I have my whole team here now. Great. As we're holding this meeting virtually, I'll just do a quick roll call. Michelle, Brian. I am here. Mr. Hill. I'm here. Mr. Skinner. Yeah. Mr. Maynard. I'm here. We're all set to return to our public meeting of hearing commission, number 418. Thank you again to PSI for its presentation. Very, very informative here. And now we're going to turn to the help of in the analyses of our own. I'm not sure if I'm not sure Katrina is available today, but certainly we have folks from GLI and IEB and RSM who are going to help us. So we'll start with GLI. Katrina's not available, Madam Chair. Do we have anyone from GLI today, Karen? You're on mute. Thank you. If you want to move on to IEB if they're available. Yeah. Why don't we do that and I'll make a call. Hi, Kathy. This is Loretta. Obviously, I'm not Heather. I guess Heather's on the agenda, but we're working in conjunction with one another. So I'm happy to jump in now with summarizing the IEB's review. So hi to everybody and another happy new year for me. So the IEB, shall I jump right in, Chair? Yes, thank you. Okay. So the IEB submitted a report regarding the preliminary suitability of Penn Sports Interactive. We've been calling it throughout the report, Penn Sports or PSI. And as you know, the applicant is seeking a category three license to be tethered to the category one licensee, a Plain Ridge Park Casino. And you issued the temporary license to PPC on December 20th. The IEB performed this review for preliminary suitability in accordance with the standards and criteria set forth in 205CMR 215.01 subsection two. As a precursor to our review, the licensing division in conjunction with the IEB performed a scoping review of the applicant under chapter 23N section 5B. And we identified one entity and one individual that we designated as qualifiers in connection with this particular application. And those qualifiers are listed on page one of our report on the entity side. The qualifier is Penn Interactive Ventures, a wholly owned subsidiary of Penn Entertainment. And on the individual qualifier side, Mr. Benjamin Levy that you have heard from today. Of course, Penn Entertainment is the ultimate parent company of this applicant that is a publicly traded company that's already a qualifier under the category two gaming license issued under 23K for the slots parlor operating as PPC. The online sports wagering license sought here would be branded as bar stool and fully operated on the Penn side. There was a public discussion before the holidays about bar stools role with Penn. And for completeness here today, I want to remind you that Penn entered into the strategic partnership with bar stool in 2020. Bar Stool Sports Inc is a digital media company and Penn currently owns 36% of that company. In August of 2022, Penn announced that it plans to to purchase the company in its entirety 100% of the company next month. Again, Bar Stool Sports Inc is a media company and it has a branding and marketing partnership with Penn. The the bar stool sports book, which is the branded sports book, is it will be fully operated on the Penn side. Under the gaming law and as stated on page two of the IEB's report today, Bar Stool Sports Inc is a registered non gaming vendor due to the branding arrangement that it currently has with PPC and the branded merchandise, including the branded merchandise sold at PPC. I'd be happy to review that registration process. Chair, I had some inquiries last week about that it is mentioned in the report. Would you like me to review that non gaming vendor registration process or under 23k or should I just move on to to this? I think it's helpful to put it in context. Okay, great. So, as I said, Bar Stool was registered and is currently registered as a non gaming vendor under the gaming law. The commission promulgated registration, promulgated regulations for vendor licensing and vendor registration under 23k and recently you promulgated regulations for vendor licensing and registration under 23n. Under both regulatory schemes, there's a higher level of vendor licensing and then a lower level of vendor registration. In the regulations, the commission has set certain definitions of what qualify constitutes a vendor license, what constitutes a vendor registration. The regulations also set forth the process for both licensing and registration and whether the company is required to get licensed or register under the regulations. You promulgated that is a determination that was based on the risk that the different kind of categories of vendors pose to either casino gaming or under 23n to sports wagering. So under 23k, which is what Bar Stool is currently registered under, you created a process where the licensing division issues a registration as soon as the company, the vendor company submits a complete registration application packet. And that packet includes a proof that the company is doing business with the gaming licensee. And then under the process that you have approved, the IED performs the invest on the vendor registrant after the registration issues. It was thought in the thought process behind this registration and licensing scheme is that it balances the level of risk that a particular class of vendors poses with the operational requirements of the industry. So for instance, we have many, many hundreds of registrants, a non-gaming vendor registrants. The scheme that the commission has authorized allows those companies to get to business, allows the casinos to conduct business with the companies before the full review is performed and leaves the full investigation, which is a commensurate with the risk posed to be performed after the registration issues. And of course, the IED is authorized to suspend or revoke registrations once they do issue. So in that registration process, the licensing division and the IED are operating as an arm of the commission under the regulations, but they are not like casino operators or qualifiers for casino or sports wagering operators that the five member commission reviews and votes on for licensing. So anyway, that's a summary of what that process is on the non-gaming vendor side. Barstool was registered some time ago under 23K as a non-gaming vendor. The IED reported publicly on that registration, I think in February of 2022, I believe that's almost a year ago. So that is the status and that is the process that was used for a non-gaming vendor registrant. With respect to the PSI application for a category 3 operator license today, the licensing division has performed a review of the submission for deficiencies. There are no substantial deficiencies. The only deficiency is that we're waiting for some IRS tax transcripts. The applicant has requested those and that's not uncommon that we would have to wait in due course for the IRS to provide them. The IED's review was performed in accordance with the regulation. The governing regulation is set forth on page three of the report. Our team was comprised of contract investigators, including former members of the state police gaming enforcement unit and contract investigators from the firm of RSM. All of this was conducted with the collaboration in the oversight of the IED. The review for preliminary suitability includes a summary of PSI's licensing status as disclosed in its application and it is credentialed in 19 jurisdictions. It appears a review of its compliance history in other jurisdictions as disclosed in its application and that summary appears on pages seven through 10 of the report. The applicant did send an updated list of disciplinary items on December 20th that was forwarded to you also on December 20th. I think the purpose of that was to bring to your attention a typo in its original submission that made its way into the IED report relating to a 2021 Indiana incident and I'll leave it to Mr. Soriano to shed any further light on that. Page 11 of the IED's preliminary report also contains mention of a matter from Ohio that is not yet finalized where a regulator alerted us to it but again that matter is not yet finalized but it has been put forward in the report to you. Three days after the IED completed the report the applicant sent another submission regarding a compliance matter in Michigan that was also forwarded to the commissioners. We have not performed an independent review of that matter yet again I know the applicant is prepared to address that with you. This preliminary review also reviewed the submission on pending litigation valued over 100,000. The applicant initially indicated that nothing involved a PSI today after the applicant heard of a civil complaint that was recently filed in Illinois where it is not a party but this little confusing about what the tangential relationship might be but out of full efforts at full disclosure the applicant alerted the IED to that and that was forwarded to you this morning as well. Our open source review of the applicant was performed including an open source review of the individual qualifier but not the entity qualifier and the results of those sections appear on pages 12 through 16 of the report. The IED is certainly aware of certain areas of concern that the commission has previously identified. The IED has not as part of this preliminary review verified information in those articles but consistent with a condition that the commission placed on the PPC category one a temporary license to cooperate with the IED and its review of the bar stool marketing practices. We are starting to plan that review. We had a meeting scheduled for today that needed to be rescheduled because of somebody a team member that invest team is out sick but we expect to we've already rescheduled it for later this week. The team from RSM prepared a report that appears as exhibit one to the report. They reviewed disclosed financial information of the applicant in this case supplemented by financial filings of the ultimate parent company Penn Entertainment as those matters were filed with the SEC which is consistent with what we provided to you for the other two tethered applicants associated with our casino licensees. The RSM review also contains some financial ratio information and a review of the forecasting submission submitted by the applicant in its general application. So we have members of the team available and we're happy to try to answer any questions you have. Questions commissioners for Dr. Lillios. Commissioner O'Brien. Just for clarification so is there no one from RSM who will present today just the addendum, the attachment one? RSM will be available as well. Okay and then are we and you tell me if this is executive session material Mr. Soriano or Loretta but the matters that you referenced in particular are those going to be discussed in greater detail to provide some clarity now or is that something that is best reserved for executive session? I know that Mr. Soriano indicated some executive session requests about that. I've you know had some communication with Todd about that. They're certainly prepared to discuss all the details with you in the appropriate forum. Okay I guess just for the record there's just one other incident that I'd want to know more about and again Mr. Soriano you tell me if this is executive session material but the there was a September 29, 2021. I believe in Indiana social media post. Is that something you can talk about publicly or is that executive session material? For sure we can we can certainly discuss that which was part of the settlement agreement with the Indiana gaming commission and in a public session to the extent that you have any additional questions that go beyond what was in the face of the settlement agreement given the competitive sensitivity we would probably want to discuss that executive session. That said commissioner I'm fully prepared to address any questions you may have on that issue. Okay yeah I'm curious to know more of the specifics that went into the posting and how that happened. So it sounds like that might get into some of your worries about competitiveness. It would commissioner and so I would respectfully ask that if we could handle that those questions in an executive session you know again we'd be happy to fully respond but I think that's the more appropriate forum. Thanks. Director Lillios can you remind me when we brought up the publicly the commission brought up publicly the the new arrangement that has been Penn National had with Barstool. I thought we discussed it publicly in February of 2022. I would have to confirm that we've were certainly notified you know some time ago about the strategic partnership and the purchase of the 36 percent you know well before that. Until it became a registrant in 2020 did the IEB have any notices or concerns? The IEB's investigation did identify before it became a registrant before it was registered. Because it looks like the footnote said that that happened in spring of 2020. I'm just trying to get the time. Our review under our open source review did indicate some media articles of concern or media articles of concern. The types of media articles that you've seen you know subsequently although not directly related to responsible gaming or underage gaming. So our review did identify media articles like that but not directly related to gaming and no you know no actions were taken given the type of arrangement for the you know branded merchandise being sold t-shirts and that kind of thing at PPC. And then it wasn't until February of 2022 that the IEB told the commission about the arrangement right that was a non-gaming registrant but that came publicly. It was right I mean that came up publicly. Certainly the bar stool has been listed on our on the on the public facing website as a registrant all of our registrants are listed but we did report publicly after math of a news story that the commission became aware of. Got it. Thank you. Okay. Other questions for IEB's report at this point in time it sounds like we'll have some follow-ups on the some of the issues that Commissioner O'Brien raised. I think probably before we assume that that it will be all executive session we'll need to go through our analysis with Attorney Grossman but it makes sense for us to hear from GLI though in the ordinary course of this and RSM and then decide on terms of timing whether we go into executive session or not. That makes sense. That probably makes sense. It might be helpful right okay. So I understand that GLI just has joined us I can't let me see. Joe's here Kathy. I was able to join I just got the invitation. I know I understand there was a little bit of a hiccup there Joe. Thank you. So are you going to be representing GLI today solely? I think Gabe Benedict might be on the call he is but yeah we both are here. Okay excellent Joe again just to be clear on the record GLI has been working with the gaming commission and it's well known as the first right instead gaming technical standards which we now consider to be the industry benchmark worldwide. GLI has continuously responded to the industry by innovating new standards and testing allowing regulators like the gaming commission to feel confident that they are providing a safe responsible method of revenue generation for their stakeholders and protection of the integrity of gaming. So we have Joe Benedict and he will allow you to introduce yourself Joe and then give us the highlights on hi Gabe happy new year to both of you. Thank you. Thanks for having us Madam Chair and members of the commission. My name is Joseph Bonner Director of client solutions to GLI and give a quick overview of the smittal certification verification process regarding mobile applications on the digital preference approved by the commission before GLI can take smittals oh sorry you guys actually already proved 247 248 see I wasn't prepared for this moment. So we actually have already taken some smittals because the commission approved 247 and 248 which are drafted with us along the outside law firm post approval the operators will be ready to deploy their code bases in the Commonwealth. That preparation included platform review. Any product new to lab was reviewed by our engineers for architecture documentation which is complete comprehensive and technically accurate description explanation of sport wagering systems. This includes a description all hardware devices and virtual service a description all server and client software modules including the software versions a layout of the network communications and various software between hydra mall modules and explanation of all third-party integrated systems post technical documentation review the critical files regarding compliance will be identified in documented then a complete project plan would be put in place taking account the neat architecture and design of the platform and the specific rules for the Massachusetts gaming commission. The lab will run a supervised confirmation of those source files signatures files and the steps and and all the compiled code once complete the source code be submitted is submitted in testing in a locked-down environment. We'll review the player account management system registration age and uh geo sorry age and identification account controls payments reporting sponsored gaming controls required to disclosures and geolocation geolocation commencing two parts a field test to verify the borders by sampling around the entire board border of the Commonwealth completing edge case and technical test field tests will also cover any restricted areas defined by the mgc a the second part will be submissive workaround detection test that will happen in the lab including but not limited to vpm and proxy usage gps spoofing spoofing code manipulation and man and middle attacks geoli will then will verify the sportsbook in total if not tested previously for the retail deployment or review the integration of the sportsbook into the pam for events markets point spreads bet acceptance in the corresponding time stamps and logging of those uh elements we'll verify the enforcement of betting limits in all edge cases we'll verify pre event in live data feeds post event bet settling the correspondence time stamps and all logging and reporting we'll review all change management process and procedures after the technical check-offs are met certification be issued when geoli verifies changes made for massachusetts specific deployments including source code differential and change testing to latest reviewed version and geol is evaluated that the product has met all massachusetts specific requirements after certifications are issued and the mgc accepts them the steps them field verification will be conducted in conjunction with the mgc this procedure will be finalized uh quite shortly uh and during that time the following will commence verification at the production server uh and all critical file signatures uh we made at that time and reviews of all internal controls for procedures to operate the book check technology for configurations such as proper setup of roles and user rate management potentially interview key employees and personnel to ensure they know and will follow procedures from their internal controls and at that point uh they have met the technical requirements for operations of the sportsbook in the commonwealth that's it questions for john with this point okay joe thank you for pivoting so quickly again whatever logistics happened i knew your happy happy happy new year happy new year okay now we'll turn to rsm rsm uslp is one leading providers of um audit tax and consulting services in the united states our son has been working with the game commission to provide insights and analysis to help us out and today who do we have we have mr catz happy new year jack happy new year commissioner how are you doing doing well thanks yourself well thank you all right so we'll get started we have of course the benefit of gizibut want to be um um i'd be the report of suitability but uh you're gonna also now give us a little bit of high guidance on the um application pieces that address primarily um the estimated market share um projections on um protected revenue and then uh with respect to the financial stability and integrity and if you think that there's anything that could be um more appropriate for the executive session please um ps i raise your hand and stop us but i think jeff has a sense of of what is navigable at this point in time so thank you right thank you commissioner um rsm appreciates the opportunity to present to the commission uh we understand the importance of the licensing process and the importance of these meetings uh we've accumulated a diverse team of professionals present on the topics requested by the commission um please note that this presentation is based on documentation received as of november 21st 2022 uh the discussion prepared by our team is based on our preliminary research to date and is subject to change if new information becomes available questions posed to our team may require further research if we're unable to respond to a question before the end of this meeting we will circulate a response to the commission as soon as practical as instructed by the mgc rsm conducted a preliminary review of each uh applicants market share submission materials in tandem with other investigators involved in this process uh regarding a temporary license process much of the information shared is likely confidential including market share and projections we're happy to discuss those items in detail in an executive session we're happy to speak generally about the process about which the applicant shared such information in this public forum in our preliminary market study the jurisdiction jurisdictional rules and what other nearby markets are doing may impact any of these applicants markets uh size and sportsbook composition in a given state uh for instance when massachusetts goes live it goes live it is probable that neighboring states will see a decrease in sports wagering activity as patrons stay home and place their bets rather than crossing state lines to do so given the evolving nature of the online sports wagering and the varying number of platforms in different jurisdictions it is difficult to predict the ultimate composition of the marketplace even after conducting extensive market research but we can say it is being viewed as a lucrative long-term growth market by operators and industry analysts uh some analysts are predicting you know plus 10 kager compound annual growth rate uh speaking broadly the online sports wagering experience of the massachusetts applicant pool has varied levels of industry experience they're represented by both by both domestically and international players and some have decades of experience and others are still in the process of building their platform the commission has received i.e. b's report addressing the suitability review led by the investigations and enforcement bureau that was just spoken to the reporters review of the applicant self-disclosed financial submission looking at a select few sections of the application those being section c2 and g3 broadly comprising historical financial performance of sports wagering and other jurisdictions liquidity and ability to fund upstart costs and losses financial projections in massachusetts and the financial impact of compliance risks bankruptcies and other legal items we understand that the purview of the i.e. b's report was intentionally limited in scope to provide the commission with facts from which to draw their own conclusion arson and intends to speak broadly about the applicant in front of you today the applicant has provided five years of financial information for intermediary pen interactive ventures and the ultimate publicly traded pen entertainment pen entertainment has previously been issued a determination of suitability the applicant is tethered to pen entertainment owned by plainville park casino we reviewed the applicant's revenue projection information and compared to market analysts do it your bank equity research report and truest securities equity research report gaming industry both issued in october of 2022 for the revenue projection section executive session may be warranted as arson's plan discussion contains specifics of pens estimated market share we are prepared to prepare to provide a high level overview and look to the commission for direction on the need for an executive session discuss details further the applicant provided a five-year five-year financial projection of sports wagering activity in massachusetts covering estimated handle gross gaming revenue hold percentage as well as net gaming revenue market share estimates for the massachusetts online sports betting market were shared by the applicant and we have independently calculated market share estimates based upon our market research the projected market shares in line with current market share percentage achieved by the applicant other jurisdictions the assumption for hold percentage at a high level is in line with other applicants that have assumed for massachusetts and what we have seen in our independent market research as the commission is aware revenue is closely tied to hold percentage pens assumption is in line with with the hold percentage one would expect in a competitive state operation the planned relationship with plainville park casino was not reviewed as part of our investigation but can be expected to provide a positive impact to the business from cross branding and marketing activities turning towards liquidity pen entertainment is well capitalized as of its most recent quarterly sec filing as of september 30th there was approximately 2.7 billion in available liquidity comprising 1.7 billion in cash on hand and 977 million in an available revolver there are no major debt maturities in the next 12 months pen generated 877 million in cash flow from operations during a trailing 12 months through september 30th 2022 long-term debt balances have remained steady over this period it is ultimately up to the applicant's parent how to allocate its financial resources if faced with future losses there is no guarantee it will continue sports wagering up wagering operations in massachusetts but it has the current resources to do so if it if it desires rsm will remain on the line to answer any questions the commission may have about this presentation or our written submission if there are further specific questions in the contents of our report we are happy to discuss those in executive session thank you thank you job commissioners as you and as we maybe anticipated it does sound as though and i think that when i was reviewing the application i wasn't surprised with respect to protected revenues that that might be an area of need to review an executive session i assume you might be interested in that okay so um thank you to rsm ieb and gli for those presentation at this juncture typically we go into um beginning of the review of the application it's 430 and one of makes sense for us to try to address the um in executive session the matters i know that we have at least one commissioner who does have a hard stop at 530 others may want i don't know if others have an earlier stop does it make sense for us to think about going into executive session now and letting the public know that we have to have a vote then the public know that we would not convene back in public but that would pick up our our public meeting in the morning um we would adjourn public meeting then um we would come back and just adjourn public meeting for tonight it would not be rolled over commissioners what do you think what process do you like may i make a suggestion yes i love the process that we have been using over the past two weeks a couple of weeks where we go through the sections and we make a list of what we need to talk about and we go into one executive session instead of numerous ones so i would i as one would like to see us continue with that process uh to get us to a to an executive session because i just think it's been a good process and and it's it's helped us through um our process so with that said i would not want to go into an executive session at this point but instead and here's my suggestion continue our meeting tomorrow oh cannot not continue on the evaluation process okay well since we would uh i'm the i'm the person that has to stop at five thirty and once we get going through the sections we really get moving and grooving and i would hate to have to stop that in the middle although i could leave and the rest of the commission uh could work obviously uh without me but at least identify should we at least list out the ones we've already identified for executive session so before we break should we at least because we do have some already the rsm and that do we summarize what those are to get a consensus on those before we break to the day do you mean like to get the list um as a part of the executive i think that's it that i yeah and then if there's something again someone wants to add in the morning but at least that way ministerially we kind of take care of that before we break today i like that yeah that'd be great commissioner maynard commissioner scanner do you have ideas does that work for you that process once for me i support the proposal commissioner maynard works for me okay so um starting back to commissioner o'Brien and you had identified a few of the um matters that are listed in the ied report yes and we'll just go to the specific um attorney grossman okay thanks yeah so um specifically uh the september 29th 21 settlement agreement out of indiana um i also want to hear more detail about the illinois lawsuit that was recently filed commissioner brian can we pause for one moment on the indiana one sure um i just want to be very precise if we can be uh i was able to locate the settlement agreement from the indiana matter online it's on the indiana website so we should just be clear what specifically uh we're interested in talking about because the general facts and circumstances are public information so i think what we can do is if they want to describe that publicly um and then there were some questions that i had about how it was um that this individual was able to post things like that um and i thought mr soriano said that i might be getting into um sort of competitive areas if we get if they went into detail about some of their social media i don't know if he wants to chime in if that's not the case that's fine mr soriano yeah commissioner if i may um why don't i summarize the matter um and see if that answers your questions and then um if we're if we're going to get into additional about how things are posted specifically then that that specific nuance may be an appropriate item for executive session but if helpful i'll start with a summary actually can i just hear from i see loretta's unmuted i just wanted to hear what she had to say before you jump in of course you know i think that's a great plan to i think there are aspects that can be talked about publicly in one piece that can be spoken about publicly that i did want to note is that penn notified the i e b of this matter back in real time after it was the discipline was issued initially um when we were looking at the when i was looking at the instant application for the sports wagering application i actually hadn't recalled the um the notification that they made to the i e b uh earlier uh mr soriano was able to remind me of that including the remedial uh action that the company took uh afterwards i did go back and uh review the initial uh disclosure uh confirmed that the i e b received it reviewed it we did not take any action at that time uh due to uh you know we didn't have a sports book at the time so the types of risks involved and also due to the type of remedial action that was put in place so i did want to just mention that publicly mr soriano do you want to get that um summary please i would chair thank you so so commissioners this matter um related to a in a posting by a newer barstool sports employee um of gaming content on a barstool account um unaffiliated with penn in other words this was not a penn controlled account through a barstool sports book account um it violated the posting violated our compliance guardrails um it certainly was not not considered something that was appropriate um within hours of the post having been made we noticed we noticed it and asked barstool to take it down promptly and they did take it down promptly the next which this this was posting took place overnight and so we saw it early in the morning and within again minutes um had it rectified and then that morning contacted all of our regulators throughout the country to advise of that the post had been made that it was not consistent with our guardrails and that we had removed it so in addition reporting it in diana we reported it to the i e b we reported it to average jurisdiction that we do business in within a few hours of it again the incident having taken place um the employee was disciplined the barstool employee was disciplined um in the form of a suspension i'm in and a additional training took place my colleague mr west who you heard from earlier conducted a refresher training for barstool employees um and a review was conducted of posting privileges and who has the ability to do posts um and some significant tightening up to place there again commissioner um some specifics on that may need to go maybe an executive session item but there was a review conducted of who can post what when where and how um and so when that matter ultimately was reviewed by indiana we entered into a consent agreement with the indiana gaming commission on september 28th i'm 2021 where a pensports interactive was fined the amount of 7500 dollars and barstool sports ink which is a registrant in indiana uh was fined $10,000 for for the same comment for the same conduct uh so that was a matter which again we we took ownership of we we answered for um it should not have happened and i believe we took the appropriate prompt steps to a notify our regulators within hours and b take appropriate remedial action again happy to answer any questions relating to that incident and again happy to do so now or an executive session thank you um so i would have some follow-up questions in terms of what came about what were the changes and the controls that you put in place as a result of that my understanding is the um some of the language that went up um um you know it was you know i i mean as as you i think you readily agreed to over the line um and then you rectified it um and then i know you said it wasn't a psi um or a barstool sport book account but was it a it was the marketing company account is that the twitter handle yes that's correct we're sure it was it was through a barstool affiliated account okay and certainly those those guardrails um that you asked about i would i would take the position are competitively sensitive right but we'd be happy to explain those in executive sessions so i think if that's the more nuanced question um that would be appropriate for executive session okay i have a question for director alleles where can i access the content that was posting because i have not seen it and provide that to you thank you so i do think actually before we go into executive session is that something that's my question is more is that in and of itself because it was put up there publicly in the domain at one point and taken down part of the public disclosure or is that something that goes into executive session also for discussion just because i'm looking at the actual agreement and it doesn't go into specifics necessarily about the posting i don't know i i'd have to turn to to you todd the todd yeah yeah i first saw just to clarify it appears it was on a tick tock at twitter for what that's what and uh secondly i'm not sure mr sureana whether the actual tick tock post is confidential it's is that something the commission can have a look at councillor grossman to the best of my knowledge i i personally do not have access i've looked and i i no longer have access i believe it's taken down that said we have the text of of what was said um and and could certainly you know could certainly share that okay and commissioner brian and i believe you've indicated that you're interested in uh learning more about some of the essentially internal controls that were adjusted to ensure um that there is no further episodes of this sort and that would seem to fall right so to one would be any consequences and to me that would be maybe personnel consequences that's not on the public domain as a result of that and then to um what controls were put in place as a result those would be the two areas of follow-up i have i think both of those would probably fall on exactly yep i would agree with that um okay so yeah so those if those are if that's the scope of the inquiry into the indiana matter that is entirely appropriate for executive session review um the second matter uh commissioner brian you mentioned pertains to the illinois situation um and i am generally aware of that uh my my question is relates to how much of that is public information my understanding is it was before a public body in the state of illinois and i'm just not familiar with the uh confidentiality or privacy laws in that state i don't know how much of this information is in the public domain and how much is not and specifically perhaps mr sariano can address um or just identify what what parts of this you can talk about and what parts are sent right yes that councilor grossman if i may defer to our chief legal officer harper co i believe is on the call um who can who could address that a little bit better so to the extent that this is has been in the public domain you know there's no reason why we can't address what the actual message was okay so just to be clear we're done with the illinois matter oh not the illinois matter that is executive session i'm sorry i thought you were still having another tiktok message okay no we were i think we resolved the tiktok matter um and we've identified the issues that we can discuss in executive session we were on to the illinois matter and um i just noted that it appears as though the matter is before a government body in the state of illinois and i i viewed a number of documents um from that body i just don't know whether those documents themselves are in the public domain or they are held in there they're withheld in their entirety under the illinois freedom of information laws correct at this point yes okay but so but we're happy to address any of that um in executive session when the commission is ready okay and so commissioner brian i is it fair to say you're just interested in the entire background of the situation and how it was resolved okay right okay we also did a more legible copy of that that documentation please we do not have a better copy you have the copy we have but we have made inquiries so to the extent we get them before tomorrow we will definitely get them to you commissioner brian you said something i didn't catch i know what i first did and i thought it was my printer um and then i realized it was just the copy that we had can i just give you a separate different document can you remind me what you were asking for before really i'd like to get a hold of the settlement agreement in the um indiana matter as well as whatever the content of that video they only have a um the text which is what you're looking for because i mean i don't need the actual video i just need to know the text right the text of what was in the video content which is which is what i was right is what i've been saying and i can provide that information and to all the commissioners all of us yep and i'm sorry commissioner brian you were i just i butted in after illinois were there other issues you wanted to i think the only other one and i think we all were asking for a more detailed conversation about projected revenue out of rsm that has to happen in executive session i don't know if there was anything else out of rsm people were looking for for the ied report just those two matters commissioner brian just uh well to the extent the rsm is really you're right more in the another section of the application so for the suitability report it was those two matters for me just those two okay and then rsm um certainly they included their written report and except one but just now jeff could not really address projected revenues because of the um nifer executive session so we'll go through that there anything else all right at this stage we'll take commissioner hill's good suggestion and we won't we won't seek to go into executive session now it is 10 of five um i'm forgetting what time we started this one i guess it was 10 tomorrow we started some of us started nine um and then we will move into the 10 o'clock public um meeting uh that will be continuing this discussion it will be a new meeting but it will be continuing this discussion and um i think then the only this piece of business we have is to adjourn this public meeting right i actually have two matters if you will talk if you will allow me because maybe karen will take advantage of just these few last minutes um i'm afraid i'll get busier during the course of the week but i wanted to just a reminder um under our agenda uh this is this we didn't anticipate this um these two matters and karen's going to help me out but this is just a reminder that our next agenda setting meeting will be held at nine a.m this thursday january fifth and we typically hold those meetings on wednesdays to address uh both short and long term scheduling needs of the agency given our current calendar we will convene this thursday morning at nine um tomorrow morning we have a short jicatori hearing um one of us is recused from that at nine and then um commissioners with respect to the agenda setting meeting as you know we don't typically stream that close um meetings but they're always recorded and they're accessible to the public by phone only and i thought about this and i think to mirror our practice with regard to all our other public meetings in a matter best practice i'd like to stream our um agenda setting meetings as well and i'm wondering is anybody have any introduction to that apparently it is not a a big lift technically or a big expense technically for our team to do that i don't know maybe we can have that conversation and not stream this week so we can have a wholesome conversation i feel like sometimes we don't have the ability to talk other than being streamed so i have a strong feeling of course public those meetings are public um but they're public by phone and so the reason why um i asked is because when you when they do a by phone they're tying up the phone that's you know that's why we we don't do that all the time so we can certainly discuss it on thursday morning i would prefer if unless it's truly an objection just going ahead and streaming on on thursday on the agenda setting meetings just as a matter of phone transparency and a matter of ease those who want to listen rachel brian you want to still defer the discussion till thursday morning i i just raised that because i know that we've had some scheduling things that we've needed to talk about i just don't know that that's going to be particularly helpful for our ability to air those things but i just raised that to see if anybody else felt the same way or not i'm not raising a strong objection just something i didn't want to point out mr maynard i don't think it could i don't think it hurts to discuss it uh in full on thursday mr maynard i would support streaming the meetings um i sometimes my own memory fails about um some of the things that i say in those meetings so um with these it's great i can always go back to them and watch that snippet that i need to watch so i would just support streaming mr hill i don't have an issue streaming that meeting so it's um you know i am i am making that suggestion and um it sounds as though we might have not a full consensus i'd like to refer um i'd like to just go ahead and stream so it's a matter of good practice uh a little bit we'll defer it um for thursday morning's discussion um but i really um think that it's a commitment that we should we should restore the the the process of streaming so that we don't tie up folks phone unnecessarily madam chair i have a question about tomorrow's meeting at nine you said that it was in a judicatory hearing is that did i hear that right well maybe it's not it's not a judicatory hearing it's part of an appeal correct um councillor grossman yeah it's part of an adjudicatory deliberation essentially but it's not a public hearing thanks for clarifying and that starts at nine okay so on thursday we will not stream um but i am making us strong suggestion that we come to a consensus on that uh dedication to local transparency all right so now we need a um a caring is going to go over up the rsm rsm has asked for feedback as to how they can be best helpful to us um with their advice and guidance when we get to friday the beginning of our evaluation of the six untethered category three applicants they asked for feedback karen do you want to just give a little bit more detail yes i'll be happy to so uh as you know rsm has been presenting uh to you as you are looking at each of the applicants um you've done that with the uh the casinos and then the uh tethered mobile applicants uh they we were just having a discussion on what might be helpful for the commissioners given that um the process that uh you approved last thursday is to uh look at them individually but then make a determination at the end and look at them collectively um it may be helpful uh for the commissioners if rsm were to do almost like a powerpoint or something uh while you're they're going through the individual uh issues who have something to refer back to similar information that you've been receiving so far but just in a little uh powerpoint that you could look back on and then the other uh potential option in addition to that is when the commission is looking at the six applicants collectively on the 18th and the 19th would you like some kind of uh compilation or side by side comparison of the issues that they looked at if that would be helpful to you so just looking for some feedback if either or both of those would be helpful to you or something else uh we can speak with uh rsm they're actually on today so they might be able to uh to um hear just today what your comments are but we can coordinate with them and what's good for the commission does that make sense i like both of those ideas i think it's both would be helpful for me okay i agree anybody else want any feedback give it uh rsm any feedback miss your skin are you leaning in no okay commissioner hill are you all set all set commissioner maynard all right that sounds like a good good suggestion and thank you to rsm for the inquiry to the applicant i probably should have excused you my apologies i see you're all there patiently waiting and your time is valuable thank you for today's presentation we look forward to tomorrow's continuing discussion and um at this point in time i just need a motion to adjourn commissioners move to adjourn thank you second thank you any discussion all right commissioner brian i think she said yes or i commissioner hill thank you commissioner hill hi commissioner skinner hi commissioner maynard hi i vote yes five zero everyone thank you thank you very much look forward to tomorrow morning thank you