 Okay, excellent. Good morning, everyone. Today is we have a special roundtable that's convening for the Massachusetts Gaming Commission. We are holding this public meeting virtually so I will do a roll call with my fellow commissioners. Good morning, Commissioner O'Brien. Good morning, I'm here. Good morning. Good morning, Commissioner Hill. Good morning, I'm here. Thank you and Commissioner Hill will be attending without his video on today. Thank you so much, Commissioner Hill. Commissioner Skinner, good morning. Good morning. And Commissioner Maynard. Good morning, Madam Chair. Okay, we'll get started today is our public meeting number 437. As I said, we have a special roundtable that addresses the marketing affiliates and our regulation 205CMR 250601 subsection three the sports wagering advertising. Just to set the stage briefly, I did circulate to my fellow commissioners three documents yesterday in addition to the written comments that we received relevant to this topic. Most recently, I distributed the PowerPoint that was put together very high level PowerPoint. I distributed in letter from Mr. Kevin Garnett for gaming associates. I know that he's represented with today's gaming sources represented by Mr. Mr. Messler who I think will be joining us. And another document that I distributed was the New Jersey directive on a similar issue that I thought might be helpful for fellow commissioners. I'm going to introduce the multiple participants. Before I do so, I wish to thank each of you for agreeing to participate in this roundtable rather short notice. I learned that our regulation might be raising issues that we weren't aware of and whenever we learn that there might be either unexpected consequences or at least questions. We want to hear from the stakeholders who can best explain it to us that a later time we'll, we'll look at the regulations and decide if we want to make any changes and today we're really going to be enjoying listening to you and explaining them. Because we have so many participants I've already mentioned this, we'll have to navigate it a little bit carefully. And I will give everyone permission to, to lean in, interrupt, use the icon, give us notice that you wish to contribute. And as I indicated in the invite, we wish to keep this conversational in nature. We have three topics of the discussion, three prompts that were on the agenda. Before we turn to those, I thought that we would allow folks from the third party affiliates to set the stage with their high level of PowerPoint. And I think I'm going to turn to Katie McCord in a second after I make the introductions to do that. And, and I know that we've had a practice while I'm sharing the document so we're in good shape. So, as I understand it, maybe I'll ask if you're here if you don't mind saying present and then just say your position because I want to make sure to get the positions. I'll introduce all of the expected participants and that may help me get all of you on the same screen. So, from WinBet, we have Jennifer Roberts and Alan Stremel. Yes. And, and you can see your positions Jennifer good morning. Good morning. How are you. Well in Europe and you wanted to state your position please. Yes, our position is that we would not your position. Oh, I'm sorry role. That is a very, that's very good though I like that. Jennifer very. Thank you for allowing us to attend this. I am the Vice President in general council of WinBet. Thank you. I'm joined with Alan Stremel. Good morning, Mr. Fox. Good morning. I'm Vice President for product and new market compliance. Excellent. Thank you. We have from the MGM Sarah Brennan and a Jeremy Coleman. Hi, Jeremy's actually unable to make it so we have real lunis she's our chief compliance officer on with me. And I'm just saying the name again, please. Sarah, my apologies. Well, Ria is on camera. Let her introduce herself. But I'm the senior director of compliance and Jeremy's unable to join us today. So Ria is joining me. Good morning. Rialoni Chief Compliance Officer. Thank you. Okay. Good morning, Ria. Then we have from Penn. Good morning, North and North Groundsville. And we have Samantha Hagerty. I'll go first, I guess. Hi. I'm Sam Hagerty from Penn. I'm deputy chief compliance officer and regulatory affairs council. Thank you. And good morning, North. Are you having trouble navigating that north? There you go. It works now. Thank you. Sorry. I was just having trouble on meeting, but good morning, Madam chair. Good morning. No, this is a good chance for everyone to get there. Technical. Situation figured out draft Kings. Good morning. We have match up. Let's go. Good morning, Madam chair and commissioners. My name is Matt Scalf. I'm government affairs manager with draft. Excellent. Thank you so much. It's important to have a strong voice for responsible gaming in this conversation. And we are very pleased that Rion. Your show has joined us today. Rion has joined a round table in the past on responsible gaming. Welcome back. Good morning, chairwoman. Thank you for having me. And you have your own consulting. I do. Yes. That specializes in problem and responsible gambling. Policy. Okay. Excellent. Thank you. From GDC America. We have a max. I thank you, Madam chair. Max pixel from GDC America. Let's go. Thank you so much. And Katina media. We have Michael. Thank you so much. And Katina media. We have Michael. Chairman Michael daily chair. Chief executive officer of media. Excellent. Thank you so much. And from better. Collective USA. Katie McCord. Hi guys. I'm Katie McCord from better collective. I'm head of legal. Okay. Excellent. And if. Mr. Thank you. Yes. Good morning, Madam chair. Thank you, Jeff. For for if for law and I'm representing the. Three media groups that you've introduced. Excellent. Thank you. And then we have from gaming. Society. I believe we have two representatives. Jamie messler. And we're Marissa Coleman. Are you here? Yeah. Hi. Jamie. Hold on one second. Hi. Jamie messler CEO and co-founder of gaming society. Marissa is going to try to join in a little bit. Great. Well, if there's any. Issue. Getting on. Let us know and we'll figure it out, Jamie. Thank you so much. All right. So that's all I have. And from Nessan, my apologies. I have Matt. Good morning, Matt. And thank you for joining us rather last minute. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you for having your position. Chief operating officer. So we are very appreciative of the. The numbers who have joined us in your interest today. And so I think commissioners, if you think this is a good way to start, we'll, we'll go ahead with. The high level PowerPoint commissioners. Do you have any questions before that? I'll set. Okay. Thank you. Jeff and Katie. Thank you. Share the screen. You may. Yes, please. And again, we'll probably let the PowerPoint go through because it'll be hard to see any faces. And then just so save your questions to the conclusion. And also, I feel free to add into their PowerPoint too. Okay. Katie. You almost have a full screen. Good. Thank you, Madam chair and commissioners and fellow. Staff. We super appreciate it. You've been amazing at working with the industry from the very get go. And we appreciate the constraints you're under. And that's not always an easy thing to do. Your office staff and all the commissioners have been. Extremely flexible in, in pivoting. To work with industry. And we super appreciate that. We think that's exactly the right recipe to. Lead to a successful. Launch and a successful scale of this new legal opportunity in Massachusetts. I just wanted to give you a quick interview overview. Sorry. We've already met and share introduced the folks on whose names are on the screen. Just wanted to give you a quick overview of the industry and then hand it off to max. And then Katie and Michael. So that can go through this PowerPoint. The, the affiliate industry. It's kind of, you know, hard. What sometimes understand what that, what that industry is, but the, the affiliate industry is essentially when you go on to Google to find you a legal sports book in Massachusetts, the types of articles and news articles you're getting from the organic search in Google are going to be articles that are published by the people on the call today. So these three media companies represent about 75% of the media affiliate assets that are out there, which means that Google on a state by state basis is being populated with articles, educational material, responsible gaming material, the risks of gaming. These are all things that this industry publishes on a daily basis. Play Massachusetts is a, is an asset that you may already be familiar with. And what these media affiliates are doing is investing money to make sure that when a Massachusetts consumer wants to know where a legal sports book is, he or she can find that sports book quickly. And this is a really key thing, obviously, to grow the business in Massachusetts because up until now, when someone in Boston or via or wherever in Massachusetts, put in that inquiry into Google, the result they got was not playing Massachusetts, was not sports handle. It was not a fan side or gaming society. The result was an offshore book. And what, and the reason why is because illegal offshore unregulated books have been, have been operating in the U.S. from outside the U.S. mainly the Caribbean for over 20 years. So they have a real head start and that creates a real problem when you've decided to regulate this industry because consumers rely on Google results. And so the affiliates here are responsible for driving almost 30% of the consumers to legal operated sites. So when you look at a breakdown of an MGM or a draftings or a Fandral, we believe that almost 30% of their consumers are going to have arrived on their sites as a result of the affiliate work and the educational materials and the media assets that these three and others invest in and publish every single day. The common goal is really to protect consumers, generate taxes and keep out the bad actors. And this is obviously a common goal that I think everyone who's on the call today agrees with, but the common challenge also has to be acknowledged, which is there's an established illegal industry and they have a huge head start on the Internet. They lie about being illegal and they're super easy to find on the Internet. Now, some of the operators can obviously pay to advertise and they can pay Google to elevate themselves above some of the illegal offshore operators. But a lot of consumers obviously ignore paid ads and look for organic search results because those tend to be more reliable. The Google algorithm will prioritize findings on an organic search based on how Google views the credibility of those sites. And so consumers will go to those sites as well. When you search for the best travel deal, you're going to get hit up by a bunch of people who are paying Google to rank them first. But if you're like me, you probably skip over those results and go to the first organic results because that's who the Google world and the consumers at large have essentially prioritized as the most credible. And the same thing is true here. If the affiliates are not encouraged to stay in Massachusetts and receive the result will be that you'll be back to giving Massachusetts consumers organic search results which drive them offshore, which don't protect them and obviously don't generate taxes from Massachusetts. So this is in a way already starting to happen because the affiliates on the call today are being discouraged from investing in Massachusetts. Operators like Caesars have told them that they're not going to be paid for the work that they do on any basis. Caesars hasn't offered an alternative basis. They've said there will be no revenue basis, no revenue agreements in Massachusetts period. We can't afford to eliminate the affiliates who are responsible for driving 30% of these consumers to operators because those consumers are going to be the ones who are going to be entertained on the various operator sites and generate the taxes that Massachusetts needs and scale the business and take away market share from the offshore industry, which was all part of the goal of legalizing. So what we'd like to see is a more relaxed approach which is more consistent with the majority of states. There simply is not another state of the size of Massachusetts who is doing what Massachusetts is proposing. There isn't one. All other states have decided to go with CPA and revenue share agreements with minor exception of one or two. And in terms of similarly sized states, there isn't a single one who has prohibited it all together. We'd like to keep Massachusetts in line with what the other states are doing because we think that's truly the recipe for success. And my clients are now going to break that down a little bit more. That was just meant to be high level. We think that there's an opportunity to license the industry in a similar way that they're licensed in other states. We hope that Massachusetts will do that and we're here to answer any questions. And without further ado, here's Max. Great. Thanks, Jeff. Madam Chair and commissioners, thank you for having us and hosting us and taking the time out of your day and your consideration here. I think I speak for Michael, Katie and I where we've been doing this for a while and we really understand how monumental of a task it is to regulate sports betting retail but online sports betting even more so because of how many different players there are in the value chain of sports betting. So today I'm going to set the stage for what affiliate marketing is, how it works in gambling and Katie and Michael will cover other elements of it. We also want to, Madam Chair, depending on your appetite, we can answer questions throughout or wait till the end, whatever is easiest. I know it's, I have a hard time remembering questions at the end of a presentation. So more than welcome to interject at any time. So I think that what I'd like is for you kind of to zip through your PowerPoint and then save, and we'll save questions and then we'll make sure that even the other colleagues that have joined today's roundtable can add them to your presentation. Max and Katie, I think that's the best way because I really do want this to be a conversation more so than a presentation. Thank you. Yeah, absolutely. I firmly agree. I don't want anyone to feel like they're going through their death by PowerPoint here. So we'll do our best to keep it succinct and make sure we're talking about something that's substantial here. So in terms of affiliate marketing, I think it captures a lot, right? It's a huge term, not only in gambling, but also in other parts of industries, e-commerce, everything. I think for us, we want to set the stage for kind of what the baseline is, how things work and what it actually is. And I think as we think about affiliate marketing and what it means is people use Google for borderline everything of what they want to search for, learn about, get ideas. And as a result, you're capturing high-intent users. And our whole thesis for affiliate marketers like Better Collective, Katina Media, and GDC America are to meet these folks where they are, right? So if someone is searching for where can I get the cheapest flight or what is the best Italian restaurant in Massachusetts, you're able to use Google to help find something that you have clearly stated as your intent through many different ways, mostly through Google searches. So that's really what we want to set the baseline to. And there's a lot of elements that come into that. So we're going to cover all of those over this brief presentation. And for us, that's really what we want to discuss. And one of the biggest pieces of that is when you do Google search for anything, whether it's we have an example here for a laptop or looking for a vacuum cleaner or a high-yield savings account, whatever the case may be, you're searching for something and there's search results that populate. And all those search results that populate are generally websites like the websites that the three companies represented here today operate like Play Massachusetts, Action Network, or Vet Massachusetts. And all of that enables us to be authoritative websites with expert content talking about all these laptops or specific travel destinations or what's airline is best. So we're able to preserve ourselves within Google and Google rewards us because we are developing and creating content that users who have shown similar intent to want to do those things or buy those goods or services have been able to realize and find successful. And that's generally our thesis of creating websites, generating great content that people find useful, helpful, and we apply all of that to the regulated online gambling industry, not only in the U.S. in all regulated states, but also globally wherever there is regulated sports betting and online casino. So for us, that's really what we want to discuss is that this is not unique to online sports betting. This is really about how it applies to online sports betting and how similar it is to something that I Google search stuff all day long about where to go to eat, to train, what airline to fly, all those things. So for me, it's easy to apply to my own life and I'm sure everyone on this call can understand the value and utility of Google, specifically when you have a new market launching in Massachusetts with online sports betting. We want to make sure that consumers have what they want when they're searching for the best sports book in Massachusetts or what is the most consumer friendly sports book in Massachusetts. We're able to walk through a lot of that. And the real purpose of our discussion here today is how affiliates like gambling.com, Better Collective or Expedia or Wirecutter or any affiliate marketing that is WebMD if you get sick and you want to find out how to get rid of a sore throat, they're going to market to you for potential cough medicine or over-the-counter medication. Similarly, they get compensated as well. And what we want to discuss is how different affiliate marketing is from general advertising because we're meeting people where they are, right? Someone who has a sore throat, Google searching something for sore throat, it makes sense to market a particular cough medicine or some other remedy to them. Similarly, someone searching for sports books, we want to make sure that they find the best books, the DraftKings, the Fandals, the MGMs, the Caesars, not an offshore operator that is not protective of the customer, not regulated by the MGC and not recognized as a good actor in our industry. And I think that's really what we're going to cover off here today. And Jeff mentioned earlier how large this actually is. If you look at how the search volumes and the search queries on Google of how pervasive and frequent they are, that's why we represent over 30% of new customers to operators collectively amongst the three companies here. And that's something that is very important. So that's where affiliate market differs because we are not mainstream media. We're not targeting folks who are on television or viewed by everyone, by children or people that don't have an appetite for sports betting. And that's also very difficult to police. So for us, we're playing in one very specific lane where we want to target these users and these potential customers for the regulated online sports betting operators that you licensed and will be licensing. So large takeaway is we're not based on the amount of eyeballs or how many people are watching a game and see your TV commercial or how many people open your newspaper and see a full page ad for a sports betting operator. The big difference for us is when we try to conceptualize this for folks is that it's proactive where you're pushing advertising into someone's face through television or radio or another method versus passive advertising where people are trying to come to our websites and our assets because we have a review of the best sports book or what are the odds for the Celtics to win the NBA Finals in June. Very specific searches versus just saying, hey, here's sports betting, go do something with it. We're focused on something very, very particular in comparison. And I think that's the unique element of affiliate marketing in sports betting is because we're just waiting for consumers to come to us. We give them what they need and there's generally a call to action if they want to take the next step of the intent that they've already shown. Matt, so I'm going to interrupt because I'm cognizant of time. We have a lot of voices that we want to hear from today and we're already kind of almost a half an hour. So I don't know if you want to speed through your next several. Again, this is a round table and so I thought that we would just limit this to being sort of a, let's set the stage and then let's move on to our conversation, please. Certainly. Yeah, I think most of these elements are very important to say in this stage because we're operating under the assumption that most folks on this call don't necessarily know what affiliate marketing. So we'll be able to get through this pretty quickly. Right, and I think that we'll get, yeah, and that's exactly what we are hoping to hear from. Sure. So thank you. Sure. And from our perspective, the way the regs are written right now is they will mostly create a monopoly or a duopoly where folks, the operators will not spend money with affiliates. And as a result, we will not have no incentive or expression to market our services or create content or invest dollars into the market in Massachusetts. And the implication of that is something Katie's going to get into now specifically about what life looks like without affiliate marketing and what that looks like. And we'll also cover some responsible gaming pieces as well. So Katie, I'll pass it on over to you. Great. Thanks, Max. And thank you, Madam Chair and commissioners, and I'll try to pick up the pace a little bit. So I think what we first want to talk about is what happens if we eliminate affiliate marketing. I think that we understand the commission's focus on responsible gaming and we share the desire to limit what we're going to call push advertising, whereas marketing affiliates are pole advertising. So this is the dynamic that Max was talking about, sort of proactive versus passive. What marketing affiliates primarily do is focus on pole advertising so people who already have betting intent. So also what Max and Jeff were speaking about with Google is the Google results that you're seeing are not a coincidence. You type go to Google and you type in best sporting bets in Massachusetts, then marketing affiliates work very hard to make sure that we appear in the first few searches. And the key thing to remember is that marketing affiliates only promote licensed operators. So if you eliminate affiliate marketing, we believe that we will all lose. The regulated industry will lose and that the illegal industry will win. Marketing affiliates have many incentives to only promote licensed operators, but the primary one is that we, like the operators, have licensing and registration obligations. So if we were to promote an unlicensed operator, then we would put our own business at risk. Additionally, many users who have betting intent will have trusted affiliate websites that they go to, like BetterFlex Action Network, like gambling.com, Bet Massachusetts. And when they're conducting a search, they may go immediately to one of our sites and then see what the licensed operators are. If affiliates are commercially discouraged from participating in a newly regulated market like Massachusetts, consumers with betting intent when they are conducting their Google searches with no marketing affiliates to provide a filter, we believe that they'll be directed to offshore books. We also believe that an outcome here will be an increase in untargeted paid advertising. So getting back to the point on the role that marketing affiliates play, marketing affiliates bring in about 30% of new customers. So if you make affiliate marketing commercially unviable by limiting performance marketing, and we believe that push advertisements like mass media will start to increase. We also think that it will produce an uncompetitive environment because operators typically prefer to focus their marketing spend, and I hope that the operators here will speak to this today, but in our experience, that they will sort of tend to prioritize marketing spend on performance-based metrics because it allows for efficiency. So, and Jeff can sort of speak to this a little bit and as he touched in initially in a state like Connecticut, which limits CPA and RedShare, only allowing flat fees, there's a small market with only three operators. In Illinois where RedShare is prohibited, some of the operators that PC works with are unable to afford CPAs and so they can't afford to advertise. So we believe that an unintended consequence will be a consolidation of the market where smaller operators won't be able to invest and larger operators will continue to focus on push advertisements like television. So therefore we believe that these regulations will result in a dampening of the Massachusetts regulated market and we're beginning to see some email guidance from Caesars that allow Max to sort of quickly touch on and that Jeff described in the beginning. Yeah, thanks, Katie. So we've received this communication from Caesars last week. Effectively, we digest this as Caesars firmly committing to not using affiliates and as a result, someone who's searching for the best sports book in Massachusetts may find Caesars or they may find someone that's offshore, mostly because there will be nothing else for Google to serve on that query and Google doesn't necessarily care who's regulated and who's not by each state entity and as a result, the implication is that none of the companies here would invest on the affiliate side for marketing to not only serve as a watchdog for illegal and offshore operators and this is as a result of currently how the regs are written and their interpretation of them and their appetite to invest in other areas perhaps mass media or push advertising to market to whomever is available whether it's TV radio print and the fine, ultimately this will result in not much protection for the consumer so you can have someone who doesn't know whether bet online or bet US is regulated if they're the same thing as Fandall or MGM or Wynn, it's hard to determine which is which because they're very good at what they do as an offshore operator and our goal here would be to change Caesars opinion of wanting to use affiliates ultimately protecting the operators and the consumers in this case. So just to quickly sort of summarize my points and while I of course am biased, I believe that marketing plays an essential role in the sports wagering ecosystem and so if you discourage if you commercially discourage the participation of marketing affiliates in a newly regulated market, we think that there will be unintended consequences that will result in sort of a damping of the market as well as her to consumers resulting in lots more untargeted paid advertisements and more mass media advertisements a result in a thriving illegal market and then consolidation of the regulated market because affiliates will not be able to provide sort of the essential educational features that our websites offer. So I'm going to just quickly turn this over to Michael Daly who can talk through some of the educational benefits that marketing affiliates provide. Thank you Katie Thank you Madam Chairman, thank you all Michael Daly, Catana Media What does affiliates have to do with responsible gaming? So as we've said already we are part of the ecosystem that help better understand what is going on. We're also companies that are all invested in the states we're in we are from the states we recognize that there has to be a balance between the industry and the consumer protection. I am from Massachusetts originally. I have cousins from Plymouth to Newbury and my sister and my her my niece who plays hockey live in Framingham. So we respect that there has to be a balance in here between the industry and protecting the consumer. So we go to the next slide how do we as an affiliate do that? What is education? Affiliate sites explain sports betting concepts before the user goes to an operator where so you get an unbiased understanding ideally of what is a line? How do bets work? This is especially important in new markets where players are unexposed to these sort of concepts or they've only seen it from the offshore affiliates or operators who may be using terms like risk free or open bets and free bets and those are the terms that good operators and affiliates are not using. We're explaining the risks we are talking about how do I get my money back out what kind of bets are allowed in the state so the user doesn't get frustrated why can't I bet on this college game? Well that's because they aren't allowed in the state and that's how this state is set it up to protect the consumer and protect the industries of the sports. Compare value. It's very hard for you to go to buy an electric bike and go to an electric bike manufacturer site and say oh their reviews all tell me this is the best electric bike. As an affiliate we serve in the middle ground where we serve to review all the operators all the features of the products who has the best this and that who's changing over time we give an independent view of that. So that's part of what we're doing on the ability to compare value. What ways can I deposit? How do I withdraw? How long will it take me to withdraw from various sites? What other issues have users had? Understanding the risks. We do talk about in the education and understanding how to why and when and how to bet and that this is an entertainment form and these are things again you should be understanding before you get to the operator site. So if you go into Google and search for us and we're not there you're either finding an operator or that as the others have said you might be finding the illegal affiliates and operators who are sending you to out of the country. If you go search for Massachusetts sports betting today you'll find a number of our sites that are in place and already educating the 2B market. We're not taking money or anything like that at this point but we're educating. If you go to Texas and do the same search you're going to find a lot of the offshore guys who are we are not doing anything actively in Texas really but they are. That's what they'll be doing in Massachusetts again if we are not in the ecosystem. We also quite frankly hold the operators to account. That's part of our reporting. We are reporters. We have 120 some odd reporters that contain the media across the United States. We'll report on fines and violations and other things that are going on that make the market more aware of how safe is the industry where what is the what are the regulators doing to improve the situation and just call a spade a spade. So we are part of that ecosystem both for the positive and the protection of the industry because none of us want to see this industry fail for tax purposes and for the sake of education and entertainment. I'll now turn it back. Thanks Katie. I'm going to skip over this because we said this already and I know we've got to get to the round table and let me just introduce our last speaker on our last slide. One of the things we'd like to talk about is diversity and affiliate marketing and Jamie Messlers on quite early in LA to talk about gaming society which is one of the first women owned, minority owned diverse affiliates and they're doing some great work and plan on doing some great work in Massachusetts. Jamie? Yeah, hi. Thank you for having me. Just quickly I guess we are at gaming society a young company like Jeff said where not only am I one of the few female founders and CEOs in this space but we're also one of the companies focused on newer betters and women in particular. There's a large amount of sports fans with an interest in betting who don't know how to bet and are intimidated by it and we're a laser focus on creating an inclusive community with making sports betting more accessible, responsible and easier to understand. And so as sports betting grows, the need to promote responsible betting is more important than ever and we're really focused on that. We have a partnership with the Association for the Bet Responsibly campaign, but consumers go to companies like ours for information for education and having diverse voices in the industry I think is really important and if companies like ours can't get affiliate revenue we're not going to be able to invest in Massachusetts the way that we plan and provide this inclusive educational content that we provide. My co-founder won a championship in Massachusetts and we have a tremendous amount planned in Massachusetts, but it really would be a shame and this is why we built our company is to create inclusivity. Everything in the industry looks the same and it's important to us to create diverse voices education and accessibility and it would be a shame if we couldn't get a license in Massachusetts to invest in the state. Thank you Madam Chairwoman that concludes this overview. We look forward to the roundtable discussion and appreciate your patience with us. That was a very very helpful overview and to Jamie I am here with you in the early hour in Los Angeles. My son and daughter did have a baby on Thursday so we are here to visit shortly after this roundtable our second grandson so Jamie and I are here early. So commissioners questions at this point and before we even ask questions maybe I should just invite the other participants would you like to add any clarifier to really the setting of the stage our first prompt is to describe the industry and I think Max for giving us that primer on what a third party ability it is because he's quite right many of us are really not familiar with the industry and that's why it's so important to have this discussion. We'll get into the more of the nitty gritty about our regulation and its impact and then the responsible gaming piece again but are there any questions or clarifiers that folks from our guest wish to add at this point Mr. I just wanted to make one point around the differentiator between what we call CPA or cost share agreements in Fandall's experience the CPA agreement where you're paying per customer acquired is much more common at least for us than rev share agreements and so the commission may choose to take a look at that as and may see the CPA agreements as something of a middle round between having full rev share agreements where maybe betters aren't incentivized to wage or more and having no affiliates at all. Do you have questions on that particular point just for some further education? It looks like you're leaning in. I have a lot of questions but we only got two hours but there's a couple things I wanted to follow up on in terms of the CPA and rev share can people speak to the percentage of your relationships that are one versus the other right now. Mr. President, if you're willing to say that publicly I appreciate it. It is almost but not quite 100% CPA as opposed to rev share. Okay. And then in terms of the third party marketers what's the majority of your contractual relationships in this industry? In the United States, container media is about 90% CPA. They have some limitations on the operator side that prohibit or inhibit us from doing revenue share. One just sophisticated back ends where they track the user's progress and behavior. Those vary from operator to operator on how sophisticated and detailed that data is for us. So generally we do operate out of CPA because it's easier for us to track and invoice the operators. So I echo Michael's percentages. Are there someone to weigh in on that? This is Rialoni, chief compliance officer for Bet MGM. I'll add that the majority of our agreements are also CPA. Thank you. Hey, Commissioner Brown, did you have another question? So I guess my follow up to that is if there's no question, how does this conversation we just had change if at all? Commissioner Brown, it might be my connectivity. Could you go over your question again? Thank you. It's probably on my end. Sure. So my question is since the majority of this seems to be on a CPA model versus a rev share model and it seems like Illinois is the only one that's barred the rev share, if Massachusetts were to continue to bar the rev share, would we be talking about impact in terms of your involvement in the market? Go ahead, Mr. Daly. I'll speak for container media. Container media would be in the market as a CPA operator being paid on delivery of an active player to the operator. So we work on CPA. Rev share allows for the operators and ourselves to potentially look at how do the operators reach profitability in the likes because they're not paying all up front. So if we were to look at how do we expect that it is in the other states, we would be in Massachusetts full. Gambling, GDC America. Similarly, revenue share makes sense when you have a very small brand. That's a new entrance to the market that may not have multimillion-dollar budgets to compete with the large duopolies in each state. And so that's where rev share makes sense. But I also echo Michael's point again. If there was the ability of a CPA basis where the affiliate GDC America is compensated for a consumer visiting one of our sites, leaving our sites, going to register and deposit with a regulated operator, we'd be in favor of that. And it would not affect the revenue share because most our business is a CPA as you discussed. Commissures, other commissures. Mr. Miscay, were you leaning in? Did you want to add? Oh, I just wanted to make sure that Katie was comfortably answering but I didn't want to interrupt you. I know that she missed the last two rounds of questions. Katie? Hi. I'm trying to sort of limit my speaking because I'm from the legal end. So if there are any commercial questions, I might punt to my chief commercial officer who's also on the call, Carl. Yeah. Hi, everybody. I'm Carl Pugh, chief commercial officer of Better Collective. I think it varies operator to operator on the CPA versus revenue share side as Max alluded to. Some of the operators don't have the budget to pay the upfront costs associated with CPA. So I think for maybe the lower end of the spectrum on the operator side, Repshare is critical to some of the marketing spend with affiliates. Can I follow up with that? If you could explain the experience of those types of affiliates in other states to most other states have an elevated licensure process associated with Repshare. We've seen that as a possible solution. I see Max maybe you're weighing in. Yeah. I would defer to Jeff. His firm looks at it and knows by heart nearly every regulation, every state for the differences between CPA and Repshare if there is a difference. So I defer to him. Yes. There is a higher form of licensing in some of the larger states. Madam chairwoman, you are 100% correct. So that's what looks like New Jersey. Do you have any familiarity with New Jersey? And I know we have a dog barking. I have one sleeping right next to me here in our hotel. So we're good with dog barking. Is anyone familiar with the New Jersey does treat Revenue Share as a form of a supplier? I mean that term supplier can be used at lower levels in other states but in New Jersey they do require what's called a CSIE license which is a little bit which is one notch higher than their vendor registered vendor application. So you can do CPA through the registered vendor which is just a two page form requires you to disclose who your partner is and your partner operator would have to support your application for a vendor for CPA in New Jersey and then one level higher for Revenue Share would require further licensing of your executives, financial disclosures fingerprinting etc. Is that helpful? That's really helpful. Commissioner's questions on these two levels of licensure and compensation just turn to my fellow commissioners first. Anybody want to weigh in at this point? Okay, Max. Yeah question I was going to add to that that the three companies represented here from the affiliate side we've gone through this in 1920 25 states I'm not sure exactly what the number is but similarly went through the the registration process in Massachusetts have all submitted and found that process simple and easy to get through in comparison to some other states where they're very onerous and misleading around the information that they're requesting and I think I can speak for Katina and Better Collective. All three of us are publicly traded companies we're used to disclosing every bit of information about our business so similarly for any form of licensure or any level of licensure we'd be more than happy to satisfy any requirement that the MGC would permit us to submit. I also know that there's been some concerns if there were to be a higher level of licensure in terms of timing I think another thing that we can I think we've all the three affiliates on this call have all sort of been already been through the registration process we'd be happy to sort of bump up to the higher licensing but I also think that as most affiliates like we can lean into the licensings we've already been through many states already regulate us so it doesn't need to be the additional higher tier wouldn't necessarily need to be completed before March 10th which I know is your target date. That would be something we have to discuss really but I see your point in terms of saying that other jurisdictions have done the vetting on the higher review. Commissioner Bryan is saying that doesn't necessarily translate that won't just accept other jurisdictions but I think Katie you're saying that you're in good position to work with us. Is that right? I'm going to just move on our prompt but we can continue to have the conversation around the compensation arrangements because I think they'll get more and more nuanced but the comments that came in make some suggestions around our regulation in particular. We've heard about the implications we've heard about how it could impact the regulated market and we understand from that overview that there's an opportunity for offshore affiliates to take advantage of maybe what might be a level of regulated marketing. So we're hearing that. Is there anyone from the operator's point of view or anyone else who could elaborate a little bit more on implications of the regulation in terms of any clarifiers for the regulator's hand mask chooses? Hi this is Jennifer Roberts from WinBit. Good to see you Jennifer. Good to see you. Thank you Madam Chair and members of the Commission. Thank you for this opportunity. We at WinBit choose both CPA and revenue share options when available with our marketing affiliates because it does provide flexibility in what we can engage with the customers. It does allow for people to evaluate customers before paying out the fees which I think is helpful instead of just a click or a cost for just a visitation to the side or any other kind of model what this allows us to do is pay upon actually doing an evaluation of the customer that they go through KYC that their application is verified that they meet the qualifications for setting up a patron account and that they are actually committed to engaging with WinBit and so that marketing kind of evaluation of our customers helps us have a better relationship with our affiliates because we can actually see a return of investment. Thank you for other voices on this matter. I'm going to skip now. Yes, go ahead. I was just going to back out for a second just from an operator's perspective just to mention that we're obviously competing against illegal operators both domestic and offshore who don't have the same requirements we do and I think the United States is in the transition to regulated and legalized sportsway drain to allow affiliate marketing would allow us to compete with those illegal operators and to deny us the opportunity to use CPI affiliate marketing really gives those illegal operators some additional oxygen because they can continue to use CPI models and continue to apply our customers so that's how we're thinking about it and why it would be valuable for us. So can I follow up on that? One of the other broader questions that I had for the people that have spoken to is to me this whole reference to sort of Google algorithms and how they prioritize and how they pull up I'm curious as to what efforts are being made sort of at the federal level by the people on this call under the licensees in terms of addressing that point I mean I remember before the Super Bowl seeing a CNN article about how you could bet and what you could bet on and certain other props bets were obviously only to offshore illegal because you can't do it legally anywhere in the United States and so that was appalling to me that you have a major news organization that is doing that so I'm curious what are the efforts just on a broader level and again I know we don't have a lot of time so being done to address it at that level in terms of Mr. Fox leaving you guys in a position of not having any effort to compete with the illegal market Mr. Daly or Mr. Fox I think Mr. Daly may be weighing in first we are definitely active in that one of the things we do with the for a law group is there's a group called IDEA that they founded which is the lobbyist for the industry of the online space and so we are actively work through that group to try to get the message across on what kind of impact this is really potentially having we're going to have so I think we are actively involved in it but we are small players probably on the grand scheme of things Max? I think one of the things that we try to do collectively as these three affiliates it is to compete against a form of trench warfare for us it's every day, every state every market, every sport and one of the things that all three companies have found to be successful thus far is to partner with media organizations in each jurisdiction so in this case in Massachusetts Katie's team has teamed up with the globe in Boston.com Katina has partnerships there GDC America has just partnered with telegram.com so to Mr. O'Brien's point where if you are on telegram or boston.com and there is an article about a Super Bowl prop that may be obscure or fun to talk about that they're not quoting offshore odds or pushing people towards offshore that they're focused on the operators that are offering those wagering markets in that given jurisdiction in this case Massachusetts so for us we are able to find ways to combat the offshore market by taking up the search in the state and Google but also tackling just more mass reporting and mass media on the editorial side to make sure that if they are referencing anything about sports betting it is legal and licensed and regulated and viewed by the MGC Commissioner O'Brien it's a great point there's a lot of work going on from the trade groups from the American Gaming Association and idea there have been letters written to law enforcement that have been written very recently to the Attorney General of the United States about the offshore industry about how it's hurting the regulated land-based and retail industry there hasn't been a lot of response unfortunately but there's also been a lot of advocacy done at the state level it wasn't so long ago that when you read through the newspapers the odds that were being reported were from you know the amazing things that Dave Rebuck had to do as director in New Jersey when the industry first started is write very aggressive letters to local newspapers and tell them that without having any authority over them telling them that they have to remove those lines and that they can't report lines from offshore it's a total transformative experience we're going through now so these affiliates are working with newspapers as well like Max just mentioned which really helps because newspapers sometimes pick up these stories without even realizing it and to your point if you want to, if you have time to follow Dustin who's on the phone on Twitter every single time there is a CNN story or another story around illegal offshore props being advertised by major networks like CNN or Fox Dustin's all over that on Twitter and we message the networks directly as well sometimes it's a story they like especially with some of these crazy prop bets some of these bets are not legal here so you know how many notes in the Star Spangled Banner or how long is Rihanna going to present for some of these types of events during a game that have no relationship to an athletic contest are not legal in every state so when a national news organization wants to report on something they grab stuff like that we see that a lot in the political bets arena as well which is also you know a totally illegal area so we are we're a small group we try to work through both you know the major organizations on the land-based side as well as on the digital side it's a work in progress and state regulators are also helping but it's a great question and you know I hope that our voices are heard and a lot of the materials we've been submitting you know are taken seriously but it's something we've got to do every day I'd like to turn to Mr. Fox because he was going to weigh in earlier and then Commissioner Bryan said thank you I think and then I'd like to turn to Matt Bulk if you you know from messing if you'd like to weigh in I don't want to put you on the spot but I want to make sure we hear from the local voice on that so Mr. Fox if you want to weigh in Jeff covered most of what I was going to say but the only thing I would add is that as one of the larger operators we're certainly trying to use our business relationships with some of the largest advertising networks and search engines in the country to move them in the right direction on this but and we have an internal task force that we take it we are doing everything we can with it our friend frankly haven't had all that much success yet yeah okay Mr. Bulk thank you for those who may not be aware we at Neston are part of a broader coalition of advertisers and national and local broadcasters leagues and and the Celtics so it is our perspective that the CPA bounty program is is an appropriate approach and kind of a standard business practice in sports in the sports betting industry to engage potential participants who have been identified through data as likely consumers and then you know that provides them an immediate you know on ramp to legally bet you know the CPA bounty program helps focus on engaging the right people such as consumers over 18 and responsible gamers and creates an inroad for illegal gamblers to legally back given the purposes of legalized sports betting which is to bring gamblers into the regulated safe legal market we should all want to have ads that are effective so a CPA bounty program is structured to base ad spending and compensation on whether ads are effective which you know we think is and feel strongly is a good thing the restrictions that the commission has proposed you know we believe would have the unintended consequence of resulting in more saturation marketing you know the type of environment that many want to avoid you know this is because as others have mentioned operators and advertisers who do not have the option of using a CPA bounty program excuse me then the advertising shifts to more of a CPA model of mass marketing which is both less efficient but also less specific in those digital advertisements that are provided and at what frequency so you know we believe that not having a CPA program would then lead to much more of a mass marketing approach. Of course the idea we sometimes use the word targeting in a negative connotation targeting those who are not eligible to wage or in this case if you remember we had a lot of information coming in from our applicants on their very tailored approach to marketing marketing was a piece of our application process I'll turn to Commissioner Maynard. Madam Chair, Matt actually raised a question that I've had Mr. Fox said something earlier that that made me use my Google machine to type in best sports way during apps Illinois and all the major players came up and didn't find anything offshore so is that the way to explain that this marketing is going on despite the fact that there's no incentive to do so in Illinois? I'm trying to figure out why I would find the accurate results there if their regulations are very similar to what we proposed. Well sir the regulations aren't similar the regulations permit CPA and as Michael and Matt and Katie said that's 90% of their business Corey at Fandle said that's 100% so what states don't so what states we had several letters what state does not allow you kept saying that similar states to Massachusetts all allow it the only state is Connecticut okay I don't want to start making fun of either correct correct that's what I was getting at okay so if I Google Connecticut is it going to come up or I don't know it will come up yeah I don't know it will come up well my point in this is that is there an incentive other than what you're asking for today to actually have this type of marketing and it sounded like there are other revenue streams available I'm just trying to suss this out yeah I think the from GDC America's point is if you were to do the same search in Texas or California right now you would not have Fandle because they're not able to provide their services in California or DraftKings or anyone that's regulated anywhere else is not it doesn't make sense to market in California for online sports betting specifically and that's where you'd see many different types of not only affiliates but also different operators if you think about how many operators are regulated in the United States across all states it's maybe 35 to 50 globally around the world of offshore operators there's hundreds and so the consideration set and the competition is much more pervasive and there's just more of them so as a result there's more opportunities for those individual entities to market in states where no one's really paying attention frankly there's no one to regulate or police or pay attention to what's going on in California from an online gambling perspective because there's nothing to protect it's just a black market that's existed for a long time for online gambling so if we relate that to Massachusetts as it stands right now we are already investing in Massachusetts under anticipation that the market is going to launch and we have assets there and we have reporters that Michael mentioned in editorial there so the question really is if we're not able to generate revenue there of substance through a CPA model then we would have no incentive to continue to invest with our media partners like Boston.com or through Google and as a result we would gradually leave the market and those offshore operators would re-enter the Massachusetts market as they've done for decades now. And so Max so what you're saying is too there's a volume issue long term right so and that's what when Matt said earlier target it's not a negative connotation to get the information out you have to have a long-term strategy because by the way we looked up Connecticut and it also has the major players on there but my guess is what you would say is eventually or perhaps even now the results are going to be different to the end user right to the person Googling than what they would be if there were investments there. Precisely and that's where you revert back to the mean of the good old days for offshore operators before passports were peeled and before states regulated online sports betting you'd go back to that at some point when the P&L didn't match up for the affiliates and the operators to advertise their services. Can I just Mr. Daley? Comment on the Connecticut so you'll see that yes we made heavy investments into Connecticut at the early stage just like we're doing with Massachusetts because you don't know before the regulations are released how it's going to turn out so we start to position that in some years in some cases before with the education side of our sites. Connecticut, yeah there's a pullback now on all that spend there because we're not dedicating resources to writing new content in Connecticut which means they fall down on the search and the bovadas and other off lines will start or off shores will start to emerge and so that's what you'll see over time so it won't be Massachusetts day one but yeah we go for this is a long-term business and so and that is actually also the way search works and the history and the prominence and the amount of content put out so as these three major affiliates and all the rest stop putting content out into Massachusetts because there's no there's no viable deal to do so then you'll see the others appear. Commissioner, if you'd allow me I'd like to pivot to the implications on responsible gaming we have as I mentioned Breonna D'Archel here and I know that Breonna has taken a look at this issue because Director Vandalen reached out to her she understands that perhaps we are the intent of our original regulation that's in place with the intention was and I think we want to understand the implications of responsible gaming so if you can turn to Breonna now and Thank you Madam Chairwoman I'm noticing some faces they're a little nervous and maybe rightfully so I've been a huge advocate for cleaning up some of the advertising and marketing that we've seen across the US but I'm hoping to also pleasantly surprise many on this call by saying the affiliates from which you've heard from today have been many of the leaders and tremendous allies both personally and professionally from a consumer advocacy standpoint as it relates to responsible gambling so I've made some notes but I'm happy to answer some questions I'd like to go to a point that Miss Roberts made about that qualifications right she wants to know if the target really transfers to an appropriate customer I think there's a huge amount of validity to that that should be explored you know things that I am worried about and I hear some of you and your colleagues it's about that mass saturation and about vulnerable populations and particularly youth right and I'm very much aware that when a market opens and we see the advertising what are the implications on our youth and normalizing this the target in marketing that pull marketing they have spoken to them I think really comes with a significant value we're ensuring that these are interested parties who are often of age that aren't going to actually have any more promotions or target marketing unless they have been verified so I very much appreciate that aspect of this type of marketing versus those socials those paid socials those paid billboards the paid notifications those are the ones right now we're seeing other regulators act upon negligence there aren't often are G messages they're the ones I'm getting recalls that are in the sales and what do we do about this and when I've reviewed some of the regulatory finds and other questions from marketing more often than not we're not seeing it by these affiliate marketing agencies they're coming from other types of advertising furthermore I think there's really something to be said about having the heightened they may not like this aspect but the licensing right especially with the rev licensing fees more exhaustive background checks and then of course with it the opportunity to put in more of those guardrails that could come with enforcement actions because while you're talking to some of the most ethical forward thinking leaders and affiliate space I am also thinking of the smaller ones who may not have those type of legal and legal rights and how do we ensure they also clean up their act or get out of the market because really I feel is though from a regulatory consumer protection standpoint this is about how do we create the safest most sustainable entity where really we emphasize this is about a privilege to hold a license it's not a right and we want only those that have the jurisdiction and the consumers I too am terrified about a scenario where we see far more of those paid socials and less of the content I absorb a lot of the content that many of these affiliates put out actually I'd like to give credit that one of them gave me so much coverage last year when I was lobbying in Kansas to get two and a half percent of the revenue generated for problem gambling that it actually helped me get lawmakers to push it forward that's one of the affiliates here on this call I'm going to call them out because I think they deserve the credit and it was better collective and those reporters were on with me after every single hearing saying I saw you I want to cover it the neutrality that many of these affiliates do content wise it's a good thing for the ecosystem and I hope maybe some of those nerves from the affiliates you guys know I'm kind of the pragmatic I'd like to be transparent I don't think everything's great I think that there are rightfully so some fines and some guardrails that need to be discussed here but I am more worried about the saturation that could occur in one of these scenarios Madam Chairwoman can I just get a clarify and we do appreciate your transparency very much and we speak about what you're concerned on the social we've heard the term push and pull and that was one of the letters what you're talking about is what we're experiencing right now that push with all of the operators heard from us during the assessment we understand that there is that push but we want them to strike that right balance which I think Mr. Efra mentioned the balance between push and push is responsible effective responsible gaming messaging but that's a language when you say social it's that push right yes a lot of the push I'm talking about are the paid socials the things that are often finding because they're done in a mass capacity right those are the ones that I get the calls about from the parents or hey my kid was watching the streaming and I see paid by someone that's going to be the more push that's not what we're talking about targeted sites with content that is often generic and about top of mind issues within the industry that will have ads and opportunities for engagement with operators that's partnered with but again what I love about it is that there's an emphasis within compliance you're talking to some of the legal departments you're not going to have that kind of a knowledge base when you're talking to just general marketing right like CNN does not have right now I'm sorry to call them out right you're seeing those offshores but they don't have someone who knows is someone licensed not the severity of pushing this out what it means for the customers and the wider public there's some real value for the knowledge base that exists within each of these entities communicated to the wider public and there's also enforcement I'm sorry that can be that could take place if you've regulated it and protected it they understand the seriousness they could lose their license I want to turn to my fellow commissioners for questions in the background if people can think about this and I think maybe Jamie if she's available we heard and I'm sorry we heard that perhaps smaller smaller affiliates might require the rev share model more than the other CPA or other forms of compensation and if so that could explain the higher licensure process I just would like to return to that question and understand the implications on small operators but commissioners what questions do we have this is an important voice to have in responsible gaming and we appreciate Brian making time today Brian so it's nice to see you we've had some conversations on this topic and a follow up question I have for you and then some of the other affiliates that are on here we're sort of narrowly talking about the language we have in our current reg 256 and we've talked about how we might have missed the mark a little bit in terms of what we really wanted to curtail and so my question for you and for the others on this call as well is other jurisdictions that have had success in minimizing those paid socials paid notifications and if so what's the mechanism that they've used I don't like the look on Brian's face like it's not working but there's everyone on this commission and so if there's a body of knowledge on this round table I'd love to hear it so I don't think that from my perspective there's one jurisdiction right now that's really gotten it right I think Ohio's a leader we've seen recently New York is revisiting some of their requirements Arizona Colorado has recently taken some steps I think it's not so much like can you participate in the market or not although licensing seems to be really a forward trend right because there can be some enforcement embedded into the market for bad actors for that predatory over saturation I think as you and I have spoken to about this it's quality and also amount quantity and quality here and both are really important I think that this is a great way for us to take the best practices from multiple jurisdictions but I have to say the truth is is having read over obviously the regulations we're discussing today you have already done a nice job of incorporating things like font size for RG messaging requiring RG messaging to be both affiliate marketing and mass marketing and a toll free help line for the best practices that you have embedded I do feel as though this might have been one of those just misunderstandings about what's really going to achieve success in protecting the market versus additional steps now I'd like to say Massachusetts has been a leader and that you have this great research agenda that's embedded into your statute right and this is an area of concern within policy in the world that really needs more examining about what's moving the needle forward as it relates to consumer protections I would love to see Massachusetts use some of its opportunities and funding and research agenda to actually help the US better understand what steps we can be taking collectively affiliates you've got operators here you've got outside consultants and consumer protections right better use some of that to inform policies moving forward they're not meant to be static right we need to evolve with the business and so I'd be happy to walk you through some of the best practices jurisdiction or jurisdiction but I think you guys have done a relatively good job of finding some of the best in class already with this one exception Director Vanderland it must have gotten to Brian's ear because this is an opportunity perhaps for our research agenda and we welcome that right Commissioner's questions for Brian and others right now Commissioner I'm just going to check in with Commissioner Hill if he's available are you doing okay okay if you wanted to speak he would add in okay and one add since you had mentioned just from a gaming society perspective it's very very difficult for us if that revenue stream was eliminated when that's a majority of our income and how we're building our business and the content that we're creating again it's targeting an audience that no one else is really targeting and we're trying to provide the education so before they go to the books to make a bet we want to give them the tools so that they're going to the books with the education and being empowered to be able to actually know what they're doing to continue betting versus going and making irresponsible betting so just because you had mentioned that it would be a very big issue for us if that revenue stream was eliminated and we were only reliant on CPA I just want to say that's really helpful Brian yes you know obviously so my job to worry as much about the revenue I'm going to come at it from my informed decision making which is a pillar of responsible gaming for the customers we want them to know what they're engaging in that it comes with a risk and how to go about it appropriately and in an affordable way right that is what I love that affiliates offer is this commentary and just general knowledge that you don't get in a lot of other spaces marketing is often a quick hit this looks really attractive right you should do it they also do hold the industry accountable and report on again the affiliates here that are represented on just general things that don't always look favorable right but it was an affiliate who first broke the news when Fandall removed the risk free and moved to the no sweat bet I remember getting that call and thinking wow this is coming from industry publication how cool is this and so I think from an RG perspective it's important to remember that they are trying to help customers navigate this appropriately and in an informed way now that comes with a responsibility and I care about those bad actors of the small affiliates that don't care and how do we manage that but overall there's some RG pillars to be said to that argument as well Skinner you haven't weighed in yet what are you thinking about in terms of the licensure the elevator licensure mechanism for addressing maybe the impact on small smaller third party affiliates Thank you Madam Chair and good morning again everyone I think it is a serious consideration I think it's one that this body should have at its forefront I'm also grateful in hearing from Miss Messler in you know negative impact that an elimination of the sharing agreement will have on her operation so I'm listening I think that this has been a very informative discussion so far and we have I think adequate information to take back when we do discuss this and make a determination as to which which direction the commission will move in Thank you Commissioner Maynard any thoughts that you want to add right now Nothing further except to say this is extremely like Commissioner Skinner just said it's extremely helpful and extremely educational I guess I'd like to just hear from the operators as well is there anything that you want to add in now from your perspective you did a fine job informing us as you applied for the privilege of a license here and you did explain how your marketing efforts would be tailored so that those who are not eligible to wager would not be impacted is there anything that you want to add we've heard from Mr. Fox any of the other operators who are on today and not to say Mr. Fox you can't weigh in others anything we're missing that we need to hear from online operators Good morning Good morning Madam Jam just to reiterate some of the comments of my peers from the operator side that we feel affiliate marketing does help to enable patron access to the Massachusetts gaming help line numbers as well as offer patron protection resources we feel that it legitimizes the market and we've spoken often about these gray market illegal operators and how an unassuming patron or someone who's never wagered on a platform in another jurisdiction may not fully be aware of who is a licensed operator and who is not and affiliate marketing helps to legitimize those of us who have gone through this process with you all offering patrons an integrity a platform rather that is operated with integrity with consumer protection patron protection provisions in place customer service departments that help to solidify that and so working hand in hand with affiliate marketing in our jurisdictions just helps to further that messaging further that protection offered to patrons and so you know we would look for you to consider these amendments that we are all requesting and I think that the fact that operators are aligned on this subject should also give you a sense of security and understanding of our position. Thank you. Yes, go right ahead. Madam chair mask up with draftings nothing to add I think everything's already been said but just wanted to confirm the draftings agrees with the comments that the other operators and the affiliates and would like to thank the commission for holding this roundtable to give us the opportunity to explain how how these things play out in the market and we look for do you considering the changes that we've requested other voices actually can I just ask one question of this group before we wrap up which is other and we're not necessarily wrapping up but I just follow up on that one point Brian and because I'm not hearing from Penn but in your written regulations you do point out and this is maybe to Brian's point that our reg does we added right at the top a reminder and Commissioner Brian I know that all of us really push for this was you know at the end of the day there may be guardrails put up for the third party affiliate but we hold on our sports wager operators responsible for content and conduct of all and any and all advertising marketing are branding them on its behalf and that will include the affiliated entity and we rely on that you know that's our first provision and I think and we're concluding its statements and it's written statements remind us of that so any guardrails that the third party has will perhaps be helpful if we end up going the route of a higher licensure ultimately you know we do rely on all of the our licensees to help us make sure that the balance is struck and as beyond mentioned the quality and quantity of all of this is right for Massachusetts and honestly it's right for the entire country so now I just wanted to point that out your next question so it's a question are there any jurisdictions that have any sort of logo or imaging that confirms it's a licensed operator in the state in terms of you know and does that help with messaging in terms of trying to steer people away from the illegal market that's a really good question I can take that the only jurisdiction we operate in currently that requires a logo indicating an entity as a licensed operator is Ontario at the moment and that was only required for the first six months of operation post launch no other jurisdiction requires that but most operators do have some type of either RG logo specific to their own advertising or that some jurisdictions require an RG logo specific to their state to be included in marketing and advertising assets thank you as Commissioner O'Brien our trade group is working also working with the American Gaming Association on what we call a verified seal which would be shared among only legal and regulated operators who are licensed in at least two states and that would show that they've committed to commercial gaming and also responsible advertising and this is something we've been working on for the past three years as we would then if it was successfully launched do a marketing campaign around it so that we can inform consumers to look for that to ensure that they're actually depositing away during with the legal site thank you okay so I just want to make sure that we've gotten through the legal department and to make sure that there are no questions that you have either from our legal department I think we have Council Grossman and we have a lot of hand who's just come on video and also we might hear from our licensure director our chief of licensure Kara O'Brien so why don't we turn to Caitlin or Todd Todd first I guess Caitlin good morning good morning Madam Chair commissioners and I'll join this has been a very helpful discussion so I think at least from where I sit we have enough information to sit with the commissioners and make any adjustments that are deemed necessary or otherwise but no I feel pretty good right now about where we stand anything I feel the same way thank you good morning thank you Caitlin good morning Kara good morning Madam Chair I will just echo our Council's decision say this has been an extremely helpful conversation especially as we work through getting everybody licensed and registered and making sure that we've got everybody that we need for our launch Kara and her team have performed a lot of heroics during this process we thank her and of course our legal team standing up all these regulations and I know there's a lot of magic going on behind the scenes much Caitlin Monaghan's excellent orchestration and organizational skills so thank you anything commissioners that you have of legal any questions you want to ask later on our licensure okay the only question I would have Madam Chair for licensing and we can take it offline is what if anything does it do to the workload for licensing if we were to implement and ratchet up licensing requirements so if we are going to be capturing a larger group than we had originally anticipated to be used before the March 10th deadline we would probably need to anticipate a grace period making sure that as long as they've submitted their application things like that just so that we have time to review the application and we're not running into you know issues of people operating either without a license or having to hold off in order to do so thanks Commissioner O'Brien on a follow-up on that and this is something I want to turn to all of our stakeholders today we've had a very discussion it's going to help inform our decision making again there's five of us and all five have a vote so we don't know exactly which direction we're going to go in we had moved to mark this up to next week I'm sensing that that's probably not going to be helpful but perhaps we should move it up to this week commissioners I'm wondering Commissioner O'Brien you're kind of saying that necessarily I don't know if it's not going to change I'm not so sure the week does much in terms of licensing in terms of that so I don't know if having the ability to have a less pressed conversation and putting it on for early next week might actually be the way to go I think I'm marked up for Tuesday so I'm hearing of the solution from Chief O'Brien's perspective now from our guests if we were to make our decision next Tuesday how does that impact I need to understand the practical impacts for you hearing what you just heard from legal and licensing I'll start if that's okay we have from our side it is a game of musical chairs one getting the affiliates and the operators on the same page contractually what they can and can't do so from our perspective as soon as the operators know what they're permitted to do on what marketing dollars they're able to spend with what type of marketer in this case affiliate marketers if they know they're going to be able to launch and use affiliates on launch day March 10th the sooner the better because we need to one paper all the deals and orchestrate internally to make sure that when a consumer does go through Google that they actually go to the place that they intend to whether it's MGM or win or otherwise so from the affiliate side it's predicated upon when the operators firmly know they will be able to use affiliates given that we're 12-13 days away from the market launch the sooner would be better just in an effort to alleviate any fire drills for operators and consumers and affiliates and the whole ecosystem if I may Madam Chairwoman I'd only just want to add to what Max said is the other side would be also then understanding as soon as possible next week what other forms in the like we would need to submit for the licensing process which understanding it might be even a temporary if it was submitted this much but that is next Friday as I've said so it's this we will move heaven and earth to do what is required by the state but time will be the end I just want to agree with both Max and Michael that time is of the essence here and that will move mountains to get done whatever we need to get done but the sooner that we have the opportunity I think it does assist with sort of preparing for a successful launch Madam Chair I echo the sentiments of my peers but as well I want to just address the actual content element of this as well to ensure that our affiliate partners have all the appropriate RG disclaimers and messaging and that at times when we prior to launch we do assist them in doing reviews and audits of their content materials and so the more time we have in order to do so the more we can adequately assure that the messaging is appropriate and correct for protection and responsible gaming provisions Commissioners I think we have our two meetings and I'm speaking this is inside baseball that you all just listen to me we have our two commission meetings that are I know they are we are required to act by Wednesday the end of those meetings I know that there seems to be a little bit of a an end time which I can explore on Wednesday to see if it can be expanded I was worried we might not have sufficient time to discuss this to add it to Tuesday or Wednesday's agenda I know on Thursday morning there are some interest in an event we do have Thursday afternoon that might be available Commissioners what if we explore either tacking it on to Wednesday and then preserve Thursday afternoon as well in case we can't get to it given the work that we have that firm deadline if I can make that work Council Grossman it would be and I have to thank Crystal she helped me at the end of the day on Friday to move it to Tuesday now I'm rethinking my decision we could amend Wednesday to add it in we're being very transparent about the moving target here so I don't think we'll be criticized but we could amend go back include it for Wednesday if we can't get to Wednesday markup a meeting on Thursday afternoon just on the single subject and we would that would be the latest time that we would be addressing the change does that work for our legal team and yeah I think that's that's workable work if we do this shortly after we in this discussion would be within seven hours so I think we're pretty close right for Wednesday Wednesday in the afternoon it would be at the end of the afternoon session so and then we'll do a Thursday as a precautionary measure in the event we can't get to it in the full some way on Wednesday missures does that work for you if we do a Thursday early afternoon I'm seeing nodding Mr. Skinner are you all right with that Mr. Jordan Mr. Maynard are you all right with that that works for me okay and Commissioner Hill I think he'll be all set as well I'll be all set okay excellent thanks Commissioner Hill how's that feeling to folks who are on this who have been so generous with their time today yeah that sounds great Madam Chair I think the one element of that that should also be noted is that the anticipation for March 10th will grow over the next couple days and especially through the weekend and consumers will start searching and making queries for what's available what's not so it sounds like this week would be very helpful for us because there is a function of consumers and patrons registering for an account before the market opens and these pre-registration times are usually the leading 8 to 10 days before the market opens so that would be toward the end of this week when we start to see those volumes of search or to ratchet up and we want to make sure that we capture those patrons and consumers effectively thank you so maybe a legal thought might be an additional lift if you could come up with options for the various scenarios that you would imagine given today's discussion that we might be entertaining Commissioners does that sound good or does that make sense in terms of potential obviously status quo and then a potential options for regulatory changes Michelle Bryan you're looking if you want to add some for the director yeah so you've got those and then whether there's a broader discussion in terms of if Redshare is going to survive in any sense or get revived I should say whether we want to have any conversation about either capping or doing some other controls on that as opposed to just a blanket opening the door to Redshare that's still an open question in my mind maybe we should just get some input from folks then when you say a cap we want to elaborate and then we'll see what our visitors can say whether there's either a monetary cap or whether there's triggering for when they have to then come up whether there are reviews in terms of I was intrigued by the idea of the person had to be qualified when you were talking about some of your reviews on people too and I can I appreciate now the know your customer part of it I just don't want it to morph into you're qualifying because they're betting a lot that's the part I'd like to avoid so that's the part of Redshare that concerns me is to not become predatory because part of the Redshare is you're driving up a vulnerable person of the frequent flyer so is there a way for us to mitigate risk in the regulation the activity the activity piece so if we were to have any kind of parameters on that have you seen that in what's workable and commissioners time and if you want to frame that better than me any input Max are you leaning in on that yeah I think I would defer to the operators in some sense because generally affiliates don't have as much consumer information as the operators because they go through all the KYC and knowing their player and identifying them and have direct contact with those players on an ongoing basis so I would defer to one of the operators on this call but anecdotally we've seen it work in both fashions in each market it's purely dependent on what the appetite is for the commission and the operators to be able to facilitate that but all in all would defer to an operator given that they have the most data on these patrons anyone want to weigh in and Breon you can we'll turn to you at the end can I ask other jurisdictions that do in fact have some sort of controls and regulations on that on the capping of the amount none none that I know none that you know none in the US know how about outside the US bring none and Breon is kind of I'm trying to think if there's calves in the UK I don't think so there's been some changes in the affiliate marketing realm over there but if I may I agree with Max from an operator standpoint and there's more data there very recent changes within regulations or best practices in New Jersey and forthcoming Colorado April 1st now expected as part of licensure to have behavioral algorithms deployed within their systems to track problematic behaviors that is not a part of the affiliate revenue right I'm kind of different here are different things but if you were interested in linking the two that you don't want and I share similar concerns we don't want to be reinforcing predatory overspending as a way to generate money here right this is all balance affordability then maybe considering that aspect of the regulations as part of your discussion around caps I'd be happy to share with you New Jersey and Colorado are going about this differently Colorado is leaving the operators to choose how they examine and define problematic behaviors in the interventions New Jersey has specifically delineated what's to be tracked and what's to happen in each intervention happy to have discussions with you at another time to talk about the differences and also what I'm seeing in other jurisdictions by way of tracking problematic play if I may madam chairman the one thing I'll add to that is yes the affiliate often doesn't actually know the player that is being shared on the revenue share in order for player protections and individual rights we're often tokenized meaning we have and we have a number of the player and this is who's been delivered on revenue share but the operator knows that player and we do not at that point in that that's very important in certain European countries but we do the same thing pretty much in most of our businesses so that level so we can do general awareness but it's very difficult for us to know that that has been asked not for us to know those. Right. Okay. Any further questions comments as you think about our next discussion commissioners that was a good one for Commissioner O'Brien to get some input on. You know again what we want to avoid is it's you know top of mind for us is the implications for responsible gaming and that's how we probably came to this right to begin with. Quite obvious. And so we want to make sure that we don't inadvertently make another change without the other information the good news for all of us is that regulations continue to evolve just as beyond explained with New Jersey and Colorado for the best interests of the patrons in the regulated businesses. Any further questions. Commissioners would you like I'll turn to Commissioner O'Brien any closing comments you wish to make. No other than this has been very helpful for me. I was sort of quite vocal about wanting to address your roles in advertising and the saturation and protecting saturation so getting educated on how this works and making sure we're doing that in the way possible is incredibly helpful and so I thank you for your submissions I thank you for your time today because it's been very helpful for me. Commissioner Hill are you able to chime in right now. I am and I just want to say thank you and it was very, very informative and I like Commissioner O'Brien I wanted to see how this really worked and I think this allowed us to do that so thanks everybody for being here and thank you. Thank you. Commissioner Skinner. Yeah, thanks. Madam chair just echoing my fellow commissioners in extending the thanks to each of our participants today extremely insightful discussion. I want to give a particular thank you to Brianne for her contributions today I thought they were extremely valuable you and I haven't had the opportunity to chat one-on-one but I'm looking forward to the opportunity to do so. I look forward to that as well. Very nice job thank you. Thank you. Commissioner Maynard. Thank you Madam chair I will echo my fellow commissioners and say that part of what we do here is try to strike a balance and we're always reevaluating where we are on that spectrum of striking that balance I think I asked a really tough question and I appreciated the answer which was this does matter even if there are places where you're engaging right now that the regulations aren't as friendly as others that it still doesn't solve the problem and so that was really what I was looking for was where's the problem where's the solve and I appreciated everyone being very clear with me on both of those points so I appreciate it look forward to engaging with you in the future and thank you for the information. I just want to extend my gratitude this the nuances of this issue came to my attention we could go Friday so not this past Friday but Friday before and as we dug into it we learned so much from all of you and the fact that you were able to come today really with few options in terms of timing and I think no options it was Monday was offered and you all accepted I'm grateful for that because our schedule is tight and this was such an important issue and just very pleased to hear from so many different perspectives so we are very grateful for that and I'm grateful to our team for listening and my fellow commissioners I know that we all are united on wanting to make sure that we hear from all stakeholders as we move forward in this new industry here in Massachusetts and pretty new across the country so thank you and Brian again I echo my fellow commissioners it's an important voice to have and we thank you for joining us for the moment alright anyone that need any further clarification that we might miss let's move forward then again for any outside stakeholders who have not been participating today please feel free to submit anything in writing we want to make sure we haven't missed anything as we move forward and we'll work on getting that marked up for Wednesday and Thursday so thank you everyone thank you and because this is a public meeting we have the formality of an adjournment my thanks again thanks to the public for your interest and thank you to the team do I have a motion to adjourn Madam Chair second thank you any discussion commissioner Brian commissioner hill hi commissioner skinner hi mr. Maynard have an excellent day everyone thank you so much thank you thank you