Building a Crypto Casino Empire: Lessons from MonkeyTilt | Sam Kiki DSH #1265

Speaker 1 Risk-taking. Well, regulation makes it really tough because different

Speaker 1 countries regulate different pieces of those products. You know, some of the products they call financial services, some of the products are like trading cards, aren't even regulated.

Speaker 1 Some of the products like NFTs aren't regulated. Sports bidding is highly regulated.
High casino is the most regulated, right? So it's hard to put all in one one platform all the time. Yeah.

Speaker 1 All right, guys, we got Sam here from Monkey Tilt. Thanks for coming on, man.
Absolutely, man. Yeah, you were golfing yesterday with Menry, huh? I was.
How was that? It was good. Did you see the bet?

Speaker 1 No. What happened? Oh, really? Well, two on two, right? So we're doing, okay, so, you know, Bob did the full send golf.
Like, he kicked off full sun golf. So what we're doing is,

Speaker 1 I don't go, I haven't golfed in two years. It took like a two-year break when I found a monkey tilt because I just, just, you need time to golf and practice.
And I just didn't have no time.

Speaker 1 So Bob's been to my year. He's like, we have to have a monkey tilt golf channel.
We have to have a monkey tilt golf channel. So finally, I get a few days this week.

Speaker 1 And and I said, you know what, we're in Vegas. The weather's amazing, by the way, right now.
So let's go golf. So we created, we needed to create a format.
I can't hit the ball that well right now.

Speaker 1 So we need to create a format that was like easy for me to slot in and just play without needing to practice a lot. We create a two-man scramble.

Speaker 1 So, you know, the format where basically both of you hit a drive and you, but you can play whoever hits the better drive.

Speaker 1 Then both of you hit an approach shot, but you can play whoever hits the better approach shot.

Speaker 1 So you kind of, it's kind of, you know, you can kind of only make one or two good shots a whole and still be in the game. It makes it very fun.
So we create this new format.

Speaker 1 It's like a stakes two-man scramble where we like challenge you know two-man teams and we play a scramble so yesterday bob bob was gonna get this uh girl influencer this girl golf influencer out there and stuff first of all he didn't sleep the whole night before he was at durango all night just zapping drinking gambling whatever by himself uh like for good chunks of the time by himself right and then uh and then i don't know and then you know bob does this thing where he always meets people at like a bar or something and then like those people become his friends for like two weeks or whatever so he shows up to the golf course course with this guy who's like a big litigator in the us randomly they just met at a bar right uh he was hitting on the guy's fiance and then him and and then the guy comes back from the bathroom and him and bob become friends oh my gosh so uh he brings him and he brings this girl she's like a golf influencer or something And then I hit up my buddy and I said, hey, oh, no, Spencer, Spencer, our buddy.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Alex says, hey, I got this friend, Adam.
We'll love to come play with you. And I said, great.
And the girl hadn't shown up yet. I said, great.

Speaker 1 So Adam shows up and Bob is like, Bob gets this thing where he like, Bob thinks he's like the best golfer in the world. Bob thinks he's the best at everything.
Bob said, you know what?

Speaker 1 Why don't I play me and the litigator against you and Adam? And we'll play two-man scramble. And I said, cool.
I said, but what do you want to bet?

Speaker 1 Because Bob, you know, I don't do money with Bob anymore. It's stupid.
So he goes, well, if I win, I want 25 grand. I said, okay, well, if I win, I want you to get a tattoo.
Now, that's right.

Speaker 1 I left it at that. And he said, if you win, I will get a tattoo on the shaft of my penis.
And I was like, you're kidding me.

Speaker 1 I was like, I would have settled with like a pec or like a neck tattoo would have been hilarious. Yeah.
And he insisted that this was a bet, right? So Spencer calls up this girl.

Speaker 1 Spencer is a tattoo artist. He calls up this girl and she's down to do it.
She's like, Yeah, 100%. So like, we're making jokes the whole time.

Speaker 1 Like, and by the way, my partner in the first two holes, you watch the stream, shits the bet. My partner is supposed to be like a really good golfer and just playing terrible first duel.

Speaker 1 So Bob's getting cockier, cockier. He wants to press the bets, like the whole thing, right? Couldn't even play it in our hands any better.
And Bob's drinking, drinking, drinking.

Speaker 1 Anyways, he crumbles like the middle. We freaking destroy him.
We get him to press the bet too.

Speaker 1 So his second bet was for, I had to put up 7,000 and he had to do three blind dates of my choosing, five on stream.

Speaker 1 He also owes me that. So right now, the whole internet's like chasing him because he owes us a dick tattoo and a three blind date series on stream.
On stream. So

Speaker 1 that, yeah, that was honestly one of the best golf days of my life. It was so much fun.
I was nuts. You think he'll actually get the dick tattoo?

Speaker 1 Well, so now we're talking, Spencer's talking to OnlyFans. And because we were like, we thought it was such a funny idea because we're out there on the golf course and stuff.

Speaker 1 And we would go, oh, shit, like, how do we stream this? Because you can't, you know what I mean? You can't put this on kick, right? And so we're like, well, can we put this on porno?

Speaker 1 Like, what do you do? And then Spencer goes, I bet you we can get a deal out of OnlyFans. So Spencer's talking to OnlyFans and he's trying to get Bob to stream this whole thing live on OnlyFans.

Speaker 1 Oh, my God. And Bob might get it, Bob might get a bag out of it.
Now he has to show his

Speaker 1 Kyle. We were supposed to golf tomorrow on Full Send golf and against Kyle and Sleem.
Kyle's like, I'm not doing it until you honor your bat snap. Wow.
That is nuts.

Speaker 1 The internet's behind me on this one. Dude, that is crazy.
I don't think he'll do it, but we'll see. I think he will.
You think he'll get it?

Speaker 1 By the way, and I've offered, because I think it's, I don't even, I didn't even know this was a thing. I didn't even know you could do this.

Speaker 1 Apparently, you can't, apparently some people do this, right? So I didn't even know that was a thing. But I said to Bob, like, hey, I'm going to be cool about this.

Speaker 1 Why don't you like, you know, the bet was, I risked 25,000. So why don't you put up like five or 10,000, right? And I want you to get it somewhere else.

Speaker 1 I want you to get the tattoo somewhere else, like on your arm or leg or something normal. He's like, nah, damn.
He's all in. He's all in.
Holy crap. Hey guys, shout out to today's sponsor, Kinsta.

Speaker 1 Running an online business is already a challenge. Your website hosting shouldn't make it harder.
And I've been there dealing with slow load times, confusing dashboards, and unreliable support.

Speaker 1 That's why I switched over to Kinsta, and it's been a game changer for my brand. Since moving to Kinsta, my site loads faster, runs smoother, and I don't have to stress about downtime.

Speaker 1 Their intuitive dashboard makes managing everything simple, and their 24-7 expert support means I always have real people whenever to help when I need it.

Speaker 1 Kinsta is built for performance with blazing fast speeds, enterprise-level security, and 37 global data centers to ensure your site reaches audiences quickly.

Speaker 1 They also handle free migrations, so switching is effortless. And if you ever get a traffic spike, Kinsta automatically scales to keep your site online when it matters most.

Speaker 1 I'm not the only one who trusts Kinsta. TripAdvisor, NASA, Indeed, and over 120,000 businesses rely on Kinsta for their WordPress hosting.

Speaker 1 So if you want hosting that works, just make the switch to Kinsta today. Get your first month free.
They'll even handle the migration for you. Just visit kinsta.com slash dsh to get started.

Speaker 1 That's k-i-n-st-t-a.com slash dsh.

Speaker 1 The whole dick or just a little picture? And so it's the monkey head, the monkey logo's head. Oh my.
Yeah, yeah. There's, I mean,

Speaker 1 there's all sorts of logistical things I don't want to get into on this podcast, but I mean, I... It's crazy.
I don't even know if I'm going to watch it, to be honest, but

Speaker 1 it's kind of that sick thing on the internet. You kind of want to watch it.
You kind of don't. It's going to be unavoidable, I feel like.
I don't know. That's going to break the internet.

Speaker 1 I think if we can pull off this deal with OnlyFans, this thing's going to go nuts. Holy crap.
That's crazy. How often do you and Bob do these weird bets? Uh, so I've known Bob.

Speaker 1 I met Bob in 2021, and we've been really good friends, you know, those four years.

Speaker 1 Bob's been on an absolute life roller coaster in that, and that probably, you know, me and you were talking before the show, you got to know Bob and stuff. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Um, we bet, we've bet our whole relationship, like our whole life, our whole time together, we bet on all sorts of crazy stuff. What's the craziest bet you've done with him? that one for sure

Speaker 1 like tasty like not like it's not even close right but like we've done we got we went and picked up this um we were gonna do this heads-up poker thing right we still are actually working something out to do it on poker go where we play heads up poker for some crazy stuff you would destroy him i i think so so we played this we played this uh heads-up poker match we did you see the tilt trucks that we have was that the one at the super bowl or uh yeah yeah yeah exactly so you can like put cut that into this clip or whatever but like we did this dope truck with west coast customs and we had this whole plan where we're going to go and pick it up in LA and then drive it around LA and invite people on to gamble with us.

Speaker 1 And Bob and I, in between, were just going to play heads of poker non-stop for like 48 hours and stream the whole thing.

Speaker 1 Yeah, because he was like, he thinks he's a better heads-up poker player than me. So I was like, let's do it.
Let's play like 48 hours straight on stream the whole thing. Right.

Speaker 1 So we were playing, but then of course the LA wildfires happened. So we turned it, we changed it into doing

Speaker 1 something for charity for the LA Wildfires.

Speaker 1 And so we raised, we ended up raising $50,000 for the LA Wildfires, just driving around on the bus, posting on social media, acting like complete knuckleheads, right?

Speaker 1 But in that same time, in addition to raising $50,000 for the fires, we also beat Bob Heads up for $17,000. So that was.
I mean, you have a poker background.

Speaker 1 I don't know why he would have thought, like, yeah, I like to play poker. Yeah.

Speaker 1 I mean, you, you are actually good at poker. You're a winning poker player, right? I'm okay.
I wouldn't say I'm like a winning. I wouldn't say I'm like a winning.

Speaker 1 It depends who, who against against an average person, probably against someone like Andrew Robo or Alan Keating, like no shots. Okay.
They would crush me.

Speaker 1 So you're better than an amateur, but you're not a pro. 100%.
You're in between. Yeah.
Is that your favorite game to gamble on poker?

Speaker 1 I think sports is my favorite thing to do. Sports betting? Yeah.
Wow. Yeah.
Sports is definitely the thing that I've had the most success with. Really? Yeah.

Speaker 1 That's a hard one to make money in, I feel like. 100%.
So what's your game, like NFL, NBA? I'm really good at NFL. So I do this.

Speaker 1 I was doing this thing for fun this year called Seniors pick of the week during NFL. I was 8-1 going in Super Bowl.
Damn. I had a huge bet on the Chiefs.
So I was 8-2

Speaker 1 against the spread, too. Right.
So,

Speaker 1 you know, I'm pretty good NFL capper.

Speaker 1 And then, you know, I dabble NBA, NHL. I like bidding totals a lot.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 What's the biggest sports bet you made, money-wise? It's a big one. I don't want to say the number.

Speaker 1 It's that big? It was on a boxing match. Yeah.
Damn. I like to bet big on fights.
Wow. Boxing.
Yeah. I feel like boxing, if you have the right information, is a good one.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 I mean, I had a ginormous bet on the Chiefs for the Super Bowl. I got crushed on, which that was a weird game.
That was a terrible.

Speaker 1 I've lost big bets before, but that one felt really gross because it felt like we've never had a chance. Not Not at all.

Speaker 1 I couldn't even watch the game. It was spooky, man.
I wanted a close game because I'm just a fan of sports. Yeah.
So, like, I just wanted a good game.

Speaker 1 We got spoiled last year with the Chiefs and 49ers. That was a good one.
I went into the overtime. And I was there in Vegas.
And I mean, dude, that was that was awesome.

Speaker 1 So to go from that Super Bowl to this one, which is a total bust. Super weird because everyone was saying the refs were in on the Chiefs and it seemed like they were going to win it all.
Yeah, I know.

Speaker 1 You know, refs weren't either. The first few calls went like the Eagles way for sure.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 I don't know. People, I've had guests come on here and say the NFL is rigged.

Speaker 1 No,

Speaker 1 I don't know about all that. Yeah, that would seem hard to pull off.

Speaker 1 Who knows, right? Like, there'd have to be so many people in on it.

Speaker 1 I feel like there's, I feel like there's been a lot of gambling scandals have been like the big thing that you saw that headline the other day about the college basketball and the NBA stuff. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Yeah. So it's obviously there's stuff going on with player props and things like that.

Speaker 1 And it's really unfortunate because I think most of the, I think most of the world's doing things pretty kosherly, but I guess you're always going to get stuff like that happening yeah michael porter jr's brother right oh i didn't know it's how oh you didn't know that no no i didn't know that yeah he would fake injuries and uh yeah that was like allegedly or this is like uh yeah i'll say that to be safe but i'm pretty sure it's like a known thing wow yeah

Speaker 1 just to get the under you know yeah that's i that's that's i've never really bet player profs at all my life yeah my whole life i just never it's never been my thing i never liked daily fantasy never bet player profs i always bet sides and totals i mean that's probably smarter because you can't really predict the player stuff if they get injured or if something happens no and it's hard to get, um, I guess people don't talk about this, but it's hard to get big bets down on anything but main markets.

Speaker 1 So like I like to bet big. So like I, the only things that I can get down on are like major sports, like NFL, NBA, NHL, MLB, and um major markets, major liquid markets.

Speaker 1 So like full game over-unders, full game spreads, that kind of thing. The casinos must hate you out here.
Uh,

Speaker 1 okay. So, no, no, I'm good.
You know, obviously, because dude, I've been at a lot of these casinos.

Speaker 1 So, like, I've been, uh, so I've, I think they love me as a a casino player because, you know, it's impossible to win in the casinos. Like, when you're playing baccarat and craps and stuff.

Speaker 1 So, I'm a good casino player. I give good action, but yeah, I can't get down big on sports in any of these places.
I'm womenated like across the board. You even asked Circa?

Speaker 1 Circa will give me, I think Circa gives like what, 25,000 a game or something like that. Which for you is like nothing.
Small, yeah, damn.

Speaker 1 Yeah, because if you bet that, you can't really win six figures or no, your ROI on a sports, like if you're really good at sports, your ROI is like, you know, low single digits, mid-single digits.

Speaker 1 Some people have like things that are high single digits, but it's, it's very tough. Damn.
Markets are really efficient, right?

Speaker 1 Like, you know, they think about all the smart people betting every single day. Yeah.
And I think what, and this is where people get preyed on all the time, right?

Speaker 1 Is they buy sports picks from people.

Speaker 1 And the problem buying sports picks from people is,

Speaker 1 let's just say I tell you I like the Chiefs minus six and a half, minus 110, right?

Speaker 1 And then you go and you bet the Chiefs minus six and a half, minus 120, or you bet the Chiefs minus seven, minus 110. To you, the you're betting the chiefs right

Speaker 1 but to me you're just seeded multiple percentage points of roi and so you just went from doing a plus expected value bet positive expected value bet to a negative expected value bet so most people are math illiterate and they don't realize that and they get prayed on and that's what i think is pretty pretty bullshit right so um if sports betting doesn't it doesn't matter what side you pick it just matters the price you get because everything has a right price Yeah, the timing of the bet's important.

Speaker 1 People don't know that. Yeah, that's right.
That's why like really smart bettors aren't allowed to bet football on Tuesdays or Wednesdays.

Speaker 1 Like, when I used to first bet football at DraftKings, I used to bet NFL on Tuesdays, Wednesdays.

Speaker 1 Then DraftKings came back to me and they said, no, you were only going to take your action on Sundays, right?

Speaker 1 They, because they want more efficiency in their line before they take a big bet from me, which is fair enough, right?

Speaker 1 Oh, so the line would move so much by the time Sunday comes around, right? Yeah, exactly. Damn, that's interesting.

Speaker 1 And I say this when I, when I give, you know, I don't, I don't need to sell sports picks, but when I give my sports picks out for free on my IG, I always say like, hey, look,

Speaker 1 just remember the price matters.

Speaker 1 Like, I get, like, if there was one game, it was like where it was the commanders and I got plus nine and a half and the line closed like commanders plus seven and a half plus eight.

Speaker 1 Like those are two different lines. Yeah.
I mean, it's a million things that can happen. Like, and this is when you do sports, you're running Monte Carlo simulations.

Speaker 1 So just like taking all the data and running sims of what's, what's, what possibly could happen and you're running thousands and thousands of these sims.

Speaker 1 So all sorts of scenarios and then you create there's a probability distribution curve of like the percentage chance it lands on any given game outcome. Right.

Speaker 1 And so when you think about there's key numbers, you know, you ever hear about key numbers in NFL and NBA? Like there's key numbers in NFL, like three, seven, six has become a key number now.

Speaker 1 So those numbers have a lot of statistical value. So when you move off of that number, it's a huge change in the delta and percentage of expected value.
Damn. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Damn, you're intense with this stuff. Yeah.
There's actually a really good book on it for beginners. I don't even play, you know, I don't get paid to plug anything, right?

Speaker 1 But there's a, it's called, it's by a guy named Matthew Davidau and his partner. I think it's called The Logic of Sports Betting.
Really good book.

Speaker 1 It just gives you, it gives you basic tools to understand how to bet a little, if you're, if you're betting sports every day or you're doing this just for fun, recreationally, it just gives you a little bit of a compass to know, like, it's like if you're playing blackjack, right?

Speaker 1 Or if you're, no, that's a bad example. If you're shooting dice, right?

Speaker 1 Everyone knows you're shooting dice, you're losing long-term in the casino, but there's things you can do to massively minimize your loss that you should know about, like max passing the, max backing the pass line, right?

Speaker 1 Cause that's an EV neutral bet.

Speaker 1 Making sure you're getting comps, all that kind of stuff, making sure you're getting, instead of three, four, five X odds, 10 X odds on the numbers, right?

Speaker 1 These are, these, these things all matter and add up over time. So

Speaker 1 it's really, you know, I was listening to this conference call for the win back when I was in my early 20s.

Speaker 1 And they talk about, you know, in the high traffic areas, they always put the games that are most advantageous to the casino. So they put like blackjack that pays six to five.

Speaker 1 Now, if you're someone who's pretty knowledgeable at gambling, you'd say, well, where's the three to two blackjack game? Which is a huge difference.

Speaker 1 But and of course, they have it there, but it's hidden somewhere in the middle kind of thing. In the high roller, right? Yeah.
A lot of times. Yeah.
They'll do it for their high limit players. Yeah.

Speaker 1 that's right palms just brought back three to two black jack that's awesome they're trying to revive yeah the local casinos do a good job of giving higher payout slots three to two blackjack 10x uh on the odds versus for dice versus three four five yeah all those things are very good for the player also

Speaker 1 i mean i hate when the casino plays mind games with you and i know i own an online casino some irony in this but like when you say but you should just be honest about it right when you play um commission baccarat and and a normal person goes oh no i have to pay commission like this is terrible for me i'm gonna going to go play no commissioned baccarat.

Speaker 1 But, of course, the game mechanics and rules of no commission baccarat are way worse for you than commission baccarat. Really? Yeah.
Or that, you know, that when uh I didn't know that.

Speaker 1 You know, in 21, there's all those variations of 21, like 21 plus three or switch card 21 and stuff. Yeah.
Those are all way, way, way worse for you mathematically than just regular blackjacks. Damn.

Speaker 1 So what they do, what these game designers do.

Speaker 1 is they come up with these really clever mechanics that are very appealing to math illiterate people that, you know, just like, you know, enjoy a game, right? And play it. And that's all fine.

Speaker 1 I mean, if you're playing for entertainment and stuff and that's, you know, what you should be doing, then that's fine.

Speaker 1 But you just need to understand that doing a little bit of homework helps you a very, very long way because this stuff all compounds.

Speaker 1 If you're playing regularly, you should like pay attention to a lot of these things. I like to gamble regularly, right?

Speaker 1 I know I'm getting taxed some amount for that over the course of every single year, but I get a lot of perks for it. I get to stay at nice villas.
I get to eat at all these nice restaurants in Vegas.

Speaker 1 And so for me, it's like a small tax to pay and I enjoy doing it. I do it socially with friends.

Speaker 1 But I'm playing like the thinnest edge stuff. Like you think about a player like me, I'm playing Baccarat.
I think what the household on Baccarat is like sub 1%.

Speaker 1 And then I'm getting comps on top of that. And then, of course, I've got really high limits, which helps me because I can, yeah, I can chase.
Right.

Speaker 1 And so the reason why a casino does well, casino has a game with a with a hold or return to player that's in their favor, but it's very thin, right? The percentage is very thin.

Speaker 1 So the way they get you is they put their max limits low. The delta between the min and the max limits are is compressed.
So you can't mardingale out of it, right?

Speaker 1 Where you know martingale where you double your bet. Mathematically, if there was a...

Speaker 1 If there was a big delta between the min and max bet, let's say the min bet was 100 bucks and the max bet was 100,000 and the casino didn't stop you from martingaling.

Speaker 1 I mean, statistically, you can martingale your way through most of your life. Damn.
It's actually nuts, right? Until like, until it doesn't work, right?

Speaker 1 But that is like some of these little math tricks is what, you know, the secret science around a casino. And then, of course, there's all the psychology that goes into it.

Speaker 1 Like UNLV has a gaming institute, and these guys will study the types of things and what their effects on player behavior is.

Speaker 1 Like the color of the felt, the where they put side bets and stuff in games, the lighting in the room, the smells of the room, the music,

Speaker 1 the lighting. Did I say the lighting already? I did.
I said the lighting. Yep.
So they study just kind of like all these different stimuli and their effects on their brain.

Speaker 1 You've heard some of the infamous stuff on the internet that they pump oxygen

Speaker 1 and stuff like that. Is that true? I don't know.
I've, you know, it's funny. I've worked in casinos a good chunk of my life.

Speaker 1 I actually have no idea um but it's definitely like when you walk into a casino it's kind of similar to like walking into a good hotel lobby or you walk into like a um

Speaker 1 like uh like an amusement part you know you know how that like that smell yeah you feel it senses get woken up right away right 100 it's hard to sleep inside yeah when i walk in the aria i feel different yeah 100 yeah yeah it's nuts how they do that they got it down to a science man yeah they do they're really wow i didn't know that they study everything from like placement of slots to placement of table games to they they they're they're very quantitative about foot traffic, promotions that drive different kinds of foot traffic, cross-selling.

Speaker 1 So getting people into the hotel for cheap, let the hotel be a loss leader, then get them to gamble or whatever it is, make food a loss leader and get people to traffic that way, make a poker room a loss leader, make sports a loss leader.

Speaker 1 So they're very good about getting you there and then figuring out how they're going to make their money off you. But it's funny, Vegas has evolved.

Speaker 1 Like it used to be that Vegas, you would do a lot of these cheap buffets, cheap calm food, all that stuff. Now, of course,

Speaker 1 if you look at a a pie chart from how vegas strip made its money 10 years ago to how they made its money now it's transformed dramatically it used to be uh mostly gaming now it's actually mostly f and b and entertainment damn yeah that's actually you go to i mean you go eat out all the same places i eat out yeah it's expensive

Speaker 1 yeah i'm dropping like 500 bucks if i'm with someone yeah that never was the case in vegas 20 years ago damn like five dollar steak yeah i used to love the buffets back in the day yeah dude me too

Speaker 1 the one in uh

Speaker 1 win's decent the one in uh caesar's palace which one is that? Yeah, I don't know the name. I've never been.
Baccanol. You've never been to Baccanol? It's fire.
Oh, fire, bro.

Speaker 1 But now I go and it doesn't hit the same. Yeah, no, it doesn't.
Once you've had really good food.

Speaker 1 Exactly. I was raised on buffet food.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 I grew up in Vegas and, you know, we didn't, we were just middle-class family and stuff. So we ate buffets a lot.
Yeah. I used to sprint to the food, man.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 And unlimited desserts. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Fire. Yeah.
I've never seen a casino go out of business out here, though, right? They know their business pretty well.

Speaker 1 Mostly. There have been casinos that have gone out of business in Vegas, but it's usually just overspending, right?

Speaker 1 So, you know, there's been bad projects where they've overspent on the development and stuff. They just never were able to recoup their capital.
Right.

Speaker 1 So there's a couple. And then there's, of course, stories of casinos that have been bankrupted by players.
So bad risk management on the casinos part. Yeah.

Speaker 1 But that hasn't happened in a while, though, right? It hasn't happened in a long time. I feel like with all the algorithms now, they probably can.

Speaker 1 They're very, I mean, well, remember, casinos used to mostly be privately held.

Speaker 1 And I i think for the most part a lot of them around the world are but in las vegas a lot of these guys are publicly listed so mgm owns like 30 40 of the las vegas strip caesars owns 30 40 of the las veg strip that's 80 of the vegas strip they're both publicly listed companies the win owns win and encore so that's whatever other percentage of the vegas strip phoenician and palazzo are owned by apollo private equity um

Speaker 1 yeah dude there's i can't think of one thing on the strip that's that's private oh uh circus circus is owned by phil ruffin yeah he's like a multi-billion they're selling though right uh it's funny funny.

Speaker 1 I was at MGM when we sold it to Phil Ruffin. Oh, yeah.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 But I heard, I guess there's rumors going on. About Disney, right? Yeah.
Yeah. Who knows? I don't know.
I don't know the buyers, but yeah. We'll see.

Speaker 1 You think Resorts World and Fountain Blue are going to survive? They're not profiting right now, right? So

Speaker 1 I don't think anyone knows the answer to that question about whether they're profiting or not. And Resorts Worlds has a parent company that's public listed on the Hong Kong Exchange.

Speaker 1 They're Malaysian parent company.

Speaker 1 I think they are profitable. Oh, they are? Oh, so Vegas Poly C, you were wrong.
Yeah, one of my good friends just took over as chairman of Resorts World, Jim Mern, who used to be one of the

Speaker 1 really, really good guy. And he brought in a new team.
And I think they're, I think they're doing pretty well. Fountain Blue, I really get on.
So I like Brett Muffson a lot.

Speaker 1 He's a good friend of mine. He's part of the ownership group.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 I think it's, you know, they just, they spent a lot of money on that property. It's dropped it gorgeous.
I don't know if you stepped. No, it's on.
Really beautiful. I go to PowerSlot there.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 We did a monkey tilt event there.

Speaker 1 But the thing is, is that whenever you spend the target uh the target that a casino is trying to hit is 10 return on investment so if you spend four billion dollars you're trying to make 400 million of ebita a year just to give you an idea i think and and these numbers might be a little still so check these numbers for me but i think the win and encore combined make 600 million of ebita holy crap so when you think about that and and bellagio for a long time back when i was looking at this closely makes makes about 500 million of ebita so those are two of like the highest earning properties on the las vegas strip so you have to kind of like you're spending i don't know how much fountain will spend on development development, but let's just say it was 4 billion, but just fact-check that for me.

Speaker 1 But

Speaker 1 then they would need to make $400 million.

Speaker 1 It's a million profit a day. It's just hard.
Yeah, it's super hard. Profit too, right? Yeah.
And is that including the restaurants and stuff or no? It includes everything. Oh, everything?

Speaker 1 It includes everything. That's our eye target.
There are some bigger spots there. Poppy Steak's probably bringing in a lot.
I love David Einhard. David Einhorn's, you know, you saw my socials.

Speaker 1 David Einhorn's my fucking guy. I love that.
You got the briefcase.

Speaker 1 So, yeah, of course I got the briefcase.

Speaker 1 He has that new thing. What's the new thing?

Speaker 1 It's like a a carousel it's like what it's like dude go look at his ig it's like a carousel that comes out it's like a bunch of bottles that come out with like um he's three big steaks hanging on like a on like a cart on like a beverage market yeah we'll throw up a video on this yeah marketing genius yeah he's really charging a thousand bucks for steak man and he has a you should get him on your pod

Speaker 1 he's down yeah we've talked very cool story he's gonna be in vegas actually upcoming this week oh hell yeah i'll hit him up yeah because he's killing it but new surrept just went under did you see that salt bay i did not see that salt bay had a restaurant next to the T-Mobile stadium.

Speaker 1 Yeah, and you're seeing that restaurant, that specific restaurant closed. Went under, yeah.
Yeah. Okay.
Yeah, I don't know why. Maybe it was location.
That's a tough area. Where is it?

Speaker 1 T-Mobile, but you got a... Parking's just a bitch there, dude.
Oh, you mean like right outside of T-Mobile? Yeah. Yeah, that is tough because there's a shake shack there, right? Yeah, I think so.

Speaker 1 Yeah, that's just tough. That's a hard place to be because where do you park? You can't park.

Speaker 1 Yeah, yeah. Park at like Paris, I guess.

Speaker 1 Yeah. But people are so spoiled.
They want to park and just walk in. Yeah.
Or valet. Well, dude, I'm so lazy.
Like, I like to go to the wind because it's on the other end of the strip.

Speaker 1 So you can just, you can sneak in there and you can sneak off the strip. But if you don't want the Arian stuff, you're in the middle.
So when you spit out, you're still stuck in

Speaker 1 all that traffic. So like location matters a lot.
Yeah. Is wind your favorite spot to gamble right now?

Speaker 1 I know you got a lot of friends in this industry. Yeah.
Yeah. I would say I have a lot of, you know what, actually a spot.

Speaker 1 I don't want to just, everyone's going to think I'm getting paid to plug this. I'm not.
The spot I like to gamble a lot lately is Durango, actually. How did I know you were going to say that?

Speaker 1 I don't know. I don't know, but like I was, I was talking to my guys on my team and we were walking through Durango on a Sunday.
And we're like, atmosphere is so pleasant, man.

Speaker 1 It's still, everything's so brand new. And

Speaker 1 they did such a good job with that property. And it's like, it's got the right mix.
I always say.

Speaker 1 A casino has to find that right mix between luxury and then the product for the everyday person because even people who like luxury stuff who are wealthy still like to feel like normal people and like every day go to a some go to a food court or like pick up a burger or pick up some like a frozen yogurt or something.

Speaker 1 It's like durango's food court is fire fire so good gerv's burgers the pizza spot's good gerv's burgers is fire yeah they have this ice cream place that's good and then and then what did you say the pizza place you can't eat pizza but prince street right prince street yeah i mean you can't eat it new york no because i've like i'm not supposed to eat dairy but damn um yeah it sucks but uh but i still eat ice cream but um the sports book is killer the sportsbook bar whatever that thing's called the george george or something i haven't been there yet yeah that's unbelievable bel air lounge too um everyone tells me that i haven't been.

Speaker 1 Really? Yeah, everyone tells me that I've been. It's nice.
But I think Durango is awesome. I mean, Wynn takes amazing care of me, dude.
I just became part of the chairman club.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I wanted to ask you about that. What is that? I never heard of it.

Speaker 1 It's it says like the MX Black card, right? It's like an invite-only program. They do it for their like top customers.

Speaker 1 I've been playing at the Wynn, dude, since it, I guess, how old am I? So since I was 21, I guess. So yeah, 14 years or something.
So

Speaker 1 they do a good, they know how to treat players. And then they're opening up Zero Bond.
So they're tying like Zero Bond into, you know, know, the Chairman's Club and that kind of stuff.

Speaker 1 So I think, and I like how they've done their, the way Wynn's done their development, like they brought in Earth Cafe from LA, they brought in Chipriani's, they brought in a lot of these cool little

Speaker 1 stores, Delilah's, yeah, poppin'. So I think Wynn has, whoever does their F and B in retail has a very good grasp on what's relevant and what's cool.
Crushed it. Yeah.

Speaker 1 And so they're, they're like, you know, they're the marquee, you know, spot still on the Las Vegas Strip. And then Durango is just so cool for a local spot.
Like I, I, dude, I'm, I live not far.

Speaker 1 I live not far from the strip. I live like three minute drive from the wind.
Yeah. And so driving to Durango is a real pain in my ass.
It's a hike for you. Yeah, it is, but I still go.
Damn. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Durango just feels clean, man. That's where all the Nelk Boys gamble too, right, Steven? Yeah, I think so.
Stevens. I've gambled with Steve there and at

Speaker 1 Red Rock. Oh, yeah.
Yeah. How'd you guys do?

Speaker 1 That day, that was that day that Steve was down a huge number and we were trying to claw back.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I've done well. Actually, Durango, dude, I've done really well with Durango.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 You know, that's just variance is just statistical variance but i've done really well at durango had a much harder time at win well their odds are probably better than strip places i'd imagine right just off strip yeah and they comp better too but the problem is like what do you what do you want the comps for at the end of the day is you know so like the win you know you can spend those comp dollars at delila or

Speaker 1 at the golf club or you know they've got a lot of good assets for you to spend that currency on but durango like durango's good like you know i look you know but i don't need them to comp herbs burgers for

Speaker 1 you know like i don't want to like stay in a room room at Durango, right? But, uh, but like, you know, like, that's why I like playing it.

Speaker 1 Like, uh, like, my family really likes staying at MGM Mansions. Yeah, I heard those are nice.
Dopest product. Like, the butler service is incredible.

Speaker 1 It's like, dude, you walk into that courtyard and there's like a smell. They like spray this smell.
And oh my God, it's so beautiful and like peaceful. You're almost like not in Vegas, right? Yeah.

Speaker 1 Like a waterfall in the middle. They have a private Chinese restaurant that's really good.
Damn. And so when you stay at mansions, like my family likes staying at mansions.

Speaker 1 So, so I'm like, okay, well, I can use my MGM comp dollars at mansions when, you know, we throw, I throw this fantasy party every year and we throw it at the Wind Villas and stuff.

Speaker 1 So, you know, that's kind of how you think, but I, you know, I'm not going to stay in a Durango room.

Speaker 1 I've eaten at Nico's. Nico's is pretty good.
That's the Italian one?

Speaker 1 Or the steakhouse? Yeah. Italian one.
I don't know, actually. I went to some restaurant there.
I thought it might have been something else.

Speaker 1 Yeah, but the Durango team's good. Yeah.
I actually like for staycations, my favorite spot is Venetian. Really? Yeah.
Have you stayed there? Never stayed there. All the rooms are sweet.

Speaker 1 That's awesome. Yeah.
So it's like... And then what do you do there when you staycation? I mean, Venetian has some good restaurants.

Speaker 1 If I had to like pick a hotel for favorite restaurants, it's Venetian. Yeah.
Ha Salon is in there. Ha Salon.
You got Mott 32. Yeah, Mott 32 is fine.
Fire. That's my favorite Asian spot in Vegas.

Speaker 1 Order the duck ahead of time. Yeah, you got to order the duck there.

Speaker 1 They got Milos.

Speaker 1 They got fire, man. Yeah, you're right.
Yeah. X-Pot, if you like Hot Pot.
Oh, I've eaten at X-Pot before. It's really good.
Danging, bro. Do they still have that

Speaker 1 karaoke spot in in there? Karaoke? Yeah, this little karaoke spot that they were trying to blow up, kind of similar to the. Oh, I think it's there.
I haven't been though.

Speaker 1 It used to be a spot before COVID. Like, it was really popular.
Yeah. They got a new dart spot if you're into darts.
Never done darts. Really? Yeah.
I did. I tried.

Speaker 1 I tried axe throwing with my team. It's actually hard, right?

Speaker 1 Yeah. I couldn't even get the thing to stick.
Couldn't mean either. Yeah, axe throwing is no joke.
Yeah. Shout out to those guys.
Yeah, 100%. Yeah.
But no, Venetian's a sleeper, man. Yeah.

Speaker 1 If you had to pick one hotel to stay at, what's your favorite one?

Speaker 1 Mansions. MGM.
It's not even close, actually. Because the wind, the wind, I was going to, I was thinking wind villas, but then I thought their butler service is nowhere near the mansions.

Speaker 1 Like, man, I'm talking, dude, mansions. There's like stuff I can say in the pod and stuff I can't say in the pod, but like mansions is like,

Speaker 1 there's nothing that they won't do for you. Like, like you, you can be, you're in your room, you're in like the hot tub.
Like there's a hot tub in the, like, in the room, somewhere in the middle.

Speaker 1 It's like a ginormous hot tub. It's like bigger than the size of this table.

Speaker 1 And like, you're in the room and then they're they're like putting out fruit platters for you they're hanging all these nice robes that like just came out of some like hot robe room they have they've got like the attention to detail the luxury like music star stuff that like it's just crazy and they'll they'll come in if you like you you just walk in there with the clothes on your back whatever you need they got it for you swimsuit no problem you need uh i don't know i'm just making it like you need workout clothes no problem they got it do you want you know what's funny with me i like the stair master yeah i love hitting the stair master in the morning when I come in, they put a stair master in my room for me in like my rooms.

Speaker 1 They buy it. They go and buy a brand new stair master and then put it in my room.
That's crazy. And then my girlfriend really likes flowers.
So they know the exact types of flowers she likes.

Speaker 1 They put them in every room. No way.
They know the exact type of food we like.

Speaker 1 Dude, that's insane.

Speaker 1 They'll work with, if you have a chef you like somewhere in like the country or the world, they'll talk to that chef ahead of time and like pay them to get the ingredients and recipes.

Speaker 1 I mean, they are, there is no

Speaker 1 stone unturned. How much a night is this spot? They don't, they they don't, you know.
Oh, you can't just get it online? They don't. So you got it's invite only types of invite-only.

Speaker 1 Is it for the Noor members?

Speaker 1 They comp, they charge you a comp rate for the biggest room there. It's comp rate's like 30,000 a night.
Oh my gosh. But I know the entry.
I don't know what the entry is,

Speaker 1 but they it's just comp. So who knows, right? I don't think they sell the room.
Wow. I wonder how many of them there are.
There can't be too many of them. 28.
28.

Speaker 1 And are they all like by each other?

Speaker 1 They're all very private. They're all kind of there, you know, very, very private.
Although one time,

Speaker 1 I know I can't tell a story. i'm like

Speaker 1 one time one time we were we were like having a great party in the room and we get a knock on the door it's a very very very famous rapper oh yeah i thought it was his room and i was like oh no but then i was like hey can i take a quick pick yeah i think mickey mace used to stay there when he was gambling a lot right oh i don't know i don't know mickey oh okay have you gambled with him at all or i don't know him i don't really i've never met him damn i'm surprised you guys probably know a lot of the same people we yeah probably have a lot of mutual friends i've never met him yeah um banks banks is one of my friends oh yeah yeah he's a mutual friend is he big on gambling

Speaker 1 He gambles, but I don't think he's big on it. Yeah.
I think crypto is a form of gambling, right?

Speaker 1 It's very debatable, dude. For meme coins? It's very, very debatable.
I would argue, yes. For meme coins, 100%.
It's not even. Yeah.
It's not even a question with meme coins. I agree.

Speaker 1 But for Bitcoin, I guess you could see that as an investment. Yeah, Bitcoin's like a store of value.
It's just highly volatile. Yeah.
I know you come from crypto a little bit, right? Yeah.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I do. So I built, if you think about Monkey Tilt, it's my third business in crypto as a startup.
Like my first business I ever co-founded was a company called Manifold Trading.

Speaker 1 It was a quantitative high-frequency hedge fund in crypto. So like my whole thing with crypto has been, what do I think are the biggest use cases of crypto? The number one biggest thing was,

Speaker 1 did you study abroad when you were in college? I didn't. I wish I did actually.

Speaker 1 So when I studied abroad, one of the most stressful moments for me, I remember, was this one time when I needed money for something.

Speaker 1 And of course, no one, I mean, all your friends aren't going to give you money. So you need your parents to send you money.
And my dad didn't know how to send me money quick enough.

Speaker 1 It was like a three to four day delay or something like that this was before venmo yeah going no no but venmo doesn't exist outside the us oh really yeah yeah so yes if you're in if you're in australia it's like a lot of americans don't like realize this right you're in another country like moving money from one country to another country is not instant it's a delay it's like a multi-day delay damn and um I guess it depends.

Speaker 1 There's different services and stuff, but it is a delay. It takes time, right? And there's FX rates and transaction fees and all that kind of stuff.

Speaker 1 And sometimes back in the day, people used to use, what's that one? Cash, Western Union or something? Yeah, Western Cash. Yeah, I use that.

Speaker 1 There's all sorts of different ways to move money across borders, but it's all extremely expensive and takes a lot of time. So the number one use case for crypto is just money transmission, right?

Speaker 1 Like if I, my daughters are in Australia and they need, I don't know, $5,000, I can send them ETH on ERC20 and it'll be there in two minutes. Right.
Probably less, right? But

Speaker 1 that's incredible. And then I think the second best use case for crypto is gambling.
I mean, so, you know what I mean?

Speaker 1 Like, I, you know, the store of value thing, I I believe with Bitcoin, I can do believe Bitcoin is a good store of value.

Speaker 1 It's, I guess, you can believe in Bitcoin as much as you can believe in any fiat currency, right? It makes sense, or as you can believe in gold.

Speaker 1 Um, but I think for some, for whatever reason, crypto as a basket trades as like a hyper beta index to tech in the U.S. So when tech's hurting, crypto tends to hurt.
And

Speaker 1 when tech's doing well, crypto tends to do really well. Yeah.
So I, you know, I own a lot of crypto, as you can imagine. I also own a lot of gold, right?

Speaker 1 And yeah, but sorry, we were talking about my startup. So Manifold is a quantitative high-frequency hedge fund.
And then I spun a piece of technology out of that called Aether, and then I sold Aether.

Speaker 1 So this Monkey Tilt is my third company. Damn.
And it's a crypto casino? Yeah.

Speaker 1 I think of it as like a crypto. It is right now it has a casino, right? But over time, I think of it as like a risk-taking platform where I think.

Speaker 1 All these things that you correctly identify are risky, right? Or take some meme coins,

Speaker 1 collectibles, like trading cards. Like we know when you buy a pack of trading cards, I don't know how many people are buying packs of trading cards to just hold the cards and put them on their wall.

Speaker 1 Like I think a lot of people hope they get that big $10,000 card, $100,000 card, whatever it is. So in some way, that's gambling, right? You know what I mean? You open your pack of cards to whatever.

Speaker 1 And it's a multi-billion dollar a year business, right? And so I believe that all these things are risk-taking, whether they regulate them as gambling or not, you know, whatever.

Speaker 1 I'll let the regulators decide that. But I think they should all live on one platform tied together by one wallet and one rewards currency.

Speaker 1 Because how cool would it be if you, you, you know, when anything, you like to keep your dollars spent at one place that takes good care of you.

Speaker 1 So like if you're a good customer at Monkey Tilt and you mess with collectibles on our platform, you trade crypto on our platform, crypto perps, you bet sports, you play casino, you play poker.

Speaker 1 Like these are all the product verticals we plan to introduce. Then

Speaker 1 now all of your spent, you could have been trading crypto on Binance and you could have been doing collectibles and cards with Fanatics or whatever.

Speaker 1 But if you're doing this all in the Monkey Tilt ecosystem, now all of a sudden you might be level one or two or any of those places, you know, all individually, but now at Monkey Tilt, you're level five on the rewards tier.

Speaker 1 And now all of a sudden, you're getting free UFC tickets, free Formula One passes, all that kind of stuff. And I think that that's overall a better value proposition for the customer.
100%.

Speaker 1 It's very, it's very, and I'm sure you know this because you dabble with a lot of stuff. It's very disaggregated, right? It's like, if I think about crypto, I've got some money on chain.

Speaker 1 I've got some money on centralized exchanges. I'm trading,

Speaker 1 you know, meme coins through Telegram bots. Right.
That is my Solana wallet's linked into.

Speaker 1 I'm using Dex Screener to check the activity.

Speaker 1 I'm betting sports on, you name it, any of the list of guys you were just rattling off. I'm playing casino.
I don't play casino online. I mostly play it in real life.
Right.

Speaker 1 And all these different prices. So like you think about that and you're like, man, there's a lot of wasted rewards currency there.
A lot. Yeah.
It's all over the place. Yeah.

Speaker 1 And rewards, and everyone knows this. Any good, if you study reward systems, I'm fascinated.
It's like one of my nerdy things is about studying reward systems.

Speaker 1 I don't know if you ever went deep down the whole

Speaker 1 credit card reward systems, maritime reward systems. There's, dude, there's like, there are people who just do ridiculous amounts.
Now you have chat GPT. So you just have to chat chat GPT.

Speaker 1 But before on the internet, there's just all over these people hacking these systems, right?

Speaker 1 But the overarching theme of these systems is that the rewards get infinitely better as the closer you get to the top, right?

Speaker 1 So the closer you get to the top, the higher the reinvestment in the customer is because the theory is acquiring a high-value customer like that is going to cost so much money.

Speaker 1 So once you acquire them, you don't want to lose them.

Speaker 1 So you're willing to give that customer so much higher of a percentage back than you would to any of the customers lower down the ladder because Ergo should be easier and easier to acquire that each tier of customer as you go lower down the ladder.

Speaker 1 But that top echelon of customer, you don't want to lose. So you're almost willing to make it a super, super low margin proposition for you.

Speaker 1 So as a customer, you want to be able to consolidate all of your points into one ecosystem. and

Speaker 1 run up the rewards ladder as quickly as possible. So that's what I'm trying to do at Monkey Tail is give an all-in-one platform for risk-taking.

Speaker 1 Regulation makes it really tough because different

Speaker 1 countries regulate different pieces of those products. You know, some of the products they call financial services, some of the products are like trading cards, aren't even regulated.

Speaker 1 Some of the products like NFTs aren't regulated. Sports bidding is highly regulated.
High casino is the most regulated, right? So it's hard to put all of them on one platform, but we're trying. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Sounds like a nightmare logistically.
Holy crap. Yeah, it's expensive.
Yeah, because you got customers all over the world, right? We do, yeah. Damn.

Speaker 1 So what's is there a reward system in place right now at all? Or you're still,

Speaker 1 and right now, no, there is one. And it's really, really generous.
And it's, it's mostly focused on reinvestment back into the dollars on the platform.

Speaker 1 And then we take care of our VIPs and soft comp dollars in all sorts of ways. I mean, you were at our Formula One party, throw a Super Bowl party, bought a big old suite to the Super Bowl.

Speaker 1 You went hard. You gave away a million at that, right? Yeah, I gave away another million dollars on top for the Valentine's Day thing.
We did a million dollar safe crack opening thing.

Speaker 1 So we do things like that all the time.

Speaker 1 I think the stuff like the million dollar Valentine's Day race is more targeted at VIPs and the stuff like the Million Dollar Safe is more targeted at the everyday customer. Yeah.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 It's smart that you take care of VIPs because you see that happens in Vegas and that's why these casinos crowd. I mean, I am a VIP customer, right?

Speaker 1 So I treat those VIPs the way that I would want to be treated. Yeah.

Speaker 1 That's what matters. Yeah.

Speaker 1 What's next for Monkey Tail? Anything fun this year?

Speaker 1 We, I mean, just the, you know, we, we're doing a lot of, the stuff I'm excited about, we're partnering with some very new personalities. Our product roadmap is super aggressive.

Speaker 1 So we're obviously introducing a ton of stuff on the crypto trading front, on the poker front, on the collectibles front.

Speaker 1 So whether those all come out all this year or a little bit weed into next year, we're excited about them. And then I think just some of the stuff we do.

Speaker 1 So, you know, the content has been so much fun. That's been the new thing for me because I've been such a private person.

Speaker 1 But the things we're doing on YouTube and through social media and stuff, the different channels that were popping up, the podcast, the golf channel, all this stuff, we're just going to keep doing that and keep having more fun with it.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Yeah.
What made you want to step out? Cause you've been behind the scenes your whole life. My whole life.
Yeah. Actually, the feedback was, it's funny.

Speaker 1 They just interviewed the guys who founded stake recently. Yeah.
Yeah, this is a really good article.

Speaker 1 The feedback from our customers was, we feel more comfortable gambling and putting money on a platform where there's a face associated with it. So like we know the guy, we know his story.

Speaker 1 And I'm sympathetic to that, right? Because at the end of the day, if like something goes wrong, at least they have someone to go after. They have, you know, they know me.
I'm out there.

Speaker 1 And so, so it's like, it's fair enough. I think that my customers deserve that level of accountability.
And it's, you know, it's what I would also want as a customer. So it makes a lot of sense.

Speaker 1 Now, it came at some cost to me because it's not something, you know, I'm not used to having on public social media or anything like that.

Speaker 1 But it's been fun. And I've just tried to lean in and appreciate the positive elements of it, which is just having fun, having some visibility.

Speaker 1 Now I go and gamble and people want to gamble with me and stuff. Wow.
Like take pictures of me gambling and stuff. Yeah, that's cool.
It's really funny. Man, those stake guys crushed it.

Speaker 1 They murdered it.

Speaker 1 I don't know how they're doing still, but I know back in the day. Still crushing it.
Oh, they're still crushing it. Yeah, still crushing it.
They're focused on kick now, that streaming platform.

Speaker 1 Right. That was an interesting situation.
Steak just as a cash cow at this point. Well, that was probably a smart move because they were banned everywhere, right? You couldn't post about them.

Speaker 1 Yeah, it was weird. Twitch like kicked them off the platform.
They weren't de-platformed them.

Speaker 1 And I don't know if that's because of gambling or if it's just because of them. I don't know.
I really don't know. But they had to create kick almost out of necessity.

Speaker 1 I think their story is that they were going to do it anyways, or they were thinking about doing it anyways. And then getting de-platformed off of Twitch just accelerated.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 And partnering with streamers was a brilliant model. Yes, 100% agree.
I think Rube maybe did that a little bit before them.

Speaker 1 But Stake definitely, what Stake Stake did a good job of doing is partnering with really big brand name celebrities.

Speaker 1 Like, so even before the streamers, like the Drake's, the Izzy Atisanias, I mean, they did, they did a phenomenal job of just branding.

Speaker 1 Before those kind of offshore casinos and stuff, they didn't, they didn't do any branding. Yeah.
They were just

Speaker 1 sketchy fly-by-night operations. And so Stake did a good job of like.

Speaker 1 um you know resetting what expectation i mean they created original games they created uh insight chat they created social communities through discord and reddit and stuff like that so they set the bar.

Speaker 1 And then now it's on us. Like it's on people like monkeys, like new entrants to the market.

Speaker 1 It's on us to compete with them and find new and inventive ways to accommodate the customer and create new product experiences for the customer.

Speaker 1 But it's also fun, you know, they've at the same time, they do a really good job of being like the Costco of online gambling. They just squeeze and squeeze and squeeze the margins.

Speaker 1 So they make it really, really hard for new people to enter the market. And I have all the fucking respect in the world for that.
Really? How do they squeeze the margins?

Speaker 1 Well, they just give more and more back to the player. Oh, okay.
So they make it, they make it like very hard for you to steal players from them. Damn.

Speaker 1 damn yeah and i think that's a super clever operating model so that of course forces us uh to do the same right to match those which makes it very hard for us to make money for some amount of time but the good news is for people like me you know i have a track record of of being a successful operator so i'm you know i couldn't do it with my own balance sheet alone but with my investors balance sheets and you know with the backing i have that i can take on someone like stake and we're not taking them on we're not trying to win number one in the market but we think there's going to be a top five in the market so monkey tilt's goal is to be a number two or three in the market i love that yeah because to open this it must be really capital intensive.

Speaker 1 It's very

Speaker 1 intensive, mostly on the marketing side.

Speaker 1 Because what happens is you go to, you go to enter a new market and, I mean, you're well aware because you're in the social media game, affiliate channels get very expensive, right?

Speaker 1 So if you're marketing keywords, stake's buying all the same keywords as you, right? So you're going after, okay, keywords, you can't do that.

Speaker 1 You go to find paid affiliate traffic. Stake's going to pay a lot more for that affiliate traffic than you're going to be able to pay right out of the gate.
Right.

Speaker 1 You talk about things like,

Speaker 1 you know, like celebrity endorsement deals and sponsorships that they're going to be able to throw a lot more money at but eventually then that becomes the the big guy starts spent overspending and it becomes very roi backwards for them and they'll do that to some to some level right until they can crowd out the market and then and then they have to go back to making money right so um you know i i look at this and i go rather than trying to take them head on in their own game we try to take a very differentiated approach i i think you notice that our brand is very different than stakes like you know we're we're fun we're degenerate you're more laid back yeah i feel i feel so too i feel like we're a little less corporate and we're a little more more fun.

Speaker 1 And I do feel that our channels and the way we touch our customers are very different than the way that, you know, that they go about it. So I have all the respect in the world for those two.

Speaker 1 And they're also young, right? So when they founded this company, they were very, very young. So

Speaker 1 enormous amount of respect for that. I never met either of them, funnily enough.
But they're in Australia, right? Yeah. But one of them, Beech is American and Eddie's Australian.

Speaker 1 And then Beech moved to Australia. Yeah.
But they are just, yeah, they've built an absolute operational powerhouse. And so now it's my job to go build a formidable competitor to to them in the market.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I remember they were kind of low-key for a bit and then their houses got leaked. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's when they became public.
Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1 Well, I guess no, they became public through Drake, through the Drake stuff. Yeah.
And then, and then they bought, like, Eddie started buying every $50 million house you could buy into your act.

Speaker 1 Well, the Drake stuff, allegedly, right? A billion-dollar contract, something crazy. I don't know the exact number.
No one knows, right? Hunter mil or whatever.

Speaker 1 Yeah, no one knows, but I'm sure it's a huge number. That's nuts.
Yeah. Well, dude, it's been cool.
Where could people

Speaker 1 keep up with you? Yeah, absolutely, man. I appreciate it.
Yeah. What's your social media?

Speaker 1 Social media is at SenorTilt on Instagram. And I don't know.

Speaker 1 Yeah, just at SenorTilt on it. We'll link it below.
Yeah. All right.
Thanks for watching, guys. Peace.
Thank you.