The Wagers E+M Golden Alarm Clock Awards

The beats, beefs and boasts of Q3

Beef of the quarter: Deutsche Bank vs. Dave Portnoy
As if Dave Portnoy didn’t have enough to worry about this past quarter, he also found himself the subject of an ad hominem attack via a Deutsche Bank analyst note. Wrote the DB team: “At present, we believe Penn, the Company we covered since 2011, and recommended as a Buy from 2011 through January of 2020, is just a sideshow, a sideshow to a wildly volatile, incredibly libelous, and misleading social media frontman.” The DB team and Portnoy have form; previously the Barstool head honcho posted highly contentious comments in June 2020 after the analysts slapped a Sell recommendation on Penn National’s shares. The irony was probably lost on Portnoy’s social media defenders, but the new change in recommendation was technically an upgrade from a Sell to a Hold.

Plain-speaking CEO award

Winner: Full House CEO Daniel Lee on temporary casino structures

Talking about the need for a temporary ‘sprung’ construction should it win its Illinois casino license bid, Full House CEO Daniel Lee showed he was fully on top of the details: “Turns out there is a company called Sprung Structures owned by a family whose last name is Sprung: who knew?”

Runner-up: Aspire Global CEO Tsachi Maimon’s sales technique

Aspire Global CEO Tsachi Maimon’s was notably candid on his company’s Q3 call when he claimed that the US B2B market beyond the top brands – and notably among the tribal groups – would be very fruitful for Aspire because they “don’t have a clue how to operate digital.” “The tribal casinos, tiers 2, 3 or 4, in a few years from now Aspire Global will be their biggest supplier,” he added, perhaps rather hopefully.

A reverse ferret to…

Incoming CEO at Wynn Resorts, Craig Billings, who called a halt both to the merger transaction with Austerlitz Acquisition Corp. and the marketing spending spree. “The current combination of large-scale brand spend, performance marketing spend, and customer bonuses that we see in the marketplace does not drive unit economics that meet our return requirements,” he said.

The overused analogy award

Winner: Flywheel effect. We’re looking at you Entain, Fubo.
Runner-up: One-stop-shop. As employed by GAN, Endeavor, Sportradar.

The memorial CEO desk tidy award goes to:

Richard Carter, CEO at Bragg Gaming, when the games provider released its results on November 8 showing revenues rising 9.9%. He was gone less than a week later, when the company said its “continued strong growth has yet to be reflected in the company’s public market performance, and the Board has determined that a search for a new CEO is required.”

The ‘surprise, surprise’ regulatory hurdle of the quarter award:

Joint winners: the new regulatory regimes in Germany and Holland. See the results from Catena Media, Better Collective, LeoVegas, Kindred et al.

The wannabe Elon replica SpaceX rocket award goes to:

Jason ‘it’s not about the money’ Robins at DraftKings for this tweet.

A Bugsy Malone ‘you give a little love’ splurge gun goes to:

MGM boss Bill Hornbuckle who told analysts “we want to be bigger, we want to be global, we want to be a lot of things.”

The misted-up crystal ball award goes to:

Winner: Betsson which said the rule that the Dutch authorities approach towards providers “who do not actively target the Dutch market without a license but who do serve Dutch players” was “a novel rule” and was somehow an ”unforeseeable break with established policy”.

A Grandpa Simpson perpetual GIF NFT:

Not unrelated, perhaps, this gong goes to Pontus Lindwall, CEO at Betsson, then not CEO at Betsson, now once again CEO at Betsson.

‘Pretty In Pink’ soundtrack LP winner:

Jack Davison, the CCO at Genius Sports who gave off strong ‘not that into her’ vibes with his comment about losing out to Sportradar on the NBA exclusive data deal. “We (would have been) thrilled to have the NBA as part of our portfolio that hasn’t happened, but it’s also true that our betting revenues for the NBA at the moment are extremely limited. And so the impact of not winning that deal on our business is very, very small at this point.”

The inaugural Golden Alarm Clock award goes to:

Joe Stauff, who took one for the team at Susquehanna and got on the Oct 12 earnings call with Entain at 4am EST. He asked a question about UK takeover rules and, after being congratulated for getting up so early by Entain CEO Jette Nygaard-Andersen, got the reply “we are really not going to talk about the DraftKings proposal.” Nothing to see here, Joe, nothing to see here.

The beats, beefs and boasts of Q3

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