Earnings+More - A taxing issue – the New York debate
A taxing issue – the New York debateDraftKings’ and FanDuel’s New York tax arguments examined, recent analyst takes +MoreGood morning. In this issue #4 of Due Diligence, E+M teams up with Paul Leyland at Regulus Partners to examine the arguments put forward by the operators in recent hearings in New York for lowering the tax rate.
Your love is such a thrill but your love won't pay my bills. Let it pleadHow do the arguments in favor of a lower tax rate in New York stack up? Grass is greener: During a legislative committee hearing in Albany, DraftKings CEO Jason Robins and Christian Genetski, president at FanDuel, argued that without a lower tax rate, New Yorkers would suffer a worse offering than what is available in neighboring states or offshore.
** SPONSOR’S MESSAGE ** SmartPay by CoinSmart offers crypto pay-in and pay-out solutions for the i-gaming sector and other emerging markets. We are publicly traded in Canada, highly regulated and licensed to offer best-in-class crypto payment processing globally. Schedule a demo and see how easy it is to integrate crypto payments into your platform. Book a demo HERE. Not buying itThere must be another way outta here: The committee then turned to the question of what would happen if there wasn’t a change in the tax rate; with Assemblyman Gary Pretlow asking what was the Plan B? Robins responded that the operators would be “forced” to take actions that would lower the quality of offering for New Yorkers. This would include:
Is that it? Paul Leyland from Regulus wasn’t impressed with the strength of the arguments put forward by Robins and Genetski. “They put forward pretty bad arguments,” he suggested. “The case for why they would want a change in the tax rate is blindingly obvious.”
Collusion illusion: Indeed, throughout the hearing both Genetski and Robins tried out various arguments that appeared to be less than persuasive. Take the issue of whether New Yorkers would really suffer worse odds than those available in the rest of the regulated states:
Further reading: Compliance+More looks into the slim chances of iCasino success in New York. Paradise lostCarrot/stick: The tack the operators have decided to take is to suggest that if the tax rate is left as it is, and the legislators sit back and leave the tax rate unchanged, then the players, seeing less value in New York, will move back into the illegal space.
The comparisons: Another major claim is that New York is trailing the performance of other states. Publicly, at least, there is limited year-on-year data with – as it stands – only one month’s data in January to look at. The first YoY comparison shows growth with GGR up over 20% to $149.4m and handle up over 7% to $1.79bn.
CarnivorousI eat cannibals: Despite being more relevant to the debate over the potential introduction of iCasino in New York, the issue of cannibalization was raised and Genetski suggested that in other states with iCasino there was no evidence of that happening.
Eating your own lunch: Here, as Leyland noted, the arguments are at best tendentious. He pointed to research from Deutsche Bank produced back in 2021 that suggested iCasino was showing signs of eating into land-based gaming revenues.
Boxed inThe blame game: One point of contention put forward by Robins looked at how the operators had managed to put themselves in a position where they were so heavily disadvantaged by a tax rate that they had themselves agreed to as part of their licensing bids.
Bad students: Leyland argued that one takeaway from the New York hearing is that neither company has learnt the lessons from the failed California Proposition campaign in November. And this has wonder implications for the future advances of OSB and iCasino.
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