00:00 Let's change the subject fairly quickly.
00:03 You didn't even know, nobody knew a few years ago,
00:06 whether it would even be legal.
00:07 You know, 38 states later,
00:09 now everybody's talking about how to maximize gaming.
00:12 What's your take on the future of the revenue from the game,
00:16 how you manage it and how you maximize
00:19 its awareness and likability?
00:23 - So three things when it comes to gaming.
00:25 Number one, it's here, like it or not.
00:26 So we can talk about whether or not you're a fan of it,
00:28 not a fan of it.
00:29 It really doesn't matter.
00:30 I mean, last year, $150 million was spent on the US Open
00:35 in terms of wagering.
00:36 So whether I was involved in that,
00:38 whether the USGA was in the game, doesn't matter, it's here.
00:41 Second thing you can know about it is,
00:42 it fundamentally delivers a different audience,
00:44 at least to our sport.
00:46 It's young, it's interactive.
00:49 You know, they follow your sport on their phone
00:52 and not on their TV or on their iPad.
00:56 And because it's that way, they stay with you much longer.
00:59 So you get this younger audience that stays with you,
01:02 you know, on a much longer basis.
01:03 The third thing is in order to be,
01:06 in order to control the wagering on your game,
01:08 in order to make sure that you can keep it
01:09 from being a bad thing in your sport,
01:12 you gotta get in and own the data.
01:14 You've gotta be the best at the data production
01:16 and the data collection.
01:18 And in just doing that, you know,
01:19 this is what I said to my board about a year ago,
01:22 in order to actually make sure that no one's doing bad things
01:24 on the US Open or the US Women's Open or the US Amateur,
01:27 we've gotta be the data king.
01:28 And to be the data king, you end up resulting
01:31 in a much better stat base for your sport.
01:33 I know more about my sport and will know more
01:36 in the next few years because of what gaming requires you
01:39 to get into.
01:40 I'll also, because I'll be into that through that activity,
01:43 I'll be able to tell you on a Monday after the US Open,
01:45 who bet on who and how much money was spent
01:47 and which things are different
01:48 from what the expectations were.
01:50 So I can kind of review and pursue and investigate
01:53 anything that's strange.
01:55 And the last thing I'd say to you is for every sport,
01:57 and every commissioner like I did at the LPGA,
01:59 and I'm dealing with here at the USGA,
02:01 is whether you like it or not,
02:04 and whether you manage it or not,
02:06 somebody else will manage the betting on your sport.
02:08 So if you really believe in the sanctity of your sport,
02:13 the ethics of your sport,
02:14 and making sure that it stays clean, it's your job.
02:16 It's your responsibility to figure that out for the sport.
02:19 Otherwise, someone's gonna figure it out for your sport.
02:21 So yes, there's some benefits to it.
02:23 There's certainly some downside risks
02:25 and you gotta manage those.
02:26 But if you outsource that
02:28 and just let some other gaming company
02:29 become the king of gaming in your sport,
02:33 I think you'll wake up wishing you didn't follow that path.
