Digital Social Hour - How I Built a Fortune: DraftKings Co-Founder Speaks | Matt Kalish DSH #789

Episode Date: October 7, 2024

Get ready to dive into the incredible journey of Matt Kalish, co-founder of DraftKings, on the Digital Social Hour with Sean Kelly! 📈🎙️ Discover how Matt transformed a simple fantasy sports idea into a monumental success, leading the charge in sports betting across the U.S. 🇺🇸 Packed with valuable insights, this episode explores the evolution of DraftKings, the dynamic world of sports betting, and the tech-driven strategies behind building a Fortune 500 company. 💼 Tune in now and join the conversation as Matt shares his experiences, from his collegiate running days to navigating the competitive landscape of digital marketing and entrepreneurship. 🏃‍♂️💰 Don't miss out on this chance to learn from one of the industry's leading visionaries! Watch now and subscribe for more insider secrets. 📺 Hit that subscribe button and stay tuned for more eye-opening stories on the Digital Social Hour with Sean Kelly! 🚀 CHAPTERS: 00:00 - Introduction to the Podcast 00:27 - Interview with Matt Kalish 07:41 - Boston Celtics Discussion 15:30 - Overview of Sports Betting 16:50 - Cryptocurrency in Sports 22:29 - Upcoming Developments at DraftKings 25:50 - Impact of AI on Sports Betting 27:40 - Poker Player Profitability Insights 29:00 - DraftKings Going Public 30:27 - Getting Started with DraftKings 31:34 - Conclusion and Thanks for Watching APPLY TO BE ON THE PODCAST: https://www.digitalsocialhour.com/application BUSINESS INQUIRIES/SPONSORS: [e-mail] GUEST: Matt Kalish https://www.instagram.com/kalish https://www.instagram.com/draftkings_sportsbook SPONSORS: Deposyt Payment Processing: https://www.deposyt.com/seankelly LISTEN ON: Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/digital-social-hour/id1676846015 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/5Jn7LXarRlI8Hc0GtTn759 Sean Kelly Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/seanmikekelly/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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So yeah, things like that can just happen I feel like. That's how I felt about the MVP this season. Because I wanted Luka to win it but he wasn't even top two in most people's voting. Yeah. Luka's a major problem I think in the future. He's a serious candidate. Every year I feel like he should like be

top of the list yeah if they get one more piece they could possibly give the celtics a six to seven game series i think yeah yeah he's a big problem all right guys we got matt co-founder of draft kings thanks for coming on today man thanks for having me this is great it's been really cool to see the evolution of the company since I was in high school. Yeah. 12 years now, roughly. And we started with fantasy sports and now obviously the culture in the country has changed a lot. So sports betting is in about 50% of the US and being on the forefront of that really, really amazing experience. And I think the best is still yet ahead as well. So it's been quite the ride so far, though.

Was sports betting even in the picture when you started the company? Was that even on your radar? It wasn't. We played, initially it was fantasy sports. Poker had been a huge thing in the US for probably the early 2000s up until around 2009 when it got shut down. And there was tens of millions of people playing internet poker and obviously tens of millions of sports fans that didn't really have any good way to predict things or engage in the u.s maybe it was an office pool or like a bookie

or some kind of a legal offshore sports book but not a lot of ways to predict things in sports and so we felt like the combination of those two worlds like the skill-based gaming poker kind of with the lack of options in sports was a good situation for a fantasy platform to really um i think meet the need a little better which was people wanted to play every day right they loved doing drafts they loved predicting things they wanted a chance to win big prizes as well. So all that stuff led to DraftKings initially when we launched. And there was really no path to sports betting, though, at the time.

This was 2012. It was highly unclear how that would even come about. It wasn't legal yet. Yeah. And so I guess anything's possible, but there was no real way to know that that could ever open up in the U.S. Yeah, who would have thought, man? So a mixture of good timing and then just being there at the right place, right? Yeah, definitely.

I think we built up with just the fantasy platform. In the first five, seven years, we built up over 10 million users on the platform. And the same people that were playing fantasy are highly – they have a lot of affinity for sports betting and other prediction games too. So in the event that it ever opened up, I thought we had a really good audience. But yeah, we didn't sort of bet the company on that either. I mean, we weren't expecting it until it actually happened.

How's fantasy these days? Is it still as popular as it was? Yeah, fantasy is still very popular. I think there's a lot of people who like the simpler predictions that you find in a sports book. Just who's going to win or point totals and player

props and things like that. Fantasy hasn't slowed down a ton. There's still a tremendous amount of interest in DraftKings, but also the season-long formats that everybody plays there's definitely been some new models though like a lot of people have jumped into what they call best ball best ball is you just draft your team at the start of the year and then you have

to manage the team at all and much more passive you can just yeah draft and then watch and i've noticed that kind of like lighter touch fantasy game. That's become a little more popular recently. That would be my style if I got back into it, because I used to play fantasy, and that was a full-time job, dude. Yeah. You know, those waivers and... Yeah. What got me into fantasy originally was baseball too,

which was I was a distance runner in high school and college. Oh, same. Yeah, I did. What was your... 800 in the mile. Okay, yeah. I was even longer. I did cross country at least a mile okay yeah i was even longer i did cross country

at least a mile maybe two mile or 5k was my my length what was your 5k time um i ran 1550 fast i actually got into college off running i would say i had a 421 mile in high school and ended up going to columbia would have never got into any school like this. I mean, they were not looking at my academics, I don't think, on that. I was fine in school. I mean, I had maybe like top 20% in my class, but I wasn't the valedictorian in my class. You weren't Colombian. And so I needed the running.

And yeah, I got in Columbia, which was a great, I think, situation. But on these runs, we were running 80 miles a week. So we would talk about baseball stats. And that's when I got into it was a lot of the people on the team, they just knew every stat for every player. And we would talk for hours about that every week. And from there, I kind of got into football and other sports. Did you start the company with your co-founders

from the track team, cross-country team? No, so after college, I had a few corporate jobs. Kick off an exciting football season with BetMGM, an official sportsbook partner of the National Football League. Yard after yard, down after down, the sportsbook Born in Vegas gives you the chance to take action to the end zone and celebrate every highlight reel play. And as an official sportsbook partner of the NFL, BetMGM is the best place to fuel your football fandom on every game day.

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Gambling problem? For free assistance, call the Connex Ontario helpline at 1-866-531-2600 bet mgm operates pursuant to an operating agreement with i gaming ontario um i started initially in technology and i got a computer science degree and throughout my career i moved sort of from very technical to a little bit more sort of marketing and creative and operations type jobs but you know early on i met my partners at uh first jason robbins at capital one we were in business analytics and uh worked together for three years built a really good relationship we both had a lot of uh entrepreneurial interest but just didn't have the right thing we wanted to work on. And then we moved together to this other company called Vistaprint.

I've heard of them. Extremely boring product, but what was cool was digital marketing. At the time, it was like a skill set that was very valuable. And this was, call it 2009, 2010. There wasn't a ton of great companies where you could go and run digital marketing channels with a big budget and learn and test and build up that expertise.

And so we went there, learned a lot about digital marketing and direct response, and then met Paul Lieberman, who's our tech founder. Got it. Paul still today runs our product in tech, and us three eventually you know, eventually ended up leaving a Vistaprint and started DraftKings. Wow. The dream team. And the fact that you guys stay together this long is impressive, but just that alone. Yeah. Yeah. I think we maybe got lucky

with this, but whenever people ask me about founding teams or like they want to start a company and, and, uh, I'd say the number one thing i notice is a lot of founding teams don't have a great tech founder and we were very lucky with paul that you know he coded our original site he's not somebody that would be our cto today you know it's um probably beyond what he would want to be doing um but at the time when you're getting the ball rolling i just noticed like a lot of a lot of founding teams don't have a great tech founder and it holds them back a lot. Like they think that they can outsource it or whatever. And,

um, what's always been great about Jason, Paul and I, I think is it's very complimentary in terms of our skillset and what we do for the company. So, um, yeah,

it did kind of end up being, I guess, a dream dream team or like a very compatible team for sure. No, that's great advice because entrepreneurs don't really think about the tech side of things. When they're building a company, that's kind of the last thing they hire. Yeah, yeah. Some teams too, I think, very technical, focused on the product, but don't know how to hit it with a market fit and really make it earn dollars.

So yeah, you got to have the total package, I think. You need both. Congrats on the Celtics championship this season, man. Thank you. Thank you. I was, believe it or not, even being up 3-0, I just knew what the consequences would be if they blew it. And look, Boston was not going to be okay if we blew it and look boston was not gonna be okay if

we blew that series i think yeah i think there have been some trades yeah i think one of the jaylen or jason would have had to go if they lost that series oh my god yeah i mean that was the story last year yeah we had like robert williams brogdon marcus smart um they just said we didn't win, we gotta make some changes brought in Drew Holiday and Porzingis and yeah, a lot of people I think around Boston were more than a little

upset about the Marcus Smart trade they really love that guy and turned out to be probably the greatest trade in the history of the league yeah, Drew was a great pickup yeah, that was a great pickup. Yeah. Yeah, that was a crazy one. I mean, and you look back at the deal we got for Porzingis too.

Steel. We're getting picks. We're getting him. Really just masterful work, I thought, by the front office. Yep. Yeah, they're winners, man. They want to win. Well done.

Yeah. There was this one story I read about Wick. Wick Rosbeck, who's the owner or the managing. I think there's like a few owners, but he's the managing operator as well. And he basically said to the ownership, he said, you guys all made your money somewhere else. This is not going to be about making money. This is going to be about parades. Expect to lose money on this investment that you're making.

You know, it's like a culture lifestyle. Like we'll do what it takes to win. And so I always thought they operate that way, like relentless. They need to win. They'll make the plays. They'll make the trades. Do whatever it takes, you know. And, yeah, finally this year that paid off.

What a great mindset because a lot of teams are scared to dish out tons of money for players. Yeah. Yeah, you see that for sure, especially they got these crazy luxury taxes and everything now. You can pay. I think it's like if you go over a certain amount, you're paying 70% of that amount in luxury tax, you know, $100 million plus. It could get expensive, but, like, that's the culture. Yeah. It was one of the most dominant playoff runs, but that's the culture. Yeah.

It was one of the most dominant playoff runs I've seen in my lifetime. Yeah. They only lost three games. Yeah. Look, my wife and I, I have four daughters. Two of them are too young to be going. Two are old enough. After COVID, when they started bringing fans back, we got season tickets.

The Celtics were 40-1, I think to win the championship. This was before like people on the team were like Dennis Schroeder, Jay Rich, and some of these guys that ended up getting traded. And we brought in Derek White and kind of mixed up the team a little, but we got the seats probably at the last minute. It would have been possible, especially in a city like Boston where the fan base is rabid.

So we got these seats, started going to every game. This was our third season with season tickets, probably been to 150 games. And the run they've been on is just crazy. I mean, two finals. We lost in the East Championship last year in Game 7 seven, but yeah, it's such a time commitment and it's become just a huge part of my life and my family loves it. I've met so many friends through just being out, going to the games. It's incredible. Future's bright, man. I saw Tatum's post-game speech and he was damn near

crying. Yeah. I mean, it was cool to see him get one for real. He had a lot of pressure. Yeah. These athletes are under so much pressure to win. Yeah. And only one it was cool to see him get one for real. He had a lot of pressure. Yeah. These athletes are under so much pressure to win. Yeah. And only one out of 30 teams wins every year. Yeah. I feel like people would have been very happy to just write Tatum. Even now, you know, he wins the title. And nobody really wants to give this guy any credit for basically leading the team

in every statistical category consistently throughout the last three years, throughout the whole finals run. He's got more points than anybody ever, under 27. He's pretty dominant. He puts numbers on the stat sheet. I don't know what else to say. This poor guy, man, nobody wants to give him any credit so i think he just has to keep proving it year after year and not expect anything from anyone and yeah in the end though i think the numbers talk the achievements

talk the rings the you know all shocked he didn't win mvp? I kind of was. I maybe saw it coming a little because of how the media was talking about it. Saw it coming. It was... Look, if you're just looking at the stats, he was the MVP. But I think people wanted to put a lot of credit on the run Jalen has had. All these crazy clutch shots. Even not in the finals, you know against the pacers he hits this three with two seconds left to tie it and they win in overtime and like the momentum

swings the defense the like intangible stuff i feel like a lot of value got put on the intangible stuff and that being said like you know both of them i thought deserved it yeah it was close i wonder how they picked that is it like a committee or do you know how it's i thought deserved it yeah it was close i wonder how they picked that is it like a committee or do you know how it's yeah it's writers they have writers i think it's 11 or 13 writers these are people from like the athletic or espn or whatever they all just vote and the majority wins so in this case i think it was like five people voted tatum got it and maybe eight or jaylen brown or something like that that seems like a weird way to pick it to me. Yeah.

You know what I mean? Yeah. Because if you're a writer, you're going to have some bias. Yeah, definitely. Like you're covering the game kind of emotionally. I noticed. There was this funny one. Marcus Smart got Defensive Player of the Year.

Yeah. Kind of a similar thing. It's the writers and everybody in analytics land was just baffled. How did Marcus Smart get defensive player of the year? This guy, I really respect his analytics chops, Haralibis Vulgaris, Haralibob on Twitter. Big name in gambling, like one of the best, most successful NBA gamblers ever.

He was on Mark Cuban's team on the Dallas Mavericks helping him with analytics. A genius level stats analytics guy. He said, Marcus Smart's the third best defender on the Celtics. How did he win?

Tatum, there was arguments for that. Tatum and Jalen Brown and even guys like Robert Williams, like people that you could make a real argument had more defensive impact. But still, though, I think writers, they see the game, they factor in intangibles a lot more. It's not just the stats. So, yeah, things like that can just happen, I feel like.

That's how I felt about the MVP this season, because I wanted Luka to win it, but he wasn't even top two in most people's voting. Yeah, Luka's a major problem, I think, in the future. He's a serious candidate. Every year I feel like he should be top of the list. Yeah, if they get one more piece, they could possibly give the Celtics a six- to seven-game series, I think.

Yeah, yeah, he's a big problem. I think Luka's... There's a bit of a run of the centers, I feel like, taking all the MVPs. Yeah, Jokic and Giannis. Embiid, yeah. Embiid, yeah. Giannis, like all these guys. And it's easy right now, I feel like, to give it to those guys

when they're scoring 30 points and blocks and all the – like the stats are crazy so i get it but um yeah if i could start a team with one guy in the league it would probably be luca i mean wow i don't know i'm trying to think like who else even has a really good argument for that it's probably luca i mean he's he's a serious problem yeah do you sports bad at all are you allowed to i do um you know what's funny is probably one of my least forms i love gambling i mean i'm in the industry obviously but yeah it's because i love the products but um i love casino games i love fantasy i let i probably sports bet the least of anything in terms of gambling, to be totally honest. I'll do the big events.

I had a Celtics future, so I finally hit that. Oh, nice. When did you put that in? I had a couple. I did one that was like the Michigan college football parlayed with the Celtics. Damn. And I was just sitting on this thing. And so I had a couple things like that where I'd just work it into bets and try to build up a little bit of a position there

so that was a nice one that was a six figure like my biggest win ever on sports betting so that was really cool but I would say I play like more blackjack or even with my wife we'll play slots or whatever I mean everything I hate slots

the girls love it though it's entertaining I feel like the argument for slots is you don't have to make a lot of decisions very entertaining the bonus all the all the um creative work that's gone in yeah they're kind of like activating ip or coming up with cool bonus rounds and things i feel like has made these games really entertaining. So like I could sit there and just, you know, you hit the button. It's fun. Yeah.

You gamble on crypto at all. Yeah. I've had my crypto runs. I would say, you know, during COVID that became a pretty big, I went super deep. I mean, 2001 to 2002 extremely deep and look i through that experience i think i decided it's not going to be a major part of my life but it's a i would say hobby i mean like i follow the markets i still have a lot of different like holdings um but i just felt like it way it sort of like interact with my ADD stuff or whatever, it was just not great. Like the NFTs and everything.

I just found like collecting. At the time, I had like sports cards as well. Yeah. I feel like the way it just interacted with my brain was a little bit like, I don't know. I always felt like a little bit disorganized cluttered create i'm like i have thousands of things all over the place i have to do taxes i have to so it was all the overhead of like managing all that stuff just kind of made me want to get simpler with my life so at this point i feel like with crypto i'd rather just either invest in something someone's

doing like a product or a business or just keep it pretty simple with like, yeah, have Bitcoin, have like some limited amounts of like premium NFT stuff or whatever, like stuff that's maybe less onerous to manage, you know? I got wrecked on NFTs. Oh, yeah. And sports cards. Yeah, you know, the person who got me into nfts was gary vaynerchuk he sent me and to his credit he sent me crypto punks and he sent me a couple other things initially and so the one thing i made a lot of money on in nfts was crypto punks did you sell it though because they're down i still i mean i've sold a lot like i have probably 10 right now oh you got a lot yeah i still have 10 damn yeah

they're down to 25 Ethereum right now. Yeah, yeah. I think it's like a little under 100K market cap. Or, sorry, like the floor price. Yeah. And I think it was 200K a month or two ago. So it definitely has, with the like shit coin

and the Solana coin and everything, it's definitely not the focus for people. And yeah, if that's happening to crypto punks everything else is decimated i mean stuff is worth zero practically um it's it's a really tough market you know like what i liked about nfts and what i always thought was the potential was i just didn't believe that the raw material of like physical cards or like it's so not valuable like the one cent of making a baseball card that is not expensive so the value has to be in the art the scarcity like the demand you know like there's some other form of value that's not the physical material, right?

So, therefore, like, what's the difference between digital or physical? Like, to me, that was the, I guess, bold case. So, I really still think that's true. But the blockchain, like, NFT stuff with all the – there was just, like, a lot of, I think, technical-wise, like, a lot of complexity to it, hard to pick up in mainstream, a lot of hype. There's also a lot of scams, a lot of people just losing assets or somehow, some way, just getting scammed or frauded or whatever.

It's tough. I think current tech and how that worked with the collectible space just wasn't good enough and it just couldn't hold on so yeah i don't know what will happen in the future there but i think if they can't get to a sort of tech and a user interface that's more easy for people to just adopt that feels as easy as opening baseball cards and putting it in a plastic holder and like if it can't be that easy and if there's this many scams and this many people like losing money to fraud or tech problems or whatever it's just not i think ever gonna get to that level so great yeah we'll see what happens i was really pumped for the metaverse i even bought the quest i used it once i haven't used it i mean i was just disappointed yeah it was super blurry the graphics were old and the metaverse i was really pumped about and

just seemed to be a letdown for now yeah yeah i think so too we'll see what happens if you think about it like most people spend so much of their time on the internet anyway like metaverse um i played 30 days of game time in World of Warcraft when I was in college or like the first year out of college I probably could have played it forever I quit because I was like

oh my god I spent 30 days of my life in this game and that was 2004 maybe why is that not metaverse what are we even really talking about here and i just feel like people spend so much of their time on internet platforms social anyway like i don't really understand the vision of like what people are moving towards in that

in that world that's distinct maybe from uh and i'm not saying it like nothing will get created that's exciting in the space i just kind of decided like i don't think i'm not saying it like nothing will get created that's exciting in the space i just kind of decided like i don't think i'm going to spend my time there in a big way um and you know like i'll follow it i'll just kind of follow it and see if somebody does something that gets my blood pumping you know what i mean yeah absolutely anything exciting for draft kings coming up that you're working on yeah draft, DraftKings is insane right now. 2018 was when we launched sports betting. And at the time, nobody really knew who was going to have the leading platforms in sports betting.

A lot of people thought casino companies like MGM, Caesars. A lot of people thought the European gambling operators that were really big, like the, whatever, Bet365, or like these companies, William Hill, the ones that had decades of experience in the space. And the way it turned out, it was really DraftKings and FanDuel, you know, like the ones that had the big existing fantasy player audiences in the US that had maybe like five to eight years of relationship building

with that audience. We were really in a great position. So as states started opening up, initially it was just Jersey for 2008 and a lot of 2009, and a couple more states come. Now we're in the majority of the country you know we're in um uh just crossed 50 percent u.s population coverage with sports betting and uh the frequency that states are just popping up and launching it really is a state-by-state launch it just keeps us incredibly busy even though you know we're we're pretty scientific with it now it's been

just persistently just crazy and then it's also an industry that's very competitive it's probably one of the most competitive most heavily regulated industries there's always changes in you know the thinking about how it should work in the u.s the rules can change the um the type of media the industry gets is always evolving and changing. It's just never a boring day, pretty much. Yeah, I bet. Are you guys scared of any AI coming in and just wiping all the bettors out because they're so good at sports betting?

Not so much. I guess who knows, because I don't want to predict everything that could come up in the future. But we have pretty great tech. I mean, our tech is strong. I think anything that comes from an innovation standpoint in the same way that it could help and hurt. It could help our company be more efficient

with how we set odds and everything in the same way that it could help anyone you know with precision on their end so i don't know exactly like all the forms that that might show up but i think most of the ways that the ai kind of momentum's been hitting us is um how we can operationally be better, like better quality, better quality assurance, copywriting, marketing, customer support, customer service, like a lot of areas that I think are repetitive, heavily manual sort of tasks and things like that. I've just noticed like impact from some of the current tools

and resources out there. A lot of the stuff we use in marketing and other functions, like those platforms, a lot of them are integrating AI solutions as well into the platform. So you kind of automatically, the company's getting better through that technology automatically in a lot of ways. I've had some of the top sports bettors on the show, and some of them use AI, and they'll give them a 1% or 2% edge.

It's pretty fascinating. Yeah. Yeah. Look, I mean, that's a fascinating business. I used to play a lot of poker. I used to try to make money. I wanted to make money playing poker. There's always an appeal to me, because I thought that that was such a tough thing to do.

You're kind of going out. You're playing games that aren't really designed it's not a job right like sports betting is not a it's not built to be a career for people it's sort of like uh some people though find these sort of like slivers through which like you know i feel like i have an edge here or whatever and so it's kind of like not inherently how the product's designed, but it creates opportunity for people to build those sort of things, strategies, tools, whatever, and try. So I always thought that that was fascinating, like this sole proprietor mindset where you just go out and you're like,

I'm just going to figure out a way to make dollars off this. But that's a tough business, man. I mean, that's really tough. I feel like a lot of people on the internet try to make that sound easy. You know, buy these picks or like Vox or something. No, that stuff's like, to me, that's the worst. I think it builds like some false hope in people's mind.

Like, oh, I can just read an internet article for two seconds and like print money. Like you can't, you can't, if you gamble, like you're going to lose money pretty much. Right. And, um,

yeah. So I always though have been very impressed with people that can like find a way to make a living off the, off those things. Very few people. Yeah. It's like a tough thing to do. Really tough. And they stay silent for the most part.

The ones that are gassing up their numbers are usually just making money off picks. Yeah. Were you a profitable poker player? I was for a minute. Well, I never played for a lot of money. I'd never really had money my entire life, to be honest, up until DraftKings going public three, four years

ago. Because when I was growing up, my parents wereraftKings going public three, four years ago. Because when I was growing up, my parents were in the military. My dad worked in a prison. My mom was like a hairstylist. This was in New Hampshire. I grew up a combination of Mass and New Hampshire, like in suburbs.

The first time I even knew about Ivy Le or like cool colleges like that was through running because I was getting recruiting calls from the coaches and I'm like oh yeah that sounds like a good opportunity for me whatever so I think it was really like after college I started like um getting a bit more of a horizon on what's even possible out there or whatever and I just didn't have any money though I didn't know ways to earn money either so poker i liked because i could put in maybe like 50 bucks i could study the game and try to win and but i was playing cheap like low like one two yeah so i would say in like five years of poker i probably won twenty thousand dollars oh that's it and playing very low stakes and that mattered to

me a lot and uh yeah it wasn't really till like my corporate career started kicking in that that didn't matter yeah um yeah that must have been a crazy moment then going public yeah yeah that was nuts it's definitely a big the guy like underestimated how much life like like how much um overhead there is as well to being in a situation like that like all the systems all the like you need tax person you need like whatever all this finance stuff that comes and hits you that like yeah i don't i don't know like all that change overnight right yeah it's like a change to lifestyle and change to like how to even like operate your house and stuff so yeah i feel like a couple years were just chaos you know and just getting infrastructure set up and everything and

and you know now i feel like we got a good grip on it but i learned a lot about like how there were options and all these different things work but um yeah that was that was pretty crazy actually the biggest thing i did after we went public, the one splurge was the Celtics tickets. And that's the one thing I'll never sell probably. And everything else, though, I was kind of... But that probably leads to opportunities, too. The people you meet and it's a family experience.

Yeah, yeah. I noticed that. It's a lot more like you see the same people 10, 20 times. The relationships start getting really good i mean and i've met a lot of people like i don't think i would ever you know really be talking to otherwise through through the celtics traveling for games all that stuff like spend a lot of time with their owners spend a lot of time with just different you know the restauranteurs the people that are influential around Boston. I feel like I just know

the city way better. Yeah. Plus it feels good when the team's doing well, you know, gives you something to root for. Yeah, absolutely. Matt, it's been fun, man. Where can people find you and get started with DraftKings? Yeah. I usually use sort of on Instagram, Matt Kalish, or on X, Matt Kalish as well. And then DraftKings. We're in the App Store. It's really easy to get. You go to DraftKings in the App Store, download the sportsbook. We give free bets just to start your account.

You get free credits just to try it and see if it's for you. So definitely easy to pick up and suggest everybody at least does that you know get a feel for the platform and think even if right now is not the best time with football coming around the corner that's really like the main peak you know september when football launches that's like far and away the biggest season for us yeah we'll link your stuff below thanks for coming on man that was fun yeah great meeting you absolutely thanks for watching guys as always check out draft kingsKings below and Matt's stuff. See you next time.