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- [00:00]
A
I was recently on whatnot the other day, just shopping around, looking frankly, because I was just blown away that this is something that people are doing with their time. And so I was like, I got to go see if this thing is real before I talk about it on the show. And so I'm browsing whatnot, looking around, finding things, and it's crazy to see the volume of people that are just having fun in the chat. They're watching people do live shopping. It's like, it's like, you know, QVC directly on your phone. It's something you need to try, I'm telling you. Not just buying, but the selling piece to too. Where these people are just starting up pop up shops and businesses, selling whatever product, finding their people, building community, getting repeat customers that come back to see your face as the seller. Not just a logo or a brand, anyone can sell. Whether your business is big, small, or yet to exist, people selling on whatnot sell 10 times more than on any other major marketplaces. And that's because you're not just listing products, you're building real connections with buyers across Whatnot. The number of sellers making over $1 million a year has now doubled. The consistency pays off for those sellers. It's not just side hustle, it's a real path to building something that lasts. Because whatnot buyers spend more than an hour a day in the app, they're not just browsing around, they're engaged, they're buying, they're coming back. You go live, show off your products in real time and turn what you love into real income. So search whatnot wh o t Whatnot in the App Store, download it today and get started selling right away. What's up, moneymakers? Welcome back to the Travis Makes Money podcast. Today I'm giving you a sneak peek of this week's episode of my main show, Travis Makes Friends, a podcast all about the most valuable asset that we have in our lives, our relationships. So whether we're talking about your network, your marriage, your friendships, or even your relationship with yourself, these conversations are designed to help you grow, connect and level up in all areas. I've sat down in person with everyone from world class athletes and entertainers to bestselling authors, entrepreneurs, and even former presidents. And you're going to love the snippet from this week's episode. So take a listen and if you're feeling it, go check out the full conversation over on Travis Makes Friends. Let's get into it.
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B
So about 20 years of operations in the gaming industry went from UK sportsbooks to international poker rooms. Paradise Poker and PokerStars took three of those companies to global number one. In the days before, online gaming regulation had turned up in each US State and in different international countries. And got to a point around 2018 where I was invited for a job interview in Malta. Okay. In the Mediterranean island in the European Union.
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A
I've heard great things about that island, by the way.
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B
Malta's a beautiful society, a beautiful island as well. And it has an online gaming model going back a couple of decades. Malta has licensed lots of companies. Okay. I got invited by one of those companies to basically run a whole bunch of their sportsbooks and casinos. And I went in for the interview. While I was waiting for the interview, the building was raided by the police and they took out a whole bunch of people and arrested them. When I asked the lady for at the reception, what's going on with my interview? I've been waiting for like an hour. She was like, they all left already with the cops.
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A
They're detained currently.
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B
They've been detained by the local police.
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A
They are getting interviewed now.
- [03:10]
B
Yeah, okay. So that's a bullet I dodged there. Not being in that office at that time. I had nothing to do with them. Obviously. They turned out to be running illegal casinos and sportsbooks. And I was like, okay. We've all known for years in human history Crime loves certain businesses to put his money into. Crime loves being around certain businesses. Gambling, it loves being around, typically because of money laundering. I've got a lot of money from weird places. Drug trafficking, human trafficking. I want to launder it through another business. So gambling's been useful to them in that way. You only need to look at this city of Las Vegas. I often refer to Las Vegas as Vegas learned a lesson from its inception. And then it got to the late 70s, early 80s. Tourists didn't want to come to Vegas anymore because it was synonymous with crime. People weren't enjoying living here anymore because there was so much crime involved. So Vegas and Nevada as a state got to a point where they went, we're going to kick some crime out of this industry, kick some crime out of our state as well. And it's called the Las Vegas lesson. As I see it, they basically saw that crime had taken a hold of the soul of this state and they got rid of it. And then they put in the Nevada Gaming Control Board. Nevada Gaming Control got rid of crime by putting in processes and practices that detect crime and keep crime removed at the kind of brick and mortar level. They also do that online now. Too. The problem is we're all drowning in a wave of criminality came to this industry and it changed in how it looks at it. It didn't just come here for money laundering anymore, it came to control this business. That change particularly happened around the time of the pandemic. So online gaming has always been attractive to certain groups, criminal groups, transnational criminal groups. Why? Because they want the money from this industry. Highly lucrative, high net worth industry. Okay, so they want the money from this industry. But what they also learned is a lesson from the tech platforms. People like Facebook, people like Meta, they learned a lesson from them, which is control of human data. So get that data, because the person who spends money on gambling, you can also sell him a lot of other things. And that person will need a lot of those other things. Because if I spend money on gambling, my bank may not now loan me money for a mortgage or a car loan. But the guys on the Internet who know my data from illegal gambling, they'll find some illegal loans to lend me as well. So there's a whole bunch of stuff here, which is crime is interested in the tech platform audience data play as well. It's not just about making that short term money, it's about the long term play of I think this customer will lead to a lot more money for me as a long term proposition, how
- [05:33]
A
worth it is a VPN compared to like a private browser, you know, like Incognito Mode on Chrome versus having a VPN.
- [05:41]
B
So I'm glad you asked that. VPNs are one of my favorite subjects to talk about because everybody raises the VPN issue as if I use a vpn, I can kind of do whatever I want, access whatever site I want, porn, gambling, et cetera, I can go and find those things and nobody knows about it if you use a VPN with online gambling. Online gambling is time sensitive. Okay, so I want to place a bet. And what are the most popular forms of betting and gambling nowadays? They are live betting and gambling, live sports gambling, live dealer casino gambling. So you need to be connected and that takes time and you need this fast connection to be able to do those things. Because you want to place a bet on something that's just about to happen. Who's going to be given a yellow card in the soccer games, who's going to be sent off, who's going to be injured, what's going to happen in the next timeout. So all those things are time sensitive. When you use a vpn, it adds latency time to your connection. So now you won't be able to place your bets. So, yes, you'll definitely be able to use a VPN to open an account with a sportsbook in Europe, for example, until they start checking for your address. And they don't need a U.S. social Security number, they need an Austrian one and all these kind of things. So you might be able to open accounts using a vpn, you might be able to fund your account using a vpn, but you won't be able to use the product, really. And that's the problem. Consumers always come up against it of, okay, great, I've got an account with xyz, illegal gambling site, but now I can't do anything with it.
- [07:00]
A
Yeah. So it literally doesn't work.
- [07:02]
B
Completely useless, doesn't work for them. So with today's most popular products, live sports betting, live dealer casino, you can't use those with the VPNs. And the thing is about crime. Crime understood that and went, I don't want anybody to buy a vpn, subscribe to a vpn. Have to find me with a vpn. They want to be found in plain sight with everybody else. So when you look for BetMGM and FanDuel and DraftKings, all legal in American states, they also want you to find them the criminal sites too. They also want you to find affiliates who are recommending those sites. They want you to find influencers on social media who are pushing those sites. So the whole point here is crime, understood. Especially during the pandemic when we rewired consumer behavior completely with the Internet. Okay. Especially with online gaming, there was a piece of it where crime basically said, we want control of the soul of this audience because they're one of the most valuable online consumer audiences we've ever seen. Yeah, big spenders we're looking for. Yeah. 5.9 trillion a year in wagering is big spenders, isn't it? So globally, wherever you find online gaming, you will find a criminal industry. And as I often refer to the, is like an iceberg marketplace. So the marketplace we have is. There is one marketplace in each jurisdiction, the Nevada Online Gaming Marketplace. Overall, the United States Online Gaming Marketplace. Great British, German online Gaming Marketplace. There are two industries in there, one legal and licensed, one illegal and unlicensed and unregulated. From a consumer's perspective, I only see one marketplace.
- [08:24]
A
Yeah.
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B
Just trying to find some online gambling. I'm just trying to get my bet on the soccer, on the NFL game. They're just trying to do those things. And they obviously demand and desire these products because on average about 20 of the population in any nation on earth is looking for online gambling. Engaging with online gambling and what you're finding now is crime, understood implicitly. There is a product there which people want, a product there, which societies are now regulating. We have 195 countries on Earth. More than half of those are now regulated. There are rules around how you engage with gaming products. You have to be 18 or 21 years old as you do here in America. You have to restrict children. You have to allow for vulnerable audiences like self excluded customers. You have to make sure that people can put this kind of money in over these payment methods they can do on these products, lottery, casino poker, etc.
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A
This episode of the show is brought to you by AG1. I don't know about you, but I feel like I've been traveling quite a bit this summer and I'm leaving again next week. But you know, one thing that has made it into my bag every single time is a little bit of ag1. Summer vacation means different bet, different schedule, healthy habits put on pause waiting for the fall except for the 30 seconds that it takes to mix AG1 one scoop plus 8 ounces of water every morning. AG1 helps maintain energy, support gut health and support immune health. And it's clinically shown to support gut health and fill in common nutrient gaps. It's a daily health drink with multivitamin, pre and probiotics, superfoods and antioxidants. So one scoop 8 ounces of water. That's all you need. Even though summers your license to chill with all the late nights, long weekends, spontaneous plans. AG1 helps you keep at least one thing consistent, high quality nutritional support every single day no matter where you start your morning. I use this and you should too. Visit drink ag1.comTMM to get a free ag1 travel case with seven free ag1 travel packs in your welcome kit with your first ag1 subscription order while supplies last. That's drink ag1.comTMM this episode of the show is brought to you by Chime. Chime is changing the way that people bank. They offer the most rewarding fee. Free banking built for you, not the 1%. Chime members can benefit from up to 1150 in annual rewards fee. Free direct deposit unlocks the most rewarding way to bank a chime. It's rated five stars by USA Today for customer service with real actual humans 24 7, which is enough to do the thing by itself. People, come on. You're not just switching banks, you're upgrading to America's number one choice for banking. With a Chime checking account, you get 5% cash back on a Chime card and category of choice like gas or groceries. You get savings to grow faster with a 3.75% APY which is nine times higher than the national average. They also have Spot Me which lets you overdraft up to $200 fee free and you can even get up to $500 of your pay. When you say with something that they call my pay, I know my younger self would have benefited from this and you will too. Chime is not just smarter banking, it is the most rewarding way to bank. So join the millions who are already banking fee free today. Head to chime.com travis that's chime.com travis only takes a few minutes to sign up.
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Chime is a fintech, not a bank. Banking services for MyPay and Chime Card provided by Chime's bank partners. Optional products and services may have fees or charges, stated annual percentage yield and cash back for Chime prime only. No minimum balance required. Checking account ranking based on the J.D. power Survey published October 20, 2025. For more information on APY rates, MyPay, Spot Me and travel perks, go to Chime.com disclosures the more restrictions you put in, the more crime can exploit it. So they came with what the evergreen form of crime is in online gaming is regulation exploitation. You have a rule, I can bet from 21 years old, fine, I'll sell to 18 year old kids then, no problem. That's exactly what they're coming for. So every new rule you bring in, it's like you bring in, it's like having a Jenga tower. So you have a marketplace based on these Jenga bricks. Every time a regulator and a government says okay, well we need the age range to be 21 years old, there's one brick slider down. You just gave that one to crime. Unless you monitor, police, enforce and optimize. That's what my business GCI does. That's what my prior business which I sold to GCI YieldSec does. We basically focus on how do you protect audiences and make this a business that can provide for local commerce in state jobs, successful companies here in America. How does it provide for local community taxation that's raised from this industry and how does it protect and safeguard consumers, excluding children and making sure that for people who do want to bet and gamble online, they can do so with sites that are fair and safe. Because when I play that roulette wheel online how do I know it's fair and safe? But when it's been regulated by the state, regulated by the country, they are checking those things. They are auditing something again, that we help these sites with, something that we help state governments and national governments with. So we're helping people get to the point where it's a fair, safe and sustainable industry, but one that produces benefit for local commerce, community and consumers. The biggest issue I have with gambling is people can take a moral view of gambling and say, okay, why do you want to have gambling at all? It's a bad thing. People shouldn't gamble. Nobody should be advising you to do this. But it does exist, doesn't it?
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A
Yeah, yeah. That's not going to take away the demand. No.
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B
We can all dislike gambling as much as we want. Okay. We can all say, well, people shouldn't want this product. People shouldn't want to engage with it. We should stop everybody from gambling. But then look at the statistics online. Look at the data that we produce for our monitoring. Nearly 25 to 40% of the population is engaging with this stuff. More than that will see it because of the advertising online. So now you've got a problem where you can dislike gambling all you want, but that doesn't make the marketplace disappear. The marketplace is there. So marketplace is clearly being used by consumers, and consumers demand and desire these products. You need to look at yesterday's Mexico versus England game, which I was happily watching in a bar here in Vegas.
- [14:23]
A
Happily is a.
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B
Until Mexican fans started throwing coins and ice cubes at me. So I was really, really shocked and grateful for it.
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A
Not Vegas. Locals just want to say they were
- [14:32]
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tourists, have to be tourists. So everybody there was on their phones placing bets. I noticed from my knowledge of this industry, some are placing them with legal sites, some are placing them with illegal sites. So it's fascinating to me that when consumers want to do that thing, they will go online to the things that they use in their social media feeds, in their Instagram, in their TikTok, and they will find some gambling. We need to determine better what's legal and what's illegal there.
- [15:00]
A
Yeah, it's like trying to teach abstinence to teenagers instead of safe sex. It's like you can wish it all you want, you can demand it even. It just. It's not going to happen.
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B
No, exactly. You need to take a pragmatic approach to all of these things and you need to be realist about this stuff, that this stuff is going on throughout human history. From my understanding of the gaming Industry, and this again is something I've studied a lot. Gaming industry has produced human beings who basically are always gamblers. Now we used to maybe do those things in our life when we were hunter gatherer, cavemen. We used to do those things in business, we used to do those things in our social lives. Now we do it a lot more with our online digital lives. And gambling has become the product that, that's expressed through for many people. So we need to look at this and see that. I look at the gaming industry and see a business that can produce substantial good for local commerce, local community, local consumers, the three Cs as we call them. Okay, I see that ability to produce that good, all of that money. If you look at certain societies we work in, so we work a lot all over the world with governments and regulators and trade associations. We work a lot in the Southern hemisphere, developing nations. Okay, why do they want to work with us? Why were they the first people to adopt our services? We help them monitor the marketplace so that they can police, enforce and optimize their marketplace, get the best results from it. Part of those best results is making money from those marketplaces. And the making of money leads to the collection of tax. That tax then gets spent on protecting consumers and a whole bunch of other stuff like roads and schools and education and hospitals. And that's wonderful to have. Now, when you're in a developing nation and you need that money from tax and there are very few other levers you can push, like, well, how about we double the income tax rate? Oh, well, nobody's got jobs so they're not paying. Oh, how about we put it up on sales of goods? Okay, well, people are hardly eating, so how's that going to work out for you? Gambling's the one thing you can go to and say, okay, this is voter neutral. I can raise money from tax on this product without affecting any voters for the future. And I don't decimate the existing population who are struggling to make ends meet. And that's the case in many countries all over the world. Now, even here in America, where you have cost of living crises, even in Europe, when you have the same going on. So there's a point of this which is look at the benefit this industry can leave behind, can produce for you sustainably when you run it right, the problem is how many of us are running it right?
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A
At 5.9 trillion, would you say that that rough estimate, if it's illegal and unregulated, would it like, is that short? Do you think of the Actual total,
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B
I'd say that's conservative. So we tend to focus on, again, we're not just producing an estimate out of thin air here. We monitor all the online behavior of consumers on the Internet and where their choices are made. So I don't need to know from a platform and tech perspective, I don't need to know who you are, Travis, but I know where you are. And I know that you visited these sites this many times. I know which pages you were on, how long you were on those pages for. We use our own proprietary methods to get that data and we buy other third party data as well from social media platforms, et cetera. So we know that audiences demand and desire these products. To what extent do they demand and design them? We get to a value per visit. How much approximately are they spending? That's different in every state, different in every country. How much are they spending on these things and how much do they then leave behind? Two numbers come out of that. A handle number. How much was wagered, how much was spent on gambling itself. That's the 5.9 trillion number. That's for all countries on earth. How much is then left behind in profitability terms to the operators in that country, legally and illegally. Now, one example of that, we give estimates sometimes because we've seen so much data. So we do estimates on things like the super bowl and March Madness and the World Cup.
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A
World cup, yeah.
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B
We've said on the super bowl, we've done this every year for four years. We've said what the numbers are going to be prior to the event happening, that we've seen this much online behavior. We think the number's going to be 1.4 billion for legal sites in wagering and 4.1 billion for illegal site unregulated sites. This was a couple of years ago. Everybody went nuts on social media at the time, on X and platforms like that. And they were going, how do these guys know? What are they hacking? How do they get to that number? We get to that number by just consuming a whole bunch of data on audience behavior. When the numbers came out four weeks later. Because the legal numbers are always going to be published, aren't they? State governments publish these things. National governments publish. We saw this much gambling behavior. This much was paid in taxes. When the legal number was published, the 1.4 billion, we'd estimated the real number was 1.398 billion. So 1.4 billion, basically. Okay, wisdom rounding. So we got that number and everyone then went, how do they know?
- [19:33]
A
Yeah, right.
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B
It's Just data, it's just knowing how to grab the data, knowing how to consume this data from audience.
- [19:37]
A
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- [20:45]
B
behavior so when we're able to produce it, if we're right on the legal number, Travis, we have got to be right on the illegal number because it's an apples and apples methodology. We're looking at exactly the same thing. Where were you? How long for what pages did you visit? How much did you spend?
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A
Why do you think that it would be a 4x of illegal to legal? Like what advantages would people have to gamble illegally versus just being like, oh, I'll just go to one of the legal sites.
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B
So the advantages and disadvantages are irrelevant here. Consumers just want to get their bet on. That's what people are looking at. So I want to place a bet on the Rams in the Super Bowl. I'm going to place my bet, okay? I'm going to find that online. They will go to whichever sources they usually use across their kind of the ecosystem that they use. Search sites, social media, AI nowadays, increasingly I'm going to ask the question, where's the best place to place a bet? They will be given recommendations that are paid for. Obviously advertisers are looking to place those adverts there in front of them. When I put that information out in the public, I then basically can respond to it. Consumers basically are acting on. It's in their social media feed. It's in their search engine and large language model AI platform feed. They're going to get data back from that thing. They're going to act on that data and do clicks on it. Then they're going to basically make choices. Some choices we probably have to start admitting consumers shouldn't have. So consumers, yes, make all the choices you want. But when those choices are with illegal sites, when those choices are with sites who basically pay no contribution to taxes, pay no contribution to local licensing, when those sites are not giving you fair products because they're cheating you in the outcome.
- [22:15]
A
That's what I mean. Yeah. That's what's so crazy.
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B
So how do you know that that roulette table is being run correctly? How do you know that when they said that bet didn't settle this way? That's true.
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A
Right.
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B
So with live professional sports, at least you've got something you can base it on. I know that guy's goal. You need to pay me. I bet on that goal happening. But how do you know with an illegal site they're going to pay you? Because they're based offshore. They don't need to pay you.
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A
Right.
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They don't want to. They could just close down and set up another one tomorrow, which many of them do too.
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A
Do you think some of it's due to just ignorance, like they don't know the difference between legal and illegal?
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B
I don't think consumers see that. So again, consumers, they just see the ad. They go, I can bet here. Yeah, consumers are engaging in the marketplace that they see. What they see is much more than what we see when we're focused on this. So consumers are looking at the visible marketplace that we see in that iceberg example. We see the bright white shining cap, we see the bit at the top that's regulated and has taxes paid and is advertising on TV and billboards all over the state. As you were saying at the beginning, you see these billboards everywhere for these online gaming companies. With unregulated gambling, it's the invisible risk, but it's a structural risk to the entire marketplace. And they're both present in the same marketplace, aren't they? It's not like illegal gambling is somehow separate. You didn't need to go to the bad side of town to find some illegal gambling. You went online to Google, Facebook and you typed it in and you ended up with many gambling choices, more than 80% of which will be illegal.
- [23:35]
A
Wow.
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B
So that's the problem here is a case of volume and scale. The other problem is where have I been leaving my money habitually for three decades? Because we're now at the point, now we're in 20, 26, 96 is when we got that kind of wave of early Internet adoption here in America with fairly fast Internet connections, as you were saying earlier. And we're now at a point where basically consumers are going, okay, for three decades I've been betting with an offshore sportsbook. Why am I going to change my mind now? Okay, I can get bonuses from Caesars and BET, MGM and DraftKings and FanDuel. And I see their advertising everywhere and they're offering me XYZ and a free T shirt. I can go and use those sites. But how I see it, looking at the data over the last few years of legal online gaming In America, since 2018, what's been going on here is basically people use legal options like supermarket coupons. I'll buy my milk there because you're giving it to me for 50 cents, but I'm not buying all my groceries there. You must be kidding me. I'm going somewhere else because they have all the products, they have cheaper prices, they have more competitive offers. So if in America we've got 31 legal licensed states for online sportsbook, okay, we have seven states for legal licensed online casino and iGaming, online poker, et cetera. But there's a whole bunch of other states then where basically I can't do the thing that I can do with illegal legal online gaming. They have all the products all the time, the one stop gambling shop. So I can use those however much I want to and nobody's stopping me. And even if you tell me it's wrong, I've been using it for a long time and they did pay me the money. So you're looking at it going, why am I taking a restricted option versus the open option? And that's more competitive. So from a consumer's perspective, they see one marketplace. I don't think they differentiate or can differentiate between what's legal and licensed, what's not. Sure, there'll be a legal license logo somewhere on the page for a legal license site, but that can just easily be copied. And you don't even need to use AI for that. Just go and grab a GIF and put it on your page. They'll just lie if they need to because most people behind illegal unregulated gambling are crooks. At the end of the day, you're taking revenue and money from an audience that you are targeting and transacting with. But you've got no legal right to do that. A license is there because this business features risks. Those risks need to be acknowledged in the gaming industry. Businesses need to be run right. Look at the whole framework of Las Vegas. There's a lesson in this system which is basically showing you when you run it right. Look at the land based resort model that America developed here. That model got taken to Atlantic City, got copied by tribal casinos, got exported to China with Macau casinos. So that's a model that shows you in this crucible of commercial engagement that America is. When you get a model right, America knows how to make money from it. And with online gaming, that's kind of failed, hasn't it? We've got all this innovation that's possible in online industries in America. And yet with online gaming, the thing that we all thought would be a gold rush back in 2018 when we first started licensing it, that gold rush is a busted flush.