Risk Takers Podcast - Dillon Borgida

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hagrinBPR Review Date: 2024-03-20 06:54:40
Rating: 7.50

Notes:
Dillon Borgida - early employee of FanDuel, one of the first VIP hosts. Then to DraftKings to run the VIP acquisition/growth team. This was a very fascinating pod because you so rarely get this perspective communicated so openly. Disagree on some stuff, but overall a very compelling look at the “other side”.

10:20 - “The sharp community seems to jump on this that these guys betting 6 figures at these books and not limited are morons” … “they might lose at like 1% or breakeven because it’s good for marketing, but not at 30% like the SGP guys are.” This is sort of a strawman - the reaction from people I respect is usually that “these people don’t win long term” which is still accurate by the following sentence - my general opinion is the people going overboard on Twitter name calling aren’t actually the sharps you are looking for /Jedi handwave.

11:30 - “I actually met Spanky in 2019 who recently called me a punk ass bitch.” Might actually be an endorsement coming from Spanky! Dillon actually fought to allow Spanky to bet there because of the marketing angle, but overruled above. Think that’s super forward thinking because Spanky’s social media reach has vastly increased since that time.

16:00 - Payments / Rewards the two big items for retail bettors, but not price. This is a point we have heard many times before, but I liked hearing it from someone on this side of the operation because it really does show that price insensitivity with retail is real (and a real problem).

20:20 - Discussion about bonuses in the early legalized customer acquisition days. Obviously, between sharps and bonus abusers this program has to be severely limited / adjusted. However, at 20:45 “it’s great when you can use it to acquire the real heavy hitters” which imo cracks open a window I have been interested in when it comes to cultivating a profile that either these in-house efforts or something like idPair will flag as an attractive potential VIP user for some eventual smash and grab across all the operators. I have no idea what specific numbers would be needed to make this approach worth it, but it seems like a window I’d like to keep open if you’re a user who didn’t cash in on the bonus grind in the past.

31:05 - “I know of a book that limited two players who were another book’s best players” (1 bet bad line, 1 possibly part-time beard who also degening into Chinese basketball).

34:20 - “What is a VIP” program discussion. Around this timestamp and before the host GP makes a great point about “putting yourself in the shoes of the operator & VIP hosts” and it’s very valuable to do that exercise every so often. Dillon mentions later about getting a request from a whale that wants to bet a game courtside and, while very basic and simple, thinking about how to exploit a business whale handling SOP can be very beneficial - Dillon giving out great content from the other side. 35:00 - “I think there’s too much responsibility on the VIP hosts & operators to monitor that” (re: responsible gambling). Not sure about that one folks. 40:15 - this moral quandary about taking money off of people who can’t afford it and GP mentions from the poker aspect. 41:00 - WSJ article that mentions VIP programs. 50:35 - “You can never wipe out / stop offshores.”.

52:15 - idPair discussion.You can fire this segment into the sun. It totally misses the point, it lacks any understanding of the full scope of “digital identity”. (Source - I’ve been working on digital identity tech and issues since 1999, I even built a tool that does something similar tech wise for tech for chain forensics tasks.) Just bad.

1:05:20 - “The VIP team isn’t over analyzing the person’s profile - it’s mostly volume.”

1:06:35 - This is the good stuff. “Before you make a deposit, if I was sharp, I would try and get in touch with a VIP rep at every sportsbook.” Very smart and I totally agree that the Information Warfare battle starts before you ever deposit. “Don’t ask questions about price.” “Get screenshots from a non-sharp’s account.” “It gives you this chance that if it’s a close decision, you have someone fighting for you.” Fantastic point, great social engineering / human hacking angle. “Don’t be afraid to ask for something big.” Interesting idea - I wonder what the optimal approach is here and how and who brings the subject up. “High variance style can open up hospitality opportunities” - interesting angle as well. “The people in these roles (VIP) are good people to know and there’s value there.” - never thought of this point, very interesting brings up FD coworkers and how they are all in prominent roles. Great 15 minutes here.

1:22:15 - “There’s little content on the business of the industry.” Well, there’s a pretty good podcast called Business of Betting, start there and the host Jason is knowledgeable and very open minded if you have ideas for content I would ping him & I’m sure he’d produce content in this arena for people looking to work in the industry.