On today’s show, we have Adam Suliman of JACK Entertainment on to talk about legal sports betting in Ohio, and what betJACK is doing in preparation for it through Training Camp.
RYAN KNUPPEL
Hey, what’s going on everybody?
RYAN KNUPPEL
here, Knup Sports Show Episode #169. Hope you all are doing well, hope everything’s going well in your world. Hey, we have another very special guest today, as you all know, we love to interview people, business leaders, people making noise and doing great things in this crazy world of sports betting and online gaming, and today we have another really special guest. I’m excited to hear what they have going on in Ohio. Without further ado, I’m gonna bring in
ADAM SULIMAN
, the Vice President of Online Gaming at JACK Entertainment. Adam, how are you today, buddy?
ADAM SULIMAN
I’m doing great, Ryan. It’s good to see you.
RYAN KNUPPEL
Really good to see you, I’m glad you joined me today. How’s everything there in the great state of Ohio?
ADAM SULIMAN
Uh, it’s never better. I mean, you have an official launch date that was announced for, uh, real money sports betting, you know, January 1, ’23, so uh, we’re all uh, all steaming towards that date at great speed, so it’s pretty, pretty exciting.
RYAN KNUPPEL
Before we dive in, do you, and Bet JACK, and all of the above, let’s talk a little bit about that date, and kinda, has there been a lot of anticipation leading up to that, and is it finally a relief to, like, have a date when it’s going to become legal in Ohio.
ADAM SULIMAN
Uh, you know uh, yes, for sure, it’s a relief to have a date, and to have a firm date, you know. The legislation in Ohio always had January 1 as the latest that we could go live, right, but there was a lot of talk in the industry of, you know, “Maybe we can go earlier”, you know, I think there were some aggressive folks, uh, in the industry saying, “Yeah we can be live by football season”, uh, you know, and we heard basically everything in between that and January 1st, ’23, so you know, it’s helpful as an operator in this space, because we have to plan for launching a brand new product, and, and this is a brand new industry in the state of Ohio, right? So we’ve gotta, got a lot of work to do so that when we go live, we do it the right way, and that customers get the product that they deserve so, it’s very helpful for us to have a, a firm date that says “Look, this is when you’re going live”, and now we can adjust all of our planning exercises to, to make sure that, you know, when we go, that the product is as good as it can be.
RYAN KNUPPEL
Yeah, and, and while some may not be happy that, ah man, January 1st is so far away, there’s a day, and hey, it’s a lot super than Florida’s gonna make it happen, so, I mean, look at the bright side, right?
ADAM SULIMAN
Yeah, that’s right, there’s silver linings everywhere. I will tell you, there’s uh, a number of my neighbors that were not happy when they heard that date. They stopped by my house and uh, and let me hear all about it yesterday, so…
RYAN KNUPPEL
Like, you have something to say about it, right? [Laughs].
ADAM SULIMAN
Yeah, right, exactly, exactly.
RYAN KNUPPEL
Well, awesome. Well, Adam, tell me a little bit about yourself, you know. Being currently the Vice President of Online Gaming at JACK Entertainment, I’d love to hear a little bit about your career path, and kind of what brought you to where you are today.
ADAM SULIMAN
Yeah, kind of a, an unusual career path, I think. You know, I started actually in the mortgage business, um, I worked for Dan Gilbert, who owns the Cleveland Cavaliers and Quicken Loans, and a bunch of other businesses up in Detroit, uh, for a number of years, um, and this is, you know, that was kind of my career, that was my job. I was in the mortgage business, and did a lot of process improvement work and technology work for that organization as it scaled, um. And then around 2009, we won, uh, there was a voter referendum in the state of Ohio to legalize casino gaming, uh, however, nobody in our organization had any experience in casino gaming, uh, and for whatever reason, Dan called me and said, “Hey, do you wanna, you know, switch from the mortgage business to the casino business?”, and I said, “Well look, I don’t know anything about the casino business”, he’s like “Nah, it’s not rocket science, we’ll figure it out, right?”. So here I am, you know, twelve years later, still uh, still trying to figure it out, but I, since I’ve joined the gaming side of our business, we’ve built a few casinos, we’ve acquired a few casinos, we’ve sold a few casinos. Um, and uh, and have run anything from horse racing to digital betting to our process improvement group to, I think I was responsible for table games for a period of time as well, so I’ve, I’ve seen a lot of the business, um, it’s, it’s really, you know, nothing’s quite as sexy as mortgages, but casinos are pretty close, I guess.
RYAN KNUPPEL
Yeah, so, so for people that don’t understand, you know, there in Ohio, where are you located? Where’s the physical, uh, casino that you guys have, or multiple locations you have there in Ohio? Tell us a little bit about where you’re actually located.
ADAM SULIMAN
Yeah, so JACK Entertainment is headquartered in Cleveland, Ohio, so our primary home office is Downtown Cleveland. We have a, a large, full-scale casino outreach, and right downtown in the urban court of Cleveland, which um, is a great, you know, a kind of unique approach to casino gaming. Typically they’re out in the suburbs, so we kind of build ours right downtown. We also have another property just outside of downtown Cleveland called Thistledown. It’s a thoroughbred race track and racino property. And racinos are essentially just um, they’re, they do a lot of terminals, don’t have table games, no poker, um, but they will have sportsbooks, so we own those two properties in Cleveland. We recently sold a property that we owned in Cinncinati, um, and then, we’d owned a property in Detroit that we sold a couple years back, so, we’re all based in Cleveland now.
RYAN KNUPPEL
Very, very cool. Once that January 1st date hits you’ve got that sportsbook up and running. That’s gonna be on my bucket list to make sure I come to Cleveland and check it all out there, once we’re legal and live. Let’s shift, let’s shift focus over to the online side, right? ‘Cuz you’re really focused on online taking and, and, the, you know, how that’s all gonna work. And I know you guys have been preparing for this for years already, I mean, you guys have been doing this to kind of lead up to this, which kind of leads us into Bet JACK and some of the things you’re doing, uh, over there. Talk a little bit about that process and what you guys have been doing to prepare for this, uh, launch of online sports betting in Ohio.
ADAM SULIMAN
Yeah, to, to not take us to far back, but we, we started thinking about the, the digital space about five years ago or six years ago, and you know, I think there were a number of conversations we had internally where we just sort of saw this trend. It was right around when New Jersey went live with online casino, and, and there was a lot of chatter in the legislative hallways of the various states where we were operating, that iCasino was a potential outcome, right? And so for us, as brick-and-mortar casino operators, we need to figure out whether or not we’re going to take a defensive position and, and just sort of protect our brick-and-mortar business as best we could, or are you going to build up your digital capacity so you can compete in the digital space? And then we made the decision to do the latter, uh, so at the time we launched a free-to-play online casino product called Play JACK, it’s been remarkably successful for us, and we;re really proud of the work the teams done on that, um, and so that was really our first foray into the digital gaming space. And since then, you know, we’ve built out a completely separate platform for sports betting, which [inaudible] also our real money, online casino product when that’s stabilized in the state of Ohio, so it’s been a long road, we’ve certainly learned a heck of a lot, probably [inaudible] quite as well, but uh, but it’s a key part of our strategy now as an organization, to be an effective player in the digital space.
RYAN KNUPPEL
Yeah, I mean I think you guys went about in kind of a unique way, right? You know, with the launch and getting into more of the Bet JACK training camp that you guys have launched and you’re excited to kind of, kind of start getting people to play around with it before it’s actually legal, right? Explain a little more, and I’ll pull up the site here because I, I thin it’s a really cool product and I want you to talk a little bit about what the training camp is.
ADAM SULIMAN
Sure, yeah, thank you. Um, you know I, so we, well we recognized pretty early on through a bunch of focus grouping that we had done here in Ohio, is that, one, folks are really excited about sports betting, right? And that people in Ohio want to bet on sports legally, um, but we also realized through those conversations that the customers really didn’t know that much about sports betting. They weren’t very knowledgable about how to bet on sports, and frankly, some of them were intimidated by the sports betting, um, you know, nomenclature, just sort of the vibe, right? ‘Cuz it’s a big world, right? It’s a heck of a lot different than it was 20 years ago, when you just kind of picked the winners of the game. Um, nowadays you’re picking the winner of every quarter, you know, what is gonna happen on the next pitch, you’re combining bets together, you know, player props are much more complicated than I think they used to be, so, we built this platform for real money, but we realized that, “Hey look, we have it. Is there a way we can give this to our customers now, just so they can learn, right?”. Let’s give it to people in Ohio, they can mess around with it, they can figure out how sports betting works. And so we worked with our technical teams and, and we were able to convert it to a free to play product and we launched it in April, and essentially what the training camp is, is a, is a free-to-play sportsbooks, but it is exactly like a real money sportsbook, all of the normal betting markers you would see are there. Most of the features and functionality that we’re gonna have with our real-money product are available. There’s a few that we’re keeping, um, we’re keeping to ourselves and we’ll launch those with real money, but for the most part, this is the product that folks in Ohio can expect to see from Bet JACK, and um, our customers really seem to like it. I mean, you know, it’s practice, you know? You have the opportunity to make some bets, and maybe you’re making bets on sports that you don’t know a whole lot about, but you’re curious about, and you get to do it for free, um, and I don’t know about you, but I feel a lot better about losing free money than I do losing my real money. [Laughs]. So…
RYAN KNUPPEL
You know, I totally agree, and I think it’s brilliant way of going about here, Adam, because I think, one, yes, it helps the players, it helps them to really get a feel for how you guys are gonna come to market, right? I mean, it kind of lets them get used to it without having to wager real money. But also for you guys, it’s a huge win because you’re now able to kind of fix the bugs, or, fix the, I don’t wanna say “bugs”, but you know, fix the user experience so when it is real money, you guys are gonna be ahead of the game there, so I really think it’s a win-win on both sides there.
ADAM SULIMAN
Yeah, that’s a great point, and um, and I think it’s one that’s missed a lot, right? yes, for sure the product is good for our customers is good to take it through feet wet, and it’s, it’s a training camp for them. I think, you know, as you pointed out, almost as important is it’s the training camp for our team, as well, and to make sure that when we go live with real money, we’re completely dialed in, and we’re delivering a product and experience that we can be proud of and that our customers want. At the end of the day, that’s the goal, right? So anytime you can get a couple product test runs in before the real thing is usually a good idea. [Laughs].
RYAN KNUPPEL
[Laughs]. Dang, golf I need a lot of practice rounds before [inaudible]…
ADAM SULIMAN
Yeah, man, I’ve given up on golf for good. [Laughs].
RYAN KNUPPEL
Yeah, I don’t know if I’ve ever really started, but it’s, when you say practice round, I’m like, I’m always in practice round mode for golf. [Laughs].
ADAM SULIMAN
Yeah no doubt.
RYAN KNUPPEL
So let’s talk about, you know, I don’t know what I want to call it, the race to market, or like, so when January comes around there’s gonna be a number of licenses issued, there’s gonna be a number of operators all kind of jockeying for position. You obviously have the nationwide brands, you know, the Fandles and DraftKings of the world that probably already have some sort of play in Ohio, getting ready to play. How do you look at that and how are you guys gonna be able to compete with brands like that?
ADAM SULIMAN
Yeah, it’s a, it’s a fair question. It’s one that we wrestle with a lot, you know, I think there’s so much, um, there’s so much money in the system frankly, Ryan, that it’s hard to say you’re gonna compete against that. At the end of the day, you’re not gonna spend as much money as some of these big-notch brands, um, and so you have to find a different path, right? And I think ours is pretty simple story, really, you know, we’re a local company. We’re not a big national organization. All of our team members are here in the state of Ohio, and I think that gives us a kind of a natural hometown advantage. And I say that for kind of two reasons. One, hometown teams make a difference in states like Ohio, right? Like the, you know, and I think this is true for a lot of states, but Ohio in particular, you know, folks are either from Ohio or you’re from the rest of the country, right? If you’ve lived in Ohio, if you’ve been around folks that grew up in Ohio I think you know what I mean. It’s a lot, it’s like that for a lot of other states too, but Ohio in particular, so I think there’s something to this, you know, Ohio-made brand, I think makes sense. And then the other thing that I think is maybe even more important is that, you know, we have the ability to be a little bit more nimble than these national players, and we can focus on the sports and the betting markets that are most meaningful to the customer base here in Ohio, which may not be very meaningful for folks in New York, or Arizona, or Michigan, right? And I do think that that makes a difference, you know, I think customers want to, want to participate with products that are relevant to them. I know I do, you know, and so if I’m seeing promotions for Arizona playing Denver, that’s probably not very interesting to me as somebody that lives in Cleveland, right? I’d much rather place a bet on a game between the Brown and the Bangles, or read content and articles and listen to, you know, listen to podcasts that are talking about that particular game as opposed to ones being played on the West Coast, so I think that gives us a little bit more of a nimble approach, and, and frankly, at the end of the day, our philosophy is we just want to deliver a really good product experience to our customers here in the state of Ohio, and we get to, I think, ina very unique way, just focus on the state of Ohio, and I’m not sure that’s true for everybody else in the industry.
RYAN KNUPPEL
Very, very great answer there, Adam. I totally agree. I think it’s, there’s something refreshing about a local brand, a local company, doing stuff like this, and I love that you’re not necessarily thinking about it in the way you’re trying to compete with all these national brands. You are who you are, you know, you have that local feel and flavor and people already know who Jack is in Ohio, and so, I love that answer, and like I said, it’s refreshing to see, so I’m excited to see how you guys, uh, how you guys do, and I’m sure you’re gonna do great.
ADAM SULIMAN
Ah, I appreciate that, thanks man.
RYAN KNUPPEL
Yeah, so let’s shift, uh, let’s just shift real quick here, I know you’re a busy man, I’m almost done with you, I promise, but uh, let’s shift. I wanna ask a little bit more about the challenges. So, some of the challenges that have went into, you know, going from a concept to now you’re pretty close to delivering, right? And so, what are some of the biggest challenges your team and you have faced throughout this whole process of legalizing sports betting in Ohio, alright? What’s some of the challenges you guys have specifically faced?
ADAM SULIMAN
Yeah, well uh, one thing I can say off the top is that this industry is not for the faint of heart. It’s hard. This is hard work for sure. And you know, I had a colleague of mine from another company, not a colleague, I guess a counterpart of mine from another company, probably about half a decade ago, when I was telling him we were thinking about building a digital division, his company was already going through the same thing, he said, “Man, I don’t know if you wanna do that. It’s really hard”. And I was like “Ah, come on, how hard could it be?”, right? He was not kidding, it’s hard to put all of these different components together. You know, sportsbook on the surface, the part that the customer sees, is relatively straightforward, right? But the amount of wiring, for lack of a better term, that has to occur behind the scenes is, um, it’s overwhelming. It takes a lot of time to figure it out, right? So, fortunately, we’ve taken the time to do it, so that to me was one of the biggest challenges of somebody that’s not been in the digital gaming business before half a decade ago, you know, going through that learning curve of understanding how all of these differences need to work together, and they need to work together every time, right? Because the instant that one of them fails, your customer doesn’t get to do what they want to do, and that is, uh, a catastrophic error. So that was a big challenge for us, I mean, I think the, you know, the rest of it, because we’re already a gaming company, that the licensing component, the regulatory components, we are pretty well organized there already, right? Because we’ve been running casino properties for a long time, so I think that was a little bit easier for us than it perhaps is for some of the other companies that are new and trying to get into this space, but, I would say those two things, between the systems and platforms, and then the regulatory licensing components, those two things are probably the biggest challenges for anybody, you know, looking at this space.
RYAN KNUPPEL
Yeah, it certainly is a challenging area, and it’s kind of where data and all the live betting and all this stuff has to work so quickly, and always be [inaudible], I mean there’s just so much that goes behind the scenes to something like this. I can’t even imagine, I don’t envy anybody that’s doing something like this, but man, that’s uh, it seems like you’ve done a great job, and you know, you’re now just willing to wait for an actual real money product being live. That’s amazing.
ADAM SULIMAN
Yeah, it’s uh, it’s a big accomplishment for the team, and you know, it’s a testament to the people that are working on it right? I mean, there’s a lot of folks that are a heck of a lot smarter than I am, that are plugging all these wires, and, and I’m very thankful for them, I can tell you that.
RYAN KNUPPEL
Gotta have a great team, right? Gotta have a great team [inaudible].
ADAM SULIMAN
No question.
RYAN KNUPPEL
So, so most of the audience here, most of the audience watching this show or listening to this show is going to be iGaming business professionals, leaders in this space, what’s one thing, you know, before I let you go here, what’s one thing you’re looking for? If you need any help, what’s one ask you might have of the audience, I mean, if anything at all that you can just ask, what are you guys looking for help with?
ADAM SULIMAN
Yeah, it’s a great question, you know. I think what we’re seeing, particularly in the sports betting space, but even the iCasino space right now, is this massive, um, I guess growth in vendors sort of servicing this part of the business, right? So there’s all these really good ideas, um, really smart people that are trying to figure out how to do things better in this industry, which is great, and that’s exactly what you expect from a fast-growing industry like the one that we’re in now, um. You know, the one thing that I, that I think we all need to focus on as an industry is what’s the end game, right? So, we have all these really good ideas, but what does it mean for the customer at the end of the day, right? Does it actually make the customer’s life easier? Um, because that’s what we’re focused on from a product standpoint, right? Anything that we look at integrating at this point, it’s all about, “Okay, what does it actually mean to the customer at the end of the day?”. Does it make their process faster, does it make it easier? Does it just look cool? Like, what is the, what is the endgame here, right? And, um, so I think that as an industry, that’s what we need to focus on, because, the customers, they will participate in these products now because it’s new and novel, right? Will they continue to participate in these products if we’re not delivering the very best product experience five years from now? And I don’t, I don’t think they will, right? I know, me personally, I will try anything once, but if it’s difficult, I will probably not continue to use it, and I think as an industry, we just gotta be careful there, and i think we need to really focus on the front-end product. What does it mean to a customer? How can it be easier? How can it be more straightforward? How can we be super transparent in our promotions and our bonusing, so we don’t have customers that are confused about what they’re getting? And I think those are the things that are, that’s the top of my process, what we’re focused on every single day.
RYAN KNUPPEL
Amazing. Well, Adam, this was great. I really appreciate you joining me. Let’s do a little link dropping here before we go. Where do people go to check you out, and what you guys are doing, Bet JACK, what are some of the links that we can put in the show notes?
ADAM SULIMAN
Yeah, I think the biggest thing is to go check out the Bet JACK training camp product, you know, you can get it either at the Apple App Store, the Google Play store, or you can check out our web version at BetJACK.com. Um, and you go on there and play some bets with funny money, and see if you can hit that 14 leg parlay, Ryan.
RYAN KNUPPEL
There you go. Now, can people actually play the free-to-play game outside of Ohio?
ADAM SULIMAN
They sure can, so free-to-play is not regulated because it’s totally free to play, right? So, it’s not actually a gambling product. It really is an entertainment product. Um, so it’s one that we’re proud to put out there, right? It’s obviously not free to develop these things, and to maintain them, but we felt not only that it was a good marketing tool, but I think more importantly, it was a bit of an obligation to help customers inside the state of Ohio, or really everywhere, get the chance to practice a little bit before they have to put their hard-earned money on the line.
RYAN KNUPPEL
Yep, absolutely Adam. Well, I’ll let you go. I appreciate everything you’ve done. I want to wish you and the entire JACK team best of luck as this journey continues and as January 1st comes around. If there’s anything I can do to help you personally, let me know, but I really appreciate your time today, Adam.
ADAM SULIMAN
Yeah, absolutely Ryan. Good to see you again, man.
RYAN KNUPPEL
All right, take care.
ADAM SULIMAN
Bye.
RYAN KNUPPEL
All right, that was
ADAM SULIMAN
of JACK Entertainment, man. One of the great guys in the industry, doing some awesome things. I think you could see there, as well, very smart and doing some awesome things with JACK Entertainment. Uh, I urge you to head out to BetJACK.com, check it out in the App Store, check out their free-to-play “training camp”, they call it, and uh, it looks pretty smooth, it looks pretty slick. So go out there and have some fun with it, see if you can win some tokens and credits that they have going on out there. And yeah, Ohio, uh, January 1st, 2023, so those in Ohio have something to look forward to. I think JACK Entertainment and Bet JACK is really gonna make some noise in that state once, uh, once the time comes. And you heard from Adam today. So, everyone listening, really appreciate you. If you have someone you’d like to see on this show, any guest at all in the sports business, sports leadership, iGaming leaders, if you know someone that would be a great guest, please, hook them up with me. I’m Ryan Knuppel, out on LinkedIn. Uh, you can find me on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, anywhere as well, but uh, LinkedIn seems to be a great place to find me. Ah man, we’re through 169 episodes of this show, so the next one will be 170. We’re shooting towards that 200 mark, hopefully by the end of the year we’ll hit 200, that’s the goal. So let’s get some more guests one here, let’s talk to them, let’s hear about what some people are doing in this awesome space, iGaming sports betting. All right everybody. Take care, stay safe, until next time. I’m Ryan Knuppel, talk to you later.
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Relevant Links
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You can connect with Adam Suliman on LinkedIn.
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