Prepare for worse to come from Donald Trump, panicker-in-chief. Like a gambler in a casino on a losing streak, the US president has doubled his bet on the fears of white America. It is unpleasant politics, appealing to the worst of the nation’s character
Go1dfish undelete link
unreddit undelete link
Author: roku44

This is the best tl;dr I could make, original reduced by 75%. (I'm a bot)

The maximum stake for fixed odds betting terminals should be cut to £30 or less, the UK's Gambling Commission has recommended.
FOTBs have come under criticism for encouraging high-stakes gambling and exposing people to the risk of gambling harm.
Mr Miller of the Gambling Commission told the BBC that although the gambling industry had argued that any cuts in stakes would harm the sector, those arguments played no part in its recommendations to government.
Investors appeared to welcome the recommendations, as shares in gambling firms climbed strongly after the commission's announcement, with Ladbrokes Coral and William Hill both up more than 5%. "This should be a relief for the sector as the worst-case scenario looks to have been avoided. Ministers will now have to justify a cut below £30 on grounds of significant risk of harm," said analyst Neil Wilson at ETX Capital.
"We fully understand that there is public concern and that there will be a stake cut to reduce the levels of losses on machines in betting shops," it said after the Gambling Commission's announcement.
"These machines are at the heart of the UK's hidden epidemic of problem gambling. The Government must cut the stake to £2 on all FOBT machines including the highly addictive roulette style games, as well as increase the delay between each play."

Summary Source | FAQ | Feedback | Top keywords: Gambling^#1 Commission^#2 stake^#3 machine^#4 cut^#5
Post found in /worldnews.
NOTICE: This thread is for discussing the submission topic. Please do not discuss the concept of the autotldr bot here.

The Russia Mafia is part and parcel of Russian intelligence. Russia is a mafia state. That is not a metaphor. Putin is head of the Mafia. So the fact that they have deep ties to Donald Trump is deeply disturbing. Trump conducted FIVE completely private meetings and conferences with Putin, and has gone to great lengths to prevent literally anyone, even people in his administration, from learning what was discussed.
According to an ex-KGB spy...Russia has been cultivating Trump as an asset for 40 years.
Trump was first compromised by the Russians in the 80s. In 1984, the Russian Mafia began to use Trump real estate to launder money.
In 1984, David Bogatin — a convicted Russian mobster and close ally of Semion Mogilevich, a major Russian mob boss — met with Trump in Trump Tower right after it opened. Bogatin bought five condos from Trump at that meeting. Those condos were later seized by the government, which claimed they were used to launder money for the Russian mob.
“During the ’80s and ’90s, we in the U.S. government repeatedly saw a pattern by which criminals would use condos and high-rises to launder money,” says Jonathan Winer, a deputy assistant secretary of state for international law enforcement in the Clinton administration. “It didn’t matter that you paid too much, because the real estate values would rise, and it was a way of turning dirty money into clean money. It was done very systematically, and it explained why there are so many high-rises where the units were sold but no one is living in them.”
When Trump Tower was built, as David Cay Johnston reports in The Making of Donald Trump, it was only the second high-rise in New York that accepted anonymous buyers.
In 1987, the Soviet ambassador to the United Nations, Yuri Dubinin, arranged for Trump and his then-wife, Ivana, to enjoy an all-expense-paid trip to Moscow to consider business prospects.
A short while later he made his first call for the dismantling of the NATO alliance. Which would benefit Russia.
At the beginning of 1990 Donald Trump owed a combined $4 billion to more than 70 banks, with $800 million personally guaranteed by his own assets, according to Alan Pomerantz, a lawyer whose team led negotiations between Trump and 72 banks to restructure Trump’s loans. Pomerantz was hired by Citibank.
Interview with Pomerantz
Trump agreed to pay the bond lenders 14% interest, roughly 50% more than he had projected, to raise $675 million. It was the biggest gamble of his career. Trump could not keep pace with his debts. Six months later, the Taj defaulted on interest payments to bondholders as his finances went into a tailspin.
In July 1991, Trump’s Taj Mahal filed for bankruptcy.
So he bankrupted a casino? What about Ru...
The Trump Taj Mahal casino broke anti-money laundering rules 106 times in its first year and a half of operation in the early 1990s, according to the IRS in a 1998 settlement agreement.
The casino repeatedly failed to properly report gamblers who cashed out $10,000 or more in a single day, the government said."The violations date back to a time when the Taj Mahal was the preferred gambling spot for Russian mobsters living in Brooklyn, according to federal investigators who tracked organized crime in New York City. They also occurred at a time when the Taj Mahal casino was short on cash and on the verge of bankruptcy."
....ssia
So by the mid 1990s Trump was then at a low point of his career. He defaulted on his debts to a number of large Wall Street banks and was overleveraged. Two of his businesses had declared bankruptcy, the Trump Taj Mahal Casino in Atlantic City and the Plaza Hotel in New York, and the money pit that was the Trump Shuttle went out of business in 1992. Trump companies would ultimately declare Chapter 11 bankruptcy two more times.
Trump was $4 billion in debt after his Atlantic City casinos went bankrupt. No U.S. bank would touch him. Then foreign money began flowing in through Deutsche Bank.
The extremely controversial Deutsche Bank. The Nazi financing, Auschwitz building, law violating, customer misleading, international currency markets manipulating, interest rate rigging, Iran & others sanctions violating, Russian money laundering, salvation of Donald J. Trump.
The agreeing to a $7.2 billion settlement with with the U.S. Department of Justice over its sale and pooling of toxic mortgage securities and causing the 2008 financial crisis bank.
The appears to have facilitated more than half of the $2 trillion of suspicious transactions that were flagged to the U.S. government over nearly two decades bank.
The embroiled in a $20b money-laundering operation, dubbed the Global Laundromat. The launders money for Russian criminals with links to the Kremlin, the old KGB and its main successor, the FSB bank.
That bank.
Three minute video detailing Trump's debts and relationship with Deutsche Bank
In 1998, Russia defaulted on $40 billion in debt, causing the ruble to plummet and Russian banks to close. The ensuing financial panic sent the country’s oligarchs and mobsters scrambling to find a safe place to put their money. That October, just two months after the Russian economy went into a tailspin, Trump broke ground on his biggest project yet.
Directly across the street from the United Nations building.
Russian Linked-Deutsche Bank arranged to lend hundreds of millions of dollars to finance Trump’s construction of a skyscraper next to the United Nations.
Construction got underway in 1999.
Units on the tower’s priciest floors were quickly snatched up by individual buyers from the former Soviet Union, or by limited liability companies connected to Russia. “We had big buyers from Russia and Ukraine and Kazakhstan,” sales agent Debra Stotts told Bloomberg. After Trump World Tower opened, Sotheby’s International Realty teamed up with a Russian real estate company to make a big sales push for the property in Russia. The “tower full of oligarchs,” as Bloomberg called it, became a model for Trump’s projects going forward. All he needed to do, it seemed, was slap the Trump name on a big building, and high-dollar customers from Russia and the former Soviet republics were guaranteed to come rushing in.
New York City real estate broker Dolly Lenz told USA TODAY she sold about 65 condos in Trump World at 845 U.N. Plaza in Manhattan to Russian investors, many of whom sought personal meetings with Trump for his business expertise.
“I had contacts in Moscow looking to invest in the United States,” Lenz said. “They all wanted to meet Donald. They became very friendly.”Lots of Russian and Eastern European Friends. Investing lots of money. And not only in New York.
Miami is known as a hotspot of the ultra-wealthy looking to launder their money from overseas. Thousands of Russians have moved to Sunny Isles. Hundreds of ultra-wealthy former Soviet citizens bought Trump properties in South Florida. People with really disturbing histories investing millions and millions of dollars. Igor Zorin offers a story with all the weirdness modern Miami has to offer: Russian cash, a motorcycle club named after Russia’s powerful special forces and a condo tower branded by Donald Trump.
Thanks to its heavy Russian presence, Sunny Isles has acquired the nickname “Little Moscow.”
From an interview with a Miami based Siberian-born realtor... “Miami is a brand,” she told me as we sat on a sofa in the building’s huge foyer. “People from all over the world want property here.” Developers were only putting up luxury properties because they “know that the crisis has not affected people with money,”
Most of her clients are Russian—there are now three direct flights per week between Moscow and Miami—and increasing numbers are moving to Florida after spending a few years in London first. “It’s a money center, and it’s a lot easier to get your money there than directly to the US, because of laws and tax issues,” she said. “But after your money has been in London for a while, you can move it to other places more easily.”
In the 2000s, Trump turned to licensing deals and trademarks, collecting a fee from other companies using the Trump name. This has allowed Trump to distance himself from properties or projects that have failed or encountered legal trouble and provided a convenient workaround to help launch projects, especially in Russia and former Soviet states, which bear Trump’s name but otherwise little relation to his general business.
Enter Bayrock Group, a development company and key Trump real estate partner during the 2000s. Bayrock partnered with Trump in 2005 and invested an incredible amount of money into the Trump organization under the legal guise of licensing his name and property management. Bayrock was run by two investors:
Felix Sater, a Russian-born mobster who served a year in prison for stabbing a man in the face with a margarita glass during a bar fight, pleaded guilty to racketeering as part of a mafia-driven "pump-and-dump" stock fraud and then escaped jail time by becoming a highly valued government informant. He was an important figure at Bayrock, notably with the Trump SoHo hotel-condominium in New York City, and has said under oath that he represented Trump in Russia and subsequently billed himself as a senior Trump advisor, with an office in Trump Tower. He is a convict who became a govt cooperator for the FBI and other agencies. He grew up with Micahel Cohen --Trump's disbarred former "fixer" attorney. Cohen's family owned El Caribe, which was a mob hangout for the Russian Mafia in Brooklyn. Cohen had ties to Ukrainian oligarchs through his in-laws and his brother's in-laws. Felix Sater's father had ties to the Russian mob.
Tevfik Arif, a Kazakhstan-born former "Soviet official" who drew on bottomless sources of money from the former Soviet republic. Arif graduated from the Moscow Institute of Trade and Economics and worked as a Soviet trade and commerce official for 17 years before moving to New York and founding Bayrock. In 2002, after meeting Trump, he moved Bayrock’s offices to Trump Tower, where he and his staff of Russian émigrés set up shop on the twenty-fourth floor.
Arif was offering him a 20 to 25 percent cut on his overseas projects, he said, not to mention management fees. Trump said in the deposition that Bayrock’s Tevfik Arif “brought the people up from Moscow to meet with me,”and that he was teaming with Bayrock on other planned ventures in Moscow. The only Russians who are likely have the resources and political connections to sponsor such ambitious international deals are the corrupt oligarchs.
In 2005, Trump told The Miami Herald “The name has brought a cachet to certain areas that wouldn’t have had it,” Dezer said Trump’s name put Sunny Isles Beach on the map as a classy destination — and the Trump-branded condo units sold “10 to 20 percent higher than any of our competitors, and at a faster pace.”“We didn’t have any foreclosures or anything, despite the crisis.”
In a 2007 deposition that was part of his unsuccessful defamation lawsuit against reporter Timothy O’Brien Trump testified "that Bayrock was working their international contacts to complete Trump/Bayrock deals in Russia, Ukraine, and Poland. He testified that “Bayrock knew the investors” and that “this was going to be the Trump International Hotel and Tower in Moscow, Kiev, Istanbul, et cetera, and Warsaw, Poland.”
In 2008, Donald Trump Jr. gave the following statement to the “Bridging U.S. and Emerging Markets Real Estate” conference in Manhattan: “[I]n terms of high-end product influx into the United States, Russians make up a pretty disproportionate cross-section of a lot of our assets; say in Dubai, and certainly with our project in SoHo and anywhere in New York. We see a lot of money pouring in from Russia.”
In July 2008, Trump sold a mansion in Palm Beach for $95 million to Dmitry Rybolovlev, a Russian oligarch. Trump had purchased it four years earlier for $41.35 million. The sale price was nearly $54 million more than Trump had paid for the property. This was the height of the recession when all other property had plummeted in value. Must be nice to have so many Russian oligarchs interested in giving you money.
In 2013, Trump went to Russia for the Miss Universe pageant “financed in part by the development company of a Russian billionaire Aras Agalarov.… a Putin ally who is sometimes called the ‘Trump of Russia’ because of his tendency to put his own name on his buildings.” He met with many oligarchs. Timeline of events. Flight records show how long he was there.
Video interview in Moscow where Trump says "...China wanted it this year. And Russia wanted it very badly." I bet they did.
Also in 2013, Federal agents busted an “ultraexclusive, high-stakes, illegal poker ring” run by Russian gangsters out of Trump Tower. They operated card games, illegal gambling websites, and a global sports book and laundered more than $100 million. A condo directly below one owned by Trump reportedly served as HQ for a “sophisticated money-laundering scheme” connected to Semion Mogilevich.
In 2014, Eric Trump told golf reporter James Dodson that the Trump Organization was able to expand during the financial crisis because “We don’t rely on American banks. We have all the funding we need out of Russia. I said, 'Really?' And he said, 'Oh, yeah. We’ve got some guys that really, really love golf, and they’re really invested in our programmes. We just go there all the time.’”
A 2015 racketeering case against Bayrock, Sater, and Arif, and others, alleged that: “for most of its existence it [Bayrock] was substantially and covertly mob-owned and operated,” engaging “in a pattern of continuous, related crimes, including mail, wire, and bank fraud; tax evasion; money laundering; conspiracy; bribery; extortion; and embezzlement.” Although the lawsuit does not allege complicity by Trump, it claims that Bayrock exploited its joint ventures with Trump as a conduit for laundering money and evading taxes. The lawsuit cites as a “Concrete example of their crime, Trump SoHo, [which] stands 454 feet tall at Spring and Varick, where it also stands monument to spectacularly corrupt money-laundering and tax evasion.”
In 2016, the Trump Presidential Campaign was helped by Russia.
(I don't have the presidential term sourced yet. I'll post an update when I do. I'm sure you probably remember most of them...sigh. TY to the main posters here. Obviously I'm standing on your shoulders having taken a lot of the information or articles from here).

From u/heardme
Pretty sure most of you know $FUBO has been shorted like crazy since the news of their Victory acquisition. It shot up 33% with the news and has since lost most of those gains. I'm here to tell you why the shorts are wrong and why this is a MASSIVE opportunity for us.
First, I'd like to address the issue of profitability. It was founded in 2015and being a young, growing company and isn't profitable yet. To put things into perspective, even Netflix which was founded in 1997 wasn't profitable until 2003. Fubo has more competition today than Netflix did back then, but it's still growing rapidly.
Q3 Results: https://www.yahoo.com/now/fubotv-announces-q3-2020-results-210500756.html

• Revenues were $61.2 million, a 47% increase year-over-year on a pro forma basis, or +71% excluding 2019 licensing revenue from the FaceBank AG business, sold in July 2020. This growth was driven by continued subscriber expansion, an increase in subscription Average Revenue Per User (ARPU) and growth of advertising sales:
  
  • Subscription revenue increased 64% year-over-year to $53.4 million.
  • Advertising revenue increased 153% year-over-year to $7.5 million.
• Paid subscribers at quarter end totaled 455,000, an increase of 58% year-over-year.
  
• Average Revenue Per User (ARPU) per month was $67.70, up 14% year-over-year.
  
• Total content hours streamed by fuboTV users (paid and free trial) in the quarter increased 83% year-over-year to 133.3 million hours.
  
• Monthly active users (MAUs) watched 121 hours per month on average in the quarter, an increase of 20% year-over-year.
  

Q4 Preliminary Results:
https://ir.fubo.tv/news/news-details/2021/fuboTV-Announces-Preliminary-Fourth-Quarter-2020-Revenue-and-Subscriber-Growth/default.aspx

• Q4 total revenue is expected to be between $94-$98 million, a 77% to 84% increase year-over-year.* Prior guidance was $80-$85 million.
• Paid subscribers at year-end are expected to exceed 545,000, an increase of more than 72% year-over-year. Prior guidance was 500,000-510,000 subscribers.

It smashed its previous guidance because sports and normality are returning. Also note that Fubo was still growing rapidly during the pandemic despite the lack of sports which is its primary focus. This is huge and it will continue to grow faster as sports start to return to normal.
FUBO is estimated to announce earnings between Jan 25, 2021 and Feb 03, 2021
​
Most of us know that Fubo was opportunistically hit by short sellers (Kerrisdale/Rich Greendfield) as their lock up period expired. This made the stock tank considerably from it's high of $60. The short argument is that integrated sports betting is a pipe dream, and that its not profitable yet.
As mentioned earlier, it took Netflix a while to scale up and become profitable. At the rate Fubo is growing, they are going to be profitable sooner than later. This isn't even an argument to me, as they scale up a few things will happen:
- Customer acquisition costs will become a lower and lower percentage of revenue.
- Since they license their content, they need scale to turn those licensing costs to profit (just like Netflix did)
- More customers mean they can charge more for advertising. (More on this later)
Fubo very clearly addressed the issue of integrated sports betting with the acquisition of Vigtory. The bear thesis is weakening significantly. Almost nonexistent.
​
​
Now, on to the NBA:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/bethkindig/2021/12/31/fubotv-solid-positioning-for-sports-betting/?sh=5fadb7c69cb5
"Over the past few years, Sky Media led investment rounds in FuboTV along with Fox for a 39% stake. This investment round was increased in late 2017/early 2018 with Sky Media holding Board positions. The former NBA commissioner was also part of the last $15 million round. Media has gone through some very big M&A shifts at the top-level with Comcast acquiring Sky and Disney acquiring 21st Century Fox. However, for FuboTV’s formative years, the company was influenced by arguably the top sports betting company in the world – Sky Media from the UK. The Comcast-owned Sky Media is still a backer for FuboTV along with Disney."
David Stern, the late former NBA commissioner was involved in funding of Fubo. The current NBA commissioner Adam Silver worked extremely closely with his mentor. I've been a lifelong NBA fan and I had doubts in Adam Silver but I think he's done a fantastic job with the NBA.
Why am I bringing up the NBA?
https://www.casino.org/news/nba-considering-betting-broadcasts-could-help-draftkings/ (check the date of this and check the date of the Fubo Vigtory announcement)
People are missing some key elements to the NBA announcement: this announcement was made literally the DAY after the Fubo Victory acquisition. People are missing the link between the NBA and Fubo, let alone the timing. Fact check me, they were announced a day apart and Fubo is the ONLY company with plans of an integrated sports betting broadcast platform.
The NBA wants to get into this because they know viewers watch games for longer with sports betting and fantasy leagues (which is why I think they threw in DraftKings)
​
​
Now, lets look into two key acquisitions:
- Vigtory - Fubo acquired them and put their co-founder in charge of integrated sports betting along with their licenses and tech.
Balto - This one is another thing bears are missing. They claim this acquisition was to get into sports betting, it wasn't this was for their fantasy sports platform which Fubo is also planning on integrating.
​
Fubo is going to be an absolute monster going forward. It is trading at a discount thanks to shorts https://www.marketwatch.com/investing/stock/fubo
34m shares short, 62.5% of float shorted. This thing is PRIMED for an epic squeeze AND it's valued at a discount right now.
Since the Vigtory acquisition, new price targets came out ranging from $47 to $60.
Short term, I'm confident this thing will pop soon. It was hammered down after the Vigtory announcement by shorts, followed by a low volume selloff Friday. It's trading at imo, a massive discount right now.
Long term, this thing is shaping up to be a unique competitor in streaming/sports betting.
​
TL;DR - get in long, one way or another. Commons, LEAPS, anything... this thing is going to explode as we inch towards earnings (expected late January to mid-February). We got massive revenue growth, we have strong tailwinds with the return of sports, we have the NBA basically saying they're in as long as Fubo can execute.

Pretty sure most of you know $FUBO has been shorted like crazy since the news of their Victory acquisition. It shot up 33% with the news and has since lost most of those gains. I'm here to tell you why the shorts are wrong and why this is a MASSIVE opportunity for us.
First, I'd like to address the issue of profitability. It was founded in 2015and being a young, growing company and isn't profitable yet. To put things into perspective, even Netflix which was founded in 1997 wasn't profitable until 2003. Fubo has more competition today than Netflix did back then, but it's still growing rapidly.
Q3 Results: https://www.yahoo.com/now/fubotv-announces-q3-2020-results-210500756.html

• Revenues were $61.2 million, a 47% increase year-over-year on a pro forma basis, or +71% excluding 2019 licensing revenue from the FaceBank AG business, sold in July 2020. This growth was driven by continued subscriber expansion, an increase in subscription Average Revenue Per User (ARPU) and growth of advertising sales:
  
  • Subscription revenue increased 64% year-over-year to $53.4 million.
  • Advertising revenue increased 153% year-over-year to $7.5 million.
• Paid subscribers at quarter end totaled 455,000, an increase of 58% year-over-year.
  
• Average Revenue Per User (ARPU) per month was $67.70, up 14% year-over-year.
  
• Total content hours streamed by fuboTV users (paid and free trial) in the quarter increased 83% year-over-year to 133.3 million hours.
  
• Monthly active users (MAUs) watched 121 hours per month on average in the quarter, an increase of 20% year-over-year.
  

Q4 Preliminary Results:
https://ir.fubo.tv/news/news-details/2021/fuboTV-Announces-Preliminary-Fourth-Quarter-2020-Revenue-and-Subscriber-Growth/default.aspx

• Q4 total revenue is expected to be between $94-$98 million, a 77% to 84% increase year-over-year.* Prior guidance was $80-$85 million.
• Paid subscribers at year-end are expected to exceed 545,000, an increase of more than 72% year-over-year. Prior guidance was 500,000-510,000 subscribers.

It smashed its previous guidance because sports and normality are returning. Also note that Fubo was still growing rapidly during the pandemic despite the lack of sports which is its primary focus. This is huge and it will continue to grow faster as sports start to return to normal.
FUBO is estimated to announce earnings between Jan 25, 2021 and Feb 03, 2021
​
Most of us know that Fubo was opportunistically hit by short sellers (Kerrisdale/Rich Greendfield) as their lock up period expired. This made the stock tank considerably from it's high of $60. The short argument is that integrated sports betting is a pipe dream, and that its not profitable yet.
As mentioned earlier, it took Netflix a while to scale up and become profitable. At the rate Fubo is growing, they are going to be profitable sooner than later. This isn't even an argument to me, as they scale up a few things will happen:
- Customer acquisition costs will become a lower and lower percentage of revenue.
- Since they license their content, they need scale to turn those licensing costs to profit (just like Netflix did)
- More customers mean they can charge more for advertising. (More on this later)
Fubo very clearly addressed the issue of integrated sports betting with the acquisition of Vigtory. The bear thesis is weakening significantly. Almost nonexistent.
​
​
Now, on to the NBA:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/bethkindig/2021/12/31/fubotv-solid-positioning-for-sports-betting/?sh=5fadb7c69cb5
"Over the past few years, Sky Media led investment rounds in FuboTV along with Fox for a 39% stake. This investment round was increased in late 2017/early 2018 with Sky Media holding Board positions. The former NBA commissioner was also part of the last $15 million round. Media has gone through some very big M&A shifts at the top-level with Comcast acquiring Sky and Disney acquiring 21st Century Fox. However, for FuboTV’s formative years, the company was influenced by arguably the top sports betting company in the world – Sky Media from the UK. The Comcast-owned Sky Media is still a backer for FuboTV along with Disney."
David Stern, the late former NBA commissioner was involved in funding of Fubo. The current NBA commissioner Adam Silver worked extremely closely with his mentor. I've been a lifelong NBA fan and I had doubts in Adam Silver but I think he's done a fantastic job with the NBA.
Why am I bringing up the NBA?
https://www.casino.org/news/nba-considering-betting-broadcasts-could-help-draftkings/ (check the date of this and check the date of the Fubo Vigtory announcement)
People are missing some key elements to the NBA announcement: this announcement was made literally the DAY after the Fubo Victory acquisition. People are missing the link between the NBA and Fubo, let alone the timing. Fact check me, they were announced a day apart and Fubo is the ONLY company with plans of an integrated sports betting broadcast platform.
The NBA wants to get into this because they know viewers watch games for longer with sports betting and fantasy leagues (which is why I think they threw in DraftKings)
​
​
Now, lets look into two key acquisitions:
- Vigtory - Fubo acquired them and put their co-founder in charge of integrated sports betting along with their licenses and tech.
Balto - This one is another thing bears are missing. They claim this acquisition was to get into sports betting, it wasn't this was for their fantasy sports platform which Fubo is also planning on integrating.
​
Fubo is going to be an absolute monster going forward. It is trading at a discount thanks to shorts https://www.marketwatch.com/investing/stock/fubo
34m shares short, 62.5% of float shorted. This thing is PRIMED for an epic squeeze AND it's valued at a discount right now.
Since the Vigtory acquisition, new price targets came out ranging from $47 to $60.
Short term, I'm confident this thing will pop soon. It was hammered down after the Vigtory announcement by shorts, followed by a low volume selloff Friday. It's trading at imo, a massive discount right now.
Long term, this thing is shaping up to be a unique competitor in streaming/sports betting.
​
TL;DR - get in long, one way or another. Commons, LEAPS, anything... this thing is going to explode as we inch towards earnings (expected late January to mid-February). We got massive revenue growth, we have strong tailwinds with the return of sports, we have the NBA basically saying they're in as long as Fubo can execute.

Pretty sure most of you know $FUBO has been shorted like crazy since the news of their Victory acquisition. It shot up 33% with the news and has since lost most of those gains. I'm here to tell you why the shorts are wrong and why this is a MASSIVE opportunity.
First, I'd like to address the issue of profitability. It was founded in 2015 and being a young, growing company and isn't profitable yet. To put things into perspective, even Netflix which was founded in 1997 wasn't profitable until 2003. FuboTv has more competition today than Netflix did back then, but it's still growing rapidly.
Q3 Results: https://www.yahoo.com/now/fubotv-announces-q3-2020-results-210500756.html
Revenues were $61.2 million, a 47% increase year-over-year on a pro forma basis, or +71% excluding 2019 licensing revenue from the FaceBank AG business, sold in July 2020. This growth was driven by continued subscriber expansion, an increase in subscription Average Revenue Per User (ARPU) and growth of advertising sales:
Subscription revenue increased 64% year-over-year to $53.4 million.
Advertising revenue increased 153% year-over-year to $7.5 million.
Paid subscribers at quarter end totaled 455,000, an increase of 58% year-over-year.
Average Revenue Per User (ARPU) per month was $67.70, up 14% year-over-year.
Total content hours streamed by fuboTV users (paid and free trial) in the quarter increased 83% year-over-year to 133.3 million hours.
Monthly active users (MAUs) watched 121 hours per month on average in the quarter, an increase of 20% year-over-year.
Q4 Preliminary Results:
https://ir.fubo.tv/news/news-details/2021/fuboTV-Announces-Preliminary-Fourth-Quarter-2020-Revenue-and-Subscriber-Growth/default.aspx
Q4 total revenue is expected to be between $94-$98 million, a 77% to 84% increase year-over-year.* Prior guidance was $80-$85 million.
Paid subscribers at year-end are expected to exceed 545,000, an increase of more than 72% year-over-year. Prior guidance was 500,000-510,000 subscribers.
It smashed its previous guidance because sports and normality are returning. Also note that Fubo was still growing rapidly during the pandemic despite the lack of sports which is its primary focus. This is huge and it will continue to grow faster as sports start to return to normal.
FUBO is estimated to announce earnings between Feb-March 2021
Most of us know that Fubo was opportunistically hit by short sellers (Kerrisdale/Rich Greendfield) as their lock up period expired. This made the stock tank considerably from it's high of $60. The short argument is that integrated sports betting is a pipe dream, and that its not profitable yet.
As mentioned earlier, it took Netflix a while to scale up and become profitable. At the rate Fubo is growing, they are going to be profitable sooner than later. This isn't even an argument to me, as they scale up a few things will happen:
- Customer acquisition costs will become a lower and lower percentage of revenue.
- Since they license their content, they need scale to turn those licensing costs to profit (just like Netflix did)
- More customers mean they can charge more for advertising. (More on this later)
Fubo very clearly addressed the issue of integrated sports betting with the acquisition of Vigtory. The bear thesis is weakening significantly. Almost nonexistent.
Now, on to the NBA:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/bethkindig/2021/12/31/fubotv-solid-positioning-for-sports-betting/?sh=5fadb7c69cb5
"Over the past few years, Sky Media led investment rounds in FuboTV along with Fox for a 39% stake. This investment round was increased in late 2017/early 2018 with Sky Media holding Board positions. The former NBA commissioner was also part of the last $15 million round. Media has gone through some very big M&A shifts at the top-level with Comcast acquiring Sky and Disney acquiring 21st Century Fox. However, for FuboTV’s formative years, the company was influenced by arguably the top sports betting company in the world – Sky Media from the UK. The Comcast-owned Sky Media is still a backer for FuboTV along with Disney."
David Stern, the late former NBA commissioner was involved in funding of Fubo. The current NBA commissioner Adam Silver worked extremely closely with his mentor. I've been a lifelong NBA fan and I had doubts in Adam Silver but I think he's done a fantastic job with the NBA.
Why am I bringing up the NBA?
https://www.casino.org/news/nba-considering-betting-broadcasts-could-help-draftkings/ (check the date of this and check the date of the Fubo Vigtory announcement)
People are missing some key elements to the NBA announcement: this announcement was made literally the DAY after the Fubo Victory acquisition. People are missing the link between the NBA and Fubo, let alone the timing. Fact check me, they were announced a day apart and Fubo is the ONLY company with plans of an integrated sports betting broadcast platform.
The NBA wants to get into this because they know viewers watch games for longer with sports betting and fantasy leagues (which is why I think they threw in DraftKings)
Now, lets look into two key acquisitions:
- Vigtory - Fubo acquired them and put their co-founder in charge of integrated sports betting along with their licenses and tech.
Balto - This one is another thing bears are missing. They claim this acquisition was to get into sports betting, it wasn't this was for their fantasy sports platform which Fubo is also planning on integrating.
Fubo is going to be an absolute monster going forward. It is trading at a discount thanks to shorts https://www.marketwatch.com/investing/stock/fubo
34m shares short, 62.5% of float shorted. This thing is PRIMED for an epic squeeze AND it's valued at a discount right now.
Since the Vigtory acquisition, new price targets came out ranging from $47 to $60, this is minimum upside.
Short term, I'm confident this thing will pop even further and it has not even begun. It was hammered down after the Vigtory announcement by shorts, followed by a little bit of rally due to GME situation. It's trading at imo, a massive discount right now.
Long term, this thing is shaping up to be a unique competitor in streaming/sports betting.
TL;DR - get in long, one way or another. Commons, LEAPS, anything... this thing is going to explode as we inch towards earnings (expected Feb-March). We got massive revenue growth, we have strong tailwinds with the return of sports, we have the NBA basically saying they're in as long as Fubo can execute. 🚀🚀🚀 🚀🚀🚀

NEW INFO 5 Results from share redemption are posted. Less than .2% redeemed. Very bullish as investors are showing extreme confidence in the future of PLBY.
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/playboy-mountain-crest-acquisition-corp-120000721.html
NEW INFO 4 Definitive Agreement to purchase 100% of Lovers brand stores announced 2/1.
https://www.streetinsider.com/Corporate+News/Playboy+%28MCAC%29+Confirms+Deal+to+Acquire+Lovers/17892359.html
NEW INFO 3 I bought more on the dip today. 5081 total. Price rose AH to $12.38 (2.15%)
NEW INFO 2 Here is the full webinar.
https://icrinc.zoom.us/rec/play/9GWKdmOYumjWfZuufW3QXpe_FW_g--qeNbg6PnTjTMbnNTgLmCbWjeRFpQga1iPc-elpGap8dnDv8Zww.yD7DjUwuPmapeEdP?continueMode=true&tk=lEYc4F_FkKlgsmCIs6w0gtGHT2kbgVGbUju3cIRBSjk.DQIAAAAV8NK49xZWdldRM2xNSFNQcTBmcE00UzM3bXh3AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA&uuid=WN_GKWqbHkeSyuWetJmLFkj4g&_x_zm_rtaid=kR45-uuqRE-L65AxLjpbQw.1611967079119.2c054e3d3f8d8e63339273d9175939ed&_x_zm_rhtaid=866
NEW INFO 1 Live merger webinar with PLBY and MCAC on Friday January 29, 2021 at 12:00 NOON EST link below
https://mcacquisition.com/investor-relations/press-release-details/2021/Playboy-Enterprises-Inc.-and-Mountain-Crest-Acquisition-Corp-Participate-in-SPACInsider-ICR-Webinar-on-January-29th-at-12pm-ET/default.aspx
Playboy going public: Porn, Gambling, and Cannabis
!!!WARNING READING AHEAD!!! TL;DR at the end. It will take some time to sort through all the links and read/watch everything, but you should.
In the next couple weeks, Mountain Crest Acquisition Corp is taking Playboy public. The existing ticker MCAC will become PLBY. Special purpose acquisition companies have taken private companies public in recent months with great success. I believe this will be no exception. Notably, Playboy is profitable and has skyrocketing revenue going into a transformational growth phase.
Porn - First and foremost, let's talk about porn. I know what you guys are thinking. “Porno mags are dead. Why would I want to invest in something like that? I can get porn for free online.” Guess what? You are absolutely right. And that’s exactly why Playboy doesn’t do that anymore. That’s right, they eliminated their print division. And yet they somehow STILL make money from porn that people (see: boomers) pay for on their website through PlayboyTV, Playboy Plus, and iPlayboy. Here’s the thing: Playboy has international, multi-generational name recognition from porn. They have content available in 180 countries. It will be the only publicly traded adult entertainment (porn) company. But that is not where this company is going. It will help support them along the way. You can see every Playboy magazine through iPlayboy if you’re interested. NSFW links below:
https://www.playboy.com/
https://www.playboytv.com/
https://www.playboyplus.com/
https://www.iplayboy.com/
Gambling - Some of you might recognize the Playboy brand from gambling trips to places like Las Vegas, Atlantic City, Cancun, London or Macau. They’ve been in the gambling biz for decades through their casinos, clubs, and licensed gaming products. They see the writing on the wall. COVID is accelerating the transition to digital, application based GAMBLING. That’s right. What we are doing on Robinhood with risky options is gambling, and the only reason regulators might give a shit anymore is because we are making too much money. There may be some restrictions put in place, but gambling from your phone on your couch is not going anywhere. More and more states are allowing things like Draftkings, poker, state ‘lottery” apps, hell - even political betting. Michigan and Virginia just ok’d gambling apps. They won’t be the last. This is all from your couch and any 18 year old with a cracked iphone can access it. Wouldn’t it be cool if Playboy was going to do something like that? They’re already working on it. As per CEO Ben Kohn who we will get to later, “...the company’s casino-style digital gaming products with Scientific Games and Microgaming continue to see significant global growth.” Honestly, I stopped researching Scientific Games' sports betting segment when I saw the word ‘omni-channel’. That told me all I needed to know about it’s success.
“Our SG Sports™ platform is an enhanced, omni-channel solution for online, self-service and retail fixed odds sports betting – from soccer to tennis, basketball, football, baseball, hockey, motor sports, racing and more.”
https://www.scientificgames.com/
https://www.microgaming.co.uk/
“This latter segment has become increasingly enticing for Playboy, and it said last week that it is considering new tie-ups that could include gaming operators like PointsBet and 888Holdings.”
https://calvinayre.com/2020/10/05/business/playboys-gaming-ops-could-get-a-boost-from-spac-purchase/
As per their SEC filing:
“Significant consumer engagement and spend with Playboy-branded gaming properties around the world, including with leading partners such as Microgaming, Scientific Games, and Caesar’s Entertainment, steers our investment in digital gaming, sports betting and other digital offerings to further support our commercial strategy to expand consumer spend with minimal marginal cost, and gain consumer data to inform go-to-market plans across categories.”
https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgadata/1803914/000110465921005986/tm2034213-12_defm14a.htm#tMDAA1
They are expanding into more areas of gaming/gambling, working with international players in the digital gaming/gambling arena, and a Playboy sportsbook is on the horizon.
https://www.playboy.com/read/the-pleasure-of-playing-with-yourself-mobile-gaming-in-the-covid-era
Cannabis - If you’ve ever read through a Playboy magazine, you know they’ve had a positive relationship with cannabis for many years. As of September 2020, Playboy has made a major shift into the cannabis space. Too good to be true you say? Check their website. Playboy currently sells a range of CBD products. This is a good sign. Federal hemp products, which these most likely are, can be mailed across state lines and most importantly for a company like Playboy, can operate through a traditional banking institution. CBD products are usually the first step towards the cannabis space for large companies. Playboy didn’t make these products themselves meaning they are working with a processor in the cannabis industry. Another good sign for future expansion. What else do they have for sale? Pipes, grinders, ashtrays, rolling trays, joint holders. Hmm. Ok. So it looks like they want to sell some shit. They probably don’t have an active interest in cannabis right? Think again:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/javierhasse/2020/09/24/playboy-gets-serious-about-cannabis-law-reform-advocacy-with-new-partnership-grants/?sh=62f044a65cea
“Taking yet another step into the cannabis space, Playboy will be announcing later on Thursday (September, 2020) that it is launching a cannabis law reform and advocacy campaign in partnership with National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML), Last Prisoner Project, Marijuana Policy Project, the Veterans Cannabis Project, and the Eaze Momentum Program.”
“According to information procured exclusively, the three-pronged campaign will focus on calling for federal legalization. The program also includes the creation of a mentorship plan, through which the Playboy Foundation will support entrepreneurs from groups that are underrepresented in the industry.” Remember that CEO Kohn from earlier? He wrote this recently:
https://medium.com/naked-open-letters-from-playboy/congress-must-pass-the-more-act-c867c35239ae
Seems like he really wants weed to be legal? Hmm wonder why? The writing's on the wall my friends. Playboy wants into the cannabis industry, they are making steps towards this end, and we have favorable conditions for legislative progress.
Don’t think branding your own cannabis line is profitable or worthwhile? Tell me why these 41 celebrity millionaires and billionaires are dummies. I’ll wait.
https://www.celebstoner.com/news/celebstoner-news/2019/07/12/top-celebrity-cannabis-brands/
Confirmation: I hear you. “This all seems pretty speculative. It would be wildly profitable if they pull this shift off. But how do we really know?” Watch this whole video:
https://finance.yahoo.com/video/playboy-ceo-telling-story-female-154907068.html
Man - this interview just gets my juices flowing. And highlights one of my favorite reasons for this play. They have so many different business avenues from which a catalyst could appear. I think paying attention, holding shares, and options on these staggered announcements over the next year is the way I am going to go about it. "There's definitely been a shift to direct-to-consumer," he (Kohn) said. "About 50 percent of our revenue today is direct-to-consumer, and that will continue to grow going forward.” “Kohn touted Playboy's portfolio of both digital and consumer products, with casino-style gaming, in particular, serving a crucial role under the company's new business model. Playboy also has its sights on the emerging cannabis market, from CBD products to marijuana products geared toward sexual health and pleasure.” "If THC does become legal in the United States, we have developed certain strains to enhance your sex life that we will launch," Kohn said. https://cheddar.com/media/playboy-goes-public-health-gaming-lifestyle-focus Oh? The CEO actually said it? Ok then. “We have developed certain strains…” They’re already working with growers on strains and genetics? Ok. There are several legal cannabis markets for those products right now, international and stateside. I expect Playboy licensed hemp and THC pre-rolls by EOY. Something like this: https://www.etsy.com/listing/842996758/10-playboy-pre-roll-tubes-limited?ga_order=most_relevant&ga_search_type=all&ga_view_type=gallery&ga_search_query=pre+roll+playboy&ref=sr_gallery-1-2&organic_search_click=1 Maintaining cannabis operations can be costly and a regulatory headache. Playboy’s licensing strategy allows them to pick successful, established partners and sidestep traditional barriers to entry. You know what I like about these new markets? They’re expanding. Worldwide. And they are going to be a bigger deal than they already are with or without Playboy. Who thinks weed and gambling are going away? Too many people like that stuff. These are easy markets. And Playboy is early enough to carve out their spot in each. Fuck it, read this too: https://www.forbes.com/sites/jimosman/2020/10/20/playboy-could-be-the-king-of-spacs-here-are-three-picks/?sh=2e13dcaa3e05
Numbers: You want numbers? I got numbers. As per the company’s most recent SEC filing:
“For the year ended December 31, 2019, and the nine months ended September 30, 2020, Playboy’s historical consolidated revenue was $78.1 million and $101.3 million, respectively, historical consolidated net income (loss) was $(23.6) million and $(4.8) million, respectively, and Adjusted EBITDA was $13.1 million and $21.8 million, respectively.”
“In the nine months ended September 30, 2020, Playboy’s Licensing segment contributed $44.2 million in revenue and $31.1 million in net income.”
“In the ninth months ended September 30, 2020, Playboy’s Direct-to-Consumer segment contributed $40.2 million in revenue and net income of $0.1 million.”
“In the nine months ended September 30, 2020, Playboy’s Digital Subscriptions and Content segment contributed $15.4 million in revenue and net income of $7.4 million.”
They are profitable across all three of their current business segments.
“Playboy’s return to the public markets presents a transformed, streamlined and high-growth business. The Company has over $400 million in cash flows contracted through 2029, sexual wellness products available for sale online and in over 10,000 major retail stores in the US, and a growing variety of clothing and branded lifestyle and digital gaming products.”
https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgadata/1803914/000110465921005986/tm2034213-12_defm14a.htm#tSHCF
Growth: Playboy has massive growth in China and massive growth potential in India. “In China, where Playboy has spent more than 25 years building its business, our licensees have an enormous footprint of nearly 2,500 brick and mortar stores and 1,000 ecommerce stores selling high quality, Playboy-branded men’s casual wear, shoes/footwear, sleepwear, swimwear, formal suits, leather & non-leather goods, sweaters, active wear, and accessories. We have achieved significant growth in China licensing revenues over the past several years in partnership with strong licensees and high-quality manufacturers, and we are planning for increased growth through updates to our men’s fashion lines and expansion into adjacent categories in men’s skincare and grooming, sexual wellness, and women’s fashion, a category where recent launches have been well received.” The men’s market in China is about the same size as the entire population of the United States and European Union combined. Playboy is a leading brand in this market. They are expanding into the women’s market too. Did you know CBD toothpaste is huge in China? China loves CBD products and has hemp fields that dwarf those in the US. If Playboy expands their CBD line China it will be huge. Did you know the gambling money in Macau absolutely puts Las Vegas to shame? Technically, it's illegal on the mainland, but in reality, there is a lot of gambling going on in China. https://www.forbes.com/sites/javierhasse/2020/10/19/magic-johnson-and-uncle-buds-cbd-brand-enter-china-via-tmall-partnership/?sh=271776ca411e “In India, Playboy today has a presence through select apparel licensees and hospitality establishments. Consumer research suggests significant growth opportunities in the territory with Playboy’s brand and categories of focus.” “Playboy Enterprises has announced the expansion of its global consumer products business into India as part of a partnership with Jay Jay Iconic Brands, a leading fashion and lifestyle Company in India.” “The Indian market today is dominated by consumers under the age of 35, who represent more than 65 percent of the country’s total population and are driving India’s significant online shopping growth. The Playboy brand’s core values of playfulness and exploration resonate strongly with the expressed desires of today’s younger millennial consumers. For us, Playboy was the perfect fit.” “The Playboy international portfolio has been flourishing for more than 25 years in several South Asian markets such as China and Japan. In particular, it has strategically targeted the millennial and gen-Z audiences across categories such as apparel, footwear, home textiles, eyewear and watches.” https://www.licenseglobal.com/industry-news/playboy-expands-global-footprint-india It looks like they gave COVID the heisman in terms of net damage sustained: “Although Playboy has not suffered any material adverse consequences to date from the COVID-19 pandemic, the business has been impacted both negatively and positively. The remote working and stay-at-home orders resulted in the closure of the London Playboy Club and retail stores of Playboy’s licensees, decreasing licensing revenues in the second quarter, as well as causing supply chain disruption and less efficient product development thereby slowing the launch of new products. However, these negative impacts were offset by an increase in Yandy’s direct-to-consumer sales, which have benefited in part from overall increases in online retail sales so far during the pandemic.” Looks like the positives are long term (Yandy acquisition) and the negatives are temporary (stay-at-home orders).
https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgadata/1803914/000110465921006093/tm213766-1_defa14a.htm
This speaks to their ability to maintain a financially solvent company throughout the transition phase to the aforementioned areas. They’d say some fancy shit like “expanded business model to encompass four key revenue streams: Sexual Wellness, Style & Apparel, Gaming & Lifestyle, and Beauty & Grooming.” I hear “we’re just biding our time with these trinkets until those dollar dollar bill y’all markets are fully up and running.” But the truth is these existing revenue streams are profitable, scalable, and rapidly expanding Playboy’s e-commerce segment around the world.
"Even in the face of COVID this year, we've been able to grow EBITDA over 100 percent and revenue over 68 percent, and I expect that to accelerate going into 2021," he said. “Playboy is accelerating its growth in company-owned and branded consumer products in attractive and expanding markets in which it has a proven history of brand affinity and consumer spend.”
Also in the SEC filing, the Time Frame:
“As we detailed in the definitive proxy statement, the SPAC stockholder meeting to vote on the transaction has been set for February 9th, and, subject to stockholder approval and satisfaction of the other closing conditions, we expect to complete the merger and begin trading on NASDAQ under ticker PLBY shortly thereafter,” concluded Kohn.
The Players: Suhail “The Whale” Rizvi (HMFIC), Ben “The Bridge” Kohn (CEO), “lil” Suying Liu & “Big” Dong Liu (Young-gun China gang). I encourage you to look these folks up. The real OG here is Suhail Rizvi. He’s from India originally and Chairman of the Board for the new PLBY company. He was an early investor in Twitter, Square, Facebook and others. His firm, Rizvi Traverse, currently invests in Instacart, Pinterest, Snapchat, Playboy, and SpaceX. Maybe you’ve heard of them. “Rizvi, who owns a sprawling three-home compound in Greenwich, Connecticut, and a 1.65-acre estate in Palm Beach, Florida, near Bill Gates and Michael Bloomberg, moved to Iowa Falls when he was five. His father was a professor of psychology at Iowa. Along with his older brother Ashraf, a hedge fund manager, Rizvi graduated from Wharton business school.” “Suhail Rizvi: the 47-year-old 'unsocial' social media baron: When Twitter goes public in the coming weeks (2013), one of the biggest winners will be a 47-year-old financier who guards his secrecy so zealously that he employs a person to take down his Wikipedia entry and scrub his photos from the internet. In IPO, Twitter seeks to be 'anti-FB'” “Prince Alwaleed bin Talal of Saudi Arabia looks like a big Twitter winner. So do the moneyed clients of Jamie Dimon. But as you’ve-got-to-be-joking wealth washed over Twitter on Thursday — a company that didn’t exist eight years ago was worth $31.7 billion after its first day on the stock market — the non-boldface name of the moment is Suhail R. Rizvi. Mr. Rizvi, 47, runs a private investment company that is the largest outside investor in Twitter with a 15.6 percent stake worth $3.8 billion at the end of trading on Thursday (November, 2013). Using a web of connections in the tech industry and in finance, as well as a hearty dose of good timing, he brought many prominent names in at the ground floor, including the Saudi prince and some of JPMorgan’s wealthiest clients.” https://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/08/technology/at-twitter-working-behind-the-scenes-toward-a-billion-dollar-payday.html Y’all like that Arab money? How about a dude that can call up Saudi Princes and convince them to spend? Funniest shit about I read about him: “Rizvi was able to buy only $100 million in Facebook shortly before its IPO, thus limiting his returns, according to people with knowledge of the matter.” Poor guy :(
He should be fine with the 16 million PLBY shares he's going to have though :)
Shuhail also has experience in the entertainment industry. He’s invested in companies like SESAC, ICM, and Summit Entertainment. He’s got Hollywood connections to blast this stuff post-merger. And he’s at least partially responsible for that whole Twilight thing. I’m team Edward btw.
I really like what Suhail has done so far. He’s lurked in the shadows while Kohn is consolidating the company, trimming the fat, making Playboy profitable, and aiming the ship at modern growing markets.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-twitter-ipo-rizvi-insight/insight-little-known-hollywood-investor-poised-to-score-with-twitter-ipo-idUSBRE9920VW20131003
Ben “The Bridge” Kohn is an interesting guy. He’s the connection between Rizvi Traverse and Playboy. He’s both CEO of Playboy and was previously Managing Partner at Rizvi Traverse. Ben seems to be the voice of the Playboy-Rizvi partnership, which makes sense with Suhail’s privacy concerns. Kohn said this:
“Today is a very big day for all of us at Playboy and for all our partners globally. I stepped into the CEO role at Playboy in 2017 because I saw the biggest opportunity of my career. Playboy is a brand and platform that could not be replicated today. It has massive global reach, with more than $3B of global consumer spend and products sold in over 180 countries. Our mission – to create a culture where all people can pursue pleasure – is rooted in our 67-year history and creates a clear focus for our business and role we play in people’s lives, providing them with the products, services and experiences that create a lifestyle of pleasure. We are taking this step into the public markets because the committed capital will enable us to accelerate our product development and go-to-market strategies and to more rapidly build our direct to consumer capabilities,” said Ben Kohn, CEO of Playboy.
“Playboy today is a highly profitable commerce business with a total addressable market projected in the trillions of dollars,” Mr. Kohn continued, “We are actively selling into the Sexual Wellness consumer category, projected to be approximately $400 billion in size by 2024, where our recently launched intimacy products have rolled out to more than 10,000 stores at major US retailers in the United States. Combined with our owned & operated ecommerce Sexual Wellness initiatives, the category will contribute more than 40% of our revenue this year. In our Apparel and Beauty categories, our collaborations with high-end fashion brands including Missguided and PacSun are projected to achieve over $50M in retail sales across the US and UK this year, our leading men’s apparel lines in China expanded to nearly 2500 brick and mortar stores and almost 1000 digital stores, and our new men’s and women’s fragrance line recently launched in Europe. In Gaming, our casino-style digital gaming products with Scientific Games and Microgaming continue to see significant global growth. Our product strategy is informed by years of consumer data as we actively expand from a purely licensing model into owning and operating key high-growth product lines focused on driving profitability and consumer lifetime value. We are thrilled about the future of Playboy. Our foundation has been set to drive further growth and margin, and with the committed capital from this transaction and our more than $180M in NOLs, we will take advantage of the opportunity in front of us, building to our goal of $100M of adjusted EBITDA in 2025.”
https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20201001005404/en/Playboy-to-Become-a-Public-Company
Also, according to their Form 4s, “Big” Dong Liu and “lil” Suying Liu just loaded up with shares last week. These guys are brothers and seem like the Chinese market connection. They are only 32 & 35 years old. I don’t even know what that means, but it's provocative.
https://www.secform4.com/insider-trading/1832415.htm
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/mountain-crest-acquisition-corp-ii-002600994.html
Y’all like that China money?
“Mr. Liu has been the Chief Financial Officer of Dongguan Zhishang Photoelectric Technology Co., Ltd., a regional designer, manufacturer and distributor of LED lights serving commercial customers throughout Southern China since November 2016, at which time he led a syndicate of investments into the firm. Mr. Liu has since overseen the financials of Dongguan Zhishang as well as provided strategic guidance to its board of directors, advising on operational efficiency and cash flow performance. From March 2010 to October 2016, Mr. Liu was the Head of Finance at Feidiao Electrical Group Co., Ltd., a leading Chinese manufacturer of electrical outlets headquartered in Shanghai and with businesses in the greater China region as well as Europe.”
Dr. Suying Liu, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Mountain Crest Acquisition Corp., commented, “Playboy is a unique and compelling investment opportunity, with one of the world’s largest and most recognized brands, its proven consumer affinity and spend, and its enormous future growth potential in its four product segments and new and existing geographic regions. I am thrilled to be partnering with Ben and his exceptional team to bring his vision to fruition.”
https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20201001005404/en/Playboy-to-Become-a-Public-Company
These guys are good. They have a proven track record of success across multiple industries. Connections and money run deep with all of these guys. I don’t think they’re in the game to lose.
I was going to write a couple more paragraphs about why you should have a look at this but really the best thing you can do is read this SEC filing from a couple days ago. It explains the situation in far better detail. Specifically, look to page 137 and read through their strategy. Also, look at their ownership percentages and compensation plans including the stock options and their prices. The financials look great, revenue is up 90% Q3, and it looks like a bright future.
https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgadata/1803914/000110465921005986/tm2034213-12_defm14a.htm#tSHCF
I’m hesitant to attach this because his position seems short term, but I’m going to with a warning because he does hit on some good points (two are below his link) and he’s got a sizable position in this thing (500k+ on margin, I think). I don’t know this guy but he did look at the same publicly available info and make roughly the same prediction, albeit without the in depth gambling or cannabis mention. You can also search reddit for ‘MCAC’ and very few relevant results come up and none of them even come close to really looking at this thing.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1gOvAd6lebs452hFlWWbxVjQ3VMsjGBkbJeXRwDwIJfM/edit?usp=sharing
“Also, before you people start making claims that Playboy is a “boomer” company, STOP RIGHT THERE. This is not a good argument. Simply put. The only thing that matters is Playboy’s name recognition, not their archaic business model which doesn’t even exist anymore as they have completely repurposed their business.”
“Imagine not buying $MCAC at a 400M valuation lol. Streetwear department is worth 1B alone imo.”
Considering the ridiculous Chinese growth as a lifestyle brand, he’s not wrong.
Current Cultural Significance and Meme Value: A year ago I wouldn’t have included this section but the events from the last several weeks (even going back to tsla) have proven that a company’s ability to meme and/or gain social network popularity can have an effect. Tik-tok, Snapchat, Twitch, Reddit, Youtube, Facebook, Twitter. They all have Playboy stuff on them. Kids in middle and highschool know what Playboy is but will likely never see or touch one of the magazines in person. They’ll have a Playboy hoodie though. Crazy huh? A lot like GME, PLBY would hugely benefit from meme-value stock interest to drive engagement towards their new business model while also building strategic coffers. This interest may not directly and/or significantly move the stock price but can generate significant interest from larger players who will.
Bull Case: The year is 2025. Playboy is now the world leader pleasure brand. They began by offering Playboy licensed gaming products, including gambling products, direct to consumers through existing names. By 2022, demand has skyrocketed and Playboy has designed and released their own gambling platforms. In 2025, they are also a leading cannabis brand in the United States and Canada with proprietary strains and products geared towards sexual wellness. Cannabis was legalized in the US in 2023 when President Biden got glaucoma but had success with cannabis treatment. He personally pushes for cannabis legalization as he steps out of office after his first term. Playboy has also grown their brand in China and India to multi-billion per year markets. The stock goes up from 11ish to 100ish and everyone makes big gains buying somewhere along the way.
Bear Case: The United States does a complete 180 on marijuana and gambling. President Biden overdoses on marijuana in the Lincoln bedroom when his FDs go tits up and he loses a ton of money in his sports book app after the Fighting Blue Hens narrowly lose the National Championship to Bama. Playboy is unable to expand their cannabis and gambling brands but still does well with their worldwide lifestyle brand. They gain and lose some interest in China and India but the markets are too large to ignore them completely. The stock goes up from 11ish to 13ish and everyone makes 15-20% gains.
TL;DR: Successful technology/e-commerce investment firm took over Playboy to turn it into a porn, online gambling/gaming, sports book, cannabis company, worldwide lifestyle brand that promotes sexual wellness, vetern access, women-ownership, minority-ownership, and “pleasure for all”. Does a successful online team reinventing an antiquated physical copy giant sound familiar? No options yet, shares only for now. $11.38 per share at time of writing. My guess? $20 by the end of February. $50 by EOY. This is not financial advice. I am not qualified to give financial advice. I’m just sayin’ I would personally use a Playboy sports book app while smoking a Playboy strain specific joint and it would be cool if they did that. Do your own research. You’d probably want to start here:
WARNING - POTENTIALLY NSFW - SEXY MODELS AHEAD - no actual nudity though
https://s26.q4cdn.com/895475556/files/doc_presentations/Playboy-Craig-Hallum-Conference-Investor-Presentation-11_17_20-compressed.pdf
Or here:
https://www.mcacquisition.com/investor-relations/default.aspx
Jimmy Chill: “Get into any SPAC at $10 or $11 and you are going to make money.”
STL;DR: Buy MCAC. MCAC > PLBY couple weeks. Rocketship. Moon.
Position: 5000 shares. I will buy short, medium, and long-dated calls once available.

Hi all,
I thought I would share my profits for Matched Betting Extra Place Horse Racing for Jan 21. January 2021 has turned into my best month of Matched Betting since I started way back in Summer 2018. This months profits are roughly £4,707. A life changing figure for many and a great figure seeing this is achievable on top of a full time job. Matched Betting is the only decent side hustle I have actually found, compared to doing hundreds of boring online surveys...yuck! (Unless you are a good business person / have 5 lodgers / lots of family money etc.) To see some of my other Matched Betting profits you visit my site: https://cashontheside.co.uk/
I will be investing some of my profits this month in ETF/Shares and putting into house improvements like a new drive way. In addition with Cheltenham horse festival coming up in March, I will be increasing my bank to cover liabilities.
The bulk of my profits came from Extra Place racing, large underlayed winners and BOG (best offer garuntee). Variance was certainly on my side this month and I must have had at least 10 large winners which won upwards of £1600 pounds per bet. As I underlay my bets I made more profit than If I had fully layed of the bets. About 5% of these profits came from low risk casino. After you have completed all welcome offers...in Matched Betting. Ep's become a gold mine...and I truly recommend them to anyone.
Some more of my bets this month illustrating underlayed bets and ep:
https://cashonthesidecouk.files.wordpress.com/2021/02/winnings4.jpg
https://cashonthesidecouk.files.wordpress.com/2021/02/winnings.jpg
https://cashonthesidecouk.files.wordpress.com/2021/02/another-winner.jpg
​
Images of one of my bets illustrative of Best offer guarantee: https://cashonthesidecouk.files.wordpress.com/2021/01/136707133_10159536662702922_8507610622687908137_o-1.jpg?w=544
For those who are starting out on their Match Betting journey in 2021 these sort of figures are achievable to you once you have experience….unfortunately this will not come overnight! I do put a lot of time into it..between 2-5 hours a day, 7 days a week sometimes. For the average person you could earn at least £500 a month.
To learn more about Match Betting please visit my article Boost Your Income with Matched Betting. Alternatively you can start an Odds Monkey free trial where they will teach you step by step and give you the calculators you need: odds monkey trial https://www.oddsmonkey.com/affiliates/affiliate.php?id=64754(affiliate) or www.oddsmonkey.com. (non affiliate)
To those with a little more experience who want to learn about Matched Betting Extra Places you can visit my guide here Extra Place Match Betting tips here or I have copied and pasted it all below.
For those with Matched Betting Experience - my guide and tips to Extra Places:
What is Extra Place Matched Betting?
Extra Places can be a very lucrative technique to learn. Extra Places are available for us to do pretty much every day, increasing the appeal. Extra Place Offers are available to all customers. This means that even if you get gubbed with a bookmaker, in most cases, you can still make money with them by Matched Betting on their Extra Place Offers.
Extra Places are considered an advanced reload offer, as they not risk-free. However once you have gained some experience on more basic horse racing offers, you can start to take advantage of the lucrative profits available. It may sound complicated but as soon as it ‘clicks’, it becomes simple. Essentially we are taking advantage of the bookies and exchanges paying out if the horse you have backed comes a certain ‘place’ in a race e.g. 4th.
Extra Places combined with additional offers such as BOG (Best Offer Guarantee) can mean additional profits. For example, you back a horse at odds of 15 and then the starting odds move up to 23. If that horse wins you win an extra x8 on your bet. You can see some real life scenarios I found of Extra Place combined with BOG below. Depending on the size of the underlay, profits below would range up to £3,000+

What is a ‘place’ in horse racing?

Quite simply a ‘place’ is the position the horse finishes a race in. For example if a horse wins a race it comes 1st, if a horse comes 2nd its 2nd. In some races with a large number of horses some bookies will pay out if a horse finishes the race in 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th and 6th position. Horse Racing festivals such as Cheltenham or Ascot are particularly well known for this.

What is an ‘Extra Place’ in horse racing?

Now we’ve understood what a place is in horse racing you may have probably already guessed what an ‘extra place’ is going to be! An ‘extra place’ is where the bookies add one (or more) additional places to their standard place classification on a particular race. For example they may offer to ‘pay 7 places on a race’ instead of the standard 3 places. The ‘extra place’ in this instance cover 4th, 5th, 6th and 7th.
What are my Extra Place top tips?

1. Some of my biggest profits have come from big underlayed winners and BOG. I typically underlay most of my bets by about 20% sometimes more. If you are starting out I would underlay on the place only by about 10% to play it safe until you learn more.
2. Don’t bet on more places than a bookmaker is offering. E.g. If the bookmaker is offering 4 places don’t bet on more than that.
3. Whilst your learning, take horses on implied odds of at least 12 or more on a match of 80%+.
4. Look to keep qualifying losses down. E.g. for £100 profit, £5 ql.
5. Please note, the best odds are typically found between 10 minutes up and to race time. You have to be quick on your ‘toes’…learn to walk before you run etc. Start out on easy horse racing officers before doing extra places.
6. You will need a bank of at least £1000+ for your exchanges, ideally more. The more you have the more of the field you can cover. You can do EP with several hundred in your exchange but you won’t be able to make bigger profits.
7. Be consistent, don’t take risks, don’t chase your losses and learn from matched betting extra place forums.
8. Keep the Odds Monkey up throughout the day...and check for good matches.
9. Use Bookies Boosts to increase your odds and matches.
10. Do not give in to your fear of missing out on offers…Tomorrow is another day.
11. Have at least a dual monitoscreen setup. It is important to be able to see exchange, books and calcs.

How do I find Extra Places offers?
I use the the Odds Monkey Extra Place Matcher to find the best opportunities for profit. The Matcher is explained in the below video.
https://youtu.be/oOKAdiSJidg
I am also a regular visitor of the active Odds Monkey community forums. You can sign up for an Odds Monkey free trial today here today https://www.oddsmonkey.com/affiliates/affiliate.php?id=64754 www.oddsmonkey.com (non affiliate). Odds Monkey provide you with the all guides, calculators etc. I have been a member for over 2.4 years now.
Feel free to get in touch or ask below if any questions.

New Music Friday is the weekly thread dedicated to cataloging all the Album/EP releases that came out this week, including non-subreddit relevant releases. This is also a great place to discuss these albums, or bring to our attention other albums released this week.

❓ "this seems intriguing after a cursory look"
⭐ "im interested in this for one reason or another"
❤️ "ive been waiting for weeks, months/i'm absolutely in love with this"

⭐ Goat Girl - On All Fours
Label: Rough Trade
Genre: Art Rock, Neo-Psych, Indie Rock
⭐ Madlib - Sound Ancestors
Label: Madlib Invazion
Genre: Instrumental Hip Hop, Boom Bap, Spiritual Jazz
Arlo Parks - Collapsed in Sunbeams (animated cover)
Label: Transgressive
Genre: Bedroom Pop, Neo-Soul, Trip Hop
⭐ The Body - I've Seen All I Need to See
Label: Thrill Jockey
Genre: Power Electronics, Drone Metal, Death Industrial, Sludge Metal
Baio - Dead Hand Control
Label: Glassnote
Genre: Indietronica, Indie Pop
LNZNDRF (side project of The National + Beirut) - II
Label: self-released
Genre: Indie Rock, Krautrock
PJ Harvey - Is This Desire? (Demos)
Label: Island
Genre: Alternative Rock, Singesongwriter, Downtempo
❓ Spills - Reflexions
Label: self-released
Genre: Synthpop, Dream Pop
Steven Wilson - THE FUTURE BITES
Label: Universal/Caroline
Genre: Art Pop, Progressive Pop, Art Rock
Katie Dey - urdata (remixes)
Label: Run for Cover
Genre: Glitch Pop, Hyperpop
❓ Lucero - When You Found Me
Label: Liberty & Lament
Genre: Alt-Country, Folk Rock
❓ Celeste - Not Your Muse
Label: Polydor
Genre: Pop Soul, Contemporary R&B
Portrayal of Guilt - We Are Always Alone
Label: Closed Casket Activities
Genre: Screamo, Black Metal, Sludge Metal
Two Suns - Isolated Incidents (EP)
Label: self-released
Genre: Heavy Psych, Garage Rock
Martin Gore (of Depeche Mode) - The Third Chimpanzee (EP)
Label: Mute
Genre: Electronic, Ambient Techno, IDM
⭐ Tamar Aphek - All Bets Are Off
Label: Kill Rock Stars
Genre: Singesongwriter, Psychedelic Rock, Blues Rock
The Notwist - Vertigo Days
Label: Morr Music
Genre: Indietronica, Krautrock
❓ Zeahorse - Let's Not (And Say We Did)
Label: Copper Feast
Genre: Noise Rock, Punk Rock
The Besnard Lakes - The Besnard Lakes Are The Last of the Great Thunderstorm Warnings
Label: Full Time Hobby
Genre: Indie Rock, Neo-Psych
The Sonder Bombs - Clothbound
Label: Take This to Heart
Genre: Power Pop, Pop Punk
Fergus McCreadie - Cairn
Label: Edition
Genre: Jazz-Folk
❓ Motorama - Before the Road
Label: I'm home records
Genre: Post-Punk, Indie Pop, Dream Pop
Dr. Dog - Live 2
Label: We Buy Gold
Genre: Indie Rock, Indie Pop
Lia Ices - Family Album
Label: Natural Music
Genre: Art Pop, Indie Folk, Singesongwriter
❓ Albertine Sarges - Sticky Fingers
Label: Moshi Moshi
Genre: Singesongwirter
❓ Divide and Dissolve - Gas Lit
Label: Invada
Genre: Drone Metal
Langhorne Slim - Strawberry Mansion
Label: Dualtone Records
Genre: Alt-Country, Americana
James Ferraro - Terminus
Label: n/a
Genre: Progressive Electronic, Post-Industrial, Aggrotech, Dark Ambient, Glitch
❓ Anna B Savage - A Common Turn
Label: City Slang
Genre: Psychedelic Folk, Singesongwriter
Minotaur Shock - Qi
Label: n/a
Genre: IDM, Electronic
Rats On Rafts - Excerpts From Chapter 3: The Mind Runs a Net of Rabbit Paths
Label: Fire
Genre: Post-Punk
Keaton Henson - Supernova (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack)
Label: Lakeshore
Genre: Modern Classical
Delvon Lamarr Organ Trio - I Told You So
Label: Colemine
Genre: Jazz-Funk, Soul
❓ Cathedral Bells - Ether
Label: Spirit Goth
Genre: Dream Pop, Coldwave, Post-Punk
The Quincey - Eolia (EP)
Label: Nice Guys
Genre: Indie Rock, Psychedelic Rock
❓ Cobalt Chapel - Orange Synthetic
Label: Klove
Genre: Neo-Psych, Art Pop
Babehoven - Yellow Has a Pretty Good Reputation (EP)
Label: self-released
Genre: Lo-Fi Indie, Bedroom Pop
The Luka State - Fall In Fall Out
Label: AntiFragile
Genre: Indie Rock, Post-Punk Revival
Joe Vann (of Indian Lakes) - Found In The Smoke
Label: self-released
Genre: Indie Rock, Singesongwriter, Synthpop
Casino Versus Japan - Echo Counting
Label: n/a
Genre: IDM, Ambient, Downtempo
DMX Krew - Overseer (EP)
Label: Cultivated Electronics
Genre: Electro
Ani DiFranco - Revolutionary Love
Label: Righteous Babe
Genre: Singesongwriter, Art Pop, Indie Folk
⭐ Black Pistol Fire - Look Alive
Label: Modern Outsider
Genre: Blues Rock, Alternative Rock
The Crayolas - Post-Modern Days
Label: self-released
Genre: Indie Rock, Indie Pop
Buzzy Lee - Spoiled Love
Label: Future Classic
Genre: Indie Pop, Singesongwriter, Alternative R&B
The Planes - The Oracle of Marcy
Label: n/a
Genre: Indie Rock
Buke and Gase and So Percussion - A Record Of...
Label: Brassland
Genre: Math Rock, Avant-Prog
Weezer - OK Human
Label: Crush
Genre: Chamber Pop, Pop Rock, Baroque Pop
Marcus Skeen - Irrational
Label: self-released
Genre: Pop
ISÁK - Roasut
Label: Universal
Genre: Synthpop, Alternative R&B
Seeb - Sad in Scandinavia
Label: Universal
Genre: Electropop, Dance-Pop, Future House
Videoclub - Euphories
Label: n/a
Genre: French Pop, Synthwave, Synthpop
❓ BONES - BURDEN
Label: self-released
Genre: Cloud Rap, Emo Rap, Trap
Fendi P - Art of Finessing 2
Label: Jet Life
Genre: Southern Hip Hop, Trap
Haiti Babii - Trap Art
Label: Empire
Genre: West Coast Hip Hop
5AM - You're Going To Be Fine
Label: Interscope
Genre: Hip Hop/Rap
Chip - Snakes & Ladders
Label: Cash Motto
Genre: UK Hip Hop, Grime, Afrobeat
⭐ Soen - IMPERIAL
Label: Silver Lining
Genre: Progressive Rock, Progressive Metal
Accept - Too Mean To Die
Label: Nuclear Blast
Genre: Heavy Metal
Annisokay - Aurora
Label: Arising Empire
Genre: Post-Hardcore, Metalcore
⭐ Trillionaire - Romulus
Label: Nefarious Industries
Genre: Hard Rock, Progressive Rock
And Now The Owls Are Smiling - Dirges
Label: Clobber
Genre: Atmospheric Black Metal, Blackgaze
⭐ Demon Head - Viscera
Label: Metal Blade
Genre: Occult Rock, Gothic Rock
Eximperitus - Šahrartu
Label: Willowtip
Genre: Technical Death Metal, Brutal Death Metal
Meer - Playing House
Label: Karisma
Genre: Orchestral Pop, Prog Rock
❓ Nopes - Djörk
Label: Magnetic Eye
Genre: Noise Rock, Garage Punk
⭐ WOWOD - Yarost’ I Proshchenie
Label: Church Road
Genre: Post-Hardcore, Sludge Metal
Hån - Breathing the Void
Label: Northern Silence
Genre: Black Metal, Melodic Black Metal
Knife the Glitter - Breakfast Time (EP)
Label: self-released
Genre: Mathcore

Real Luck Group LTD CVE: LUCK TSX: LUCK.V
What does it do Real Luck Group Ltd (CVE:LUCK) is one of the first movers in the esports betting market and one of the few pure-play names. Its Luckbox operating business is a dedicated esports betting site currently accepting customers from about 80 territories globally. Luckbox was built from scratch by a team now led by chief executive Quentin Martin, a former top-ranking professional cardplayer and esports gamer in the UK and Canada. He and two ex-colleagues from Canada’s Pokerstars together co-founded Luckbox in 2018 and soft-launched a live product in spring 2019. The esports betting website and app are licensed by the Isle of Man, which from a player-protection perspective is one of the best gaming licences in the world.
Why esports betting? With Generation Z more likely to watch computer games than traditional sports, esports is becoming ever more mainstream and even before the coronavirus pandemic was predicted to be facing the highest growth potential of any sport. Luckbox has seen first-hand the spike in players moving from betting on sports to betting on esports in 2020 and has managed to lock up around 75% of its customer gains. Martin says esports betting, which uses the same licensing and infrastructure as the existing traditional sports betting industry, offers the potential for higher profits and has barriers to entry from the betting models.
What’s the latest In December, parent company Real Luck Group listed on the TSX Venture Exchange in Toronto. This followed a CA$6mln funding round from investors in the summer. Around the turn of the year, Luckbox has plans to add the option to bet on around 100 more traditional sports and other events, including football, baseball and tennis, as well as developing a casino offering in the following months. Looking ahead to 2021 at the time of the IPO, Martin said there remains “huge” potential for further organic growth through content marketing, affiliates, partnerships, influencers and direct media. There are also plans from a B2B perspective, bringing odds compilation in-house, with Martin saying a merger or acquisition would probably be the most effective way to achieve that.
article: https://www.proactiveinvestors.co.uk/companies/news/936987/real-luck-group-offers-chance-to-get-into-esports-betting-at-level-one-936987.html

Hi everyone, this is my first contribution to HobbyDrama, I hope this is an entertaining read and also to the community's standards. Let's go!!
Brief glossary before we begin (and some foreshadowing)
MMORPG: massively multiplayer online role-playing game, MMO for short. A videogame genre that generally invites hundreds, or up to thousands, of players to share a space. Depending on the game, anything from general adventure to large-scale war to economy and politics can be simulated. I find it hard to believe that anyone reading this could possibly not know what this is but it's included anyway.
Electro-convulsive therapy: ECT for short, it is a form of treatment where electrodes are "carefully" hooked up to a person's head and a "precise" level of electric shock is delivered, in order to treat major psychiatric disorders. Developed in 1938 when most psychiatric treatments was in their infancy, it is still used today occasionally for serious cases of depression, mania, or psychoses. In its early days however, there were widespread claims of abuse associated with its use.
Pt1: The Root of all that is bullshit
Zhengtu Online (hereafter referred to as ZT) was an immensely popular MMORPG that was developed in China and primarily served a Chinese playerbase. Released in 2006, at its peak it boasted more 2 million players, which while not particularly impressive relative to World of Warcraft (8mil worldwide at the same time), was a truly insane amount of success in a gaming scene that was very much in its embryonic stage.
The game itself was an unimpressive Diablo-style top down fantasy setting, and its gameplay loop primarily revolved around improving your ability to kill various things, but what made it special was the overarching metagame: every player population (sharing a server) was divided into 10 kingdoms. Kings and generals were all individual players, and they dictated politics to their neighbors--primarily in the form of initiating player-vs-player (or PVP) warfare.
Most contemporary MMOs had an upfront price plus a monthly subscription fee. In China, such pricing models were mostly replaced by paying oney for a set amount of ingame playing time. Unlike all of them, ZT was completely free to play (F2P).
Free to play, however, meant pay-to-win: the best weapons and armor, and even leveling up your character, needed you to pay real money. Since so much of the game was focused on PVP, it also created an eternal arms race between players, each paying for the privilege of not being evaporated by a high level enemy.
The way they did this was unique at the time. While F2P online games had already seen their rise in South Korea, equipment was generally priced explicitly via in-game currency and bought in virtual shops. ZT fused this with the sweet, sweet taste of gambling: gear in the game was primarily obtained in loot boxes, and you had to pay for keys to open them.
It needs to be emphasized that gambling of any kind was illegal in China, but, in an eerie parallel of American CEOS in the future, ZT's developers said it wasn't gambling because, well, you weren't getting your money back.
By combining this with multiple other exploitative practices, such as providing a small amount of premium currency like a casino giving you a free bet on the house, or awarding special items to the player with the highest number of lootboxes opened in a day, ZT was making money like taking candy from a candy-hating baby, and made gaming history.
As far as what this means for gamers, this was Eve giving Adam the apple, Oppenhemier splitting the atom, Prometheus stealing fire, Caesar crossing the Rubicon, and goddamn Helen Keller signing "water".
If you play any kind of videogames today, you've stepped through the long shadow that ZT had cast. Zynga (developers of Farmville) would be founded in 2007 and focused exclusively on free games with real-money integration. Lootboxes made it into Team Fortress 2 in 2010, one of the first major western-developed games to include them.
Similar mechanics (with varying degrees of exploitative practices) came to FIFA in 2010, Mass Effect 3 in 2012, Counter-Strike in 2013, League of Legends in 2016, and NBA 2K in 2017, infecting every genre of gaming under the sun, including the most popular MMO, World of Warcraft. As an aside, corporate defense of lootboxes in Star Wars Battlefront II also led to the most downvoted Reddit comment of all time.
Finally someone speaks out
The System, an article published in the Chinese newspaper Southern Weekly in 2007, was a hard-hitting expose on the exploitive practices of ZT. It chronicled the rise and fall of a gamer who accidentally becomes the monarch of one of these in-game Kingdoms, her addiction to the game, and final disillusionment when she realized that in-game player behaviour was being explicitly manipulated by its designers for the purpose of creating addicts and selling more lootbox keys.
The whole article is worth a read, even if it is sensationalist in a way that immediately tells you the writer was clearly a failed novelist of some kind - describing virtual destruction with the kind of prose most people would consider and then discard for a gang rape, for starters. But it had gotten its point across. It created an explosive backlash against the game in China, and was even translated into English and propagated across gaming forums.
The fallout
In an act of censorship usually reserved for the CCP government, this article--including its English translation--began to be scrubbed from the internet, with speculation pointing to the immensely powerful CEO behind ZT. I mean, who else could it be, right?
This article would light the fire of China's first moral panic regarding videogames. In its wake, swift legislation would be enacted regarding internet gaming addiction as well as online proxy gambling. ZT would heed the new laws and remove its lootbox mechanics in the following years and many other similar games followed suit.
Most tragically, the panic (which, to be fair, was fueled by a very real problem) allowed unscrupulous characters such as Yang Yongxin, vice chairman of a hospital in Shandong province, to create "internet addiction centres". With its legitimacy established by a docuseries ("Fighting the Internet Monster") on the state-run television channel CCTV, these centres charged terrified parents exorbitant prices in order to keep teens by force in, essentially, private hospitals and asylums, subjecting them to inhumane conditions and abusive ECT in order to "cure" them of their disease. It was estimated that Yang earned the equivalent of more than $6million USD from his addiction centre in the short space of 2 years. While his centre was eventually closed by state order, he received no punishment of any kind.
As for ZT, it limped on until 2018. A mobile game reboot was made in 2015. A tie-in fantasy movie was released in 2020. it was not very good.
~~~~~~
Addendum: how we got here: Of Mice and levers
In the 1950s, an American scientist named BF Skinner discovered the following: when mouse is put in a box with a small lever that, when pressed, dispenses a food pellet, they will quickly learn to start pressing on the lever as fast as possible. If you then stop the food from dispensing, the mouse will lose interest quickly after pressing a few times and seeing no food coming out.
If, however, you hooked up the lever to dispense food at random intervals, the mouse will be practically glued to the lever and hammer on it nonstop, sometimes long after they become full, and long after any food has been dispensed.
This discovery, known as variable outcome operant conditioning, formed the foundation of our understanding of addiction and gambling. Skinner would go on to try and fail to make bombs guided by pigeons, but we're not interested in that here. His research tool--the Skinner Box--would become a descriptor you may have come across when discussing exploitive game mechanics.
Summary
Once upon a time, a game combined the random outcome of videogaming with real-money gambling. This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move.

Missed out on SCR.TO? RIDE $LUCK TO THE MOON! 🚀🚀🚀🚀
Real Luck Group LTD CVE: LUCK
What does it do Real Luck Group Ltd (CVE:LUCK) is one of the first movers in the esports betting market and one of the few pure-play names. Its Luckbox operating business is a dedicated esports betting site currently accepting customers from about 80 territories globally. Luckbox was built from scratch by a team now led by chief executive Quentin Martin, a former top-ranking professional cardplayer and esports gamer in the UK and Canada. He and two ex-colleagues from Canada’s Pokerstars together co-founded Luckbox in 2018 and soft-launched a live product in spring 2019. The esports betting website and app are licensed by the Isle of Man, which from a player-protection perspective is one of the best gaming licences in the world.
Why esports betting? With Generation Z more likely to watch computer games than traditional sports, esports is becoming ever more mainstream and even before the coronavirus pandemic was predicted to be facing the highest growth potential of any sport. Luckbox has seen first-hand the spike in players moving from betting on sports to betting on esports in 2020 and has managed to lock up around 75% of its customer gains. Martin says esports betting, which uses the same licensing and infrastructure as the existing traditional sports betting industry, offers the potential for higher profits and has barriers to entry from the betting models.
What’s the latest In December, parent company Real Luck Group listed on the TSX Venture Exchange in Toronto. This followed a CA$6mln funding round from investors in the summer. Around the turn of the year, Luckbox has plans to add the option to bet on around 100 more traditional sports and other events, including football, baseball and tennis, as well as developing a casino offering in the following months. Looking ahead to 2021 at the time of the IPO, Martin said there remains “huge” potential for further organic growth through content marketing, affiliates, partnerships, influencers and direct media. There are also plans from a B2B perspective, bringing odds compilation in-house, with Martin saying a merger or acquisition would probably be the most effective way to achieve that.