Chapter Two; pages 35-38

Identifying the problem was advertising 101 and easy for me since I concentrated on advertising as a profession. The spots were horrible and not appropriate. The voice on the radio spot in my opinion was very dry, sorry Lee Klein (XTRA Sports 1150 Los Angeles). The ad copy was written with the intent to sell how trustworthy BOS was with their Lloyd’s of London insurance policies on each account, which was non-existent. The spots were also not appropriate as a nighttime sports talk show host in Los Angeles was doing spots on the San Diego station. At the time San Diego’s XTRA Sports 690 was the king of local radio on the west coast. It was created by media legend Chet Forte of ABC Sports and Monday Night Football and also is the station that launched the career of the top sports talk show host for what seems forever, Jim Rome. More people listened to the San Diego station with its booming 70,000 watt antenna on the hillside of Tijuana that reached the great northwest on a clear night. So having Lee Klein as the voice of the commercial made no sense. Our first choice to replace him was Arnie Spandier; although Arnie was from the Los Angeles station he was a very excitable person and spoke passionately about sports betting. Unfortunately Arnie’s services were already locked up by my good friend Robert Elkman in the San Fernando Valley just north of Los Angeles for Jaguar Sports which was cleaning up with hundreds of new accounts from radio.

The creative was non-existent in the radio commercials also. Claude had no clue on radio advertising he wanted to sell facts and figures on the air which I confirmed with the representing agency. I was convinced the spots just needed some excitement to entice the audience to call in or log onto the internet at BOS to find out about betting on a game. My analogy would prove to be correct and the pending changes made radio very successful. Claude once said if he could he would say gamble, bet, gamble, bet, wager, 888-999-BETS, and 888-999-BETS for the entire 60 second commercial if he could. After 10 seconds of that I am sure the audience would be getting a headache and turning the channel; If not 10 seconds then 30 seconds of it for sure.

I immediately restructured the radio advertising. I flew back to Los Angeles for a few days and hired a couple of enthusiastic voices and wrote a script with a couple of unknowns using a male/female dialog. I pushed a combination of humor from an excitable male voice, thank you Scott Hensley and the sultry voice of Brandy Carter. Anyways their enthusiasm was a huge hit and calls started flooding in after I put them on the air. Furthermore I adjusted the scheduling of the media to focus more on the days leading up to games as opposed to spreading out the advertising throughout the week. Weekends were also a poor time to advertise because gamblers were watching the games and not paying attention to radio unless it was a game and in-game advertising was nearly impossible to attain with NCAA and NFL contracts.

Despite the great results down the stretch Claude used the poor start as reason to not pay and release the media firm out of Cincinnati for failing to get results despite having an agreement to represent BOS. I recall Claude blasting the owner and account executive over the phone one day, then hanging up saying he wanted to put them out of business. Sometimes Claude’s expectations combined with ire got the best of him and he said things he probably should have kept to himself. That Cincinnati firm was also the bearer of bad news for defaulted payment on two great guys, David Kent of XTRA – Sports 690 in San Diego and Richard Walsh of XTRA – Sports 1150 in Los Angeles. Both guys lost their commissions and I would have to smooth them over the following year just to get back on the air. I maintained contact with the Cincinnati firm’s account executive, former NFL lineman named Joe on problems that BOS was having because it was professional courtesy; they were the agency of record and I just happened to be there in Costa Rica and was requested to clean up the mess which I assume was dictated by Claude. A couple of times I gave Joe a heads up call to let him know about problems before either Claude or Shaun got the urge to call him up and yell at him. Shaun was a real ass about that. Joe was about 6’7” and 300lbs of professional athlete that was just working on a post NFL career and Shaun had little man’s disease getting a rise out of making fun of him.

Joe still owes me a beer for those heads up calls. I am not one to steal an account or step on ones toes but at this point I was the leading candidate for landing the now open BOS account. In this case I never solicited the account and never received any commissions off of improving the radio advertising in 2000. The work was a courtesy.

One of the biggest keys to electronic advertising in the online gaming industry happened in 2000, because of the emergence of radio for BOS. The strong results came through once I cleaned up the radio. This success provoked Claude’s desire to be on sports talk radio in Miami. I immediately contacted WQAM Sports Radio in Miami and sales representative Todd Greck; he informed me that although he would love to take the advertising he couldn’t due to assumed prohibition of online gaming advertising in the state of Florida. I did some extensive research and discovered a Supreme Court Case where online gaming could benefit. The 1998 New Orleans Broadcaster’s Association vs. the United States case on gaming focused on the Central Hudson Test which stated if the business is licensed where the operation and transactions are taking place than people in the US regardless of state laws on gambling had the right to hear about the business. In this case the folks of South Carolina had the right to hear about gambling in the state of Louisiana despite local South Carolina law that forbade gambling. I would use this Supreme Court interpretation to support executives' decisions to accept online gaming advertising business in a lot of states during the upcoming years. I also used a copy of this for many prospecting calls down on the island of Curacao that January. Companies that I contacted before the 2001 ad season jumped right on board the radio bandwagon with the information I provided about the Supreme Court case on gaming and the precedence with WQAM – Miami. Florida became a hot market with most of the industry’s executives flying back and forth to the states on American Airlines through Miami and it didn't hurt that three major college football powerhouses resided in the state along with three NFL teams. When Claude was not in Costa Rica chances are he used one of his alleged fake passports to visit his doctor in Miami due to physical ailments.

During one of my in person meetings with Mr. Ripner in 2000, I found out what a sore spot is for him. Taxes! I came to him with new ideas including consolidation of companies for advertising purposes to increase the power of the dollar when locking up advertising. The proposed creative usage of excitement and humor to get the consumer response rates up. I pushed the use of celebrity personalities to promote his product. I suggested the use of large recreational luxury coaches as billboards with attractive young people to pass out t-shirts, key chains and other memorabilia to brand the BOS name. Claude didn’t say anything about the consolidation he just listened, he just listened when it came to the creative differentiation, he was against the use of the luxury coaches and supporting other people’s party habits at tail gate events and chewed me out of the office on taxes and establishing relations with government officials and charities. He was emphatic toward me about giving nothing back as his bonus programs were enough. I didn’t know it at the time but turns out he had a heart when it came to charities which Mrs. Ripner was probably more responsible for.

Taxes or contributions to programs in the country (USA) where a majority of his business came from was in my opinion essential for long term relations. Take too much money and the government will notice and they can put up obstacles to make it difficult to do business. Keep overcoming those obstacles and they can change laws that will lock you out. Tell the government how to do their business and some of the most powerful men in the world (US politicians) will start signing off on arrest warrants. So working with US politicians was the route I advocated. It wasn’t to Claude’s liking. I only brought it up twice and both times I could barely get past the words of taxes and working with politicians before Claude would erupt and send me away. He hated that idea!

The bonus programs were for new gamblers to get anywhere from 10-20% bonus on top of their initial sign up; if a gambler posted up $500 on his account he would get an additional $50-100 depending upon his bonus agreement with the sales representative. When a customer would run out of money and not bet for a while sales representatives would call the prospective gambler and entice him with bonuses to refill their accounts. It really wasn’t much of a freebie since there were stipulations to keeping the bonus to keep “bonus whores” from conning the online gaming companies; The stipulations where players had to play their deposit anywhere from 3x to 5x over before being allowed to withdraw funds. It was fair but not really any form of charity or giving back to communities that supported BOS with their patronage.