The Future of Sports Betting Marketing: AI, Brand Experience & Celebrity Ads | Casey Hurbis

On today's episode of Right About Now, I talked to CMO, Casey Herbus. He is the chief marketing officer of BET-MGM. Yes, that MGM. We break down all the things that change in marketing, digital, branding, the last 20 years, and exactly what's working today. Casey talks about their new campaign, Make It Legendary, with John Hamm. Yeah, that John Hamm. It's a really cool and insightful episode. I enjoyed it. You guys know me. I'm the marketing geek. You're going to enjoy it too. Learn what work today. Learn how big CMO sinks, operates, and acts in 2025, right here, right now. Chatchy PT AI in the form that we know it's only been around for two and a half, three years. The pace, the speed of which this business is changing is the fastest I've ever seen it. And so 30 years ago, 15 or today, you and I were in it. We live it, and it's just the fastest I've ever seen it. And so much of it is data led. This is Right About Now with Ryan Alford, a Radcast Network Production. We are the number one business show on the planet with over one million downloads a month. Taking the BS out of business for over six years and over 400 episodes. You ready to start snapping next and cash and checks? Well, it starts right about now. What's up guys? Welcome to right about now. We're always talking about what's right now. Again, what's more right now than the guy I got on today? I'm just telling you, look, he's the Hughes who CMO. You know what that is? That's chief marketing bad ass officer. That's his name. It is Casey. Herb us. He is the CMO at bet MGM. What's up, Casey? Right. I'm going to take that title and change my sick right now. I love it. C M B O. Yeah. Oh, hey, man. I love what you're doing. I got to know you behind the scenes. Even though I knew I knew you and respect what you've been doing in the marketing business and leading teams. And now, hey, bad MGM. I'd like to place a wager or two Casey. I'd like to place a wager. What do you like placing wagers or football football NFL college? Yeah, mainly college. I keep it like you know in my 20s. You know, probably more than I should have. Now it's I never gamble what I can't afford to lose. As long as you're being responsible, that's what matters. Exactly. Talk to me. What's going on with bet MGM? Bet MGM. So Ryan, I joined Bet MGM in December. It's been eight months. It's been fast and furious. Prior to that, I was proud to be a CMO at Rocket Mortgage, the country's largest retail mortgage lender. Prior to that to 25 years in automotive and had the opportunity to join the Bet MGM team and family in December. And it's been wild. I mean, we're now what two weeks removed from NFL kickoff, which that was my first preparation for an NFL season. And it was like getting ready for Super Bowl. It was a hundred hour weeks getting a new brand campaign going, which we'll talk about. I'm sure with John Ham and then gathering everybody at the office on Thursday night for the season kickoff game where we anxiously awaited watching the technology and seeing how our players were reacting to the marketplace. And then our brand campaign come to life in the second quarter. And it felt it was like a little Super Bowl for me. You know, to finally see eight months of hard work come to fruition with launch earned brand campaigns. It's been awesome. That's awesome. And congratulations on the campaign. It's been really successful. It looked great. And it's interesting. It brings me back into my days. I spent in Manhattan and on big brands. I am a little jealous of some of the reliving some of those days vicariously hearing you talk and thinking back some of my quiet existence here in South Carolina also is not so terrible. But I do miss some of the energy that just comes with campaigns that have the attention of so many talk to me. You've worked at such large brands large campaigns talk about that experience. It's sometimes hard to explain. It's one of those like if you know you know and you've done it Ryan. Yeah, where is when you sit down and you finally see it come to life say it's a 30 second spot. And then people move on with their life. And I would say like you have no idea what it took to bring that to life. The months, the 100 hour weeks sleepless nights in the world we live in even though we live in a world that's so data rich. It's still marketing advertising, particularly in the creative world is still very subjective. And right when you get that ball to the two yard line, then somebody says, well, I don't like this. And it's managing and you've worked on big brands as a guy and I always say there's been points in my career right at 17,000 creative experts at a company I work at here. I've got about 1500 creative experts, but sometimes the right to you know, I'll take feedback from anywhere. I always try to remind myself Ryan and those sleepless nights or those moments of mass tension is my calming forces. I tell myself, dude, if this was easy, everybody would do it. Let's not take the path to least resistance. Let's push. Let's be different. Let's, you know, so when we want to piece of work, whatever that might be comes to life, you sit back and you feel you feel proud to have it on your real or share with your friends. It's a great feeling. Yeah. Hey, Kasey, I'd already want to be on your team. You already I can already tell you a good leader because I can see you rallying the troops around that because again, there's much work that goes into these things. Kasey, talk to me. You and I have been around the block. You've done things at the highest level, doing them every day. Now with brands like that MGM and just where that whole industry is. We'll get to that in a second, but talk to me about what Rose sings a lot last 15 years. I've been dying to have someone at your level on because I know like at the ground floor, small meeting business owners or startups, even if they're famous founders. I kind of know where they're at, but big, large brands and just your perspective on this democratization of content and social media. And like at the highest level that you're at, what's your perspective on this whole marketing landscape last 10 to 15 years? I don't want to date myself, but I'll double down on you and go 30 years ago. I mean that I started in this business at the time. It felt complicated, but as I said, you're in 2025. It was as simple as it could be. Just from a media standpoint, it was print, radio and TV. I came from a world where you routed silver prints and I didn't even have a fax machine to work with. I have no idea how meetings were held. I have no, I just don't know how communication actually traveled. But to your point, there are moments in time. For those of us that have been around for a while, you look back and you laugh. I can distinctly remember in like 1999 city. I was in the automotive world and city with car dealers and talking about the impact that the internet might have on the automotive purchase cycle. And at the time, everyone's like, whatever internet, fine for music, travel, books. Don't worry. People will always want to go to a dealership. They'll visit five or six dealerships or shop five or six brands. They'll sit with a salesperson. They'll sit with an F&I manager. They'll always want the dealer experience. Don't worry about the internet. You look back on that and you laugh. And when you think about like 2012, when the whole like PC versus mobile usage and everyone is tracking and then the iPhone came out, I mean, those are pivotal moments that you look back and laugh. All right. Is that mobile optimizer? Why would we do anything mobile first? And I think right now. So those are moments like 99 12 and then really starting in 2022, 23, we're sometimes you have to step back and go, geez. Chechi PT AI in the form that we know it's only been around for two and a half, three years. The pace, the speed of which this business is changing is the fastest I've ever seen it. And so 30 years ago, 15 or today, you and I were in it. We live it. And it's just the fastest I've ever seen it. And so much of it is gay to let a hundred percent. And you did create some flashbacks for me talking about newspaper and print right yet. I was just sweat it. Like I better get the right hand read age or my client's going to be mad. And I'd run out to the end of my driveway and pick up the Sunday paper. Just praying that by me, bribing the sales guy at the newspaper, we got the right hand page read. Oh my God. I didn't heard that term in a long time. Proversioning ads was like one of my first tap in my ad agency, like 400 newspapers, I'd verging them out. When you didn't have software that could do it, just the micro differences in sizes, though, they could throw head. Oh my God, I used to roll up adslicks. And then literally type out the least payment and the disclaimer. And then just hope that they pub said it. Okay. I know. These you bring up a great point, the speed with which things are changing. I mean, how does a company like bed MGM and you as a leader as a marketing leader think about the AI revolution? Obviously, I'm sure you guys are using it as everyone's using it. How does a CMO in today's world think about AI? We could have a whole discussion on how AI is utilized with technology and player experience and so on and so forth because everyone wants that insatiable at the fingertips. Think about the world of sports. It didn't feel like that long ago. It was fine. I was in a sports book yesterday. And I ruled by the sports book and I looked up at the lines. It used to be you're going to use a place of that. And then you wait till the game is over. And then you either cash or ticket or crumpled up and throw it on the floor. Now the speed and the opportunities and markets that we open up are endless. And from a marketing standpoint, AI, certainly, yes, anyone you talk to is going to be leaning into it. The way I look at AI is the couple of different ways. One is, how can the use of AI and data and think about segmentation and personalization? We are all living in a world of one to one personalization or custom content or being served meaningful messages that are relevant to me. Remember the old movie time cruise. Am I already reported? I'm already a report. I'm about freaking out with us. Wait a minute. And you know, little gold here. We are 20 years out. So AI for that, but also scale ability to your point. How do I now take that newspaper ad and do 400 versions? Now how can I take that six, 15, 30 second spot and that Ryan lives in South Carolina? I'll say you're in North Carolina because that's a regulated state. Ryan's in North Carolina. While he's watching the Carolina Panthers, we know he loves soccer, primarily or whatever might be. And so how do we know that if we know Ryan is a player of ours, but we know he watches the ball. He's a big conveyor of taking on content or placing wagers and suckers. How do we serve him a sucker? Because that's relevant to you. How do you say I to do that? It's an arms race. Obviously is we think about the platforms and tech companies that are making that available. And that's what I find really exciting is going from on channel optimization to like segment and audience targeting and personalization smart. And that's what it's about. I always used to say and I picked this up. I think from an old creative director. So you'll get a kick out of this. But you know, everybody's favorite radio station is W I F M. What's in it for me, baby? And so the record. You're not being relevant. You're not being listened to. It's all about attention. That's why you got to make it legendary. Talk to me. Campaigns going on. We got John Ham. You told me mad man, John Ham. Come on. Mad man, John Ham with his new show in Apple, which is doing fantastic. He's a man of so much talent. We had a chance. I was to shoot with him recently. And when I joined the organization, Ryan in December, the first thing that was on my plate was, all right, here we are six, seven year old brand, you know, very still young industry. And the brand has done very well. Obviously Jamie Foxx who we work with for a number of years has served the brand so well. But it's like anything else. As time evolves, how can we continuously evolve and elevate the brand? And it was rooted in research and data and insights. And as we develop the repositioning for our creative platform, we developed the core creative idea, make it legendary. Then it was, okay, we want to do some storytelling connectivity and creating a brand that truly speaks to players. And knowing that Madam Jim and MGM resorts are joined venture partner, we're at the forefront of entertainment. All right. Who is there a who? That was our first question. There's a lot of brands, particularly the space that use talent. We address that first. And then yes, we want to use it. And it wasn't like, well, Casey likes John Ham or CEO plays golf with so and so. And we know those conversations do happen, make no mistake. But let's let data and insights help kind of shape that pathway. And we started with maybe 30 talent. And we did research and insights. And we got focus group feedback. And then you start to have conversations with the talent. Are they interested in the space? What do they have going on? I'm not a big fan of using talent that is on every ad. We all know who those folks are. And then is John Ham kind of like started rising at top. Oh my gosh, relevant today, relevant to wide area of players and demographics. And we got on the phone with him and pitched the creative. And he started leaning in and ideating with us. And that's what I want. Yes, there's going to be a transactional relationship, make no mistake. But I want to be able to work with somebody that creatively invested. They have shared values. And he's a big sports guy, right? Huge chiefs and blues fan. And those types of partners I want to work with. And John's been fantastic. He is fantastic. And I'm going to give you a focus group of one feedback demo here. 25 to 50 year old fluid males. I fallen that demo nailed it. John Ham literally in guys 20 years younger than me, look up to Ham and go, oh, he's cool. I consider his word. He might be a spokesperson, but he's trustworthy. And he's cool. And he's relevant. And guys like me, it's more, you know, peer level on the age level. I don't need any AI to tell me that was a home run. I'm going to you're going to join me tomorrow for my CEO meeting. Bring you in as my focus group of one you can call me make it legendary weather intention or not. Here's how I got it. You happen to get an ad guy here on the show. It's a market show. I like it, but weather intended or not. The way it hit me was it could work both ways. The brand enables you to make it legendary. And also the brand experience itself is legendary because of the crossover of entertainment gambling in person, mobile, all of those things. Am I in the territory of the thought process? That's the way it hit me. Well, right. You're an ad guy. It was like you were sitting in the strategy meeting. You're exactly right. Make it legendary in that creative incident. You know, the creative core creative idea. When you make that statement, you also better back it up. It's like me telling my kids, I look cool. I'm done. And so we talk about make it legendary. One is we think about the brand, the player experience, the ecosystem that is part of Betham GM with a MGM, as I mentioned, we know in our confident because we heard from our players, the ability we're brick and more obviously. We have nine properties in Vegas, you know, on the strip, 11, 20 total around the country. And over 40% of our players visit Vegas every year. They love the idea of the connectivity from Betham GM to MGM and nothing. The ecosystem it provides. And let's be honest, it's a very noisy space. I live here in Michigan. There's upwards of 60 to 70 operators, very noisy in a marketplace. How do you break out? We know that yes, there's going to be acquisition, but this is kind of like credit cards. I'm going to place a bet today, but I don't use Betham GM. I can't. If I were to place a bet today on my tigers, I'm not going to check six apps. I use one app because I love their loyalty program. It makes me feel good. Kind of like credit cards, right? I have five credit cards. I use one or two. Airline hotel. We really feel like this is a big differentiator for us is certainly in making that promise from a player experience, but also from a loyalty and rewards. Our players have the opportunity to take advantage of the MGM ecosystem. Yeah, you used the word. You took it right out of my mouth. I was going to say, you have the ecosystem. So you're leveraging it. You know, some of these other players in the space don't have that ecosystem. They don't have land base with the land base casinos or some of that back. And that's people at the end of the day. I don't care if you're buying a car. You're taking out a mortgage or you're placing sports bed or an eye game in experience. People want to be taking care of it. They know that the brand is trustworthy and that if I'm spending my hard earned money, that a brand is there to take care of me and providing an experience that I might not be able to get otherwise. Yeah, it's interesting because when I had you coming on, I know that Betham GM is separate from MGM, but it's all part of the family of brands, sort of speak. I go, okay, what does MGM make me feel? You know, because I like, I'm going to think feel act kind of guy. I'm a little school print marketing guy. Well, maybe think a boxing first, like all the great boxing matches that happen with the MGM grand. And then that experience and then the luxury because you've got, I don't know, the whole area of Cosmo. Yeah, all that. And then I tied back to remembering the commercials of the Super Bowl and it feeling very kind of experiential and big. And that's what it feels like. It's a big deal and make it legendary. Then John Ham, he is legendary. He's that guy. He's like sipping on a scotch like you did on madman, but you kind of associate him with the classy legendary kind of dude. But he's also kind of cool. It's just all ties together. It's so versatile. I mean, right? Serious. If you watch SNL, like I still do, now I just watch on my phone, but when he comes on SNL, like he's a guarantee, he's got such a really interesting range and he appeals such a wide demographic too. What can we expect from the campaign? Greatness, legendariness. We're on air with one spot right now. We actually shot for nine days. It was a ambitious production. We literally wrapped up camera maybe three weeks before the season. Maybe one of these years, I'm gonna finally get my, you know, what, in order and actually get production done. I was in jealous of the beer brands where I know darn well. Here I am in September. They already have their Super Bowl spot in the can. In my previous lives when I did Super Bowl, we were turning lights on till January, but we are in the midst of post production. We actually just wrapped up post production on our second spot. That's gonna start airing soon. We have six spots in the campaign. And as you can imagine, Ryan, I mean, it's not just about the 30-second TVC. I don't know, probably 5,000 assets after it's all said and done between digital, social print, photography, whatever it might be. We are a post production machine right now. And then you always find some of those really interesting nuggets when you're planning that you're lifting up the hand, if you will, and finding some interesting takes or moments that you just continue to iterate on. I think that's what would be fun in the big brand world now, because you got this atomization of content now. Having all these assets from the top down, the spot kind of being the lead, the hero. And you got, okay, what are the social nuggets we could put out of there? What's the print? What's this? And that atomization process would be really fun having big brand budget in the nine-day, you know, all those assets that kind of worked through. It's ambitious. It wasn't going back to 15 years. It was probably 10 years ago where you just go shoot your 30-second TVC, and then you would just throw over the assets to the digital and the social and the PR team. Now, you come to one of my sets, and it's like cut turn, photography, cut turn, green screen, cut turn, wild lines, cut turn. Literally put them on a pedestal and just have cameras all the way around, and it was nine days. I mean, that was a lot of production, but it's not like I have three days of digital, three days of social. It's nine days and trying to serve many, many masters. And it's not just taking the TVC and cutting it. It's like, what are the digital, social first ideas? Or if my PR team wants something special three months from now that we're maybe thinking of, how do we get wild line or pieces of content ready for unforeseen circumstances or maybe what ifs? Casey, what's success look like from this campaign and made for your first year, lapping both, I mean, it's your campaign and your teams campaign. All that's happening was kind of all tied together with you. What's that first year success look like for you? When you write it down and go, this is what we're aiming for. What are we going for? One is, obviously, we are a company, we are a business, we are a brand, is to be financially healthy. We are financially healthier than we've ever been reported that recently. From a marketing standpoint, the amount of states that have opened have slowed down the last four or five years states. You know, right now, as I mentioned, we're in 29 states, plus Ontario. Last year, we had a state open this year in Q4, Missouri will open and Alberta and early will call it mid 2026. Yes, acquisition is important. But as I mentioned earlier, acquisition will take place. That's natural funnel. But for us, as I spoke about earlier, it's about how do you create that healthier middle part of the funnel? Whether it's players that have engaged with us, maybe they've stepped away or one of our main focus areas as well, Ryan, is out by, with a brand elevate, but also elevating our players, i.e. the premium mass VIP players. You could imagine VIPs for any sports book or eye gaming brand. Obviously, those VIP players rule that almost the 80-20 rule. You're pretty close. Yeah. Our brand certainly serves that audience well. And now it's more of a concentrated effort of raising that level of premium mass players for us. Yeah, you got to activate intent now that you generated awareness from all that Super Bowl, because you'd have, because I heard the word of cooler talk. Did you see that? Did you see Jamie? And you see, we confiscate this stuff, but it's still the top of the funnel, the middle of the funnel, the bottom funnel, like in one way, shape or form. It's like anything else, even though this world is moving so fast, the funnel is the funnel. It's kind of like credit card. There's 70 operators in Michigan. What's going to entice somebody to download our app? And maybe they, the average sports better and eye gaming, they have three plus apps. It's like, all right, well, how do we become one of those three? And it's like credit cards, wall chair. All right. Once he's here, they download the three or four apps, then what is going to make them use that MGM, that MGM, then why that MGM? That's marketing carries a big hard part of that low, but it's also going to be product, product UX and player experience as well. That's going to help drive that middle part of the funnel. Well, if I was a betting man, and I am, I think you're willing, you're willing, you're willing, you're way willing, betting against you. Talk to me about where anyone listening can learn. They're marketing junkies like me, about what you guys are doing on the team for marketing's perspective, but then just all the bit MGM stuff. Obviously across any of the social platform handles at that MGM. It's such a special company, great culture. We're at Basin, Jersey City. That's where our headquarters are. I'm there three weeks a month. We've got 150 team members in marketing. We're very blessed to work with some really solid agencies, creative and media, and but we're also in house agency. We're creating tens of thousands, 20,000 plus assets, I annualize bases, 14 are on market and media plans, and follow me on LinkedIn, whatever it might be. I love what I'm doing and being out there as a brand, whether it's in the endemic circles or in the marketing, advertising communities, you usually find someone from our brand hanging out. Casey, it was a lot of fun. Enjoy it. Enjoy it. Hey guys, you don't have to find us. Ryan is right.com. You'll find highlight clips, full video, audio, and links to that MGM. And of course, Casey's LinkedIn, as he mentioned, go give them a shout out. It's a legendary campaign, and I love John Ham. It's some of sucker anyway, but you know who's the sucker. It's us because we're lucky to have you to make us number one. We'll see you next time. I'll write about now. This has been right about now with Ryan Alford, a radcast network production. Visit Ryanisright.com for full audio and video versions of the show, or to inquire about sponsorship opportunities. Thanks for listening.