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"I think I've lived long enough to see competitive Counter-Strike as we know it, kill itself." Summary of Richard Lewis' stream (Long)
I want to preface that the contents of this post is for informational purposes. I do not condone or approve of any harassments or witch-hunting or the attacking of anybody.
Richard Lewis recently did a stream talking about the terrible state of CS esports and I thought it was an important stream anyone who cares about the CS community should listen to. Vod Link here: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/830415547 I realize it is 3 hours long so I took it upon myself to create a list of interesting points from the stream so you don't have to listen to the whole thing, although I still encourage you to do so if you can. I know this post is still long but probably easier to digest, especially in parts. Here is a link to my raw notes if you for some reason want to read through this which includes some omitted stuff. It's in chronological order of things said in the stream and has some time stamps. https://pastebin.com/6QWTLr8T
Intro
"The last month has convinced me, that we are going to be heading into a dark place for Counter-Strike esports in 2021."
"I think I've seen the scene essentially kill itself."
"For the past 5 to 6 years, we've basically been in a holding pattern of people coming into our game wanting to run it, wanting to run all of the esports and wanting to profiteer and its been sort of a concerted effort to drive them off and push them away."
"We're spread way too thin."
"If Riot don't get involved and stop the scumbags that have moved over to Valorant from getting their feet under the table, Valorant is going to have real problems."
RL thinks too much has happened all at once for us to do anything except watch it play out, like:
Recent CSPPA strike against BLAST
ESIC failures and them not being supported enough
Teams cheating i.e. coaches/bugs
Widespread match fixing
The Pandemic
"People who try to hold bubble events are so incompetent and fuck up and people get the 'rona and its their fault."
"People who say Flashpoint is a bubble is full of shit and is a lie and people are now suffering for that lie."
"To save money they let people go home and break the bubble for a week."
"Not just Flashpoint peoples decision, they have a partner that handles the production." (hinting FACEIT)
"People are trapped in hotels essentially under house arrest because of COVID restrictions and has fucked peoples lives up."
"It's all too much, all of this incompetence, all of this greed, maybe we ride it out."
RL says he has talked to the Riot devs (the ones working on Valorant) and says, "They are so cognizant of all the fuck ups and all the problems we have in Counter-Strike."
He continues to say that this is factored into their business plan and that we never had a competitor, but just so happens to have one coincide, when we are at our worst.
CSPPA - Counter-Strike Professional Players' Association
"Who does this union really fucking serve?"
RL believes that the CSPPA is a mockery.
He points out the hypocrisy that they wouldn't strike for the pros who were kicked out of ESL Pro League, or for Jamppi or dream3r.
He also says ESL paid CSPPA and are racketeering and many other TOs have to pay them to get their "seal of approval"
He says they would strong-arm TOs saying "well if you don't give us the money, these guys are so we'll just have to commit to playing their event."
Also points out that they will strike against a competitor they are not in agreement with (Flashpoint)
RL: "It's what it says about every other time you haven't done it and it's about every time you don't do it now moving forward." "The issues they've chosen to ignore this year alone are embarrassing."
Then he points out that there was no strike for Valve qualifiers even if we have no major but Jamppi and dream3r can't play in them.
"and Valve have said 'Oh yeah we know actually their stories are accurate, Jamppi didn't cheat, now in a legally binding document. Yep dream3r did have his account hacked in a LAN café', but they still can't play. Where is the fucking solidarity? Gone. Doesn't exist. It's not important [because] it doesn't affect you." "That's what the union does right now, it looks after all the tier 1 people."
He says the CSPPA doesn't represent all players all the time and has driven a divide where you have the haves and have-nots
"We have a tier of players that operate with impunity and do not help their tier 2 or tier 3 players out at all." "If you are not a tier 1 player you do not matter, they don't event ask your opinion."
He tells chrisJ to admit and own the fact that the reason he didn't speak up during the ESL Pro League debacle is because it didn't affect him
"They are looking after some players at the expense of other players. How the fuck is that a union?"
He says the BLAST situation is a reasonable dispute and supports the players but is not the right time for a strike and have not even identified the correct enemy
He thinks players are lashing out now due to previous incidents and are upset that BLAST are working with ESIC
He stated that CSPPA shouldn't beefing with ESIC and they should be working in harmony
He says what they need to do is talk with the teams/organizations that have sold that right to BLAST
RL: "Your employers, the people who pay you that massive exorbitant salaries, when you don't stream and you don't do interviews and you offer no value beyond your ability to click heads and you get 25k dollars a month." "Why don't you talk to them about it? Oh right. You're happy to take away BLAST's paper, but you don't want to risk your own."
"I am seeing such unbelievable cowardice from the players here with the battles you choose."
"Where was the strike action when in the qualifiers for the world championship, there were teams and players engaged in huge conflicts of interest?" "Where was the strike action when your image rights were taken and sold to every league you've ever been in every union type organization you've ever been associated with like, WESA, to your org every time you sign a contract, to the leagues you play in."
"Your image rights are essentially worthless now, there's about 10 fucking separate parties that have them, and how many of them are giving you anything for it? Not much pretty much your org by the way."
"That's a big issue. Your image is you, your image is your brand. What are you doing about that? Nothing."
He is also angry at SirScoots who is "popping off" at people on Twitter who all want the same thing, which is 'A unified Counter-Strike scene for everybody, that works for everybody, that has a sustained ecosystem that nourishes everybody.' "We don't have that now."
He also says their rankings are a joke
"Just so happened, oh look TACO, that very important prominent member of the board, we pushed his team artificially up when they weren't even in the fucking top 20, not by a long shot."
He also says the ineptitude of the CSPPA cost Flashpoint a monitor sponsor
"Is it really a player association or is it like a fucking agency at this point"
ESIC - Esports Integrity Commission
"They have been put in an impossible position."
RL says that Ian Smith, the founder of ESIC and who was done work in mainstream sports, is a good and honorable man who has dedicated his life to integrity and sports. He takes on both sides, ensuring match fixers are punished, but also doing appeals and ensuring those punishments were fair.
"ESIC is a tiny organization" and are in need of money, "They didn't run a grift like the CSPPA did."
"Saying 'you want our support and you want the players to turn up you better pay us.' They don't do that."
"Had startup seed money from MTG and since then they've been pecking shit with the hens."
Ian Smith made sure that the money given by MTG (Modern Times Group, parent company of ESL, ESEA, DreamHack) was nothing more than startup money and wouldn't be in debt to them
Ian Smith sat down with other TO's not part of MTG and wanted to partner with them. They declined and called ESIC "ESL spies and we will never align ourselves with you"
"They only were just able to afford, hiring a PR guy on a full time salary to deal with the press and send out those releases you've seen, this year."
"They have a tiny group of staff investigating these things and they have taken on the biggest problems in our scene: the cheating, the match fixing."
ESIC have had "unprecedented levels of cheating to deal with, because there's something wrong with our scene ever since we went online. There's something wrong with it, everyone's lost their fucking pride and self-respect and they got no passion for it anymore, so they think fuck it, what's in it for me?"
He calls out coaches who are talking about players rights when they would rob and steal from them.
Also says more coaches being banned are coming
He also points out flaws in community's reaction to the punishments to coaches bans: "Half of the cunts still have jobs and some of the cunts got new jobs. We didn't even shun the cheating coaches."
ESIC have "found I think another 2 or 3 exploits like that one and they are investigating them all right now, it's going on right now."
"I know that there are going to be more names getting banned, again."
"So they're doing that on a skeleton crew while, investigating 3 continents worth of match fixing in MDL and semi-pro level CS." "They're doing this with half a dozen people." "They don't have any money or any help. People barely even fucking cooperate with them, they are treated like pariahs. It's ridiculous."
"Why are the CSPPA popping off at ESIC on my Twitter timeline, when you should be working together." "because its all about what's in it in for me." "2020, the online era of CS: 'What is in it for me?' How can I cheat, how can I get my paper, how can I bleed this scene one last time before I fuck off and play shooty shooty bang bang Riot Games babys first fps."
RL says that in the CIS region, teams have gone to tournaments and have been eliminated multiple times by the same team. We found out they were cheating and those players who lost, have been cut from their roster, careers ended because of cheaters.
Stream Sniping
"They're all at it in the online era, they're all at it, they're all cheating, they're all using exploits, probably that see through smoke bug got used a bunch of times"
RL talks about how there is no integrity from dead (the player), always denying when caught doing something
On the topic of 'BLAST never said we couldn't stream snipe': "Lies, BLAST never said you could do that, they had to sort of retcon it." "because what happened after that they fucking started snitching and squealing"
"Suddenly you had like, 10 of the top 15 teams in the world, staring into the abyss of being banned for 6-12 months in line with ESIC recommendations."
He says that ESIC was put in a tough situation and couldn't enforce the bans because it would have resulted in killing CS. What resulted was, BLAST, ESIC, and teams came together and gave them a warning and told them, in RL's words "don't do this again or you're gonna get got."
He then says the top teams brushed this off and didn't give a fuck
The new MiBR team playing Flashpoint, that wasn't involved in the previous incidents are doing it again (stream sniping). He gave credit to Flashpoint for the quick resolution and punishment and respect for cogu's response to the situation.
"ESIC came out and said, once more, 'Guys, zero tolerance from now on.'" RL then got upset at community's reaction calling ESIC "pussies" for their non enforcement and said if we want competitive CS we cant ban the top 10 teams.
He points out how players have no integrity and will do anything for an edge as long as they won't get detected or banned or it's within a grey area.
"All of this shit was mad avoidable, even in the pandemic era."
He talks about why aren't we filming them. Why aren't there representatives for leagues and tournaments making sure players aren't cheating?
Match Fixing
"How many years have we let our scene be fucking pillaged by these greedy cunts?" "We just let it happen."
RL says that gambling and skins betting which existed in moderation was "accelerated and blown up by the Call of Duty greedy fucks."
"Never forget TmarTn was on the board of EnVyUs." "His website, CSGOLotto, they had a bunch of off-the-books sponsorships." "NBK promoted them. People forget."
"Those people who had access to the skins, go to the players" "Even people like s1mple, best player in the world, even he scammed knives and skins off fucking fans."
Owners of skin casino sites would approach pros and lend them skins to use in tournaments and possibly keep them after reaching a deal
Players would tip off inside info about matches and teams in exchange for skins. Info such as: roster changes, how they played in scrims
They would use this info to bet and subvert the odds on their sites. "That happened religiously, I can't even tell you how many times it happened."
"I had access to the biggest database of information, from an inside betting circle in NA, and it would take information and screenshots from other pro players, who were feeding them info in exchange for money or skins."
"Some of these players are still playing." "Incredibly, there are players still in the CSPPA today, complaining about the BLAST recordings, that were embroiled in this murky shit back then."
RL also says that there were tournaments where teams contrived with each other, who should throw, who should win.
"There's a handful of people that are trying to fucking clean it up, and you think you get something over the line and you see something like the CSPPA and it's run by corrupt fucking chuckle heads, and now you've got another corrupt body you have to fight on a fucking daily basis, it's demoralizing."
"It's too far gone. Our entire semi-professional scene is compromised."
"It's rife guys, I'm not going to lie any more. It's not just China, it's not just Russia, it's here, it's NA, it's Europe, it's Australia, so much more than you think, so much more than we can prove."
"I get sent chat logs all the time […] and they're morons, these players, short-sighted, amateur, morons and they're doing it on WhatsApp." People would get cut from the bets because they want to make more money, then they leak the logs. He says, from the chat logs, they spread "little" bets across every site they can (400 to 1k dollars) to prevent shifting odds
He says the scumbags who've fucked off to Valorant will do the same there if Riot doesn't do something and says Valorant "is an esports scene heading for a very early fall based on the sheer volume of scumbags that are already there."
"That's tier 2 CS in a nutshell these days. They know they're never going to play in a major, so what's the punishment?"
"All of these tier 2 fucks that are fixing games now they are like the fucking mafia compared to iBuyPower" "These guys are working with organized criminals to fix entire seasons worth of games. That's what's going on in your tier 2 CS."
"I'm literally being told that there are players fixing games at all levels of Chinese esports and motherfuckers with guns are turning up to team houses and stuff."
North America
"Everyone in NA has left we've lost a continents worth of support during this pandemic and Valve haven't said a fucking word."
RL says the Call of Duty "goblins" that destroyed CS for years are the same people who are now trying to leave CS. "The nerve to treat a game where the fans, and the community, and the TO's were nothing but good to you." "To just kick the players out now and go and leave and say 'It just doesn't make financial sense.' Oh you'll slither back when we have a major though for them stickers won't you."
There's a cascading effect in NA where people don't bother with CS anymore and people like Chaos suffer.
He says NA team owners are incompetent for always wanting it easy and always wanting a guarantee on their investment without skill or nuance.
RL says he would be able to market a team correctly and would have a good ROI and also points out how TSM wouldn't even be bothered to tweet that their team, which was one of the best in the world, was playing at the Major.
He also says not all NA owners are like that, compliments and respects Jason Lake who nearly lost everything to keep Complexity going.
He then calls out the incompetence in Infinite Esports when they acquired OpTic Gaming and bought an Indian CS team.
He says HECZ is not to blame here and that they couldn't tell forsaken was cheating when it was so obvious.
They measured his reaction time to the likes of dev1ce and s1mple
When an enemy showed up on his screen he won that duel something like 44% of the time
"was like the number 1 player in the world statistically"
He brought a laptop to their bootcamp and refused to use the high end PCs that hey provided
He respects Andy Miller (NRG CEO) and HECZ but says that the attitude of not being able to easily monetize their teams is "piss weak" and there needs to be a risk.
He says Chaos EC shouldn't be cutting their roster and should be competent enough to be able to figure out how to make money off their team.
He says there are still opportunities in NA and people are panicking and pulling out, and says Valorant will be the same if not worse.
He also says "bums" who couldn't even get out of groups in NA competitions, are making crazy money in Valorant and says it will continue to inflate.
He also said that he heard rumors that EG (Evil Geniuses) are done.
He also thinks that the rumors of a Valve franchised league from before was sparked up from "these lazy fabled weak NA fucking team owners basically trying to see if Valve would bite at the hook if it was dangled and they didn't"
Slasher says NA team owners are really in favor of franchised leagues because they want to make more money. "Most of the powerful team owners right now are on board with ditching this third party organization structure, or they are trying to play this power politics with all the TOs, and that is contributing to a lot of the problems there"
RL says that Riot has proved they can run a franchised league (LCS) and will be profitable in 2021 which is what a lot of team owners care about and says the competition will only serve to snatch people away from CS.
RL continues to say, "I am so sick and tired of what we have done to this scene, I am just exhausted with it." "I think we have legitimately fucked it, I really think we have. I think we're staring into almost like a CGS (Championship Gaming Series) wasteland in NA." "Counter-Strike esports is a fucking joke."
Talent
"TO's have treated CS talent like absolute human garbage for years now."
RL says that people like Sean Gares and ddk switching over to Valorant isn't for financial reasons because they are making less over there.
He points out that TO's can't even give talent a 3 month in advance calendar.
Because of the pandemic TO's won't hire certain people and some people are working more hours for the same money.
He says we as a community don't respect journalists enough which is why we don't have good journalists.
He also says DeKay is leaving the scene soon and that Thorin is close to leaving also
He says he had to talk a caster down from quitting and was struggling to find reasons.
He says that DreamHack told Vince they would hire him but not if he wants to stick with dusT and says that this is the norm in esports. "Constant leveraging of people against each other." and says this is why we don't have a talent union.
New gen casters are getting put into shit situations and the community's reaction to them is adding fuel to the fire
He says the reason Moses left was because of the terrible conditions
He says that Anders had to constantly leave his family and kid because someone fucked up or broke promises and had to constantly tell his kid to their face that "daddy can't be home this weekend."
He says that esports has always been a lie to sell you this dream, "Meanwhile there's about 2% of the cunts getting all the checks."
Valve
"Anything that Riot does, is better than Valve's inaction"
Slasher says that the larger aspect of esports as a whole compared to other entertainment mediums and Valve's lack of inattention are the bigger problems. He continues saying that the fact that Valve let their game be ran as an esport, they need to take on the responsibilities of it.
Both Slasher and RL wants Valve to take control but not on the level of Riot Games, there needs to be a balance.
In case it was ever a question: Gabe Newell has been to 0 CSGO Majors.
RL calls Valve out saying they could have done something during the gambling era.
He says Valve used to come to the majors, but doesn't think they do anymore.
RL had met with Valve at the Cluj-Napoca Major and had tried to appeal iBP's indefinite punishment and had also gave Brax's life story:
A recent family member passed away, they had lost a lot of income, they had to live in trailer, iBuyPower did not pay any salaries, and was pressured by family to make money who didn't support his career.
RL said that Valve told him, "How dare you try and make us feel guilty." "We shouldn't feel bad about enforcing the only thing that matters that we need to make players afraid of: cheating and match fixing"
RL also tried to share other info about match fixing and nothing came of it
RL points out that Source 2 or a new engine is not something you will want based on the experience of transitioning from CS 1.6 to CS:S. "Valve's track record with brand new engines being launched, not fucking great from what I remember."
Slasher says "If there is anything the community should do, is pressure Valve to hire a community manager."
They say that we need a commissioner, a community manager (not the person who runs the Twitter who posts memes all day), then we need to have a circuit
RL reiterates that Valve doesn't care about CS esports and says they need to change the culture at Valve to make them care about CS esports
Slasher says a systemic problem is making it so working on CSGO would be a bad decision for you as an employee for Valve
He also hasn't talked to Valve in ages and have sent over bugs and cheats and doesn't get emails back anymore
Slasher says we should be directing attention at the developer leads, pointing out Ido Magal, if he even is still the project lead
RL thinks that Ido and Brian are the only people that "vaguely even give a fuck about CS" and were the only people that RL recalled that actually read Reddit and paid attention from time to time
"It is really fucking precarious. Somebody has got to step the fuck up and start giving a shit"
Slasher suggests org owners, with CSPPA, with ESIC, with TOs have a concerted effort against Valve
"Riot Games are doing better things than Valve in the esports space" which is something RL didn't think he'd say.
"People who used to be talent, working with unions, arguing with other talent, when the unions fucked them over, can't understand their perspective, TOs fucking over broadcast talent, broadcast talent wanting to leave and go and work for orgs, orgs having no money, Valve might take coaches away because all the coaches are cheating, ESIC has about 4 people in a fucking call doing the investigations, everyone thinks they're spies for ESL, ESL are just the evil fucking overlords wanting to rule the scene and will just somehow, like cockroaches outliving a nuclear bomb, and Valve are in a fucking holiday in Hawaii thinking about the next Dota character because they don't give a fuck about us."
Closing Statements
"We've peaked. If we want to sustain and exist, now is the time to figure it out. No esports lasts as long as this, we've already done 8 years. We've already broke the records. We have got to figure out a way to coexist and drive the negative forces out and we need to do it as a collective and we're not doing that."
RL compared the Counter-Strike scene to the people on the Titanic who ran around with guns robbing people while the boat was sinking.
"We have given up on being a respectable esports scene." "We are now a conduit to make money for those who want to just milk it, just have one last ride, one last roll of the dice. It's done." "What a fucking mess. What have we done to our fucking scene?"
"There's just too much self-interest driving all of this." "I don't see a way we stop the dominoes." "When it's that bad, when there's that many dishonest people that ESIC have to come out and say that if we punish them all there's no one left. What does that tell you?"
"How many opportunities have we had to clean house? How many times have we said, 'this must never happen again', and another scandal." "The entire skins betting operations was the biggest criminal conspiracy in esports ever executed and no one has been punished for it." "The people who could be driving that don't want to."
"Right now people are fans of those organizations because the scene has value. It is worth being a fan of Astralis because they are excellent at Counter-Strike. It is worth being a fan of s1mple because he is the best player in Counter-Strike, maybe the exception of ZywOo. If the scene is devalued, if the scene loses its meaning, those things lose its meaning too, and people will leave, people will stop tuning into the games. I have seen it happen in multiple esports, this is not my first time at the rodeo. I am getting big Brood War vibes right now and I don't like it."
"The role you play in all of this as fans, as viewers, as listeners, as consumers of esports content, it's absolutely imperative that you know who the good guys are. It's absolutely imperative that you use your voice. It's absolutely imperative that when things are bad, you know who, at least, is trying to make them good, and you have to apply your criticism to the right targets."
He continues saying it's no good in continuing to attack ESIC and saying how they are bad, ESIC have it hard
He says CSPPA are on the right side of the argument on BLAST but have been on the wrong side of many arguments many times.
"If you are not willing to stand along side the weakest member of the union, with the least amount of influence, and the least amount of power, then it is not a union at all and you shouldn't pose as one." "You wanna serve a bunch of special interest do it, everyone else in esports fucking does, but do not pose as something you are not." "We love the players. I've been fighting for players rights for as long as I've been able to, but the CSPPA is not what we needed."
"They are not applying the pressure to the right people, they are not fighting the right battles, they are not helping their weaker members."
He says what orgs have done by keeping or hiring coaches is bad. "When you give up on holding an appreciable standard, you've lost the scene" "Competition matters, rules matter, punishments matter, achievements matter, excellence matters" "If you start stripping that away, you have nothing" "You guys need to take that knowledge and apply it sensibly."
"Valve has sold you all down the river, they sold everyone in the esports scene down the river, tournament organizers are selling their talent down the river. Don't hate on them for sounding tired after a 16 hour day. Don't hate on them because the hype for a matchup they've seen for the 20th time in the past 3 months, they can't be as excited or it sounds contrived. Support your guys, they're there for you, these are your people."
"This community has got to start acting like one for the first fucking time. Just put the petty shit away, let's try and fix this fucking scene while we still have one to save."
"You can't rely on Valve, you can't rely on ESL, you can't rely on the CSPPA, you can't rely on anyone." "Once again, it's gonna be the likes of us, the amateurs, the people who give a fuck, rolling up our sleeves and grafting." "I'm old and tired and I don't want to have to do it again. People need to pick up the torch and do it."
"Like Michal did, like Dudenhoeffer did. You see something wrong, fix it. You see somebody doing something wrong, call it out. If you think something could be better, let people know."
"Vote with your wallets if you're not happy with the direction Valve goes in. If when we do get to the Major, they serve up another subpar, same old bullshit stickers and signatures package again, do not buy it."
"You're a powerful block and if you use it correctly we can fucking avert this disaster."
"I'm not doing another year in this broken, bust-up fucking scene, where everyone is miserable, everyone is broke, everyone is tired, and everyone is trying to fucking rob everyone else, blind, while the fucking people who are meant to be protecting you, are just fucking enhancing it and lining their own pockets."
"I'm not doing it anymore and you shouldn't want to do it either."
"I stand by every fucking thing I said. I mean it, because this game fucking matters to me, this scene fucking matters to me. I put my life into this, my adult life, and to see it in this state is fucking sad."
Not your parents PLAYBOY: How Playboy is reinventing themselves and why you should Invest $MCAC
I know what you're already thinking. Playboy is a dead porn brand that publishes a magazine and doesn't appeal to millennials or gen z right? Wrong. Leadership Let's start with Ben Kohn, the CEO. Kohn has worked in private equity for 25 years and started a firm called Rizvi Travers which invested in pre IPO tech companies. They were the largest investor when Twitter went public and invested in Facebook, Snapchat, Square, SpaceX, Instacart, and Uber. In 2011, Kohn partnered with Hugh Hefner and took Playboy private. Kohn became the CEO in 2017 with the goal of revitalizing one of the largest, most recognizable brands in the world. Since becoming CEO, Kohn has been shutting down most of the legacy business and most recently discontinued producing a domestic magazine. He's focused most of his attention so far on growing the high margin licensing business and direct to consumer business, transforming Playboy into a consumer lifestyle brand focusing on 4 categories:
Sexual Wellness
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Gaming & Lifestyle
Beauty & Grooming
Kohn is also placing a strong emphasis on appealing to women and young people, something that Playboy had never done in the past. Over the last 3 years, the female audience has grown by 70% and 90% of their audience today is under the age of 40. Out of the total e-commerce sales, 40% of customers are women. Financials Playboy is already a profitable business. They have a highly efficient, high margin business model that accelerates with growth. For the first 9 months of 2020, Playboy grew revenue by 78% from 57 million to 101 million and grew adjusted ebitda 129% from 9.5 million to 22 million. For 2021, they reaffirmed guidance of 167 million of revenue and 40 million dollars of ebitda. By 2025, Playboy is conservatively projecting 296 million of revenue and 140 million in ebitda, but expects it to be much greater. It's also important to note that they have over 400 million of forward booked minimum guaranteed cash flow, but they only recognize 67 million of that today, so the actual revenue numbers are much higher. Playboy's business is monetized in two primary ways, licensing and direct to consumer. Licensing is a key part of the revenue stream and they anticipate it more than doubling moving forward. However, Playboy is extremely excited about its growing direct to consumer business as well which I will dive into in the next section. Growth Playboy has huge growth opportunities in each of their 4 product categories. First I want to point out that Playboy is HUGE in China and it's growing rapidly in India. In China, Playboy is one of the leading men's apparel brands with over 2500 brick and mortar stores and over 1000 e-commerce stores. Playboy sells products in over 180 countries and is the 17th most licensed brand in the world. Style & Apparel: Over the last 3 years, Playboy has partnered with Pacsun, Misguided, Supreme, and others. The Pacsun and Misguided businesses have increased almost 15x over the last 3 years. Playboy also launched Playboy Labs and partnered with Steve Aoki to promote the brand. Playboy intends on transitioning this business from a pure licensing business to a direct to consumer business going forward. They have future collaborations with Yandy planned as well. Sexual Wellness: The sexual wellness category is a 240 billion dollar industry today and is projected to grow to 400 billion by 2024. Currently, the industry is fragmented and made up of small businesses with no ability to scale. Playboy is poised to become the leader in this category through strategic acquisitions of existing companies and by growing its product offerings. Yes, I'm talking about lingerie, condoms, sex toys etc. They recently acquired the sexual wellness retailer Lovers for 25 million and expect them to add 45 million in revenue over the next 12 months. They are planning on making more strategic acquisitions in this space moving forward to become the leading direct to consumer brand in this field. They also began offering online sexual wellness classes for women, which have seen large growth since inception. Gaming & Lifestyle: The growth opportunities in this category are huge. Playboy is diversifying into online gambling, mobile gaming, CBD/Marijuana, and virtual reality. They have a social club/poker room opening in Houston this year in addition to their casino in London. They currently have partnerships with Microgaming as well as Scientific Games for mobile gambling apps like slots and poker, with plans to build more. They are also planning on entering the sports gambling market through partnerships with well known sports betting operators. Moreover, they recently launched an exclusive furniture collection on Wayfair and plan on offering more in the future. They currently offer 3 CBD products and have plans to enter the legal marijuana market when it's legalized at the federal level, which might happen soon under the Biden administration. As of now they sell Playboy branded smoking materials like ash trays and grinders. They are planning on launching 4 more CBD products in 2021. Lastly, Ben Kohn said that experiencing Playboy through a virtual world format is something that is "extremely interesting to us". He gave an example of the Travis Scott and Unreal Platform collaboration. Beauty and Grooming: Currently, Playboy offers men's and women's fragrances and color cosmetics in Europe. They have plans to expand their product line and enter the North American market this year. In China, a place where Playboy has a large market presence, Men's grooming is one of the fastest growing categories and an area that Playboy is not in today. They are planning on entering this market in the near future with Playboy branded skincare and grooming products. SPAC Merger Playboy has a DA with Mountain Crest Acquisition Corp, $MCAC, with the shareholder vote taking place THIS TUESDAY 2/9/21. Once it's approved, the ticker will change to PLBY shortly after. One of the great things about this deal is that there are absolutely no warrants outstanding, meaning there will be very little dilution. They only have 1/10th of a right per share outstanding which automatically convert to common stock. Upon completion of the merger, PLBY will have only 37 million shares outstanding, which is a very low float. Any increase in volume and demand will send the stock price higher. After the merger, PLBY will have a market cap of approximately 413 million. For comparison to other global brands, Nike's market cap is 185 billion, Disney's is 329 billion, and Lululemon's is 45 billion. Now I'm not saying Playboy is near those companies today. However, if they continue growing and realize their potential, they're massively undervalued. Additionally, the management team all signed 12-month lock ups, preventing them from selling for at least one year. This is not a transaction sale, but a true capital raise to accelerate growth. They are in this for the long haul. Conclusion Playboy has big growth opportunities in multiple product categories to become a leading consumer lifestyle brand. They have a high margin profitable business model and a very healthy balance sheet. They have 100 million in free cash right now and only 40 million in net debt, or one times 2021 adjusted ebitda. They already have global brand awareness and the bunny logo alone has tremendous value. Ceo Ben Kohn knows what he's doing and has a proven track record of success. It might be flying under the radar right now because all the hype is surrounding GME and EV socks. I believe when the ticker changes to PLBY and people realize that Playboy is no longer what it used to be, this has huge long term upside. FYI: All of the statistics I mentioned are directly taken from the CEO Ben Kohn in his 1 hour webinar interview with SpacInsider. Disclosure: Long 500 commons $MCAC Disclaimer: Do your own due diligence too
Playboy going public: Porn, Gambling, and Cannabis
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.
A state agency that works toward equality for women and girls issued a blistering report Monday outlining the ills associated with casinos, particularly as they relate to the sex trade...“Casinos bring more than just revenue. They bring a bachelor party culture,” said Khara Jabola-Carolus, executive director of the Hawaii State Commission on the Status of Women...
Nationally, a person being sex trafficked in a hotel/resort setting is forced, coerced, or intimidated to perform sex acts on an average of 5 to 10 customers per day. (p. 2) Sex trafficking is distinct from prostitution: sex trafficking is the means, prostitution, pornography and stripping are the ends. Both are relatively new problems in Hawaiʻi that became systematic after Western contact. (p. 2) According to law enforcement (Spotlight) data compiled by The Avery Center, there (is an estimate of) a total 18,375 sex trafficking victims in Honolulu...(that's a total of)...23,887,812 commercial sex acts per year performed by sex trafficking victims in Honolulu. (p. 3)
When police charged New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft with soliciting prostitution, the press said the police rescued sex slaves. "They were women who were from China, who were forced into sex slavery," said Trevor Noah on The Daily Show. We're told this happens all the time. It's bunk, says Reason Associate Editor Elizabeth Nolan Brown. In the Robert Kraft case, she points out, "They had all these big announcements at first saying they had busted up an international sex trafficking ring, implying these women weren't allowed to leave.” But now prosecutors acknowledge that there was no trafficking. The women were willing sex workers... Politicians tell us that thousands of children are forced into the sex trade. "Three-hundred thousand American children are at risk!" said Rep. Ann Wagner on the floor of Congress… ...celebrities...perpetuate the myth that sex slavery is rampant. "You can go online and buy a child for sex. It's as easy as ordering a pizza," says Amy Schumer. "Thousands of children are raped every day!" says comedian Seth Meyers...
There is something familiar about the tide of misinformation which has swept through the subject of sex trafficking in the UK: it flows through exactly the same channels as the now notorious torrent about Saddam Hussein's weapons. In the story of UK sex trafficking, the conclusions of academics who study the sex trade have been subjected to the same treatment as the restrained reports of intelligence analysts who studied Iraqi weapons – stripped of caution, stretched to their most alarming possible meaning and tossed into the public domain. There, they have been picked up by the media who have stretched them even further in stories which have then been treated as reliable sources by politicians, who in turn provided quotes for more misleading stories...
President Barack Obama has famously declared that "human trafficking" is "modern-day slavery." He's also said that it "is a crime that can take many forms." The second definition is a good deal more accurate. "Trafficking," in practice, is less a clear-cut crime than a call to moral panic. The vagueness of the definition allows or even encourages governments, organizations, and researchers to claim that there are tens of millions of trafficking victims worldwide on the basis of little more than hyperbolic guesses... According to Alison Bass, author of Getting Screwed: Sex Workers and the Law, "trafficking has become a new name for an old problem, which is largely teenage runaways." Young people who run away from abusive situations at home, and who sell sex to survive, are considered trafficking victims by default under many federal and state laws. This, despite the fact that hardly any teen runaways have pimps or traffickers, according to a John Jay College of Criminal Justice study. Most see sex work as the best way to support themselves on the street, given the limited legal and social service options available for children who run away from home. And most, Bass told me, do not travel out of their own town or city, much less out of the country...
ACAC Spac (PlayStudios): A Solid Risk Reward Longer Term Play (Long)
Hey guys, I have a bit of a long DD on ACAC / Playstudios. You can read the text below. If you want to see the full post with all the nice pictures, you can check it out here. I was too lazy to upload each picture individually to Imgur. Apologies in advance. I've seen numerous people on Reddit compare the ACAC / Playstudios SPAC to Skillz, and some even to Draftkings. I think this is mainly because they're all in the online gaming / gambling industry, but aside from that, the companies themselves are quite different. I think a more apt comparison should be between Playstudios and Playtika (Ticker: PLTK), since they operate in the same vertical, compete against one another in mobile slots games, and Playtika has publicly available financial data in which I will be making comparisons against. Playtika Analysis You can find Playtika's prospectus here First and foremost, Playtika is one of the leaders in the mobile casino space. They have an assortment of games, and they themselves are diversifying into more casual games (similar to what Playstudios says they are trying to do), but their bread and butter are casino games, and the ones that make the most money for them are slots. Slotomania, House of Fun, and Caesars Slots are all mobile slots games, and as you can see from the above, they generate a significant portion of Playtika's revenues (roughly 50% of their 2020 revenues). OK, so why do I keep bringing up Playtika? Well, they had a very interesting graph that shows how much of their revenues come from different segments of their user base, based on when they acquired those users. What this chart is saying is that 45% of their revenues came from users acquired from 2013 and earlier! This is insane! They have such high user retention and user LTVs, that they're still monetizing a portion of their users that they acquired from 7 years ago. If we go up to 2017, then roughly 75% of their revenues come from users acquired 2017 and earlier! This is important because Playtika's oldest games are all slots games. So this is telling us that users that play mobile slots games, they tend to stay with those games for extremely long periods of time, and if they do stick with them, they spend a lot of money! This is great news since the vast majority of Playstudio's revenues come from mobile slots games. If you look at Playtika's financials, you'll notice pretty nice revenue growth. However, a lot of that is non-organic, and was accomplished through M&A. This was because in 2016, Playtika was acquired by a consortium of Chinese game companies for $4.4 billion (including Giant Network, a well known gaming company in China), and they need to make revenue numbers higher to have a better story to sell for the IPO. And part of their strategy was to diversify into casual games, and they did so by acquiring about 15 companies since 2016, including Wooga (developer of June's Journey, a very profitable find hidden objects mobile game) and Supertreat (developer of Solitaire Grand Harvest, a profitable card game). However, one of the caveats of casual games is that the ARPPU (average revenue per paying user) is lower, and retention is lower than casino games. I did my own calculations on Playtika's ARPPU for 2018, 2019, and 2020, and you can see the noticeable downtrend. This was obviously not disclosed in the prospectus. Only ARPDAU (average revenue per daily active user) was disclosed. My belief is that even though ARPPU and retention are lower, maybe the market is giving a higher multiple to casual games. I believe that even though online gambling is beginning to see legalization in many states, and more and more people are starting to be open to it, there is still a bit of a social stigma associated with it, and certain investors may be wary to investing in a pure "casino" play. That's why Playtika is making such a concerted effort to move away from purely casino games, and positioning itself as an mobile entertainment company. Another reason is also the immense competition and high user acquisition costs, but Playtika has shown that they are more than able to execute on a long term strategy here. Playstudios Analysis Before jumping into anything else, I want to go straight to Playstudio's financials. The reason is because I think there's a lot of fluff here, and I want people to know the bullshit. But even when you see through the bullshit, the downside is still mitigated enough to warrant this play. So first off, take any numbers you see from 2022 with a grain of salt. No one knows what's going to happen this year, let alone two years in the future, and in my eyes, those 2022 numbers look extremely unrealistic. Revenue growth will probably not be that high, unless they make some big acquisitions, and EBITDA margin expansion probably won't be that fast. Revenue Growth Playstudios is planning on launching a Bingo and an RPG game, and their plan is to aggressively spend on UA (User Acqusition) in 2021. Their hope is that revenues will scale up with their UA, and by 2022, they can lower their UA spend a bit, and continue to monetize the new games exceptionally well, maybe at an even better rate than 2021. I think this is a bit farfetched, especially in such a competitive space as Bingo. I've done analysis on Bingo games before, and some of those games have also been around for 8 to 10 years, and they can't expect to just launch a game and have it ramped up to their expected revenue in a year's time. Development for those games requires game designers, people who are very good at math, product designers, and a many other people, which can make the development timeline quite long (at least a few months, for a more finished product, I think at least half a year for these guys). I think a more plausible scenario is that they acquire a smaller Bingo player, and then begin optimizing that game, and add in their own loyalty rewards, as that's the quickest way to ramp up revenues post IPO. My guess is revenues are not going to ramp up as quickly as they expect, and they'll see limited revenue growth here, and still mainly see some growth from better monetizing their slots players. I think by 2022, somewhere between $350 million to $400 million in revenues is more reasonable, and I'd probably lean towards the lower end of that range. Margin Expansion In terms of margin expansion, I think the decrease in cost of sales is doable. It seems like there is some extra fat there that they can trim as they scale. The cost of sales is mainly the tax that Apple and Google charges when users make a purchase through their respective stores, and this is a flat 30%. I doubt they'll get it less than 30% any time soon, but that will probably be through getting their whales to make purchases outside of the Google Play Store or App Store, and using a much cheaper payment processor. I think a long term goal of 20 - 25% for UA spend is reasonable. I'm OK with these numbers, though they may need to spend more initially to ramp up new games. One of the benefits of their loyalty rewards program is that they can have higher retention, and this might be a way for them to lower their UA spend, since people may be more willing to tell their friends about a free trip or prize they won through a mobile game. Another reason I'm OK with the UA spend is because it seems like they have a pretty knowledgeable UA team. I have access to App Annie, a data analytics company that tracks mobile apps, and I checked out the download history for POP! Slots, one of Playstudio's mobile games. You'll notice that US downloads spiked quite a bit in March. This is right when COVID-19 was beginning to spike in the US, and people began working from home. In the mobile app world, many apps had spikes in downloads in March and April 2020 because there was a much larger pool of users looking to download apps. CPAs came down, and companies that had strong UA teams were able to capture a lot of these new users. Thus, this tells me that Playstudios UA team was at least aware of ongoing trends in the mobile app space, and they were able to capitalize by gaining more users during that period of time. The biggest issue I have is with the "All Other Expenses." I don't know why it's this high (R&D and G&A shouldn't be that high), and Playstudios definitely needs to do some expense cutting here. While this has the most room to cut, it may be the hardest since I'm guessing a lot of that cost is from legacy employees. But if they can get this to around 30% by 2022, I'll be happy. Playstudios Has No Daily Active Users (DAU) Growth This is a common issue I see raised on Reddit and I want to address it here. Below is another chart from App Annie, which has DAU estimates. As you can see, DAU has remained pretty flat for the past 2 years, roughly between 150K and 200K users. But have you considered that revenues were actually increasing during this time? This means that Playstudios is becoming more efficient at monetizing their current users (getting more money out of older players), or their user acquisition team is targeting more profitable users. And this is just how the game is played in the mobile apps world. Users will eventually get sick of a game and stop playing. Not many games can count on users organically finding their game, and continuing to play indefinitely. To maintain a certain DAU, companies generally have to spend money on UA to maintain that user base. It becomes a business where you are calculating how much you are spending on UA, and whether the LTV and retention are good enough that you can make money in the long run from those users. You can think of it as an ROI on your marketing spend. And this is especially true for mobile game apps. If it were a social app, then yes, something like the network effect can come into play, and UA spend would be much lower. But for Playstudios, maintaining a steady DAU is actually a sign that their UA team knows what they're doing, and they're able to maintain a profitable and highly efficient business. It's actually a positive that they can maintain their DAU, and even INCREASE their revenues during that period. End Game? I don't actually know how this will end up. I don't give price targets cause I have no idea how the markets will value this company. But I can provide a few data points so that you can make your own decisions. From a multiples standpoint, Playstudios is cheap on a revenue multiple basis compared to Playtika, and is about the same from an EBITDA multiple basis. I personally don't think that Playstudios is a play that's going to 5X. Hell, even 3X I think will be a stretch. But, they do have a loyalty program that will help lower their UA costs, and extend the lifespan of their users. And they are moving into more types of games to diversify their revenue source. The reason I like this play is because I think the downside is heavily limited. The lifespan of casino slots players are so long, and the revenues are pretty stable (even growing), that there isn't an immediate risk that revenues will all of a sudden drop 30%, as is the case with lots of other mobile game companies. Add on top of this the potential for new revenue growth drivers from Bingo and RPG games, and the potential for margin expansion, that this is an easy 30-50% upside from current prices with almost minimal downside. One last minor bit, is that I'm sure lots of people missed out on the hype surrounding Draftkings and Skillz, and I'm sure there are some retail investors that will look for any type of casino / mobile gaming / gambling deals, and may jump on this as well. My feeling is that there is also a potential upside from the hype or FOMO factor. Anyway, this is my analysis on Playstudios / ACAC, hope you guys enjoy. Disclaimer: I am not a financial advisor. These are my personal views and analysis on Playstudios. Please do your own due diligence. Disclosure: I own 400 shares of ACAC.
THE NEXT ONLINE GAMBLING GIANT!! (Score Media and Gaming Inc)
Score Media and Gaming Inc TSE: SCR OTC: TSCRF It's already common knowledge sports betting is big in the North American market - and will continue to generate tons of revenue as states continue to legalize sports betting. Canada is following suit. Legislation will be passed Q1 2021 and we're soon going to see an influx of CANADIAN online betting. Basically all of Canada uses this app exclusively for sports and it is starting to become more popular in the United States
10M+ downloads on their sports media app with 4.7 stars on Google play store
#1 sports app in Canada (#2 behind ESPN in the US) with 10% of Ontario's entire population that uses it
theScore successfully began the multi-state expansion of its mobile sportsbook, theScore Bet, launching in both Colorado and Indiana in September
theScore Bet secured market access to operate an online casino in New Jersey via a multi-year agreement with Twin River Worldwide Holdings Inc.
Total views of theScore esports’ video content across all platforms reached a new all-time quarterly record of 292 million in Q4 F2020, year-over-year growth of 243%.
Strong fucking balance sheet = increased flexibility for upfront investments in new markets (e.g., market access fees, infrastructure, etc.)
theScore is competitively advantaged in Canada, vs. foreign operators, as a homegrown player with a strong brand, which we believe will afford it preferential treatment by regulators with early market access, thus paving the way for early market share gains
theScore esports just recently has been named the exclusive English language broadcast partner for the League of Legends’ Demacia Championship, a marquee annual event featuring 24 of China’s top esports teams.
MCAC and Playboy (PLBY) merger. Why I think Playboy has a bigger future.
As I am sure a lot of you know, Mountain Crest Acquisitions (MCAC) are in late-stage talks with playboy to take them public currently at a valuation of ~$425M meaning we should see the MCAC ticket convert to Playboys ticker, PLBY, within a matter of days, if not weeks. A lot of the people I have seen talking about the Playboy acquisition have argued that Playboy is a dying brand and are far beyond their prime, which is no doubt true, in terms of selling sexy magazines that have all but been made redundant by online pornography. However, this company and its newish CEO (of 2017), Ben Kohn, have given it a new lease of life and are changing the globally recognized brand's direction to be more of a lifestyle and sexual wellness brand. They have been seeing huge year on year growth since Kohn's appointment in 2017 across almost all revenue streams, Kohn has been a part of Playboy for many years and initially helped privatize them in the early 2010s. He is highly regarded for his marketing and sales abilities. WHY PLAYBOY? First of all let me offer you CEO Ben Kohn the chance to convince you: Here is his investor presentation.The numbers are extremely impressive. If you would rather hear it from me, for whatever reason, my take is below: For me, one of the most notable things about this deal is its the extremely rare opportunity to buy into one of theworld's most known brands at such a low valuation. How many SPACs currently on the market would you be able to ask your typical man or woman on the street about the company they plan on buying and almost everytime get an answer about who they are and what they do? Playboy had a WHOPPING $3bn annual spend on thier brand across 180 countries worldwide last year! Playboy are taking huge strides moving away from the sex negative and very 20th century ideals they built their original empire off, and closing in on an increasingly empowered and sexually liberated young demographic. The sexual wellness market is seeing massive growth among people both young and old and is expected to reach $125 billion by 2026 with an expected anual growth of 12.1% YoY, now think about the size of this market in context of how many brands do you know that are key players in this sector? It should be somewhat obvious that Playboy is in an extremely unique position to capitalize on its massive recognition in a growing market otherwise lacking recognized leaders, they plan on doing this with a strategy of M&A which are outlined below. First, I will talk about what they are doing now to fit themselves into the market we see today. Playboy has begun a plan to increase growth via acquisitions, and started by buying leading sexual wellness reatilerYandy at the end of 2019, and have driven direct sales up from $3.7M in 1H 2019 to $29.7M in 1H 2020. On top of this, they are working to make their own playboy.com website into a retail destination, and across Yandy and their own store they were seeing 70,000 orders a month with a AOV of $72. During the stock redemption period Stockholders requested redemption of a total of 8,842 shares, less than 0.2% of Mountain Crest’s issued shares. As a result, Mountain Crest anticipates that approximately $58.7 million will be released to PLBY Group immediately following the closing of the transactions, with further PIPE investments of $50 million. Ben Kohn, CEO of Playboy, said, “We are delighted with the overwhelming support for this transaction, which at closing is expected to inject more than $100 million of gross proceeds into PLBY Group, so that we can aggressively capitalize on our well-defined and exciting organic and acquisition-led growth plan.”. On top of direct sales increases, Playboy continued to capitalize on their brand recognition by increasing licensing revenues YoY,with ~$400M currently in forward-booked cash flow. Note licensing is one of the most cost-effective way brands can earn revenue, with 80% cost margins and being able to create such licensing demand is a rare feature only attributed to truly globally recognized brands. I read somewhere which I now cannot find that Kohn has said (I am sure somewhat jokingly) that he believes the Playboy Bunny Logo alone is worth a billion dollars, and I can see some truth in it, the Playboy bunny is close to the levels of recognition of the Nike swoosh or the McDonalds M, even among young people who have probably never seen a playboy mag before, myself included (i have never seen it sold in the UK). As breifly mentioned above, playboy Revenues are growing rapidly. 2020 Projected Revenues is expected to be up 75% year over year, and Projected Adjusted EBITDA is expected to be up 112% year over year, they have projected 2021E revenue and adjusted EBITDA of $166.8M and $40.3M, respectively, with an goal of $100M EBITDA by 2026. They already have a number of CBD-based products and have plans in place to grow into the legal marijuana industry when it is eventually legalized at the federal level. They are looking to increase their positions in the gaming industry and have recently opened a poker house in Houston, on top of their London Casino, with further plans to add more casinos in the US, and looking for sports betting partnership opportunities. Playboy are already an established producer of apparel and maintain a realtively large presence within the market, particularly in China, where their items are sold in over 2,500 brick and mortar stores, and 1,000 online stores across the nation. In the western World they are stocked at household retailers such as urban outfitters, and have done many collabs with well regarded and in fashion millenial brands such as Supreme, Anti Social Social Club, and Alpha industries (all 3 of which have seen extraordinary growth among young people all within very short time). For me this stands out massively and shows promise on both sides of the table; These trendy and modern brands want to associate with the Playboy logo and lifestyle, showing a level of interest from consumers, but more importantly it shows that Playboy is tapped in and aware of the youth culture, an area in which they have the potential to capitalise massively on through all of their revenue streams. One of the things i think people are most underestimating about this merger is that the current trajectory Kohn is taking Playboy along is very 2021, and is extremely focused on growth. I believe the brand to be undervalued already, and when taking into consideration the trends in Millenial and Gen Z society, I think this brand is ready to once again become a market leader in its new sectors. A comment I saw on another DD put it well: "If Kylie Jenner thinks its cool, it probably is". It sounds stupid, but the power of social media in conjunction with its recognized logo and brand mean you cannot underestimate this companies value and potential for both short term and long term growth. Coupled with the large cash injection of over $100M and a new focus on M&A, the upside really is potentially enormous. Personally i think it is somewhat criminal this company does not have a current valuation of close to a billion USD considering its recognition, and i think Kohn is the man to enable playboy to capitalise on their extremely unique position in a rapidly growing market. The above stats are all taken from the Playboy investor presentation given by Ben Kohn here,(as said above I would encourage you all to look at this, it is very impressive), and from MCAC press releases that can be found here.
The black nobility is the base of the global crime syndicate that controls this planet. The black nobility or black aristocracy are the aristocratic families that sided with the papacy under Pope Pius IX after the army of the Kingdom of Italy led by the Savoy family entered Rome on September 20, 1870, overthrew the pope . and the Papal States, and took over the Quirinal Palace, and the nobles later ennobled by the Pope prior to the Lateran Treaty of 1929. Any family that produced popes for the Vatican is royalty. Most of the black nobility are Vatican royalty. The black nobility consider themselves sovereign princes. These families earned the title of "black" nobility for their relentless unscrupulousness. They used murder, rape, kidnapping, robbery and all kinds of deception on a large scale, without resisting the achievement of their objectives. The black nobility were the families that financed and created the holy corporation of the Vatican with the aim of imposing world slavery as a necessary institution, with the sole belief that some are born to rule and others to be ruled. The idea that certain families were born to rule as an arbitrary elite, while the vast majority of a given population is condemned to oppression, servitude, or slavery became the theological position of this elite. The "New World Order" is an attempt to take control of society by these fascist families with the purpose of the total slavery of humanity. The Vatican is an imperial nation and is the largest empire in this world. The Vatican City, or the Holy Vatican Corporation, officially the Vatican City State, is a nation that operates as the largest intelligence network in the world. The Holy See is the "All-Seeing Eye" in society and a corporate entity connected to many other corporations and governments through papal and royal statutes. Archbishops and high-level bishops are the overseers of society within their districts and oversee politics, police, business, and organized crime. The same year that the professor of ecclesiastical law and practical philosophy at the University of Ingolstadt, Adam Weishaupt, created the Order of the Illuminati, was the same year that they created the United States as a corporation to run it as their private army and lead I dig the agenda of a "New World Order" for the elites, mainly, thanks to the infiltrated Freemasonry and directed by the Jesuits. The New World Order is a conspiracy of lineage at the top. They are ancient and evil bloodlines that build and destroy empires for control through an order out of chaos. Royal and noble houses are corporate entities and claim to rule and own land, resources, and people. Landlords have always been the dominant owners of gold and precious metals. They empower and finance bankers and entrepreneurs to work for them through their corporate homes. They authorize and issue the creation of laws, agencies, the military, companies, and universities. They create and run religions and secret societies. They also finance and organize organized crime syndicates as if they were commercial enterprises. Some of the major royal bloodlines include Savoy, Bourbon, Medici, Glücksburg, Wittelsbach, Nassau-Weilberg, Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, Romanov, Grimaldi, Orleans, Braganza, Habsburg, Hannover, Windsor, Saud, Thani, Khalifa, Alouwite , Zogu, Hohenzollern, Orange-Nassau, Bonaparte and Bernadotte. Many royal bloodlines still rule their nations as heads of state such as the United Kingdom, Belgium, the Netherlands, Denmark, Monaco, Spain, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Morocco, Sweden, Norway, and Luxembourg. The Vatican City State is also a kingdom with the Pope of Rome as its monarch. The Black Nobility are the ancient bloodlines of the Papal States and they own the Holy See and the Vatican. They produced the first popes of Rome and held leadership positions in the Vatican from its inception. The Colonna and Torlonia still hold the hereditary positions of the Assistant Princes to the Papal Throne. The black nobility consider themselves sovereign princes. The Vatican is used as a central point of control and the Holy See is one of the oldest and most criminal corporate entities in existence. The Spanish Catholic Church is immensely rich, it has not suffered the crisis and also enjoys a true tax haven, being free to pay taxes, such as the IBI, works, companies, etc. The vast majority of the assets in their possession and on their accounts are completely opaque. This situation is illegitimate, unfair and presumably illegal, and this occurs with the complicity and consent of the public powers. The Erlach and Brandi families are Swiss tax advisers who enable corruption, bribery, criminal financing, and money laundering. The Swiss Guard is the one that protects the Vatican City State. The Swiss cantons have been in contract with the Vatican for centuries and Switzerland is basically a papal state with the noble Roman saints claiming partial ownership. The German house of Baden-Zahringen founded Bern, in Switzerland. The House of Savoy ruled the regions of Switzerland for hundreds of years. Some of the most important bloodlines of the Black Nobility are: Massimo, Colonna, Pallavicini, Odescalchi, Ruspoli, Orsini, Aldobrandini, Sforza-Cesarini, Boncompagni-Ludovisi, Chigi-Albani-Della Rovere, Doria-Pamphilj, Rospigliosi, Giustiniani , Torlonia, Corsini, Borghese, Del Drago, Lucchesi-Palli, and Gaetani. The Pecci and Pacelli families are more recent bloodlines of the Black Nobility. The black nobility share ownership over the Holy See, which is a corporate entity based in the Vatican City State that was established as a nation in 1929 under Benito Mussolini, who was put in power by the House of Savoy. The Mussolini and Franco families became nobles after their fascist regimes. The Black Nobility also owns the Knights of Malta, the Jesuits, and the Cosa Nostra. The Black Nobility established branches in southern Italy and married Sicilian-Campanian nobles such as the Lanza di Scalea, Adragna, Sanseverino, Tomasi di Lampedusa, Paterno, Cattaneo, Serena di Lapigio and Rocco di Torrepadula families. Many Italian crime families were Sicilian nobles like the Bonanno and Bellomo families. Both the mafia bosses and the Italian and Spanish nobles call themselves Dons, which is the equivalent of Boos (boss) of crime. The Savoy, Savoy-Aosta, Medici, Borbon-Dos Sicilias, and Borbon-Parma families are members of Italian royalty and are married to various European royal bloodlines and Black Nobility. Most of the monarchs are members of the Sovereign Military Order of Malta. Prince Carlo Massimo has been overseeing the Sovereign Military Order of Malta as President of the Italian Association of SMOM. The Knights of Malta have an undercover operation at the Jesuit School of Foreign Service in Georgetown, run by Joel Hellman. The Jesuits and the Knights of Malta basically run the Defense Department alongside British Crown agents and high-level Freemasons. Prince Carlo de Borbón-Dos Sicilias is a high commander of the Society of Jesus through his Sacred Constantinian Military Order of Saint George. The Jesuits were authorized by Pope Paul III of the Farnese family. The Bourbon-Dos Sicilias and Borbon-Parma families are the continuation of the Farnese family, the name Farnesivs is engraved in the Jesuit headquarters called the Church of Gesu in Rome. The Farnese family lived in a pentagonal fortress called Farnese Villa Caprarola, which is the basis for the design of the American Pentagon. Jesuits are involved in education, politics, banking, science, law, and especially military intelligence. The Italian Bourbons have established residences all over the world, including Florida. Jesuits need to be investigated and banned, they have rightly been expelled from almost every country in the world, but they always end up coming back. In Spain three times, his last return was at the hands of General Franco. The Holy See is a corporate body that issues laws and bills, such as the Golden Bull, which claims ownership of the Kingdom of England and identifies the emperor as the sovereign of the only legitimate universal empire, directly chosen by God. The Pope claims temporal power or ownership over the Earth and also claims Papal Supremacy or Papal Rule and Papal Infallibility. Infallibility means incapable of being wrong. The Roman Curia or Papal Court is the highest organized council in society and is directly supervised by the two “Assistants of the Prince to the Pontifical Throne”, these two positions are held by the princes of the Colonna and Torlonia families. They work with a higher level princely council of the Italian nobility that works with another council made up of the Roman nobility. The Italian and Austrian nobility are married to each other and work closely together leading the Sovereign Military Order of Malta, which is a sovereign entity equivalent to that of a sovereign nation. The Italian Nobility, La Cosa Nostra and the German and Austrian Nobles, run the Jewish Mafia. Royalty and nobles have massive amounts of wealth in private bank accounts in Switzerland. They use the Nazi-founded Bank for International Settlements to steal wealth from central banks through fraudulent tax contracts and then launder and hide the wealth in private bank accounts in Switzerland. The main Italian lineages still active include the Massimo, Colonna, Pallavicini, Torlonia, Aldobrandini, Ruspoli, Orsini, Gaetani-D'Aragona, Borbón-Parma, Odescalchi, Borghese, Adragni, Chigi, Medici, Borromeo, Doria-Pamphilj, Sacchetti, Savoy, Grimaldi and Bourbon. These bloodlines oversee the various specters of society. Outside of this power structure is the Committee of 300 with an inner circle made up of the leading monarchs and princes of Europe and the former Holy Roman Empire with members from Windsor, Spencer, Cecil, Percy, Hohenlohe-Langenburg, Habsburg, Bonaparte, Orleans, Bernadotte, Lagergren, Glucksburg, Hannover, Furstenberg, Austria-East, Hohenberg, Hesse, Nassau-Weilberg, Habsburg-Lorraine, Saxe Coburg and Gotha, Saxony-Weimar-Eisenach, Saxony-Meiningen, Braganza, Orange-Nassau, Hohenzollern , Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen, Liechtenstein, Rothschild, FitzJames, Lobkowicz, Ligne, Merode, Romanov, Thurn and Taxis, Schwarzenberg, Orsini-Rosenberg, Windisch-Graetz, Esterhazy and other families. Many members who do not have noble status on the Committee of 300 are representatives of the royal families. These families are all enemies of humanity and have conspired to enslave the world for centuries. They authorize and create corporations and billionaires, run religions, states, secret societies, the mafia, and organized crime syndicates. Royal families in Europe are mainly divided into two factions, and this dates back to the Guelph merchants and Ghibelline landowners. All other groups like Bilderberg, CFR, and the Trilateral Commission are lower-level organizations. All roads lead to Rome, which is the basis of its control system. The European Constitutional Monarchies are branches of the corporate empire of Rome. Constitutional Monarchies are ruled by blood-appointed heads of state and serve Rome through the Sovereign Military Order of Malta. The Pope claims temporary or physical ownership of the Earth. The Pope claims to be infallible of error. The Pope claims ownership over all souls through the papal doctrine of "Papal Supremacy." The Pope is a leader for the Black Nobility of Italy. The Jesuits are a military priesthood officially established by Pope Paul III A.K. to Alessandro Farnese of the Farnese family. The Jesuits were officially established under the Papal Bull called Regimini Militantis Ecclesiae, which means Military Regiment of the Church as the continuation of the Templars. The Black Nobles are the true owners and controllers of the Vatican and maintain their control throughout the centuries by installing their relatives as high-level popes and bishops. At present the Torlonia and Colonna families who have the hereditary positions of Prince Assistants to the Papal Throne are those who supervise the pope. In turn Pope Francis supervises all members of the Catholic Church and also supervises the various secret societies that are connected with the Church. The Jesuits are also a Masonic order and were the continuation of the Templar orders when they were banned. The Roman Catholic Church mocks Christians by performing rituals where they pretend to drink blood and eat human flesh known as the Eucharist, also called Holy Sacrifice. The New Testament did not exist until about 1600 and the Old Testament is even more recent than the new. It was the Vatican and European monarchs who created both the New and the Old Testaments. The last official version of the bible was published in 1777. The bishops and priests operate as supervisors and the Jesuits function as spies trained in deception and are infiltrated everywhere. The Pope claims temporal power or ownership over the Earth and also claims Papal Supremacy or Papal Rule and Papal Infallibility. Infallibility means incapable of being wrong. Archbishops are the overseers of society within their districts and oversee politics, police, business, and organized crime. The Latin phrase Novus Ordo Seclorum means New Order of Ages (or Ages), or also "New World Order", and is on the US dollar bill and Great Seal of the United States. The Vatican uses Latin as an official language and for documents. America is named after the Italian Americo Vespucci who worked for the Medici family of Florence and Rome. Vespucci created the term New World for America. The Bank of America was originally called the Bank of Italy and was founded by Amadeo Giannini, who was financed by Italians. Nations were formed as companies or corporations to exploit their citizens as merchandise. Corporations are fraudulent constructions because they are considered a person with rights under the law, and because the owners and controllers of the corporations can disregard responsibility for crimes committed by the corporation. That is fraudulent. Corporations are not people and therefore cannot have rights. Corporations are also monopolies that use subsidiaries to hide their dominance over industry. Private companies cannot compete fairly with corporations. Citizens are also classified as legal persons (companies), robbing them of all their human rights. Corporations shouldn't exist. Royalty and nobles issue charters establishing representative covert property agents controlled by corporate households or crowns of royalty and nobles. They claim to own foreign governments in this way. Royalty and nobles claim to own the United States as a continuation of the Virginia Company. Roman royalty such as the Hanover, Hesses, Wurttembergs, Hohenzollerns, Glucksburgs, Orange-Nassaus and Saxe-Coburg and Gothas claim a share of ownership over the British Crown. This is why the British royal family has so much German ancestry. The United States is defined as a federal corporation under US code 3002. Section 15. Most of the founding fathers were Freemasons and worked for the British Crown and German royalty. American political families, such as the Bushs, Clintons, Romneys, and Kennedys, take their names from European noble families that still exist. The Von Dem Bussche family are German nobles and relatives of the Bush family. The Clintons and Romneys are also British nobles. The Kennedys are Scottish-Irish nobles and an American political family involved with the Democratic Party. Mars, Walton, Rockefeller, Guggenheim, Getty, Hearst, Sackler, Lauder, Sachs, Busche, Johnson, McMahon, Forbes, and Cox are some of the billionaire American families that work with royalty and nobles in Europe. The Mars family is worth about 70 billion and works with the Windsor, Savoy, Thurn and Taxis families. The Waltons are worth around 130 billion and work with German nobles like the Württemberg, Baden, Hohenzollern and Isenberg families. The various Johnson families in the United States are collectively worth tens of billions and serve as agents for the House of Hannover. They own Johnson and Johnson and Fidelity Investments. The Hanovers are powerful royals and merchants who established the Hanseatic League. The Hearst family is worth more than 25 billion and several members were educated at Harvard University of the British Crown. The McMahon family is a billionaire and owner of the WWE and works under the Bonapartes and Savoys as their noble ancestors who were served militarily by the MacMahons during the Second Italian War of Independence. Today there are MacMahons in France with Italian and French titles of nobility. The Lauder family works for the House of Esterhazy in Austria and the House of East in Austria and Italy. The Guggenheims have assets worth hundreds of billions and are married to the House of Stuart. The Getty family are billionaire American oil merchants and are married to the Italian House of Ruspoli. The Forbes family are billionaires and American descendants of Scottish nobles who still exist. All gang stalking and cult organizations are owned and controlled by members of royalty and nobility. Criminal organizations such as Royalty itself, Royal Institutions, The Company of Jesus, The Black Monks, The Hellfire Club, The Templar Orders, Freemasonry, The Grand Orient of France, The York Rite, The Scottish Rite, Prince Masonry of Prince Hall, Shriners International, The Royal Order of Jesters, The Cabal Society, Chabad, Scientology, Skull & Bones, The Boulé Society, The 5% Nation, The Nation of Islam, Black Israelites, The Ordo Templi Orientis ( OTO), The Temple of Set, The Church of Satan, Rosicrucian, Golden Dawn, Opus Dei, Mormons, Knights of Columbus, The Bohemian Club, Knights of Phintias, Ancient Order of Druids, Wicca, Santeria, Obeah, Voodoo, Sufism , Greek Fraternities and Brotherhoods, New Age and Gnostic Cults, Nazi Cults, KKK, Mafias, Prison Gangs, Biker Gangs and Street Gangs. The Rockefeller family uses their charitable foundations to fund harassment gangs and bribery in the United States, as well as globalization agendas and vaccination programs. The Rockefeller Foundation funded Almighty Vice Lord Nation, which is an organized crime group, and also funded the Tavistock Institute. Hollywood, the Church of Scientology, and Silicon Valley are military operations like the US DARPA agency and run by European royalty and nobles like the Oettingen-Spielbergs, Schaumburg-Lippes, Anhalts, Hanovers, Windsors, Passi di Preposulos, Ruspolis, Torlonias and Odescalchis. The Ferragamo family is also involved in the management and financing of corruption in Hollywood. The House of Nassau-Weilberg, which is married to the Torlonias, funds human trafficking and human sacrifice in Hollywood. Idols in the entertainment industry are a dangerous cult with leaders who have access to electronic weapons. Most of modern electronics is being broadcast covertly with GENISIS and NEURON bio-piracy software controlled by Kabbalists and Scientologists. European monarchies function as extensions of Rome and run secret societies that infiltrate government agencies and run corporations for monarchs. The Sovereign Military Order of Malta is the main military council and works closely with the Orders of St. John administered by Protestant royalty such as the Windsors and the Hohenzollerns. The Order of Malta and the Order of Saint John are Masonic organizations with grand masters and titles for initiation. The royal and noble bloodlines are all working together as a global crime syndicate and part of a modernized Roman corporate empire. They also have several competing factions that create the illusion of division. The British crown and Scottish nobles such as the Bruce, Stewart, Sinclair, Campbell, Montagu, Scott, Hamilton, Percy, Boyle, Bowes-Lyon and Sutherland families administer a large part of Freemasonry. All of these families produced Grand Masters of the Grand Lodge of England. There are thousands of Masonic lodges in Europe and in the United States. Freemasonry must be investigated and outlawed. The Greek-German Royal House of Glucksburg directs the Greek fraternities and brotherhoods and uses initiates as its agents. Glucksburg nobles and Italians run the Boule Society, Boule is a Greek fraternal society for African Americans. Martin Luther King and Jesse Jackson have been members of Boule, among many other high-profile, successful, and wealthy blacks, including Barack Obama, Bill Cosby, Al Sharpton, and Thurgood Marshall. The Glucksburg family rules Denmark and Norway and recently ruled Greece. Among its members are the ex-queen Sofía of Spain and Duke Felipe de Edimburgo. Former Greek nobility and royal merchants such as the Mavroleon, Onassis, and Niarchos families are billionaires who have a monopoly in the shipping industry and work with British nobles. The Greek royal family currently lives in London from where many Greek consignment merchants operate. The British Crown authorized and controls universities such as Yale and Harvard which are used to recruit Crown agents through fraternal orders such as Skull & Bones and Book and Snake. Royal and noble families also do undercover business in the City of London Corporation, which dominates global markets. Some of the major London merchant families include the Goldsmith, Stuart, Rothschild, Grosvenor, Sassoon, Barclay, Sutherland, Montagu, Bailey and Guinness families. The Sutherland family created the HSBC bank that has a long history of financial scandals around the world (Emilio Botín, Fernando Alonso, Mohamed VI, Jorge Trías and Jordi Pujol Jr. had accounts at HSBC when it was chaired by Stephen Green, Baron Green of Hurstpierpoint). The Bailey family is co-founder of Janus Henderson through a merger. Janus Henderson manages around 190 billion in assets. The Stuart family owns the Hudson Bay Company and has an alliance with the Bavarian House of Wittelsbach, which is the covert owner of some of the Hudson's Bay Company subsidiaries, which were founded by Bavarian merchants. HBC has approximately $ 12 billion in assets and has had fiscal contracts with the United States through the Organic Law of the District of Columbia of 1871. The Orange-Nassau family are influential traders through the Netherlands Trading Society and have a large number of shares in Royal Dutch Shell, Philips Electronics and ABN AMRO Bank. The Orange-Nassaus and their Dreyfus agents run the Rand Corporation, which has a contract with the US military. Rand's founder was a Dutch gentleman. The Orange-Nassau family also runs the Loyal Orange Institution in Ireland, which has infiltrated the police, justice and politics. The Luxembourg Nassau-Weilburg family are international bankers connected to the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. The royal families of Luxembourg, Belgium and the Netherlands have shares in the European Investment Bank and all of these royals are recently married to Italian nobles. The Ligne family from Belgium are wealthy diamond and gold merchants. The Belgian Crown and its nobles are stealing wealth from the United States through fraudulent tax contracts established through the Organic Law of the District of Columbia of 1871 and continue to do so through the Bank for International Settlements. The Barons Strange heads the Masonic Order of Oddfellow. The Russell family are the Marquesses of Tavistock and they run the Tavistock Institute, which is an organization involved in mass mind control. The Russell family also co-founded the Yale University and Russell Trust Association, which is named after the New Haven, Connecticut company based on the Skull & Bones secret society. Skull & Bones is a death cult military complex run by the Bush family from the USA who are like a European royal family in the USA. The Furstenberg family runs the Royal Order of Jesters who wear a jester on their coat of arms. The Clintons work closely with the House of Furstenberg, who have residences in the United States. The Italian Orsini family and the Holy Roman Rosenberg family lead the Rosicrucian Order of alchemists who infiltrate food and drug companies for chemical warfare. The Medici family, who have a statue of Hermes (Mercury) in their palace in Rome, administer the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, an alchemical secret society. The Medici were architects of modern banking. The Pierleoni family of Rome and the Spanish House of Bourbon-Anjou run the Kabbalah Society, which uses the Spanish lion for its logo. The Pacelli family of Rome and the Crescenzi family of Italy administer the Wiccan witchcraft cults. The Bavarian Wittelsbach family from Bavaria created the Bavarian Illuminati and administers the Benedictine Monks and is also part of the Jewish Mafia in the United States who are white collar criminals. The Pecci family of Italy also owns the Jewish mafia in the United States through their marriage to the Blumenthal family. The House of Wittelsbach is involved with Zionism, Nazism, Freemasonry, and the Society of Jesus. The Jesuits function as Roman intelligence and infiltrators and use their universities to recruit and train agents for Rome. Jesuit agents dominate leadership positions in the United States military and intelligence and especially in the CIA. The Knights of Columbus are owned by the Casa de Colonna. Christopher Columbus was Pedro Madruga, the Count of Caminha, a relative of the Colonnas who settled in Pontevedra at the time of the Romans. Many Knights of Columbus are police officers, mayors, lawyers, and judges, protecting the Italian mob while targeting free-thinking people. The Knights of Columbus are heavily involved in gang harassment. Court Jews such as the Rothschild, Warburg, Goldsmith, Oppenheimer, Walton, Sassoon, Kadoorie, Lewis, Javal, Lauder, Sackler and Dreyfus families work through the Roman Curia or royal courtrooms such as Buckingham Palace. The French Rothschilds work for the Black Nobility of Rome and the French House of Orleans. The British Rothschilds work for the British Crown. The Sassoon and Kadoorie families work for the British Crown and oversee banking and business in China and India. The Swiss Rothschilds work for the House of Habsburg and the House of Hesse. The Oppenheimers work for the German House of Wurttemberg and the Cologne Oppenheim branch. the Austrian House of Habsburg granted them titles of nobility. The Warburgs work for the Italian House of Borghese and the German House of Hesse and the House of Hannover. Warburg Pincus had a contract with Unicredit that merged with the Borghese Family's Bank of the Holy Spirit. The Warburgs were Venetian bankers and the Borghese family now hold Venetian titles of nobility. The Warburgs financed the Nazis. The Dreyfus family works for the Dutch House of Orange-Nassau and the French House of Bonaparte. Jewish banking families work for Christian nobles and royalty. These billionaire Jewish bloodlines run many rabbis who run a criminal intelligence network that works with Mossad. The French House of Bonaparte and the Swedish House of Bernadotte control many of the main European companies through their knights of the Order of Seraphim and the Legion of Honor, who are also members of the Round Table of Industrialists of Europe, which it has a great economic influence on the markets. The Wallenbergs run corporations worth hundreds of billions and work for the Swedish House of Bernadotte. The Wallenbergs and the Swedish Crown also work with the Jesuits and the Vatican. The Black Nobility and other royal families have been hiding billions in private banks in Luxembourg, Liechtenstein and Switzerland. The royal families of Luxembourg and Liechtenstein own and run their own national and private banks. Austrian and Eastern European royalty and nobles, such as the Habsburgs, Esterhazys and Schonberg, use private banks in Liechtenstein and also own Israeli and Jewish mafias. The Esterhazy family together with the Lucchesi-Palli family run a faction of the Russian mafia through the mob boss Semion Mogilevich from Budapest. The Torlonia family owns the Fucino Bank in Rome and functions as Vatican bankers and treasurers. The Torlonia family of Rome and the Hohenzollern family of Germany are the main owners and controllers of the Bank for International Settlements which was founded and administered by the Nazis during World War II. The Torlonias are architects of fascism and the Hohenzollerns are architects of Nazism. The East, Rothschild and Hottinger families are some of the leading Swiss bankers. The Romanian Sturdza family also owns a private bank in Switzerland. The Casanova family of Italy and Spain is one of the leading political families in Switzerland. The East and Savoy families run the Bank for International Settlements, which has a contract with most of the major central banks and is embezzling the wealth of nations through fraudulent loans and contracts. The Savoys live in Switzerland and Prince Lorenz of Austria-Este works at the Gutzwiller bank. The Bank for International Settlements must be investigated and closed. The Gutzwiller family is one of the leading banking families in Switzerland, owning its own private bank and managing 35 other Swiss banks. The Swiss Guard is a military body in charge of the security of the Pope and the Holy See. The ceremonial head of the Swiss Guard is the Pope, sovereign of Vatican City. Italian mafias are Rome's enforcers involved in extortion, money laundering, murder and drug trafficking, and they pay their dues to the Sicilian mafia, which in turn pays them to the black nobility. The mafia channels its earnings and tributes to the Black Nobility through the Vatican charitable foundations and then from the Vatican bank they are transferred to the private accounts of the Swiss Bank. The Savoy’s Genovese crime family specializes in extorting Wall Street. The mafia is rigging professional sports for gambling and they also launder their criminal winnings through the casinos. The Torlonia family owns the Kansas City crime family and shares ownership of the Pittsburgh crime family with the Borghese family of Rome and the Rocco di Torrepadula family of Sicily. The French House of Orleans owns the New Orleans crime family and the Franco-British Beaufort family oversees and owns the Dixie Mafia factions along with other British peers who have French ancestry. Cox's billionaire family is involved in multimedia communications and is part of the owners of the Dixie mob, which is involved in tobacco and ginseng sales as well as arms, drug and human trafficking. The Goldsmith and Sassoon families own Pakistani and Hindu human trafficking networks operating in the United Kingdom. The Imperial House of Brazil, Orleans-Braganza and the Belgian House of Ligne are married and have shares in the Brazilian companies AmBev and Belgian Anheuser-Busch InBev. The House of Orleans-Braganza owns Brazilian drug cartels that are also involved in human trafficking. The Sforza family owns the Stidda Mafia clans operating in the Sforza-Visconti territory in Milan and the Sforza and Visconti families have greater control over the Italian Stock Exchange or the Milan Stock Exchange. Milanese billionaire Silvio Berlusconi works for the Sforza and Visconti families and has a monopoly on Italian media and politics. Berlusconi founded the Forza political party in Italy named after the Sforzas. Some northern Italian nobles such as the Visconti, Borromeo, Este, Gonzaga, Valenti, D’Adda, and Passi di Preposulo families are closely related to billionaire families such as the Rothschilds, Agnellis, Benettons, Armanis, and Ferreros. The Sforza and Visconti families own the Seattle crime family with the Gaetani family as partial owners. The Seattle crime family controls billionaires Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos through blackmail. In 2017, Microsoft and Amazon employees were caught in a sex trafficking scandal. The Colonna family owns the Knights of Columbus and also owns the Colombo crime family and partially owns the Chicago Outfit along with the Capponi and Roselli families of the Florence Turk. Al Capone was an agent of the House of Capponi and John Roselli was an agent of the Roselli del Turco family. Roselli also worked for the CIA. Colonna means column like Colombo and Colón. The Knights of Columbus infiltrate police departments and work with the Italian mafia. The Massimo and Gaetani families own and run the Gambino crime family and the Philadelphia crime family. The Massimo-Brancaccio family also owns and runs the Magliana or Roman Mafia and the Armed Revolutionary Nuclei, as well as the Graviano de Brancaccio crime family in Palermo, Sicily, which is part of the Corleonisi mafia clan. The Massimo family receives tribute from most of the Italian crime families and even from the Russian mafia and Eastern European mafias. The Massimo de Roccasecca family, who live in London, own the Clerkenwell crime syndicate, also known as the Adams Family or the London A-team and are part owners of the Irish Mafia, including the Rathkeale Rovers. The Borghese family is also the main owner of the Sicilian Mafia and the Mafia Magliana. The Lucchesi-Palli and Pallavicini families own the Lucchese crime family to which the Russian mafia in Brighton Beach pays tribute. The Pallavicini family owns the Armenian mafia that operates in Hollywood and works closely with the Kardashian family. The Romanovs are partial owners of the Russian mafia and have established several residences in the United States. The Giustiniani family oversee the Philadelphia Greek Mafia along with some Greek merchants. Royal and noble families finance organized crime. The Jewish Mafia reorganized into a white collar crime and worked with the black hand of the Italian Mafia. The head of the Jewish mafia in the United States is billionaire Michael Bloomberg. Leon Black is another one of the leading Jewish mobsters in New York. The Jewish Mafia participates in professional sports with white-collar mobsters such as Daniel Gilbert, Robert Kraft, Joshua Harris, Tom Werner, Jerry Reinsdorf, George Kaiser, Peter Guber, Joe Lacob, Mark Cuban, and Micky Arison. The European Union is based on the Treaty of Rome that was signed at the Capitol in Rome. The president of the European Central Bank is Mario Draghi, born in Rome and educated by the Jesuits at the Massimo Institute. Mario Draghi is an undercover relative of the Borghese and Del Drago families. The Erba-Odescalchi family with ancestry from Cernobbio, Italy, runs CERN with the Roman Fabiola Gianotti as CERN Director General that is used to generate pressure in the lower atmosphere in order to oppress society. CERN, HAARP, The Church of Scientology, Chemtrails and electronic devices are being used to covertly oppress society. The US military administers a HAARP electronic harassment system in Puerto Rico that is controlled from Guantanamo Bay in Cuba, which is under the command of Captain David Culpepper. The CIA and the Italian Mafia have a large criminal operation in Cuba. The CIA and Cosa Nostra work closely to this day. Islamic royal families were named after European royalty in the 19th and 20th centuries and especially after the First World War. Middle Eastern royalty run the oil industry and use their massive wealth to fund globalist agendas that allow them to rule their nations. The house of Saud is worth at least a billion. The House of Thani and the House of Al Khalifa work with the House of Saud and are also wealthy oil traders. Royals from the Middle East run the Muslim Brotherhood and the Five Percent and the Nation of Islam, which are violent mobs of cult and harassment. These organizations need to be investigated and banned. They also own an Arab mob that is based in New Jersey and Detroit. The royal family of Morocco are wealthy merchants and owners of the Abergil crime family of Israel and Morocco. The House of Bourbon and Spanish nobility such as the Osorio, Fitz James, Alvarez (Alba), Pignatelli, Arteaga, Borja, Zuniga, Ruspoli, and Aragon-Escobar families own the majority of the Mexican and South American drug cartels. The Osorio and Borja families own MS-13. The Borgia and Borja families are also partial owners of the Mongels motorcycle gang. The Bourbons own the Gulf Cartel and the Lating Kings. The Ruspolis are partial owners of the Sinaloa Cartel and the Primeiro Comando da Capital in Sao Paulo, where their Matarazzo cousins reside. The FitzJames and Alvarez families own the Los Zetas Cartel. The Álvarez and Osorio families also own the Bandidos motorcycle gang. The House of Bourbons are the founders and owners of Banco Santander. The King of Spain has the official right to the throne as King of Jerusalem.
China is a country in East Asia with legal gambling. There are 2 cities with gambling facilities in China which have 3 legal gambling facilities available in total. The types of gambling available in China are: casinos. The largest gambling city in China is Shanghai with 2 gambling facilities. China also gave us Pai Gow, an ancient form of gambling using dominoes that became a global sensation when it was modernised and introduced to Western casinos in the late 1980s. And of course, there's Mah Jong, another tile based game that is enormously popular. China restricts a lot of websites, but we have found 7 online casinos available in China. The list of the top 7 top rated gambling sites in China looks at the online casinos that have the best bonuses, cashout and deposit policies, legitimacy - all what is necessary to know before deciding where to bet. Chinese casinos, cruise ships, horsetracks and dogtracks - the complete gambling landscape of China. Includes China casino details, gambling news and tweets in China, area maps, Chinese entertainment, coupons offers... Online casinos accepting Chinese players. Despite China’s strict laws against online gambling, it remains big business in China. Many local operators illicitly continue to offer their services to Chinese players, although raids are common and these operators can cease services at the drop of a hat, making these sites very dangerous for players. China to ‘Paralyze’ Foreign Casino Operatives Who Entice Mainlanders to Gamble. Posted on: February 8, 2021, 11:31h. Last updated on: February 8, 2021, 11:31h. It was during the nineteenth century that legal forms of gambling came to China. This can largely be attributed to the incompetency of late Qing Dynasty governments and the need for war funds. Two Opium Wars (1839 and 1856) against the British Empire, and the Sino–French War (1884-85) left China weak. China Mulling Legal Action Against Foreign Casinos Targeting Mainland High Rollers. Posted on: October 13, 2020, 10:05h. Last updated on: October 13, 2020, 11:27h. Is online gambling legal in China? No – online gambling, like most other forms of gambling, is illegal in China. Despite the strict laws against online gambling, there have been many Chinese operators who have tried to offer underground online gambling services to Chinese players, although raids by police and major busts of illicit gambling rings are common. Although China still lacks legal casinos, you can gamble in the autonomous territory known as Macau. Macau is the only place in China where gambling is legalized. Furthermore, Macau is a tax haven and an offshore financial centre.
How a Chinese Casino Conquered a Piece of America - YouTube
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