The Booth agreement. Billing, refunds, and the use rules.

The agreement the desk ships alongside The Booth subscription. The Booth tier bills $4.99 a month through Stripe Checkout, cancels same day at /account, and ships the gated 60-second video recap, the Trade Confidence Meter on /rumors, the premium breaking alerts, the full archive, and the ad-free newsletter to Illinois-resident readers. Below: the subscription terms, the refund posture, the acceptable-use rules around recap redistribution, the Illinois-only operating scope, and the contact path.

See the two tiers Contact the desk

The Booth subscription · billing · cancellation

Four terms. One Booth subscription.

The Booth tier is one subscription with four terms. Stripe-billed at $4.99 a month, auto-renewed on the same calendar day, cancelled same day at /account, and the free Wire keeps dispatching either way — that is the entire subscription contract.

Billing cadence · $4.99 / month on card checkout
The Booth tier bills $4.99 USD every month through the card checkout flow — the only path into The Booth. There is no annual plan, no quarterly plan, no ad-hoc invoice: the cadence is one month, billed in advance, on the same calendar day each billing cycle. The card on file is the card the processor holds for renewals automatically.
Auto-renewal · the card on file
The Booth tier auto-renews the same way it started: the card processor charges the card on file at the start of each monthly cycle, and the Booth dispatch surfaces (the gated 60-second video recap, the Trade Confidence Meter on /rumors, the premium breaking alerts, the full archive, and the ad-free newsletter) keep delivering to the address you entered at checkout. No further opt-in is required; the renewal is what you signed up for.
Cancellation · same day at /account
Cancel at /account and the Booth perks stop the same day — gated video recaps, the Trade Confidence Meter tier, premium breaking alerts, the full archive, and the ad-free newsletter all stop pinging your billing email the moment cancellation hits. Billing stops the next renewal on its next cycle; the desk does not keep any paid-tier state once the cancellation timestamp lands. The address stays on file as the billing email for the next renewal cycle and then drops off the paid roster automatically.
The free Wire is unaffected by Booth cancellation
Cancelling The Booth does not touch the free Wire recap or the waitlist address — the free nightly recap keeps dispatching to whatever inbox the reader subscribed at /signup, and the Monday Betting Brief keeps shipping to every Illinois-resident reader who opted in. Booth cancellation only takes the paid perks with it; the free reader-tier stays exactly as it was.

Refund policy · same SLA as /contact

No automatic refund. A discretionary path.

The Booth tier is a recurring service, not a one-time purchase — the gated renders inbox the reader consumed is the rendered inbox the desk already shipped. A failed dispatch or a renewal that should not have renewed is a desk-review case, not a routine pro-rata refund.

No automatic refund on cancellation
The Booth tier is a subscription for an ongoing service — the gated 60-second video recap, the Trade Confidence Meter on /rumors, the premium breaking alerts, the full archive, and the ad-free newsletter all dispatch on a recurring cadence the moment the renewal hits. The first paid month that ships an inbox of Booth perks is the paid month the reader consumed; cancellation stops the next month from delivering, not the one already on disk. There is no automatic pro-rata refund on the cancel-with-time-remaining path.
Discretionary refund path · contact the desk
If a gated render never reached the inbox, if a video render failed mid-build and the desk could not redeliver it, or if a renewal charged a card that should not have renewed — drop the desk a line. The same /contact form the desk uses for everything else takes a Booth refund question too; the desk replies within one business day and reviews the case against the dispatch log the same day the request lands.

Acceptable use · the recap redistribution rule

Three rules. The recap wire stays on the desk.

No republishing the recap body, no scraping the wire, no impersonating or reselling the Booth dispatch surfaces — the recap wire is for reading in the inbox or on /archive, not for piping into a downstream product. Each row is stated in plain prose below.

No redistribution of the recap content
enforced
The recap body, the gated MP4 video renders, the Trade Confidence Meter cards, and the Booth subscriber badge artwork all stay on the desk. No republishing the recap on a third-party site, no embedding the Booth MP4 render on a non-desk URL, no lifting the Trade Confidence Meter cards into a paid feed elsewhere. The recap wire is for reading in the inbox or on /archive, not for reposting — including screenshots lifted past the dispatch window.
No scraping / no automation against the wire
enforced
No scraping the /feed.xml, /rumors.rss, or /recaps.rss feeds, no scripted polling of the recap wire, no bot-driven ingestion of the nightly-digest inbox for redistribution anywhere. The feeds ship for conventional reader clients (RSS readers, podcast apps, the in-app recap wire UI); they do not ship as a free ingestion source for a downstream pipeline. Repeated hits from the same agent are blocked at the edge.
No impersonation / no commercial resale
enforced
No impersonating the desk in a third-party channel, no reselling the Booth dispatch surfaces under a different brand, no co-branding the Booth MP4 render in another publisher’s newsletter. The Booth tier is never re-sold: the address Stripe collects at checkout dispatches only against the desk itself, and the Booth badge stays attached only to /account on the desk’s own URL.

Illinois only · the operating boundary

The desk operates exclusively in Illinois.

BrickbatDeskships Chicago-local recaps for Illinois-resident readers. The Booth dispatch surfaces, the waitlist capture, and the free recap wire all stay inside the Illinois jurisdiction — the desk’s editorial coverage, source ledger, and disclosure obligations all live in the same regulatory frame.

BrickbatDesk operates exclusively in Illinois. The Booth dispatch surfaces (the gated 60-second video recap, the Trade Confidence Meter on /rumors, the premium breaking alerts, the full archive, and the ad-free newsletter) all ship only to Illinois-resident readers; the wagering guidance (21+, 1-800-GAMBLER) lives on /legal/privacy and the disclosure banners on the betting-trends products. The Booth MP4 render and the free recap wire are all built and dispatched from Chicago for Illinois readers.

The Illinois-specific regulatory copy the Monday Betting Brief ships alongside lives on /faq#illinois. The focused free-Wire disclosure lives on /legal/privacy. The paid Booth data disclosure lives on /privacy-policy.

Contact · ask the desk a Booth question

Ask the desk. The contact form is on /contact.

The same form the desk uses for everything else takes a Booth question too. Drop it on the contact form, the desk replies within one business day, and the row the question concerns stays untouched unless the reader asks for it to go.

The desk’s contact form lives on /contact →. The form lands in the desk’s inbox within one dispatch cycle. Prefer email? Mail brickbatdesk@polsia.app and the desk will reply the same way.

Open the contact form Email the desk

Last updated · 2026-08-08

A Booth question? The desk replies.

This page is the source of truth on the Booth subscription terms, the refund posture, and the acceptable-use rules. Updates ship here with a fresh “last updated” line. If a change ever affects a row that’s already on the desk, the change ships with a one-tap opt-out in the next dispatch.

Contact the desk See the two tiers

Contact the desk: brickbatdesk@polsia.app

Free-Wire disclosure: /legal/privacy →

Illinois regulatory block: /faq#illinois →