Addabbo eyes 2024 New York iCasino push
NY iCasino debate, Aussie ad ban, GamCare block plea, Swedish risky business, RG committee +More
Good morning. On today’s agenda:
Presenting the bull and bear cases for New York iCasino in 2024.
Australian parliament rushes towards total gambling ad ban.
GamCare urges banks to sync up payment blocking.
Sweden’s risky gambler numbers fall.
Lobby group approves dedicated player harm committee.
I’ll state my case, of which I’m certain.
NY iCasino
New York State Sen. Joseph Addabbo was a leading voice in bringing OSB to the state, and now he has his sights set on iCasino.
View from 30,000 feet: Addabbo has vociferously supported iGaming in the last two sessions. Thus far, his optimism hasn’t produced any results. Like every other form of gambling expansion New York has explored, the roadblock is not the Senate. The Senate passed numerous online poker bills in the 20-teens and has introduced several pieces of online casino legislation over the last few years.
In 2016, it passed S 5302 in a lopsided 53-5 vote.
In 2017, it passed S 3898 in an almost as lopsided 58-9 vote.
Slim Pickens: Contrary to the Senate’s appetite for gambling expansions, the New York State Assembly is on a strict diet. The lower chamber has introduced legislation, but those bills do little more than collect dust.
Further, bills passed by the Senate are ignored and left to wither and die on the vine.
And in the New York State Assembly, the vine is the Racing, Gaming and Wagering Committee, chaired by longtime Assemblyman Gary Pretlow.
Pretlow is either a supervillain or an antihero (depending on your purview) in the eyes of online gambling supporters.
The case for: There are plenty of reasons to be bullish on New York’s iCasino chances:
New York pushed OSB across the finish line in the face of similar opposition.
The state’s constant need for new sources of revenue to fill an ever-swelling budget.
Online gambling revenue leaking over its borders with New Jersey and Pennsylvania remains a strong argument.
In addition to New Jersey and Pennsylvania, the northeast has five of the seven legal iCasino states, including the recently added Rhode Island.
The case against: Likewise, there are also reasons to be bearish:
Downstate casinos will continue to dominate the conversation.
An ongoing dispute with the Seneca Nation over revenue-sharing will also suck up oxygen.
The nascency of OSB and concerns about the amount of advertising it has generated will almost certainly lead to more calls for cautiousness.
Assemblyman Gary Pretlow.
See-saw: Most of the above are straightforward. The wildcard is Pretlow, who see-saws between supporting and opposing online gambling. Pretlow is known to speak optimistically about the chances of passing a bill one day before citing an existing or new reason for not taking up the bill the next.
Over the years, Pretlow’s committee has failed to act on several online poker or online casino bills, with a laundry list of excuses given, including:
Operators’ ability to detect collusion.
Geolocation.
Tell me to my face: One example occurred in 2016 when State Sen. John Bonacic (Addabbo’s predecessor, who led the online poker efforts at that time) expressed his frustration with Pretlow’s vacillation. “When I asked him if he was going to move the bill, he said he didn’t know,” Bonacic told PokerNews. “He never said to me what he told you.”
New York 2024: Where does New York stand as we head into 2024? Online gambling expansion is on the table and will receive plenty of attention. Our expectation is the introduction of bills in both chambers, and iCasino is likely to make an appearance in someone’s budget (the House, the Senate or the Governor).
Still, the structural hurdles are unchanged from 2022 or 2023, and passage, while possible, feels unlikely.
New Jersey iCasino
Extension progression: The bill to extend the authorization for the state’s iGaming law, advanced from the state Assembly Budget Committee with an amendment that would shorten the extension period from 10 to two years. NJ legalized iGaming in 2013 for a 10-year period, which is set to expire in November.
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Australian ad ban
Australia's federal government is meeting with bookies and broadcasters in the coming days as the likelihood of a blanket ban on advertising, promotions and sports sponsorships intensifies.
Changing channels: After a parliamentary inquiry proposed a widespread crackdown in response to growing player harm concerns, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said online gambling ads appearing during live sport was “reprehensible” (last month he said they were “annoying”).
Industry figures believe an embargo could cost more than A$300m ($198.6m).
Other recommendations include a national gambling regulator, the appointment of a dedicated federal minister for online gambling harm and changes to behavioral algorithms in gambling apps.
“What we’ll do is give consideration to the recommendations,” Albanese told ABC Radio in Queensland. I’ve said before that the idea you’re watching a footy game and... on comes an ad for gambling, I find pretty reprehensible.”
Not with haste: Lobbyists representing the sector said a heavy-handed response would be “short-sighted” and “ineffective”. Much of the pushback concerns proposals to kill all online gambling advertising over a three-year period, excluding advertisements for physical shop premises.
Tabcorp currently holds exclusive wagering licenses in NSW and Victoria.
It was the only betting company to row in behind the ban, having publicly backed such a move throughout the inquiry.
The first phase would involve halting online gambling ads on social media and online platforms such as Instagram and YouTube, and outlawing radio ads during school drop-off times.
Responsible Wagering Australia (RAW), which represents bet365, Betfair, Entain, Sportsbet, PointsBet and others, said a cap would strike a better balance.
“Blanket bans, even in a phased roll out, are short-sighted, ineffective and are not the answer,” RWA chief executive Kai Cantwell said.
Tentative decisions: Ministers are reviewing the 31 recommendations ahead of a decision, which sources indicate could come before the end of the year.
Polls indicate the public is strongly behind restrictions, while research from the Australian Gambling Research Centre also found more than half of Australians support an outright ad ban.
Lawyers suggested the changes will have a “significant” impact on licensed online operators.
“What is also clear is that illegal offshore online gambling operators will, if these reforms are introduced, likely be more attractive to Australians wishing to gamble online,” said Jamie Nettleton, partner at Addisons.
UK payment blocking
GamCare says banks can do more to support tools that block transactions linked to at-risk players.
Protect the people: The charity has released a new report guiding banks on stronger support measures to stop vulnerable individuals from gambling. Blocks are currently being deployed by banks as free tools to curb harm by stopping any relevant transactions from and to a customer’s current bank account.
The charity says greater awareness of the tools is needed, and research shows they are inconsistent across various banks who deploy them, with various names and features.
What one bank calls a ‘card freeze’ is known as ‘merchant control’ or is listed under ‘restriction’ settings, which researchers say causes “ambiguity and confusion for the consumer”.
“Offering these tools in intuitive locations and adopting consistent naming across the finance sector could help drive awareness and adoption of gambling management tools, ensuring more vulnerable customers are protected from gambling harms,” said Deelan Maru of GamCare’s behavioral insights team.
With the support of the charity, the Betting and Gaming Council is launching a registry of account details for its members, which will connect to banks and aims to stop faster payments and transfers to gambling companies when a block is in place.
Sweden player harm
Svenska Spel said risky gambling numbers were down in the first quarter of 2023, having dropped year-on-year across online casino and land-based venues.
Shrinking: The state-owned operator also reported risky gambling levels were “extremely low” across its Turspel business, covering Triss, Lotto, Keno and Eurojackpot.
One of the main reasons for the drop was improved responsibility measures, the operator said.
It has introduced a mandatory income review for punters aged 18 or 19 and limit spends per month.
It has also brought in an enforced 10-minute break for players using its Vegas slot machines and a rebranded version of gambling harm prevention tool Min Spelkoll.
“We would like to emphasise it is not possible to draw conclusions about Sweden’s overall risky gambling based solely on how they play at Svenska Spel,” said head of sustainability, Kajsa Nylander. “We can only report how our customers behave when they play with us, right now.”
Player harm committee
A top industry trade group is to introduce a data-driven responsible gaming committee as part of efforts to show regulators how seriously the betting sector is taking player harm.
Serve and protect: The International Gaming Standards Association’s (IGSA) board of directors unanimously approved the addition of a new committee dedicated to supporting regulators and operators in their mission to protect punters.
“The time has come to create a global standard, process and path for predictive responsible gaming,” said Earle G Hall, chair of the IGSA, whose voting members include Aristocrat, Playtech, IGT and Light & Wonder.
“Regulators have done an incredible job of creating their individual approaches. It is now time to pull the best practices together into a journey from discovery to quantitative management.”
The committee will research the use of data-driven predictability models within the sector that can head off problems before they escalate, and potentially intervene earlier when issues with gamblers are identified.
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European notebook
Glitnor has been fined $259k by the Financial Intelligence Analysis Unit in Malta for not conducting relevant risk assessments. These included not checking the source of income for big spenders and not checking if a player was a politically exposed person.
The Netherlands: The minister of legal protection, Franc Weerwind, has said that talks with gaming operators might be more effective than fines in ensuring compliance with the fast-approaching ad ban.
According to iGaming Business, Weerwind said it would be up to the regulator, the KSA, to “decide what the most appropriate intervention is, whereby obvious violations are of course dealt with more strictly.”
Nevada notebook
On the team: The Venetian and Palazzo in Las Vegas will allow labor groups to organize non-gaming employees having come to an agreement with Culinary Workers Local 226, Bartenders Local 165, Operating Engineers Local 501 and Teamsters Local 986.
According to The Nevada Independent, The Apollo Global Venetian and Palazzo were the last casinos on the Las Vegas Strip operating without a union agreement.
Shirt sponsorship notebook
Relegation zone: Fulham and Burnley have become the latest English Premier League clubs to somewhat snub the spirit of the voluntary ban on gambling-related shirt sponsorship by signing up to new deals with betting companies with SBOTop and W88 respectively. Fulham was sponsored by W88 last season.
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