UKGC fears over health stats
The UK’s data debate, New York pick’em decision, Super Group’s Indian exit, Australian checks +More
Good morning. On today’s agenda:
The UK Gambling Commission has a problem with the official health stats.
The future of pick’em-style fantasy sports offerings in New York could be decided today.
Super Group has quit the Indian market due to new tax fears.
Australian punters face compulsory checks before they can place wagers.
Does the body rule the mind or does the mind rule the body?
UKGC health admission
Gambling Commission’s omission highlights health problems.
Still ill: The Department of Health has become the latest target of the Gambling Commission’s campaign to root out the misuse of statistics. Last week, Commission executive director Tim Miller launched a thinly veiled attack on the Office for Health Improvement and Disparities (OHID) for manufacturing statistics on self-harm.
Speaking at the Regulating the Game London conference, Miller suggested the Commission had deliberately excluded a contentious OHID report from its advice to the government, due to concerns about its quality.
The report published in January claimed gambling harms cost the state and society between £1bn and £1.8bn.
It also alleged that either 117 or 496 deaths by suicide in England were associated with problem gambling in 2019.
OHID has used such figures in support of a range of prohibitionist policies, including annual tax increases on gambling consumers and ‘plain packaging’ for all gambling products, meaning no colors, logos or images.
Off target: Last year, under pressure from a freedom of information request, the Commission produced a damning assessment of a report by Public Health England (PHE) on economic and social costs, which used the same data and modeling techniques as OHID.
The Commission described PHE’s assumptions as “inaccurate” and criticized the now defunct state agency for using ‘unreliable data’.
Last week, Miller was unable to confirm whether this opinion would be formally published by the regulator and refused to defend either PHE or OHID.
Asked about the confusion over the statistics, a spokesperson for the UKGC said the role of the Commission was to “regulate licensed gambling operators and does not extend to regulating gambling research”.
“As a result, we do not produce and publish official assessments of other organizations’ research,” the spokesperson added.
“We may draw upon third-party research in our role as the statutory advisor to the government.”
“As our statutory advice is always published people are able to see for themselves what research we have relied upon.”
Backgrounder: The CEO of the Gambling Commission, Andrew Rhodes, has written to the parliamentary select committee for Culture, Media and Sport to highlight the misuse of statistics in evidence hearings. Rhodes told the committee chair that it was “wholly unacceptable” to claim there are 496 gambling-related suicides “or a suicide every day”.
He directly criticized testimony from the campaign group, Gambling with Lives among others.
Dame Clare Gerada of the NHS Primary Care Gambling Services also wrote to the committee to express concern about “inaccurate comments made about the National Gambling Support Network” at a hearing attended by Gambling with Lives on July 18.
Dame Gerada warned that – left uncorrected - these “inaccurate comments” may serve to “erode trust in the service and could dissuade people from using it”.
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Pick’em decision
The future of Pick’em-style fantasy sports offerings in New York could be decided today.
Pick’em and mix: The New York State Gaming Commission could move as early as today, October 3, to ban fantasy sports games that mimic prop bets in the latest regulatory intervention following Florida’s issuing of cease-and-desist letters to three prominent DFS providers.
In documents filed with the NYSGC, the Coalition for Fantasy Sports, which includes Underdog Fantasy, PrizePicks (both receiving the Florida letters) and Sleeper as its members, complained that the new rules stifled innovation.
The CFS added that the new rules “would serve to solidify the market domination by DraftKings and FanDuel”.
The lobbyists also argued in their letter that pick’em games are not gambling because they are contests of skill as defined by the courts in previous rulings.
Fake plastic trees: In a separate letter to the Commission, Mojo said that while it recognizes concerns over “single-user contests in which the user competes against the house”, the company believes there is “nothing inherently offensive” about pick’em games.
Mojo added that its current offering involves contestants “allocating fake dollars” to compile a roster of players.
“There is no principled distinction between appropriately constructed skill-based contests that are based on traditional fantasy point structure or contests that use a scoring structure based on the players’ achievement of specific statistical goals,” Mojo added.
“Both require a compilation of multiple player rosters, skill-based determinations of player performance and winnings awarded based on the relative performance of the contestants.”
The company went on to say the Commission’s attempts to target products that “fall out of the scope of fantasy” will have the “unintended effect of outlawing a wide range of appropriately constructed, skill-based fantasy games”.
What we’re reading: Is DFS legal in Florida? The answer is probably not, according to the state Gaming Commission.
US notebook
Florida: Gov. Ron DeSantis has been ordered by Florida Supreme Court to respond by November 1 to a petition filed by West Flagler and poker room owner Bonita-Fort Myers Corp aimed at invalidating a gaming compact between the state and the Seminole.
According to SportsHandle, the plaintiffs argue DeSantis and the state legislature violated the Florida Constitution when they approved a compact in 2021 that gave the Seminole the exclusive right to offer off-reservation online and in-person sports betting in the state.
They argue that a constitutional amendment ratified in 2018 requires voter approval to expand gambling in Florida.
The latest development follows the US District of Columbia’s Circuit Court of Appeals denying West Flagler’s request for the court to halt the tribe from launching OSB operations.
The appeal to the US Supreme Court is still pending.
Betway’s Indian exit
Betway parent Super Group quits the Indian market following the introduction of a new tax on goods and services. More to follow (literally).
Goodbye: In a business update, the operator behind Betway and Spin said “the newly effective tax rules make the Indian market no longer commercially viable”. The new levy entered force on October 1, obliging operators to pay a flat 28% turnover tax for online gambling, casino and horserace betting.
The initiative was announced in July by India’s tax ministry.
The All India Gaming Federation lobby group has long decried the move, and said it would either force businesses out of the country or send them under, while leading to a spike in black market activity.
Australia ID checks
Australian punters opening online betting accounts will have to go through a compulsory pre-verification check before they can place wagers.
It matters who you are: The scheme replaces the previous 72-hour window for identity checks and is part of a range of new initiatives designed to protect players and tackle money laundering.
Responsible Wagering Australia (RWA) CEO Kai Cantwell said pre-verification provides online wagering operators with “the ability to continue to advertise the adoption of safer gambling tools”.
He added that the ongoing regulatory overhaul in Australia, while welcome, should be balanced.
“The real-time collection of individual customer data allows providers to intervene early when they identify unusual or concerning betting behavior,” he said.
“However, to effectively reduce gambling harm, regulation must be applied consistently across all forms of gambling, not just online.”
Another Tabcorp fine mess
Naughty, naughty: Less than a month after being fined A$1m by the authorities in Victoria for a foul up that saw its systems go down for more than a day in 2020, Tabcorp is now in the dock for its marketing practices.
Specifically, it has been alleged to have sent unsolicited marketing material to non-users in violation of New South Wales regulations.
More Dutch pressure
The Netherlands may soon have tighter gambling regulations if the government approves a set of recommendations by the country’s addiction tsar.
Medicine: In a report titled Gambling on Health, Dr Arnt FA Schellekens and the National Rapporteur on Addictions (NVA) outlined 22 recommendations to the Ministry of Justice. It floats the creation of a “structured, high-quality monitoring system” to better track online gaming and player harm, calls for “overarching play limits” and powers to “prohibit games with a demonstrably high risk or impose requirements to mitigate these risks”.
Other recommendations include investment in educational packages, awareness days and independent online information sites to raise awareness of the risks of gambling.
Schellekens said waiting for forthcoming discussions on the regulations, including an evaluation of the Remote Gambling Act in 2024, is a waste of time.
There is “sufficient reason to formulate additional policies as soon as possible” to limit gambling harm, he said.
The NVA also wants more marketing restrictions in place following a ban on untargeted advertising introduced in July, with the report comparing similar crackdowns in Italy and Belgium.
European notebook
Denmark: Denmark’s self-exclusion register will now block betting inside physical stores and casinos, the country’s regulator said. The Danes recently implemented mandatory player ID for betting in shops, meaning those who registered with the self-exclusion register, ROFUS, have their details shared with operators.
Operators themselves must refrain from advertising to the individual in question.
The rules entered force on October 1.
Greece: OPAP has been whacked with a €24.6m fine by the Hellenic Competition Commission (HCC), which found that the company violated competition laws and exploited its betting and gaming market dominance.
The Commission agreed with the complainants, which included the Hellenic Cooperative of Professional Lotteries’ Agents (SEPPP) and other agents, that OPAP’s non-compete clauses breached certain elements of Greek law.
Macau crypto arrests
The police in Macau and Hong Kong make arrests connected to a crypto-fraud case involving the JPEX platform.
Last week, four arrests were made related to the demise of Dubai-based JPEX, which left thousands of Hong Kong-based investors out of pocket by ~HK$1.5bn ($191.5m). Of the four, two men were alleged to have frequently visited casinos in Macau during the past month.
CoinGeek reported that the pair had over HK$6.5m in casino chips in their possession, along with some cash and luxury watches.
The paper also reported they had another HK$3m on account with an unspecified casino and said the authorities previously froze HK$5.2m in a casino account belonging to another JPEX-linked individual who remains at large.
In Hong Kong, one man was arrested while attempting to destroy documents. He was detained with ~HK$8.7m in cash and gold in his possession.
Ponzi my soul: JPEX offered customers 21% via the exchange’s ‘savings products’, which enticed customers to purchase and store various tokens with JPEX. The exchange used influencers to promote its products with some influencers also participating in the scam.
The Hong Kong Securities and Futures Commission (SFC) warned investors in September that JPEX was operating without its approval.
It sparked a run on JPEX as people attempted to withdraw their funds.
JPEX claimed that unspecified “third-party market makers have maliciously frozen funds” following its “unfair treatment” at the hands of the SFC.
Crypto notebook
Cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase has been granted a full payments license to operate in Singapore by the city-state’s central bank. The world’s largest listed crypto exchange can now offer digital payment token services to individuals and institutions in Singapore.
The Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) has previous stated that it only grants licenses to cryptocurrency firms with robust anti-money laundering controls and that “most applicants have not been successful”.
Fourteen companies, including the Singapore arms of fintech Revolut and London-based crypto firm Blockchain.com, have obtained a crypto payments license, the MAS said.
Reuters reported last year that around 180 companies had applied for the crypto payments license in 2020 under a new regime.
In August 2022, the MAS said it was planning regulations that will make it more difficult for retail investors to trade cryptocurrencies at a time when they seem to be “irrationally oblivious” about the risks involved.
Chase warning: The UK arm of JPMorgan is to stop customers buying cryptocurrencies, citing rising numbers of criminals using digital assets to target victims. The ban by Chase UK is a further escalation from lenders in Britain to stop their networks being abused by fraudsters.
Banks including HSBC and NatWest have set limits on their customers’ crypto purchases, but outright bans are rare.
High-street bank TSB began blocking crypto in 2021, also citing the high rate of fraud, while digital bank Starling has prevented the buying and selling of cryptocurrencies since last November.
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