California plan appears friendless
Calif. tribal opposition, Rhodes weighs in, Spain hands out fines, Wynn’s UAE hopes +More
New California OSB plan faces tribal opposition.
UKGC’s Rhodes attacks racing, makes pointed black market comments.
Spain hands out fines and takes away licenses.
Wynn says not every emirate will take the gambling route.
Any way you say it, the charade goes on.
File under ‘this is nuts’
A plan to roll-up black market operations and hand it to the tribes appears fatally undermined from the off.
If it walks like a SPAC: The principals behind the California sports-betting initiative have gone public with their plans, suggesting in part that the Eagle 1 Acquisition Corp. vehicle being used to front the move could be the repository for all the unregulated business taking place in the state.
Behind Eagle 1 are CEO Kasey Thompson, formerly of Pala Interactive, and COO and blockchain entrepreneur Reeve Collins.
Talking to PlayUSA, the pair suggested part of their plan for OSB in California would be to somehow transition black market assets operating in California to the tribes via Eagle 1.
Such a move would, according to Thompson and Collins, “cleanse” the assets of bad actors before being handed to the tribes.
The maneuver would take between five to seven years.
You wouldn’t know her, she goes to a different school: Thompson was vague on who was backing his initiative. “It’s top of the industry,” he told Politico. “It’s the biggest of the big.”
He argued that while no tribe has publicly embraced the proposal, the collective silence “in no way means they are against”.
If tribes aren’t proclaiming their enthusiasm, Thompson said, it’s because “nobody wants to come out first” as they study the proposal.
Low bro: But the tribes’ reaction to the scheme was less than effusive, with Victor Rocha, Pechanga member and tribal political consultant, telling Politico the plan was deeply flawed. “Basically what you have is a tech bro and a poker bro walk into a bar,” he said.
James Siva, chairman of the California Nations Indian Gaming Association, meanwhile, told PlayUSA he did not see how Eagle 1 was “going to get enough momentum behind this to make it viable”.
“If tribes are going to be supportive of this, it’s going to take a lot of tribal input and edits, and the clock is already ticking,” he added.
“But if they want to spend half-a-billion dollars on our behalf, that could change things,” Rocha told SportsHandle. “But I really don’t see a path for this.”
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Notebook
Slapshot: The Alcohol and Gaming Commission of Ontario has fined PointsBet C$150k ($109k) for what it said are multiple violations of responsible gambling provisions contained within the province’s regulations.
According to the AGCO, PointsBet failed to intervene with a player potentially experiencing gambling harms when they lost C$500k, failed to enforce a cooling-off period when the player canceled their per-day deposit limit and advertised to them without consent.
This is the second intervention from the AGCO, following a C$100k fine for Apollo Entertainment.
Brazil watch: The sports committee in Brazil’s Senate gave the nod to the sports-betting bill last week, but with more amendments put forward by executive chair Romário de Souza Faria, which would prohibit sponsorship for teams or athletes by sportsbooks and allow lottery operator Caixa and its licensed retailers to offer fixed-odds betting without a license.
As per last week, the bill as passed by the committee also omitted any iCasino language.
The next step is a vote by the full Senate before the bill returns to the lower house.
Proper Charlie: NCAA president Charlie Baker told CBS News he is concerned about the impact of gambling on the integrity of amateur sports. Singling out prop bets, he said they represent a specific risk and should not be allowed on any College sports.
What we’re reading
Will Wyatt in the Racing Post: “With a prudent betting strategy and laying out only what I don’t mind losing, I am buying fun.”
On social
“Great to know that sponsoring stuff doesn't actually increase your business. That's £2m I can put back in the cookie jar.”
William Woodhams from Fitzdares (which sponsors Fulham) responds on X to English Football League chair Rick Parry’s statement last week that EFL-conducted research hasn’t “seen any evidence that sponsorship leads to an increase in gambling or gambling harm”.
Career path
Entain is advertising for a regulatory affairs and policy manager to be part of the group’s wider regulatory team for the UK, Europe and international markets.
Calendar
Nov 13-19: European Safer Gambling Week. See the EGBA schedule.
Rhodes speech
Rhodes rails against racing’s parliamentary petition.
Straw man: UK Gambling Commission CEO Andrew Rhodes late last week defended the plans to bring in affordability checks against what he told gambling industry CEOs was becoming an “exceptionally difficult and sometimes very bitter debate”.
Singling out the parliamentary petition, which as of Monday had nearly hit 87,000, he said the “current campaign” argues there should be “no checks at all on how affordable someone’s gambling is on horseracing”.
It was a “point-of-principle disagreement”, he added.
Sign on and on: The petition was launched a fortnight ago by British Racing. It says it wants the government to “abandon the planned implementation of affordability checks for some people who want to place a bet”.
“We believe such checks – which could include assessing whether people are ‘at risk of harm’ based on their postcode or job title – are inappropriate and discriminatory.”
If it reaches over 100k, it means the petition will be considered for debate in parliament.
Rhodes argued the call from those behind the petition was there should be “no checks at all” and would mean “unlimited losses being sanctioned when betting on horseracing”. “The call being made here is for unlimited and, quite literally, unchecked gambling losses on a sport, to support the growth and continuation of that sport.”
While Rhodes did allow that it was “open to any group to say what they think should happen”, he said the “perennial challenge in gambling regulation” was to balance individual choice and harm prevention.
He said the right to gamble enshrined within the legislation was “subject to the licensing objectives being satisfied, including that the vulnerable are protected”.
“They are not intended to be an either or – they are intended to be balanced,” he added.
Recall, in a speech at the Reputation Matters event in late October, ex-BHA CEO Nick Rust said the affordability measures represented an “existential threat” to British horseracing.
Hey, hey into the black
Risky behavior: Rhodes also took aim at the operators assembled with regard to the related argument over the risk of affordability checks driving UK consumers offshore. “The risk of illegal gambling and the black market as an argument against reform of regulation is, I think, overstated, based on what we see in reality,” he said.
Rhodes added he believed that “does not mean there is no risk” attached to it.
“I hear quite a lot of anecdotal examples from you, but we need to turn that into something actionable.”
Somebody’s watching me: But he still aimed a sideswipe at his audience, pointing out “it is worth noting that other regulators around the world are looking at this problem too and some of you are the black market in those countries”. He said operators should expect a “greater degree of attention” from international authorities, “especially where there are legitimate routes to gain a license in that country”.
Spanish practices
Travieso, travieso: The authorities in Spain have published a long list of 30 operators who have been fined €71.4m between them in the first half of the year for what the Ministry of Consumer Affairs said were “serious or very serious” violations of the country’s gambling regulations.
The list of 30 offenders published on the Directorate General for Gambling Regulation (DGOJ) website features most of the big names in the market, including bet365, Entain, Codere Online and William Hill.
Not messing around: Of the 15 “infracción administrativa muy grave”, 14 have had their licenses disqualified for two years and, in most cases, been issued with €5m fines, accounting for the vast majority of the fines total.
The remaining 15 operators found guilty of ‘only’ serious offenses were fined a total of €1.33m between them.
In 2022 the MCA and DGOJ sanctioned 73 operators.
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Gulf flag
During his company’s Q3 earnings call last week, Wynn Resorts CEO Craig Billings indicated he thought it “highly unlikely” every emirate that comprises the United Arab Emirates will “ultimately avail themselves of the right to host an integrated resort”.
“There’s a whole bunch of reasons for this, ranging from cultural nuances to population density to varying degrees of need for the additional visitation,” he added.
Billings said the regulations for Al Marjan were in draft form. The UAE recently announced ex-MGM Resorts CEO Jim Murren as the chair of its new gambling authority, with state media confirming the intention to introduce a “world-leading regulatory framework”.
“We expect that the licensing process is a two-step process, the issuance of a provisional license and then a final license,” said Billings.
“It’s happening,” he added. “It’s moving along. They’ve appointed leadership for the regulatory body there. That’s really good for the market because it lends a lot of certainty.”
Three’s company: Wynn is currently building its own IR on Al Marjan island in Ras Al Khaimah. Billings was keen to stress that alongside having first-mover advantage, he felt Wynn would also be one of only two or three IRs in the region. “It may be a duopoly or an oligopoly of three,” he told analysts.
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