Georgia failure caps disappointing legislative season
Georgia effort fails, UK racing’s black market risk, US offshore leakage, regtech focus – BetComply +More
Georgia failure caps miserable legislative season for OSB bills.
In +More: West Flagler fights on, Thai casinos move forward.
UK racing is already suffering due to overzealous risk checks, says panel.
A new survey points to continued US offshore leakage.
Our regtech focus looks at BetComply.
Putting it down to another bad day.
Georgia bill fails to ripen
That’s that then: A late push to legalize mobile sports betting in Georgia failed as lawmakers couldn’t agree on where to send tax dollars from wagers, leaving little hope of any other state coming online this year.
Peach pit of despair: Georgia’s proposals now join California and Alabama on the scrapheap, with OSB and iCasino proposals on life support in Minnesota, Missouri and Maryland. The legislative season in the Peach State started with optimism when lawmakers advanced the idea of legalized sports betting through Senate Bill 386 and a partner measure, which received widespread support.
Both were passed in the Senate and in the Georgia House Higher Education Committee.
But the dream died when no vote occurred on the House floor after failing to make it out of the House Rules Committee on Thursday, the final day of the legislative session.
Arguments over allocation of tax revenue caused the clock to run out, with slim hopes of any revival next year.
Historically, the House has always been the obstacle to legalized sports betting, as the Senate has cleared bills in the past.
How did I get here? Back in February, noises from the Georgia Senate were that the proposals were reasonable and would have the necessary support to get the matter before the public. The Senate Resolution would give voters the option of a platform for 16 licenses, tax gross revenues at 25%, and charge operators an initial $100K licensing fee and a $1m renewal fee per year.
On Thursday it emerged the bills did not have the support necessary to pass in the House and no vote ever took place.
The split over tax revenue concerned pre-K funding, which the House altered to allow deposits to be used for HOPE college scholarships and pre-K initiatives.
A further proposed change came from Rep. Sam Park, who wanted to allocate 35% of Georgia sports-betting revenue to citizens with below-median incomes and another 35% to rural counties across the state.
“I just hate to see it all fall apart over how the money is going to be divided. Because, at the end of the day, I think it’s going to provide funds that aren’t being provided to education and in the long run will be better for all Georgians,” said Rep. Kasey Carpenter during a Wednesday meeting.
Confusion and a back-and-forth dance ultimately torpedoed the hopes of Georgia joining the 38 other states and the District of Columbia with legal sports-betting platforms.
Wanna shake your tree: The Peach State has been one of the most eagerly awaited new markets, with projections of over $900m annually to be raked. It’s the eighth most populous US state and home to the NFLs Atlanta Falcons, the NBAs Atlanta Hawks and MLB’s Atlanta Braves, along with one of the nation’s biggest college sports programs, the Georgia Bulldogs.
The next Georgia legislative session won’t commence until 2025 due to the election year, meaning it is likely to be 2026 before the state’s residents could welcome sports betting.
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North America
Florida: Pari-mutuel operators West Flagler and Bonita-Fort Myers Corporation have added an additional brief to their SCOTUS appeal challenging the Seminole’s OSB monopoly in the state.
The pari-mutuels are arguing that the Florida Supreme Court ruling earlier this month conflicts with the opinion issued by the DC Circuit Court of Appeals regarding its interpretation of the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act.
The Department of the Interior has to file a response to West Flagler’s brief by April 12.
Massachusetts: The Gaming Commission said late last week it would set up a public roundtable and an executive session with all licensed operators before deciding upon the issue of whether to amend state regulations on stake limits, according to LegalSportsReport.
Canada: A majority of Canadians support banning the use of celebrities and athletes in sports-betting advertisements, according to a Maru public opinion poll. Some 68% of respondents said current team players and celebrities should be banned from ads, while 66% said sports-betting commercials should not be allowed during live games and events.
The poll surveyed 1,534 Canadian adults and found nearly 60% supported a nationwide ban on sports-betting ads altogether.
Illinois: A state representative has introduced legislation to legalize VLTs in Chicago, according to the Chicago Tribune. The city has maintained a local ban on VLTs since the Illinois legislature legalized them statewide in 2012.
Global
Thailand: Regulated integrated casino resorts moved a step closer last week as the House of Representatives in the country voted unanimously in favor of a study that recommends legalizing casino gambling, according to Inside Asian Gaming. The report suggested the study is now set to go before the cabinet for approval.
The Bangkok Post reported that Prime Minister Srettha Thavisin is in favor of the move, which could see up to eight licensed casinos. “It’s time for our society to stop hiding the gambling, which is out there, and just properly regulate and take care of it,” he said.
However the opposition have raised concerns over the study’s omission of online gambling.
“Gambling problems still persist, such as online gambling or gambling dens that are illegally operated in the provinces,” Rangsiman Rome, an MFP list-MP, told the Post.
Licensing and commercial
The Caesars Sportsbook has received RG Check accreditation from the Responsible Gambling Council. The accreditation process includes an assessment of operators’ responsible gaming practices, training processes, and player education and protection mechanisms.
Soft2Bet has been approved for a license by the Alcohol and Gaming Commission of Ontario. The online platform provider said it is also currently pursuing a license in New Jersey as part of its expansion plans into North America.
Play’n Go has received iCasino licenses in both Pennsylvania and Delaware.
By the numbers
North Carolina: In its first week sports-betting GGR hit $42.7m on handle of $198m, according to the state lottery.
Slovakia: Total online handle in 2023 came in at €21.4bn generating contributions to the state coffers of €301m, according to the G3 Newswire.
Careers+More
Harris Hagan has promoted David Whyte to partner with effect from April 1.
Racing the loser in offshore debate
A racing uncertainty: Senior writer at the Racing Post, Lee Mottershead – who recently uncovered a black market betting operation in the UK using WhatsApp to relay bets – said the racing industry was set to lose over £50m a year from the “unintended consequence of overzealous affordability checks” driving bettors to unlicensed operators.
A visit from the goon squad: Speaking during a panel at the Player Protection Forum in London last week, Mottershead noted breaking the story of the unregulated firm going by the name of The Post Bookmakers had earned him a home visit from representatives of the UK Gambling Commission.
Mottershead warned the government was enacting the financial risk checks “because they have to be seen to be doing something, not because they are right.”
The Racing Post investigation last month found a racehorse owner was touting for business ahead of last month’s Cheltenham Festival, telling an undercover reporter from the paper that the firm he represented employed 10 people and had 1,300 customers.
He recommended the reporter, posing as a potential customer, deposit “as much as you can” to take advantage of a matched deposit scheme.
Echo beach: Mottershead’s point was echoed by Dena Merson, founder of Simply Racing, who drew a comparison with the post-great financial crash regulatory regime introduced after 2008, saying it was an example of “over regulation driving people offshore.”
Merson said she was worried about the future of racing in the UK given the lack of prize money compared with Ireland and France
Your nuts, m’lord: Answering to the issue of the upcoming regime of financial risk checks, Tina Thakor-Rankin of 1710 Gaming said it was clear the current system wasn’t working, likening the manual checks undertaken by the operators to “using a sledgehammer to crack a nut.”
She added that open banking was the best route towards understanding an individual’s real-time financial status.
Even a stopped clock: Thakor-Rankin noted that during the recent Westminster Hall debate, it became evident racing was under threat and special measures would be needed to protect the pastime from extinction. “Matt Hancock is right,” she told the audience. “Racing is dying.”
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US offshore leakage survey
Get your rocks off(shore): An online US player survey undertaken by Truist shows the appeal of offshore betting options remains undimmed, with 31% of respondents saying they bet offshore.
Bespoke travel: More worrying for the sportsbooks and the regulators is the survey found that 71% of players who classed themselves as VIPs, spending $500 a month or above, took the offshore option.
Of the 133 offshore bettors who answered the survey, 52% used BetOnline and 10% each went with Bovada, MyBookie or BetUS.
Wish you were here: Of those that bet offshore, it is clear that aspects of the regulated space lay behind the appeal of seeking out offshore options, with no betting limits and wagering on credit among the top reasons for taking their chances in the unregulated environment.
The other big draw is higher promos, which 50% of respondents put in their top three reasons for betting offshore.
The analysts from Truist said the size of the continuing black market could actually provide a tailwind for the regulated operators should more states – eventually – go the regulated OSB route.
“We continue to monitor for if onshore books can bring offshore bettors into the light, which could prove as a sizable long-term tailwind for OSB as the list of states yet-to-legalize shrinks,” the team concluded.
Regtech focus – BetComply
Lagging indicator: For a sector that has embraced technology on the operational side, it is a common theme that the gambling industry is still playing catchup when it comes to deploying new solutions in areas such as compliance and regulatory reporting. But that is beginning to change, suggests BetComply CEO Daniel Brookes.
What has changed is operators are now becoming aware that, faced with the increased regulatory demands, it is becoming increasingly evident compliance and regulatory departments can’t just keep adding bodies.
“Compliance teams aren’t really scalable,” he says. “You can’t staff up indefinitely to analyze Excel-sheets.”
A lifeline: Yet while some are now realizing how tech-driven solutions can improve efficiency, accuracy and “compliance adherence,” as Brookes puts it, not everyone is fully signed up to the vision of automated processes working in this field. More education is needed.
“From what I’ve seen, the commercial side of the business is reluctant to sign up to regtech that can’t prove it won’t be an overkill,” says Brookes.
“It is our side of the business that is tasked with explaining that it’s not. It’s the opposite. Proper regtech keeps the business healthy and alive.”
High hopes: In part, the change in attitude is indirectly driven by the regulators. “They put very high expectations on operators that frankly only can be properly solved with regtech,” says Brookes, who suggests the infrastructure demands of ID verification, transaction monitoring, financial risk checks and the rest are all problems in search of a regtech solution.
The example set: “We do also see regulators not trusting operators to be innovative with regtech and based on political sentiment they create blanket-rules like overall limits,” says Brookes.
“I think the industry is smart enough to develop, but they should be given the freedom [and mandate] within the framework to do so.”
Pioneering: Other sectors provide examples of how the implementation of technology-driven processes can be achieved, with finance providing the clearest read-across. “It has pioneered the use of AI and machine learning for fraud detection and risk management,” says Brookes. Meanwhile, healthcare has leveraged technology for regulatory compliance in areas such as electronic health records and telemedicine.
“These examples showcase how technology can be effectively utilized to address regulatory challenges and improve overall operational efficiency,” adds Brookes.
Calendar
Apr 8-11: Indian Gaming Tradeshow and Convention, Anaheim
Apr 17-18: East Coast Gaming Conference, Atlantic City
May 6: Gaming in Spain
May 28-30: IAGA, Washington DC
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