Led down the garden path
Illinois tax hike highlights strategic lobbying failure
Questions mount over tactics as OSB sector takes tax hit in Illinois.
In +More: Quintenz Senate confirmation date.
Careful what you wish for: European sector drowned in red tape.
It’s a raid: Irish bookmaking rocked by ‘competition’ police raids.
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IL advised
The enemy within: The online gambling lobby squandered “time, energy and political capital” in an effort to get anti-sweepstakes legislation passed in Illinois and was blindsided by the sudden moves to include another tax hike in the state’s budget.
Lightning strikes: Chris Grove from EKG said DraftKings and FanDuel should reconsider their lobbying options in the wake of the failure to head off a last-minute tax rise for the second successive year.
Grove posted on LinkedIn this week that if the betting industry was caught by surprise by the move then it was guilty of being “asleep at the wheel.”
Speaking to C+M, he suggested the OSB market leaders should not only conduct a “top-to-bottom diagnostic” of their lobbying efforts but should also look at the “strategies and tactics employed by my allies.”
You’re out of touch: “Maybe they’re not as aligned as it seems, or maybe they’re not as good at getting bills done as they assert,” he added.
“Or maybe the legislative game has changed and passed people by. Time comes for us all.”
No dice: It has been a dire legislative season as regards to new legislation for either OSB or, in particular, iCasino, which, as Grove noted on LinkedIn, hasn’t notched up a new “major population” state for six years.
What moves there have been have included pushes for tax rises in various states, culminating in Illinois, and the maneuvers to outlaw sweepstakes.
Grove suggested the latter has been driven by a self-serving Light & Wonder, which appeared to be more concerned with protecting its social casino flank than advancing iCasino.
“For Light & Wonder, the math is undeniable,” said Grove. “They have to protect their social casino business.”
In 2024 the SciPlay social casino business generated revenues of $821m.
Kool-Aid: Grove also cautioned in his LI post against the industry “drinking the Kool-Aid,” that when states need to raise revenue, they will look to iCasino.
A similar narrative appeared to come from Jefferies this week, who argued against the likelihood of more OSB tax rises, suggesting instead that iCasino legalization is a “more logical conclusion for many state governments.”
Grove said the promoters of getting iCasino measures passed have failed. “The only thing they’ve been able to deliver are increasingly hollow claims of success being right around the corner.”
Meanwhile, Morgan Stanley reported back from their travel and leisure conference held this week that Flutter said it was looking to implement a “measured and proportionate response” to the surprise Illinois hike.
Gnomically, they suggested Flutter’s management had “indicated they are considering a full range of options going beyond the 'standard' mitigation playbook.”
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Prediction markets: June 10 has been set as the date for Brian Quintenz’s confirmation hearing as incoming chair of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission in front of the US Senate. Recall, Quintenz recently confirmed he would depart from the Kalshi board if his appointment is rubber stamped.
Meanwhile, a Nevada court has granted the Nevada Resort Association’s request to intervene in the case brought by the state’s regulatory bodies against Kalshi, saying its expansion into sports would result in the “complete upheaval” of Nevada’s gaming regulations.
Brazil: Six betting and gaming trade bodies have issued a joint letter to “express deep concern and vehement disagreement” over plans to raise the tax burden on operators. Government proposals for a selective tax could raise the effective tax rate to over 50%. The statement said the increase was “unjustifiable from any technical, economic or public policy perspective.”
Sweden: Svenska Spel has won a victory in court over a SEK100m ($10.4m) fine dating back to 2024 over alleged RG failures. The state monopoly appealed the decision, saying it believed it had fulfilled its licensing requirements in continuously monitoring players’ gambling behavior. In overturning the regulator’s fine, the court said it based its assessment on the “so-called legality principle, which means that an authority may only take measures that are supported by the legal order.”
Maverick Gaming: The company’s challenge on the exclusivity of sports betting for tribes in Washington state has been denied by the US Supreme Court, which backed the claim that tribal gaming compacts in the state granting exclusivity do not violate federal laws.
Lottery reselling: Lotto.com is no longer operating its digital lottery offering in Texas, following the ongoing crackdown on lottery couriers by the Texas Lottery Commission and the state legislature.
Rhode Island: A bill that would open up the OSB market in Rhode Island to multiple operators has passed the state Senate committee on labor and gaming. The bill would end IGT’s sports-betting monopoly in 2026 when its current contract expires. The bill now heads to the full Senate while a companion bill in the state House awaits further study.
+More careers
Finnish state-owned operator Veikkaus has appointed Jyri Lassi as its new general counsel, effective September 1, 2025.
Player Protection Specialist – Dublin
Head of Compliance – Limassol
Compliance & Legal Manager – Johannesburg
LiveScore complains
Directing traffic: LiveScore Bet has responded to a decision from the UK Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) that ruled ads on its scores app directing users to the company's betting product could have been aimed at under-18s.
The ASA said because the ads appeared in the context of a version of an app that was directed at under-18s, they did not comply with the rules on gambling advertising.
LiveScore said in response it wanted to clarify the ASA’s description of the under-18 version of the app. “LiveScore is one app that offers a tailored experience for both minors and adults out of a sense of social responsibility,” the company said.
The company added that it believes it is “important to also clarify that the age-gating screen is shown to all UK-based users on their first use of the LiveScore app and does not itself contain any advertising content.”
Not in harmony
Is this what you wanted?: The European Union’s online gambling cohort has long pined for harmonized legislation but, as the monkey's paw closes to catch the industry in yet another complex continent-wide directive, it’s a case of being careful what you wish for.
Gambling laws remain firmly devolved to member states, but that doesn’t mean lawmakers in Brussels aren’t cooking up new compliance challenges for the industry.
A bevy of new directives, which might be easy to miss beyond the noise of local issues policed by gambling regulators, are coming into effect over the next few years.
Reporting for duty: Chief among them is the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive, which will require all but the smallest companies doing business in the EU to report on their ESG credentials.
This year, companies listed in the EU with more than 500 employees have to comply with these reporting regulations and, by 2029, the vast majority of gambling firms will need to present their bona fides.
By then, many firms will need to report not just on the business they do in Europe, but the sustainability of their entire global enterprise.
Access all areas: From June 28, all EU member states should have transposed the European Accessibility Act, which will force gambling companies to make their services easy to use for people with a variety of access needs.
The rules have a major knock-on effect for suppliers, who are the people that actually build a lot of software ultimately deployed by operators.
Experts have warned that the Act requires a completely new way of thinking about building and designing B2C software.
Even the computers have compliance now: Then there’s the AI Act, which is gradually coming into effect through to August 2027. Although things such as a ban on companies using AI to deploy “manipulative techniques” for advertising and a prohibition on so-called “social scoring” are already live.
Consumers must also be clearly informed when they are interacting with AI, for example through a customer support chatbot. In fact, any content generated by AI from next August must be clearly marked as “synthetic audio, image, video or text.”
Don’t forget about me: EU-based gambling firms are at least used to dealing with AML rules direct from Brussels, but that doesn’t mean the pace of change isn’t challenging.
The latest issuance is colloquially known as AMLD7 and is designed to tighten up standards across the Union.
The new rules will bring crypto transactions fully into the scope of money laundering prevention and demand source of funds checks for any transaction over €10,000.
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Smoke, no fire
Just hold your hands up, it’s a raid: Mystery surrounds the news that the Irish competition regulator and the police carried out a number of raids on bookmaking businesses two weeks ago.
The Competition and Consumer Protection Commission (CCPC) said it was assisted by members of the Garda National Economic Crimes Bureau in what it termed were “dawn raids” on unspecified businesses.
The CCPC added that it couldn’t say which businesses it had visited or what it was investigating beyond “possible breaches of competition law.”
No comment: The Irish Bookmakers Association issued a statement that failed to shed any light on the subject, other than that it had “consistently operated in full compliance with all legal and regulatory requirements and will continue to do so.”
It declined to comment further, citing a “live investigation.”
Into the vacuum: Needless to day, the absence of information has led to considerable speculation. The Business Post claimed offices of Paddy Power and Betfair owner Flutter Entertainment were among those visited.
Flutter would neither confirm nor deny but did issue a statement saying it “takes its legal responsibilities very seriously and is confident that its business practices are fully compliant with competition law.”
Nobody knows anything: Oncourse, online and retail bookmaker Anthony Kamizkas, owner of AK Bets and a former Paddy Power trader, said on his Racing Room podcast that he had spoken to many people in the industry but none knew what was happening.
He thought the issue may be related to betting terminal feeds. “Perhaps if everyone is using the same feeds, the regulator could perceive there is an issue there,” he said.
Fellow podcaster, lawyer Harry Stewart-Moore, suggested that investigations such as this one were usually initiated as the result of a tip-off.
The CCPC statement drew attention to its Cartel Immunity Programme in conjunction with the Director of Public Prosecutions, and their Administrative Leniency Programme.
“Individuals may avoid criminal prosecution and get immunity from, or reductions in, fines if they reveal their involvement in illegal activity and fully cooperate with a CCPC investigation,” the statement added.
Calendar
Jun 5: Gaming in Holland, Amsterdam
Jun 9-12: IAGA, Berlin
Jun 10-11: European regulation and compliance track at SBC Malta.
Jun 19: Player protection symposium, CGS Toronto
Jun 26: Gaming in Spain, Madrid
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