Bettor safe than sorry

With last month being Problem Gambling Awareness Month, the timing is right to talk about exclusion – both self-exclusion and impermissible bettors.

Currently, 20 states and Washington DC offer some form of sports betting, and state regulators have done a good job in crafting regulations to properly address this new opportunity. They have developed specific guidelines around Prohibited Wagering Activity which detail persons that must be prohibited from placing wagers. These include groups like sports coaches, players, and referees, and even state regulators and gaming operators that prohibit employees from placing bets as well.

Most states have very similar language, but let’s look at Illinois as an example (Section 19-1120 – Prohibited Wagering Activity). The regulation states: No person enrolled in the self-exclusion program may place or redeem a wager. No athlete, competitor, referee, official, coach, manager, medical professional or athletic trainer or employee or contractor of a team or athletic organization who has access to non-public information concerning an athlete or team may engage in sports wagering on an event or the performance of an individual in an event in which the person is participating or otherwise has access to non-public or exclusive information. No key person or employee of a master sports wagering licensee or management services provider licensee may place a wager with that master sports wagering licensee.

It is clear why these stipulations exist, but how are they enforced? How do operators ensure these individuals are blocked from using their betting products, and how can they do it in a manner that protects data privacy? When new states go live, new lists and pieces of information need to be shared between different stakeholders and it quickly becomes unwieldy and prone to error and oversight. It isn’t easy.

On location

If you think about professional sports leagues, their teams and personnel travel in and out of cities regularly while in season. What good is it to have a team on its home state’s prohibited list if they can go ahead and wager when playing away games? What prevents a consumer living in New York from walking into a New York gaming facility after self-excluding in New Jersey?

Conscious Gaming’s new multi-state exclusion technology PlayPause is a national repository that takes the individual databases of each stakeholder – state gaming regulators, gaming operators, and sports leagues – and anonymizes the data. A token is created and then shared with igaming operators in real-time to block wagering, without using personally identifiable information of any individual. But for it to truly be effective requires collaboration.

PlayPause is also customizable and can be used as a state’s official self-exclusion register if one doesn’t already exist. It can plug into an existing registration platform and allow consumers to opt in to PlayPause if they wish to extend their coverage outside their state of residence. Regulators and operators can contribute their employee impermissible bettors lists as well, and easily add or remove names when employees join or depart from the organization. For sports leagues, PlayPause can be customized based on sport and individual policies.

We’re offering PlayPause to state regulators and operators at no cost. The Pennsylvania Gaming Control Board was the first regulator to implement the platform as part of their state’s self-exclusion scheme and it only took 20 hours for the tech to be up and running.

Seth Palansky is an expert in corporate communications, media relations, crisis communications, and social media strategy. As communication director for the NFL, he served as the league’s key internal executive, along with a league lawyer, leading the effort to increase distribution for the NFL Network cable channel. He also spent 12 years managing corporate communications at Caesars Interactive Entertainment before joining GeoComply’s non-profit arm Conscious Gaming.