The National Council of Legislators From Gaming States Summer Meeting will be held in Pittsburgh next week and this time a panel of sports bettors will be added to the panel.
Let’s take a closer look at the details behind the meeting and how it might impact top-rated sportsbooks.
Power to the People
The Rivers Casino in Pittsburgh will be ground central for legislators, and gaming regulators, and in an interesting wrinkle, three veteran sports gamblers in the forms of Billy Walters, Gadoon “Spanky” Kyrollos, and Richard Schuetz will also get a seat at the table.
This should make for lively discussion but also bring a more pragmatic perspective to the challenges the industry faces as well as the successes it has had since the post-PASPA era began in 2018.
Bettors Take Center Stage
The conference will run from July 17-20 but the sports bettors will get their opportunity to be heard on July 19th. National Council of Legislators From Gaming States (NCLGS) Shawn Fluharty was asked about the inclusion of sports bettors in the organization’s summer meeting.
“It’s probably one of the first panels where you’re going to have members of the actual betting community have their voices heard,” said Fluharty. “Most legislation that has been passed has been one without any lobbyists related to the sports betting industry as far as bettors go. They don’t have a lobby. They don’t have hired guns.
“Everybody knows Billy Walters. Richard Schuetz is fantastic, with many years in the industry as a regulator. The knowledge that’s going to be sitting at that table is impressive. I think it’s been a long time coming to have this discussion, especially in a room with regulators and legislators who are the decision-makers. And getting input from people that are directly impacted by the decisions that are made.”
Betting Limits
It is the topic no sports betting company wants to talk about – limits on sports betting accounts.
That was evident when no representatives from any Massachusetts sportsbook showed up at the Massachusetts Gaming Commission’s “Sports Wagering Operator Wager Limitations Roundtable.” Needless to say, their absences were noticeable and not appreciated by the Bay State’s gaming regulators.
“I have to admit this discussion was not as meaningful as I had hoped it would be,” MGC commissioner Nakisha Skinner said after the meeting. “I do think we have not scratched the surface. … I feel like this was not a good use of our time today being that we didn’t have our primary stakeholders as part of the discussion.”
The sportsbooks were uniform in their stance that they did not want to discuss the topic publicly as it might expose proprietary technology and protocols that could compromise their operations.
A DraftKings statement read as follows: “Any meaningful discussion on wagering limits would necessarily involve disclosure of the company’s confidential risk management practices and other commercially sensitive business information.”
Cutting the Limits
Another roundtable is in the works and all the sportsbooks have agreed to attend. But how much information will be shared is anyone’s guess. The crux of the matter is why sportsbooks impose betting limits on customers who might be winning but also have a losing history with that sportsbook.
The practice of cutting customers’ betting limits has been described as arbitrary and capricious but the more often it happens, the more disillusioned bettors will become. And once that occurs, more and more customers will eschew the domestic sportsbooks for the offshores and the states will lose all that tax revenue.
“I do think that (betting limits) could come up, the limit portion of it,” Fluharty said. “I think what you’re going to hear is they want to see a system that’s fair. Billy Walters has said that having a sustainable sports betting model in the US, as someone who has been pushing for it for years, has really been a dream.
“And he wants to see it succeed. And for it to succeed, he believes it’s going to require fairness for everyone involved. To see full transparency. And that’s where you get into the limits side of things. I think he also would like to see disclosure of the true odds be part of the formula.”
