Sports betting rollout still ironing out
A learning curve or glitch in the system?
It’s a question that has surfaced during the occasionally bumpy rollout of legalized sports betting in Massachusetts.
The three designated venues for the launch of the state’s foray into this new arena have already been flagged for violating terms of their license.
Having already admitted to taking illegal bets on a Boston College women’s basketball game and assuring regulators that it had addressed the problem, Encore Boston Harbor found itself under the Gaming Commission’s scrutiny again for taking wagers on another BC women’s roundball contest.
Sports Wagering Director Bruce Band told commissioners at last Thursday’s meeting that the matter is being vetted by the Investigations and Enforcement Bureau and will be before the commission in greater detail “in the coming week or so.”
The commission also heard a more in-depth review of similar violations of the state’s new betting law at MGM Springfield that involved an error that placed Harvard University in Connecticut. It announced plans to hold adjudicatory hearings March 14 on the first two violations that came to light, at Encore and Plainridge Park Casino.
The state’s wagering law only allows betting on out- ofstate colleges and universities. An exception to that rule only occurs when a Massachusetts team participates in a national tournament such as college basketball’s NCAA Tournament.
Whether to allow any collegiate betting was a major sticking point between the House and the Senate, which passed a bill prohibiting all college betting last session. The in-state school exclusion was a key compromise that finally pushed the legalization bill over the finish line.
Band said that a glitch in the system of Encore’s technology partner GAN Sports allowed the latest BC women’s basketball bets to be placed in the last few days. When he detailed the Everett casino’s first violation for regulators earlier this month, he said that Encore planned to take over the process of assembling the list of events from which it accepts wagers from GAN Sports by Feb. 10, along with other compliance steps.
There’s now more than 30 states under the legalized sports umbrella, all having instituted their own betting guidelines.
That likely means there’s no one computer system that can account for all the variations in state gaming laws.
Based in Las Vegas, GAN Sports describes itself as a technology solutions and internet gaming software provider for land-based U.S. casinos.
As of last year, GAN was licensed in nine states — operating sports betting in six states and casino gaming in four states.
Band said last week that when “they reviewed the betting catalog and made sure
(BC women’s basketball) was turned off, the system automatically turned it back on.” For the time being, he said, Encore has stopped taking any action on NCAA women’s basketball because that’s the “only way they can stop that from being offered.”
That’s probably because the other states GAN services don’t restrict betting on collegiate sports like Massachusetts does, which could explain the commonwealth casinos’ infractions.
The Gaming Commission must now decide how to handle these seemingly unwitting violations as it readies to launch online sports betting March 10.
Of the nine mobile operators approved for temporary licenses — Ballybet, Barstool Sportsbook (Penn Sports Interactive), BETMGM, Betr, Caesars Sportsbook, Draftkings, Fanatics, Fanduel and WynNBET — at least two, Ballybet and Fanatics, won’t go online March 10.
Digital Gaming Corporation USA (Betway), doesn’t plan to launch in Massachusetts for another year, while Pointsbet has withdrawn its application.
That leaves five operators, including Boston’s Draftkings and New York’s Fanduel, remaining for the March 10 liftoff.
Wagering Director Band sounded sanguine about prospects for a smooth online debut.
“Everything seems to be moving forward very smoothly … I don’t really see, at this point, any stumbling blocks.”
We’d expect heavy hitters like Draftkings and Fanduel, which already have been operating in many states for several months, would have worked out the kinks involved in satisfying so many different jurisdictions.
But it would be naïve to expect that a two-pronged undertaking of this scope and complexity would go off without a hitch — or glitch.