iGaming Daily

Jessica Welman (00:02.04)
Depending on who you ask, this week's federal sports betting hearing was either a lame duck farce for media attention or the first step in a full-blown national assault on regulated sports betting. The real answer is likely somewhere in the middle, and no matter the reason, the national attention on sports betting is worth a discussion, which is exactly what we are going to today on iGaming Daily.

iGaming Daily is brought to you by OptiMove, the number one CRM marketing solution for the iGaming market. I'm Jessica Wellman, editor of SBC Americas, joined by media manager Charlie Horner and Charlie, nothing says festive holiday spirit like an attention headline grabbing Senate hearing. I don't think you ever, is this your first foray into the US federal government?

Charlie Horner (00:50.0)
I believe it is, actually, yeah. I've sat in on hundreds of hours of state hearings and meetings, but yeah, never the federal level, so yeah. It's a whole new world of political experience for me.

Jessica Welman (00:52.91)
I don't think you've had a federal hearing.

Jessica Welman (01:10.446)
Yeah, let's just start with, think the headlines that came from this were leading in, it was this call for federal oversight. We have the GRID Act, the Safe Bet Act. We've had a couple of kind of federal oversight pieces coming in at the federal level being introduced as bills. And we've been on this pod saying it's going nowhere. Then we do get this hearing.

And I think I was less surprised, but I'm pretty sure you're you were a little shocked that this turned into, of all things, a debate on whether trans athletes should participate in college athletics.

Charlie Horner (01:52.984)
Yeah, this was this was rather ludicrous, in my opinion. I just didn't understand it. I didn't get it. I understand it in terms of the political climate and some of the vested interests that some of these senators have. But ultimately, Charlie Baker, NCAA president was at the hearing to talk about legalized sports betting across the US and the impact that that is having on his organization and his athletes.

I understand why he couldn't turn around and say to the two senators who were berating him about the half dozen transgender athletes in his sport, why couldn't he turn around and say, with all due respect, we're not here to talk about this? He actually gave them a response, which I don't know.

I'm not sure why he did that and he couldn't just ignore them because it just was completely irrelevant. I don't know whether you have a differing view on this, Jess.

Jessica Welman (02:55.541)
I think when you're under oath facing US senators, you it's a better look to just answer the question versus deflect the question. They also like very broadly trying to frame this in well, certainly sports betting has to do with the fairness of the game. And is this fair? It was

a hop, a leap, and a jump away from where it needed to be. what I saw and heard from some people, John Pappas, is someone who's worked in lobbyists with lobbyists and comms and gaming for a very long time noted that if if Charlie Baker and the NCAA didn't show up that this hearing very likely wouldn't have happened and there wouldn't have been the Senate interest in it. So it was kind of like a bait and switch where these guys

wanted a ruse to get Charlie Baker to come and then dump all these questions on them. And you saw that Senator Hawley from Missouri, within like minutes of it's happening, had it clipped out up on his Twitter account ready to go. And that was what came out of this hearing. I will say if I'm the gambling industry, I don't hate that this is what this devolved into because the tone of the rest of the hearing was not positive.

At least when it came to sports betting, I didn't think.

Charlie Horner (04:22.404)
No.

No, it didn't come across in the most positive light. So I understand what you're saying, that the industry itself might be quite pleased that the headlines were stolen. I think, Jess, we spoke about this off air at the time. We feel really bad for the people who actually put the time and the effort into building their evidence, publishing reports, taking their time out to come and...

either contribute to or be in the audience for this hearing, particularly from the responsible gambling crew, because it was just completely overshadowed. And if you look at the headlines from other media outlets and mainstream media outlets, that's the headline. It's going to be about transgender athletes rather than sports betting.

Jessica Welman (05:19.608)
Yeah, I agree with you. Like this was an opportunity to have a really meaningful problem gambling discussion that didn't necessarily happen as much as it could have. There was a certain amount of discussion about kind of predatory behaviors, misleading, like risk free bets and that sort of thing. Part of it though, was the makeup of who spoke was a little bit odd in that

You had Charlie Baker, who was there on behalf of the NCAA, I think athlete harassment probably got the most discussion out of any talking point of the entire hearing. You had someone from the NFLPA, a former player, Johnson Batamosi. You had National Council on Problem Gambling's Keith White.

NCPG, a problem gambling group that is very like net neutral on gambling. think some outlets have kind of described them as anti and I'm like, that's not true. You know, they're very neutral on the existence of gambling. They're just saying if you're going to have it, you need to have support. The kind of very overtly anti gambling director of gambling policy at the Public Health Advocacy Institute, Harry Levant. And then

You add David Rebuck, who used to be the head of the New Jersey Division of Gaming Enforcement, who was the closest thing to an industry rep that we had, but no operators, no active regulators. So it was kind of hard to talk too much about anything because you didn't really have anybody there to explain what they were doing or why they were doing it, you know?

Charlie Horner (07:01.464)
Yeah, that metaphorical empty chair was an elephant in the room, really. I thought Ray Buck did a very, very good job of actually putting things into actual context and trying to give the industry's perspective from his time as a regulator. But really, we're here to talk about the operators. We need an operator in the room and the lack of industry.

representation was start.

Jessica Welman (07:32.812)
AGA put out a statement that, you know, I think they had tried to get Bill Miller on this panel and didn't and that they were disappointed they didn't get, you know, operator representation. I'll be honest, I love the AGA. I think they do good work. I don't really want to hear what Bill Miller has to say on this panel. You know, I want Jason Robbins or Amy Howe or somebody on here, because you're just going to get the same old party line. But I think that kind of gets to

the meat of this, which is, is anything going to come of it? We're talking about a hearing that's happening during like a lame duck session. It's the last meeting of the Senate Judiciary Committee of the year. The chair, Senator Durbin, was very motivated and eager to get some sort of federal oversight, some sort of framework, some sort of action. He's not going to be chair of that committee this time next month.

Charlie Horner (08:32.046)
No, did feel, yeah, though it is significant that this is happening and there is a federal hearing. Yeah, this whole political session really is basically over. So whether anything comes out of this, don't think so. But I think it shows where the wind is blowing in terms of there is appetite in DC for something.

that something is I'm not sure but it definitely shows that there's interest in sports betting as it becomes ever more prevalent in the media.

Jessica Welman (09:10.094)
Yeah, I mean, we're going to have a change in administration. So you're going from a Democratic administration to a Republican one. House and the Senate, you you're going to have some turnover and some change. We're going to have different people on this committee. We will still have these two, I guess now would be a good time to kind of run down if the federal government were to intervene, what some of the options that were floated at the meeting entail.

athlete harassment, this ban on college player props kept coming up. I spoke with an attorney about this because I was just like, I don't understand how you could even do that if that's even legal. Given the PASPA decision.

Charlie Horner (10:01.41)
Yeah, that's an interesting perspective.

Jessica Welman (10:01.592)
But he was noting you could do something like in the US, there's not a federal seatbelt law. But if you're a state that doesn't have a seatbelt law, they can withhold certain federal funding from you. So you could do some sort of work around like that. You could do an overarching oversight system like the Safe Bet Act.

where the federal government is just like, you guys can do what you want at the state level, but you have to meet these minimum mandates and that sort of thing. I don't think it's super cut and dry that you could just say like college prop bets are illegal. think, again, standard iGamingDaily, I am not a lawyer disclosure here. I would be intrigued to see what just a bill that's straight ban on college props looks like. And if there's

potential for a court challenge to it. I also want to add, by the way, I was at Nickel-G's last week in New Orleans and Deshawn Hanneke from Kansas, who's a tight end on their football team, came to speak. Really impressive young man. He was one of the athletes embroiled in the Iowa-Iowa state controversy of, you know, them betting on themselves and other Iowa athletes and such. I asked him during the Q &A, I said,

Charlie Horner (11:01.871)
Yeah.

Jessica Welman (11:27.018)
Would your life be easier if we put this player prop ban in? And he's like, I mean, maybe. His point was if you're Travis Hunter or, you know, some huge college star at a power five school where there is interest in betting on your individual performance, then yeah, it would probably help. But for the Deshawn Hanukas of the world,

most of his harassment comes from people who bet Kansas or bet the under or bet the total, you know, that he kind of said, and he's not speaking for every college athlete ever, but it was interesting to hear from a college athlete. Like, I don't really know how big a difference it would make.

Charlie Horner (12:13.922)
Yeah, that's... I guess, yeah, it's difficult to decipher how popular college player prop bets are. guess if... Okay, so it's a very small amount, but it's...

Jessica Welman (12:25.05)
1 % of all bets.

Charlie Horner (12:31.958)
those athletes who are very, very young, they're still students, it can have a huge impact on them. And I think some of the points that Charlie Baker made during the hearing were quite compelling. Just talking about the DMs that some of these athletes are receiving, some of the public messages that they're receiving, it's pretty horrific stuff that these athletes are receiving. And we've covered on site in the past.

reports that the NCAA has published with regards to this sort of behavior. the idea of banning college player prop bets is, you know, the arguments for it are very compelling, but yeah, as you say, Jess, it's very, very difficult to actually implement. It's often the case with a lot of political movements. Various measures can come from a good place, but actually implementing them is quite challenging, and this is definitely one of those.

Jessica Welman (13:31.642)
And other kind of elephant in the room that did get poked at a little bit is that these athletes are now being compensated. Some of them are making millions. I think those two issues get a little more intertwined. And I hate the argument that, like, well, harassment's gonna happen betting or no betting, and so we should just not take any blame for it. But it's...

complex issue of, you know, athletes are under more scrutiny from boosters, they're under more scrutiny from everybody, and it's just like, en masse happening to them. And it's very, very stressful. All of these athletes, the NFL player was testifying to this as well, that it's just become very intense. And I completely relate that and sympathize that that's awful.

I just question how we can fix it. We have bills that have passed in Ohio and are now law in Ohio and Virginia about better harassment. I have yet to hear about a single solitary person that has been placed on the self-exclusion list for harassment.

Charlie Horner (14:44.32)
It's difficult to identify some of these people in most cases. They're often going to be coming from anonymous social media accounts. How do you link those accounts?

Jessica Welman (14:54.594)
And it counts that you can't necessarily tie to person in a sports betting account either.

Charlie Horner (15:00.066)
Exactly. It's really difficult to enforce and yeah, think authorities are going to have a real challenge doing that in the future as well.

Jessica Welman (15:09.732)
And if you're the athlete, do you want to be... I hate that this is the culture, but do you want to be the guy or girl that is just like, I would like to criminally prosecute this person because do you know the hell and the hatred that will rain down upon them? you're too weak. you can't handle it. Blah, blah, blah, blah. Like, I don't think any athlete wants to be the first person to actually go through with this. I think they report...

certain amount of stuff and then they're asked do you want to do anything about it and they rightfully kind of say no I think it's going to make it worse.

Charlie Horner (15:45.516)
the elite sport is a pressure cooker enough without this abuse and this is just adding to it really and yeah no one wants to be the it's know it's playground stuff but nobody wants to be a grass or a snitch and yeah being the first person to put their head above the parapet is tough.

Jessica Welman (16:01.508)
Yeah.

Jessica Welman (16:06.84)
Like a few of them have posted and I appreciate that they've kind of posted what's out there for them, but I don't know if anybody, I implore somebody to be the person to take that first step. I would love for us to make an example of someone and like send them to prison. But I just am not sure that's coming. So.

harassment piece we may see some sort of action on prop bets I'm not really sure I think you know Blumenthal was on this committee he is one of the sponsors of the Safe Bet Act and asked kind of every witness point blank if they would support it. I hate to say that Johnson Atomosy said he, Atomosy said he would support it he was more like I'm not really sure what it is but sure sounds okay. Charlie Baker was like

think parts of it are interesting. Harry Levant, who basically helped write it, was like, I think it's great. Keith White was like, we're neutral on it because it takes a position that gambling is bad. And then David Rebuck was the lone industry person who's like, I think the states have this under control. So even the panel was very mixed to negative on the Safe Bed Act, the Grit Act got mentioned by Keith. And that was really the only mention of it, which would be

taking the federal excise tax and using that for problem gambling funds. So yeah, as much as I think it was very important that we hit this and we talk about it and it's probably one of the huge stories of the year, end of the day, I don't really see, maybe we have another hearing, right? Do you think anything else kind of comes to this?

Charlie Horner (17:49.424)
No, not really. Everyone sort of had bit of a chat, had their say, said, yeah, gambling's terrible, this is really dangerous. David Reebok was sort of bringing some sort of industry attention to it. And they'll probably do this maybe again in six months, nine months, once the new administration is underway.

But yeah, think there's a long, long way for this to go before there's actual legislative action on this.

Jessica Welman (18:23.034)
As we, as you have now learned, these hearings are about making Twitter clips for lawmakers to send around to people and I think they certainly got some of those.

That being said, we have a recap of the hearing. We've got notes of how the gambling industry kind of responded to the hearing. All of those are available on SBC Americas, as well as some big news out of Nickel-G's regarding Model I gaming legislation, discussion of that credit card ban and someone saying it would be political suicide was the exact quote if you didn't ban credit cards in online casino legislation. And

Mississippi informed us that they have been sending Bovada C-Synthesis that have been ignored so far, so they are a state that has not had so much success in that. You can check all that out on SBC America's. Charlie, I know you've had some content going up this week. What should people be on the lookout for on your end?

Charlie Horner (19:21.552)
Yeah, well, we're coming towards the end of the year, which means we're heading into 2025. One of the biggest things happening in 2025 is the launch of the Brazilian market on SBC News over the last couple of weeks. The Odd Matrix CEO has been writing about what Brazilian players really want to see from operators in that market, and part three has gone out.

today, Thursday, if people are listening on the day that this launches. And part three is all about the features, the features in a sports book that players in Brazil are really after. if you do have some spare time, I would highly recommend checking that one out.

Jessica Welman (20:04.224)
Alright, with that, our duo is done for the year, so we will catch you all in 2025, but don't worry, we've got new episodes of iGaming Daily coming until New Year's, so be sure to keep tuning in every day for the latest news from around the gaming industry.