The recent rash of incidents related to sports betting sites and college and professional athletes has regulators reaching for the phone — and hoping the leagues will do the same.
Monday was the first day of panels at the Global Gaming Expo (G2E) conference in Las Vegas, and the integrity-related issues that have cropped up over the past year were fresh in the minds of moderators and legal sports betting regulators.
While their answers varied, what at least some watchdogs want in the wake of those scandals is clear: to talk. Those lines of communication with the leagues were already open — particularly when it comes to approving events for wagering — but they may be used more and more given the recent outbreak of gambling-related incidents in professional and college sports.
Do the evolution
New Jersey Division of Gaming Enforcement Director David Rebuck noted his state started out fighting with the leagues over the attempt to expand legalized sports betting.
Then, when the 2018 U.S. Supreme Court decision went New Jersey’s way and paved the way for the expansion of wagering, the state made a conscious decision to work with their former foes and inform them about the plan to ensure the integrity of games.
Rebuck said he thinks a “further evolution” of the regulator-league relationship is coming, especially as organizations such as the NCAA and NFL have recently shown an appetite to tweak their policies.
“I think a lot of that has to do with [how] they've been educated on what people want to do,” Rebuck said during a panel of North American regulators at G2E. “But more importantly, they know that the regulators, all of us here, want to work with them to ensure that there is no risk of match-fixing, there's no risk of insider trading. Just like any other area, you want to have that reduced to its lowest level. And you can only do that if you have this open dialogue between each other, sharing what their concerns are, your concerns are, and understand what new tools we have, and others have, that can assist them in carrying out their causes.”
First @G2Eshows panel of the day for me is a group of state gaming regulators talking about, well, regulating gaming. pic.twitter.com/BRmoypxnMQ
— Geoff Zochodne (@GeoffZochodne) October 9, 2023
Nevada Gaming Control Board Chair Kirk Hendrick, a former UFC executive, said sharing integrity-related information has become very valuable, especially for billion-dollar leagues trying to avoid scandals at all costs. He also pointed out that regulated gambling can serve as validation for a sports organization.
“It was important for us at the UFC that there was gambling on our sport,” Hendrick said. “It actually legitimized the UFC across the world, because if you were able to say that Nevada allowed gaming on the UFC, then the public looked at it and said, ‘This must be a legitimate sport. There must be rules in place, there must be some kind of oversight.’ So the cooperation between the private and the public is extremely important.”
The comments from arguably two of the more influential regulators of legal sports betting come after a year of integrity-related controversies in college and professional sports. The NFL, notably, announced a recent update to its gambling policy that provides flexibility for discipline but also stresses the importance of upholding the integrity of games. That update, however, follows several suspensions the league handed down to players earlier in the year over wagering at team facilities and on NFL games.
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The system works (unfortunately?)
Another G2E panel on Monday highlighted the double-edged sword of legal sports betting that is both helping and hurting the leagues. While legalized wagering has led to its expansion and increased availability — arguably helping some athletes to run afoul of the rules — the regulated systems have also made it possible to identify any bad behavior and to report it to the relevant watchdogs.
“This stuff was all happening before,” said Jessica Feil, the vice president of regulatory affairs and compliance at OpenBet. “It's just now that you have regulated players in the market there's just so much more transparency. We're all working together.”
Regulators will continue to be proactive as well and pick up the phone. That way, they can try to defuse controversies, such as the mass investigation of college athletes in Iowa, before they happen.
“We're just trying to do as much outreach as we can,” said Stephanie Maxwell, the general counsel for the Tennessee Sports Wagering Council. “We don't want to have a scandal like that.”
