As more states reassess the state of play of their gambling industries, there is a push on multiple fronts happening in Pennsylvania right now for the state to implement a range of new measures aimed at protecting online gamblers.
The bipartisan Joint State Government Commission released a report on Monday that proposes a number of changes, and the Pennsylvania Gaming Control Board (PGCB) has put forth suggested regulatory amendments of its own.
What are Pennsylvania legislators suggestions for gambling?
The bipartisan and bicameral research agency of the state General Assembly published a lengthy study on July 13, after being mandated by House Resolution No. 60 to review how sports betting and iGaming are affecting the state and its population.
The ‘Sports Betting and Related Interactive Gambling in Pennsylvania‘ report was written by staff and overseen by the commission’s assistant general counsel. It cites several studies as evidence that increased gambling addiction in Pennsylvania is leading to several effects on residents, including higher levels of debt, domestic violence, college athlete abuse, and mental health and suicide instances.
The report makes several recommendations for changes that would or might ease those issues, including but not limited to:
- Banning in-game live betting
- Banning gambling with a credit card
- Requiring gamblers to place self-imposed limits on their betting
- Creating new restrictions on gambling advertisements
- Limiting how VIP programs can be used
- Prohibit AI-assisted promotional offers and marketing
- Banning operators from sending push notifications to logged-out users
- Requiring operators to share anonymized player data for the purposes of research
“If there is sufficient concern now, the General Assembly can enact any number of amendments to address problem gambling,” reads a line in the report. “One of the proposals would not have an immediate impact but would likely lead to further amendments.”
“The recommendations are divided between more deliberate measures and more immediate ones,” adds the report. “The deliberate measure would use actual player data to generate responses to more precisely protect gamblers while continuing to maximize revenue. The more immediate measures would target indicators of problem gambling that would protect gamblers but diminish revenue less precisely than the deliberate recommendation.”
PGCB intends to change its own rules
While those recommendations were made upon the request of legislators who approved HR 60, the report noted that the PCGB has already proposed a series of new rules at the regulatory level and disseminated them for public comment.
The PGCB Proposed Rulemaking would update the board’s regulations to provide “further clarifications and expectations for licensees” related to developing and implementing compulsive and problem gambling programs.
Pennsylvania’s gaming regulator’s own suggestions, which are focused on iGaming more than sports betting, include but are not limited to:
- Offering more options for players to set gambling limits
- Giving players the choice of suspending their accounts for up to a year
- Allowing players to opt out of receiving direct marketing materials
- Requiring online casinos to file a monthly report detailing player self-limiting or self-exclusion activity
- Restricting the number of advertisements and banning gambling ads where the majority of the audience is children, and requiring advertisers to take additional steps to prevent minors from accessing their sites
- Banning operators from advertising to people who have excluded themselves
- Prohibiting direct advertising and marketing campaigns that disproportionately target groups “which have been identified by empirical evidence to be considered at higher risk of experiencing gambling-related harm”
- Banning ads that use wording like “free” or “risk-free” if a player still has to risk their money
The legislative commission’s report noted that regardless of whether any of its own recommendations are ultimately implemented, the PGCB’s proposed regulatory amendments “would likely advance its efforts to address this problem as well.”
States are reevaluating what they have created
The two-pronged effort in Pennsylvania to add more consumer safeguards to the gambling industry is part of a wider pattern of states giving second thought to the online gambling activities they legalized in past years.
In states such as New York and New Jersey, this year saw a glut of bills introduced that aimed to do various things, such as add more stringent advertising restrictions. In June, for example, the New York legislature approved a bill that requires sportsbooks in the Empire State to provide players with monthly betting account statements of their activity and their wins vs. their losses.
Meanwhile, Colorado Gov. Jared Polis recently signed a bill that made a range of notable changes to Colorado’s responsible gambling procedures and standards, including banning credit cards making Colorado the first state to ban online sportsbooks from sending push notifications or texts to solicit bets.
The Colorado legislation also banned marketing language like “bonus bet” or “no sweat”, added a limit of six deposits from any one user in any 24-hour period, prohibited operators and/or their marketing affiliates from targeting people under the age of 21, and more.
Not long after that bill was approved by the Colorado legislature, two Pennsylvania state representatives announced plans to introduce a package of bills that they said were inspired by the Colorado changes.
