News In Brief: August 5-August 9, 2024

Penn Entertainment CEO Jay Snowden has said the operator does not intend to follow DraftKings’ lead in enacting a customer surcharge early next year, although he did not rule out adopting the concept in the future.

Snowden said on an earnings call Thursday (August 8) that the company found the concept, where DraftKings will enact a customer surcharge on winning bets in high-tax jurisdictions, to be “very interesting.”

"It was unexpected from our perspective, but definitely interesting,” Snowden said. “As you think about Penn’s view on this, you should expect us to be observers. 

“We have a lot going on in front of us right now over the coming quarters,  so I would say, when you’re talking about a potential tax surcharge in early 2025, it’s not even on our radar."

However, Snowden did not close the door on revisiting the concept in the future depending on the market’s reaction when DraftKings launches the initiative.

“It doesn’t mean that I hesitate to ever say never, it just means that we’re really focused on continuing to improve the product, continuing to drive top-of-funnel and loyalty and retention, and so, we would not be a first mover on something like that,” he said.

Snowden also said that the company expects to launch its ESPN Bet platform in New York later this month in advance of the college and pro football seasons.

The Philippine House of Representatives will convene a super-committee to probe allegations that officials bribed with drug money provided Chinese nationals with fake documents facilitating foreign-facing online gambling operations (POGOs) and criminal activity.

The House committees on dangerous drugs, public order and safety, public accounts and human rights will convene on August 15 to investigate the claims.

“There seems to be a criminal organisation operating within the country where drugs or drug money is being used to corrupt certain government officials to secure fake and spurious documents to misrepresent themselves as Filipinos,” Representative Robert Ace Barbers told a press conference on Tuesday (August 6).

The documents meant Chinese nationals have been “able to acquire properties or lands in the country ... which are used to build front and legitimate businesses, such as POGOs”, said Barbers, who chairs the dangerous drugs committee.

The super-committee has been formed to expedite investigations into the interlinking of drugs, POGOs, document forgery and national security threats, and to produce “remedial legislation”, in the wake of raids on major cyber-scamming operations in Tarlac and Pampanga provinces, north of Manila.

Hundreds of enslaved local and foreign workers were freed or escaped amid the raids, which uncovered ownership of a plot of POGO land by Alice Guo, a local mayor and Chinese national allegedly impersonating a Philippine citizen, and Chinese nationals since imprisoned in Singapore over money laundering offences.

The super-committee may also call former President Rodrigo Duterte as a witness, given lawmaker suspicions that Duterte’s war against drugs rewarded killer police with POGO slush money.

“We would like to find out where the [reward] money is coming from, because we found out, that’s POGO money, that’s gambling money,” human rights committee chair Bienvenido Abante said.

Austria’s financial police have said that concerns around illegal land-based gambling are diminishing, but have still handed out a number of fines this year. 

In an update on the activities of financial police for 2024 so far, the Austrian Finance Ministry said that although illegal gambling still formed a key part of its work, the situation was improving.

Police handed out €962,000 in fines during the first half of this year, but that compared favourably to the €2.75 levied during the same period in 2023.

A total of 51 illegal gambling machines were confiscated from 70 establishments, compared with 274 machines in 2023.

“The hotspots of illegal gambling remain Upper Austria, Salzburg and Vienna,” said the ministry.

Denver Broncos defensive end Eyioma Uwazurike, who was suspended more than a year ago for violating the National Football League’s (NFL) policy on gambling, was reinstated by the league on Monday (August 5). 

The Denver Post reported that Uwazurike returned to practice on Monday. Uwazurike was suspended on July 24, 2023 by the NFL for betting on league games during the 2022 season. 

The NFL allowed Uwazurike, 26, to petition for reinstatement no earlier than July 2024. 

The NFL prohibits players from betting on the NFL; gambling at a team’s facility, including its hotel during road trips; having others make bets on their behalf; entering a sportsbook; and playing daily fantasy football. 

Uwazurike was also accused of betting on football games he played in at Iowa State, but those charges were dropped on March 1.

Senator Jeff Merkley, a Democrat from Oregon, led a group of lawmakers Monday (August 5) in urging the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) to ban gambling on U.S. elections. 

The letter urges CFTC chairman Rostin Behnam to finalize and implement a proposed rule to prevent Wall Street from setting up massive political betting markets that could influence and interfere with elections and further erode public trust in democracy.

The two-page letter was only signed by Democrats in Congress.

Those signing the letter were Senators Merkley, Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut, Chris Van Hollen of Maryland, Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, and Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island. Representatives Eleanor Holmes Norton of Washington, D.C., Jamie Raskin and John Sarbanes, both of Maryland.

“The threat of violence and extremism is high, and the U.S. remains a target for foreign actors who have sought to meddle in our elections,” the lawmakers wrote. “The last thing that voters heading to the polls need are bets waged on the outcome of that election.”

Previously, Merkley was successful in urging the CFTC in 2023 to disapprove a proposal by KalshiEX to buy and sell event contracts that would allow legal gambling on U.S. elections. In May, the CFTC by a 3-2 vote approved a rule to ban event contracts that are used to wager on politics, as well as sports betting. 

The federal agency has also attempted to ban political betting company PredictIt. Several of these orders are being challenged in state and federal courts.

UK trade group the Betting and Gaming Council (BGC) has welcomed new cross-industry codes for its members and different sports when entering into betting sponsorship deals. 

The “Codes of Conduct for Gambling Related Agreements” framework was developed by the BGC and a range of sports bodies, with each body producing a specific code for their sport, to establish new standards on safer gambling sponsorship across four key principles of protection, social responsibility, reinvestment and integrity.

Michael Dugher, BGC chair, said: “These codes will be a big step forward and is something we have been working on for many years, long before the white paper.”

Under the new voluntary code of conduct, gambling sponsorship must be specifically designed to limit its reach and promotion to those under the age of 18 and those at risk of gambling-related harm, according to the BGC's announcement on August 1. 

Gambling sponsorship must be promoted and delivered in a socially responsible way, the commercial income they raise must be partially reinvested back into infrastructure and programmes that serve fans and communities, and they must not compromise the integrity of sporting competitions or harm the welfare of participants.

The EFL, Premier League, FA, Women’s Super League and British Horseracing Authority have agreed to adopt the code. 

The BGC expects more sporting bodies to agree to the code “shortly”. 

Separately, Premier League teams have already agreed to voluntarily ban gambling shirt-front sponsors from Summer 2026.

Gambling branding will still be permitted elsewhere on matchday shirts, pitchside hoardings and in other areas.

According to research conducted by Ipsos MORI and funded by GambleAware, more than 70 percent of the general public in the UK agree there should be more restrictions placed on gambling advertising.

The Netherlands Gambling Authority (KSA) has issued four warnings to sports-betting providers for failing to provide match-fixing risk analyses on specific matches in foreign competitions. 

The KSA found the shortcomings during a targeted follow-up investigation it launched after sending letters to sports-betting operators after it published guidance on match-fixing at the start of 2024 in response to its market-wide match-fixing risks investigation in 2023.

During its recently conducted targeted follow-up investigation, data was requested from various licence holders about risk analyses on a specific match in foreign competition.

“In four cases, the associated analysis appeared not to have been carried out correctly and/or not interpreted correctly,” according to the KSA’s announcement on August 1.

Along with the four warnings it issued, the KSA said it will continue to request random match-fixing risk analyses from operators to check whether legal requirements are being met.

The Arizona Department of Gaming (ADG) has awarded two open licenses for sports event wagering to Sporttrade and Plannatech, the regulator announced on Friday (August 2).

Betting exchange platform Sporttrade currently operates in New Jersey, Colorado and Iowa, while Plannatech is the technology platform behind Prime Sports in New Jersey and Ohio.

Under a 2021 law, Arizona allows for up to 20 licenses to be issued for mobile sports betting. Ten of those licenses are allocated to operators partnering with an Arizona professional sports team, and ten for the partners of federally-recognized Indian tribes within the state.

The ADG said that Plannatech had obtained a license as the designee of the San Carlos Apache Tribal Gaming Enterprise, with Sporttrade the designee of the Quechan Indian Tribe of the Fort Yuma Indian Reservation.

The two licenses became available following the withdrawal of other sportsbook operators from the Arizona market. The San Carlos tribe was formerly partnered with WynnBET and the Quechan tribe with Kindred.

Caesars Entertainment has agreed to sell the World Series of Poker to GGPoker operator NSUS Group in a transaction valuing the renowned poker brand at $500m, according to an announcement made by the Las Vegas-based casino giant on Thursday (August 1).

Caesars said the deal includes extended rights to host the flagship WSOP poker tournament at its Las Vegas casinos for the next 20 years. 

The company’s digital arm will also continue to operate a WSOP-branded online poker platform in Nevada, New Jersey, Michigan and Pennsylvania “for the foreseeable future but will otherwise be restricted from operating online peer-to-peer real-money poker operations for a specified period of time”, Caesars said.

GGPoker is by some distance the largest online poker network in the world, ahead of Flutter’s PokerStars, according to player traffic data reported by PokerScout. NSUS Group already operates a WSOP-branded version of its GGPoker offering in Ontario. 

Cherokee Nation Entertainment filed a lawsuit in the Arkansas Supreme Court late on Thursday (August 1) in an effort to block a referendum that could disqualify its recently approved license to build a casino in Pope County.

The Cherokee Nation’s commercial arm was awarded the license for Arkansas’ fourth and final casino in late June after the Arkansas Racing Commission found that a competing application was invalid. 

Earlier on Thursday, however, Arkansas Secretary of State John Thurston said a proposed referendum to establish new local-approval criteria for that license could advance to the November 5 ballot after supporters backed by the Oklahoma Choctaw Nation turned in a sufficient number of voter signatures.

The Cherokee Nation’s lawsuit to prevent that referendum claims the ballot measure violated state rules regarding signature collection and includes misleading language.