News In Brief: March 3-March 7, 2025

The UK Gambling Commission has opened a consultation that will augment its plans to require all gamblers to be offered the chance to set deposit limits.

From October 31, all gambling licensees in the UK will need to offer deposit limit-setting tools on signup and remind customers of their existence every six months.

The commission said that while most respondents to an initial consultation on these plans were supportive, disagreement has emerged about whether or not the limits should count “net” deposits.

Some operators now and in the future prefer to offer net deposit limits that deduct withdrawals from deposits in a particular month. Meaning that if a player with a deposit limit of £50, deposited £50 and later withdrew £40 they would be free to top themselves back up with another £40 without hitting their predetermined limit.

The commission said it was seeking to create one clear standard for the meaning of deposit limit across the industry.

A bill introduced on Thursday (March 6) would require Connecticut regulators to establish a maximum amount of wagers for online sports betting. 

Senate Bill 1464 has been referred to the Joint Committee on General Law. The committee has scheduled a hearing on the bill for Wednesday (March 12).

The bill also grants Governor Ned Lamont, a Democrat, the ability to join the Multi-State Internet Gaming Agreement (MSIGA) for online poker and requires online gaming licensees to disclose a toll-free problem gambling number. 

“The maximum sports wagers established for online sports wagering in regulations adopted pursuant to section 12-865, as amended by this act,” according to SB 1464. There is no mention of a maximum amount of wagers in the 13-page bill. 

In a statement of purpose, the bill reads to “disclose the maximum sports wagers established for online sports wagering; and (3) require the Commissioner of Consumer Protection to adopt regulations establishing maximum sports wagers for online sports wagering.”

Currently, there are FanDuel, DraftKings and Fanatics operating in Connecticut. 

Michigan is continuing its campaign to remove illegal offshore online casino websites that are doing business within the state’s regulated gaming market. 

The Michigan Gaming Control Board (MGCB) confirmed it sent cease-and-desist letters, notifying five operators that they are breaking multiple state laws, including operating an unlicensed gambling service.

Three of the five sites targeted by the MGCB had offices in Curaçao. Those unlicensed operators were BetWhale Casino, Coins Game Casino, and Love2play Casino. Love2play also had an office in Costa Rica.

Black Lotus Casino, owned by TD Investments Ltd., were based in Belize and Orion Stars 777 Players was in Sichuan Province, China. The MGCB said the websites offer a variety of casino games, such as slots, poker, keno, bingo, in addition to sports betting. 

These operators must stop their activities within 14 days of receipt of the cease-and-desist letters or face additional legal consequences, according to the MGCB. 

Last week, the MGCB issued a cease-and-desist order to BetNow.eu, and before that targeted nine online operators, such as Xbet Casino and BetAnySports. In addition, offshore sports-betting brands Bovada and MyBookie, as well as sweepstakes operator VGW have turned off access to their sites to Michigan residents. 

Thailand’s deputy finance minister says a prohibitive cash asset provision for local gamblers visiting future integrated resorts (IRs) has been retained in a draft IR law.

Julapun Amornvivat said on Thursday that the restriction, which would shut out Thai nationals without 50m baht (US$1.5m) in the bank, remains in the draft Integrated Entertainment Business Act, despite suggesting on Monday that it had been deleted.

The hardline provision had been inserted by the Office of the Council of State, a prime ministerial body that advises on legislation, amid reports of its hostility toward the draft and protests by activists and lawmakers.

Julapun said on Thursday that the government will now seek to amend the legislation in the parliament to remove the restriction, which more bearish observers say would damage the appeal of the Thai market to major global gaming companies.

The Japanese government has confirmed it will consider the systematic blocking of gambling websites amid a surge in reports of online gambling by sports stars and other celebrities.

Spooked by a new wave of media coverage of online gambling addiction, the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications on Friday (February 28) said it will commence a feedback process to discuss blocking internet gambling while assessing associated technical and cost issues.

Shinichi Omura, director of the ministry’s telecommunications department, told the House of Representatives’ budget committee that his staff are taking the next steps that would lead to systematic targeting of online gambling, including consultations with technical experts and the business community.

“We are preparing to launch a discussion site [on the ministry’s website],” NHK quoted him as saying. “We want to proceed with this so that we can start considering the matter as quickly as possible.”

The Japanese government and police agencies have shifted their messaging in recent years to stress that online gambling is a criminal offence amid hundreds of prosecutions of ordinary users and others.

But to date, the government has been reluctant to use direct measures against websites such as ISP blocking.

The government’s move coincides with a string of media reports in recent months on high-profile sports professionals, entertainers and government workers coming under police investigation after using online gambling products.

These include an Olympics medallist, professional baseballers from several teams, a comedian, police officers, firefighters and a range of other public servants.

France’s gambling regulator has fined Unibet-owned SPS Betting €800,000 for unintentionally reducing the time some self-excluded players requested to be banned for over the course of nearly two years.

France's National Gambling Authority (ANJ) said: “This decision, unprecedented in its scope, reiterates the importance for the committee to sanction operators' breaches of their obligations regarding the prevention of excessive gambling,” in a press release on February 3.

The ANJ became aware of reports in 2021 of a malfunction on the Unibet.fr site affecting iOS device users, changing self-exclusion requests made in months to days.

This meant a player self-excluding for 12 months would only be banned for 12 days.

The issue occurred between March 2, 2021 and December 11, 2022, before it was resolved by the operator.

However, the issue reappeared after an update, affecting iOS devices once again between December 29, 2022 and February 2, 2023.

In total, the issue lasted for 22 months.

This decision can be appealed within the next two months.

A bill to trigger a 2026 referendum on gambling expansion has failed to clear a Georgia Senate committee, the latest setback in a state that has consistently struggled to get sports-betting legislation across the finish line.

The Senate Regulated Industries and Utilities Committee voted down Senate Resolution 131, which would have put the question of legalizing both sports betting and land-based casino gaming to the voters in 2026.

While Georgia legislators have discussed a number of gaming issues in recent years, none have gained enough traction to clear both chambers of the legislature.

Supporters have also gone back and forth over the years about whether sports-betting legalization requires a constitutional amendment and corresponding voter approval, or whether it can be approved through traditional legislation.

Other efforts are expected to come this session to legalize betting using both mechanisms, but a pending crossover deadline on March 6 for bills to clear at least one chamber of the legislature is looming.

Florida lawmakers are proposing to ban online sweepstakes sites, including internet casino games and online sports betting, in a move to protect the Seminole Tribe’s exclusive gaming rights.

Representative Webster Barnaby introduced House Bill 953, while Senator Corey Simon filed companion Senate Bill 1404. The measures by the Republican lawmakers would prohibit “internet gambling” and “internet sports betting” and would appear to ban sweepstakes in Florida.

Neither bill would affect the Seminole Tribe’s 30-year compact with the state. The gaming compact grants the tribe the exclusive right to offer retail and online sports betting, as well as the ability to offer craps and roulette at its casinos. In exchange, the Seminoles make annual payments of $500m to the state.

The bills define “internet gambling” as playing or engaging “in any game in which money or other thing of value is awarded based on chance, regardless of any application of skill, that is available on the internet and accessible on a mobile device, computer terminal, or other similar device and simulates casino-style gaming, including, but not limited to, slot machines, video poker, and table games.”

Florida joins Maryland, Connecticut, and Mississippi as states considering legislation this year to ban online sweepstakes casino games and sports betting. As of Friday (February 28), both Florida measures had yet to receive their committee assignments.

The Malaysian Federal Court’s appeals bench has thrown out a lower court’s decision backing a junket seeking to recover almost $1.7m from a Malaysian gambler.

The Federal Court on February 26 found that an appeals bench of the High Court mistakenly identified two lines of junket credit totalling $1.5m and almost $200,000 in rolling rebate as ordinary loans instead of gambling loans.

The higher court therefore dismissed the Huang Group junket’s attempt to recover the money from businessman Ting Ching Lee after his 2015 gambling trip to Cambodia’s NagaWorld casino, citing established law that debts “by way of gaming or wagering shall be null and void”.

The High Court had found that the “oral contract” to supply the funds related to the purchase of gambling chips, but that the funds themselves were not directly gambled in Cambodia.  

The Federal Court instead ruled that the “credit facilities were meant for the sole purpose of gambling at the Naga Casino” and that they “could not be used for purposes but for gambling at Naga Casino”.

The credit facilities therefore could not be classed as “a genuine loan independent” of these gambling activities, it said.

“To conclude otherwise is to allow parties to get around the law and indirectly defeat the law,” it said.