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As U.S. Senator Richard Blumenthal and Representative Paul Tonko unveiled federal legislation that could drastically change the framework of betting in the United States last month, one phrase seemed to be stressed repeatedly: public health.
“This bill is a matter of public health,” Senator Blumenthal said.
That comment, and the many other references to the SAFE Bet Act as a “public health” solution to gambling harm, may give a clue about where Tonko and Blumenthal have borrowed some ideas from.
The phrase “public health” has been used frequently both inside and outside the U.S. when describing gambling frameworks for years. But it appeared to take on a new lease of life in a gambling context in recent years in the United Kingdom, as a “public health approach to gambling” became a priority for those seeking tougher rules.
“The thing about public health is that it’s become a catchphrase,” said Dan Waugh of UK-based consultancy Regulus Partners. “And it’s often really unclear what it means.”
“In Britain, activists have called for a public health approach to be taken to gambling, but our current approach already incorporates these principles,” he continued. “How it’s been used in the British context in the last few years is the idea that gambling represents a harm to the population as a whole.”
Brendan Bussmann of B Global Advisors said that among those pushing for tighter rules in the U.S. are groups “trying to replicate what happened in the UK” when the country’s government launched a review of the 2005 Gambling Act, primarily to impose stricter regulations on online gambling.
There might be reason to think Tonko and Blumenthal’s bill is more influenced by the modern British meaning of a “public health approach”.
The sponsors claim that the bill is designed to “for the first time, address the public health implications resulting from the widespread legalization of sports betting in the United States,” suggesting a break with existing frameworks.
But perhaps more importantly, some of its most significant provisions appear to borrow from recent UK reforms.
Most notably, the bill would require “affordability checks” on customers who bet $1,000 in 24 hours or $10,000 in 30 days, similar to one of the headline measures to come out of the UK’s Gambling Act review.
In Waugh’s view, the copycat approach is not necessarily wise. With the UK’s financial risk or affordability checks still in a pilot program, there is little evidence so far of their effects.
“We’ve got a pilot in Britain, where the objectives were not articulated, and the measures to evaluate it have not been set down,” Waugh said. “It’s lazy just to go, in Britain they have affordability checks, so let’s bring them in here.
“In Britain they drive on the left [side of the road],” he added. “Should they do that in the U.S.?”
Affordability is far from the only aspect of the SAFE Bet Act that appears to take influence from abroad. A proposed ban on in-play wagering resembles rules in Germany that limit in-play betting to bigger markets like the result and goals.
Meanwhile, the strict ad limits, including a ban on daytime advertising, as well as on ads during live sports, follow a number of strict marketing crackdowns across Europe, with similar measures existing in Spain and various other countries.
Bussmann said advertising backlashes have followed a similar path in Europe and the U.S. because operators are naturally going to focus their advertising around the sporting calendar.
“They didn’t like it when the Premier League started up and the ads started increasing — well so do ads for Christmas,” he said. “That’s the structure of how you advertise.”
He added that these types of rules run up against the same problems.
“It’s the law of unintended consequences,” Bussman said. “What sounds good in theory isn’t necessarily good in practice.”
Not every part of the SAFE Bet Act has an obvious precedent in another country, however. Some aspects of the U.S. sports-betting landscape are just naturally different than many European jurisdictions, including its state-by-state approach to gambling policy.
The SAFE Bet Act would still allow states control over many aspects of their sports-betting laws, but states would have to apply to the Department of Justice to offer betting, and their regulations must meet the federal bill’s criteria on advertising, affordability and artificial intelligence.
In Bussmann’s view, that level of federal oversight is “not how we’re built” in the U.S.
Not only would the combined federal-state structure system naturally be different to gambling laws in other countries, it also does not resemble the U.S.’ approach to other regulated industries.
“There really isn’t [anything similar],” Bussmann said. “There’s not a comparative out there. And some people are going to say it’s a healthcare related thing so we’ve got to do it. But even with our healthcare system, my plan in Nevada is my plan in Nevada. I can’t buy one in Arizona.”
Elsewhere, the bill would ban prop bets on college sports, a measure that is not so relevant in Europe, but has already been implemented by a number of states, including Ohio, New York and Pennsylvania.
Waugh said borrowing from other jurisdictions, before seeing robust evidence on the effects of a given policy, has been a common feature of gambling regulation across the globe.
In Britain, campaigners have called for a ban on in-play online betting because those are the rules in Australia, he noted. The common thread when these policies are borrowed, Waugh said, is that there are not enough people asking whether the policy being copied ever achieved its goals.
“My particular bugbear is poor use of evidence or nonexistent use of evidence,” Waugh said. “We’ve seen a lot of demands based on poor research here, and it’s starting to cross the Atlantic.”
