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Nevada regulators are poised to expand the use of wagering accounts beyond the casino floor to non-gaming amenities following a regulatory change that was provisionally approved last week.
Currently, accounts are limited strictly to gambling transactions, but that would change if the Nevada Gaming Commission (NGC) grants final approval to draft amendments to Regulation 5.225 at its December meeting, allowing casino patrons to use their wagering accounts to pay for restaurants, hotel rooms and other amenities.
The Nevada Gaming Control Board (NGCB) last week recommended approval of the changes as board members continued a two-year reform initiative to review, amend and in some cases eliminate state gaming regulations.
The three-member control board began the regulatory review in January 2023 after Republican Governor Joe Lombardo signed an executive order requiring state agencies to recommend at least ten regulations be eliminated. Kirk Hendrick, chair of the control board, was appointed by Lombardo in January 2023.
“I believe this is moving the ball forward to the future of where gaming and cashless wagering systems should be,” Hendrick said at the beginning of the NGCB’s consideration of the draft amendments to Regulation 5.225 during a monthly meeting on November 6 in Carson City.
The three-member control board voted unanimously to send the draft amendments dated October 22 to the commission for final approval.
At best, Hendrick said, the NGC will consider the amendments at its meeting next month and that may not even be likely because the amendments need to be posted for 30 days.
“We have concerns about [anti-money laundering] issues and other things that we need to be a little cautious about,” Hendrick said. “But as presented, I feel comfortable that we’re allowing licensees, if the commission approves this, to move forward in the future [with] what people are already doing.”
Hendrick stressed that a lot fewer people are “carrying cash and coins in their pockets today”.
John Michela, senior deputy attorney general with the Nevada attorney general’s office, told the NGCB that limiting the use of wagering accounts to Nevada casinos and their affiliates or tenants “is the right step at this point in time”.
Scott Scherer, an attorney with Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck who represented Sightline Payments, took issue with specific language in the proposed regulations, noting that some systems already allow customers to move money from a wagering account in the state to a wagering account in another jurisdiction.
Scherer asked the control board that the “language not be interpreted to prohibit that kind of movement of money”.
“If somebody comes to Las Vegas from Massachusetts and opens a wagering account at [the] Wynn and then wants to go back to Massachusetts and use that money, they should be able to get access to their money at Encore [Boston Harbor] in Massachusetts,” Scherer said.
In potential changes submitted to the NGCB, Sightline suggested amending the amendment to read “the funds in a wagering account may be used for the patron’s activity outside of Nevada with any affiliate of the licensee or any tenant of any affiliate of the licensee as long as such use complies with all applicable laws in the jurisdiction(s) where used”.
Scherer said one of the concerns of Sightline is not to create a disincentive for tourists to deposit money into a wagering account in Las Vegas because it is too inconvenient for them to get their money out of the account later.
“We certainly have no intention of creating ambiguity or unintended consequences,” Hendrick said. “That would be a real shame if we went through all this process and actually cause people not to use it.”
Jim Barbee, chief of the NGCB’s technology division, said that technology allowing funds to be deposited or withdrawn from wagering accounts is not restricted geographically, so a patron could fund their account in Massachusetts, travel to Nevada and use money in that account, and then later make a withdrawal in Massachusetts.
“So, I don’t believe at this time it is necessary to include that language,” Barbee said of Sightline’s suggested change to the draft amendments.
The proposed change would apply only to Nevada non-restricted gaming licensees, primarily land-based casinos, because restricted licensees in Nevada cannot offer wagering accounts. A restricted gaming license permits the operation of a maximum of 15 slot machines in a location where their operation is incidental to the primary purpose of the business.
Nevada regulations have long permitted wagering accounts but those rules historically required a separate wagering account for each separate activity. For example, a wagering account was confined to race and sportsbooks and could not be used for slot machines or for online poker.
In 2017, the five-member commission approved amendments to five state gaming regulations giving casinos the ability to permit patrons to establish a single wagering account for all gaming available at a casino.
Hendrick noted that Nevada regulation already permits cashless wagering, deposit and withdrawals, and the latest amendments are “just saying, once you put money into that account you can use it for other purposes here in Nevada”.
