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Sports-betting operators argued Wednesday (September 11) that individual limits to so-called “sharp players” affect a very small minority of users in response to concerns from Massachusetts regulators over the practice.
Representatives from each of the state’s seven licensed sports-betting operators appeared before the Massachusetts Gaming Commission on Wednesday for a long-awaited roundtable discussion about the practice of limiting players, arguably the most prominent discussion on the topic in the United States to date.
The commission previously sought to host the roundtable in May after receiving a host of complaints from customers about individualized wagering limits, but all but one operator, Bally’s, refused to appear at one of the commission’s famously public meetings, instead seeking to discuss the issue in a private executive session.
Commissioners expressed their frustration over the snub and hinted at future regulations on the issue, and ultimately, each of the operators agreed to appear at Wednesday’s discussion.
“We're trying to solve a problem,” said Jordan Maynard, the interim chair of the commission. “We're not here because we woke up one day and said we really, really want to cause an uncomfortable conversation with the operators.”
“What happened was, we do get complaints, and we also see the difference in the particular complaints,” he continued. “I think we’ve shown as a commission we’re concerned about the casual bettor that gets caught up in the controls that you’ve really set for the non-casual bettor.”
Representatives from the operators were unanimous in saying that individual wagering limits are applied to an extremely limited portion of the user base and often applied to behaviors rather than the win/loss results for players.
Sarah Brennan, senior director of compliance for BetMGM, said that the company presently limits about 1 percent of Massachusetts players.
"Our goal is to provide the best customer experience to the majority of our patrons, which means providing them with competitive lines odds and a wide variety of markets to bet on, while also managing our risk to ensure that the outcome of any single event or series of events does not pose undue risk to our business,” Brennan said. “The risk management framework is essential to sustainability, not only for BetMGM but to the industry as a whole.
“This group of limited patrons, many of whom self-identify as professional bettors, are loud in insisting that limiting patrons is a pervasive practice by operators, however, this is not accurate, it is actually the opposite,” she added.
Multiple operators explained that behaviors that would lead to an individual limit on players included the practice of “court-siding,” which sees a player at a live event rush to get a bet in before the data feed can catch up, as well as syndicate betting with large numbers of other players and seeking to capitalize on sportsbook errors or arbitrage players looking to gain an edge against a line at a different sportsbook.
Cory Fox, FanDuel vice president of product and new market compliance, added that sometimes players might simply just have an advantage over the operator.
“I think it's important to keep in mind, on an average day, FanDuel takes wagers on 2,700 unique events and over 37,000 different markets within those events, so in limited cases, some users may have more information than we do.”
“Some users may have a better model than we do,” he continued. “We're comfortable taking wagers for them, but we have to do it in a responsible manner that protects our company.”
One frequent complaint the commission mentioned receiving was that players were not notified specifically that their accounts had been limited.
“There is this perception real or not, that the online market that’s out there right now is that you’re going to be enticed until you run out of money, or as soon as you start winning, we’re going to shut you off, we’re going to limit you, we’re going to ban you,” said commissioner Eileen O’Brien, who questioned operators about their lack of specific explanation to customers as to why they were limited and how they would be limited going forward.
Multiple company executives argued that in most cases players do know why their behavior has led to limitations.
“We’re not banning customers for beating us, we’re banning customers for other reasons that we should be banning them for,” said Ken Fuchs, senior vice president and chief operating officer for Caesars Sportsbook, citing issues such as anti-money laundering concerns, suspicious activity, and repeated terms of service violations.
“We’re happy to work with commission and staff to think about solutions that would resolve this issue for everyone, but I do really want to emphasize it is a tiny percentage of users who are limited, and I believe that many of the users who wrote into the commission to talk about wager limits are not at all confused about what’s going on or why they’re limited,” Fox added.
“They know exactly why they’re limited, and they would prefer not to be limited, but there isn’t a confusion aspect of the vast majority of them.”
Alex Smith, senior vice president for legal and regulatory at Fanatics, said their previous efforts to notify customers about limits were not exactly met graciously.
“Frankly, we found that to be a bit of a failed, failed experiment,” he said. “On our end, all we got back from those notifications were rather nasty responses.”
“So we found that we don't send an email that customers have seemed to find annoying, and we notify the customer in the app what their max limit is.”
Following a second roundtable that included responsible gaming advocates and advocates for bettors, the commission was non-committal to any specific policy proposals that may result from the roundtables.
