Tomorrow we celebrate our divorce from the UK. But it is one of our most recent freedoms, and our mother country remains far ahead of us when it comes to protecting those who may be harmed by our actions.
As Reuters’ Tom Bergin explains, British regulators are willing and able to hold sportsbooks to account. Not intercepting bets made under suspicious circumstancesFanDuel’s parent company, Flutter, was forced to pay $2.8 million after it continued to take bets from an animal shelter director who misappropriated the cash, resulting in losses of more than $500,000 over a four-year period.
In response, Flutter CEO Peter Jackson apologised for not stopping the gambling and acknowledged that the company has a duty to act “if a customer shows signs of a gambling problem”.
This obligation was not met in the United States, and FanDuel and DraftKings kept quiet and left their safes open when former Jaguars executive Amit Patel stole and gambled millions of dollars.
One key area of concern is the behavior of VIPs – the high rollers, the big spenders, but usually the big losers.
“There’s a very fine line between VIP and problem gamblers,” former BetMGM VIP manager Josh Jaramita told Bergin.
Besides having warning signs for gambling addiction, it remains odd (to say the least) that sportsbooks don’t refuse bets from people who are prohibited from gambling by law or otherwise. If NFL players, coaches, officials, etc. can’t bet on NFL football, it seems easy to cut off their ability to bet on football. (And since DraftKings and FanDuel are partners of the NFL, it seems easy for the NFL to tell NFL officials not to bet on NFL events.)
Hopefully, that will happen sooner than later, and if sportsbooks don’t do it on their own, the U.S. government will force them to implement fair and responsible practices against problem gamblers, thieves, and people who shouldn’t be gambling.
