Paul's Blog July 16, 2018 -"For every complex problem, there is always an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong." H.L. Mencken

Exciting news indeed: Pennsylvania iLottery Hits $21.6 Million in Sales in its first 26 days

45,000 players registered and the Pennsylvania iLottery paid out $18.7 million in prize money during the 26-day period, despite the initial roll out offering just 13 games, and no keno or scratch offs.  Revenues after prize payouts were $2.9 million.  Those numbers are particularly impressive considering the PA online lottery is still in what can be described as a soft-launch phase.  We don’t want to impose unrealistic expectations on Team Pennsylvania Lottery, but those numbers will surely increase which makes the potential is quite interesting indeed.  

Other hot stories: Delaware’s expanded sports-betting offer is getting off to a great start.  And New Jersey is seeing high double-digit growth in both online and land-based casino gambling.  In fact, land-based casinos are growing at a faster rate than the online sector, which is rather amazing. 

There are a number of stories that attest to the increased attention governments and regulators are giving to the enforcement of laws prohibiting unlicensed (i.e. illegal) internet gaming operators.  Poland is taking an aggressive posture to block illegal internet gaming operators.  The Netherlands is levying fines against unlicensed i-gaming operators.  Belarus is creating a regulatory framework for online gambling and casinos.   Sweden is completely over-hauling its regulatory structure to expand the licensed-operator sector in hopes of controlling illegality.  

Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) is updating its terms, conditions, rules, restrictions for online operators.  And just two weeks ago, a nation-wide law was passed that outlaws the “synthetic” or “secondary” lottery model.  The secondary lottery model enables the player to bet-on-the-outcome-of-lottery.  The player is not actually buying a lottery ticket.  Instead they are placing a bet with a secondary operator like Lottoland.   In spite of this law (which does not take effect till 2019), the CEO of Lottoland Luke Brill insists they are ”here to stay”.       

Every week there is a new regulatory decision on “lootboxes”.  A reflection of the current state of confusion over what constitutes “gambling” is that nobody can agree on whether Lootboxes should be regulated as gambling or not.  Some are saying yes and some are saying no.  

Chinese authorities arrested six suspects behind a World Cup gambling ring that was hosting more than 10 billion yuan ($1.5 billion USD) worth of cryptocurrency bets.  The gambling syndicate ran on the dark web, accepting bets in the form of bitcoin, ethereum, and Litecoin.  It attracted more than 300,000 players from different countries, and 8,000 “agents” who earned commissions for recruiting new members through a pyramid scheme-like system.  The bust that took down the dark web syndicate was a part of China’s larger plans to combat illegal gambling, though this was the first to involve cryptocurrency.  

Conversely, there is a story about the adverse effects of dysfunctional regulatory and enforcement mechanisms as it applies to Lebanon.  Online gambling is rampant there, but with no consumer protection and no tax revenues going to the state or good causes.