Tomorrow, we’ll celebrate our divorce from Great Britain. As it relates to one of our more recent freedoms, however, the motherland remains far ahead of us when it comes to protecting others who might be harmed by our actions.
As explained by Tom Bergin of Reuters, British regulators have been willing and able to hold sports books responsible for not shutting off wagers made under suspicious circumstances. Flutter, the parent of FanDuel, had to pay $2.8 million after it continued to take bets from the director of an animal shelter who had embezzled cash. The losses were more than $500,000 over four years.
In response, Flutter CEO Flutter’s Peter Jackson apologized for not stopping the bets, and he admitted that the company has a duty to act “when our customers show signs of problem gambling.”
That duty wasn’t honored in the U.S., where FanDuel and DraftKings kept their mouths shut and their vaults open when former Jaguars executive Amit Patel stole and gambled millions.
One important area of concern is the VIP dynamic. They’re the high rollers, the big spenders — and usually the big losers.
As former BetMGM VIP manager Josh Giaramita told Bergin, “There’s a very fine line between VIPs and someone with a gambling problem.”
Beyond ensuring that alarms go off when it comes to signs of problem gambling, it remains odd (to say the least) that sports books don’t refuse to take bets from those who are prohibited from betting, by law or otherwise. If NFL players, coaches, officials, etc. can’t bet on NFL football, it would seemingly be easy to shut off their ability to bet on football. (And since DraftKings and FanDuel are partners of the NFL, it would seemingly be easy for the NFL to tell them to not let NFL personnel place bets on NFL events.)
Hopefully it will happen, sooner than later. And if the sports books won’t do it on their own, hopefully the U.S. government will force them to exercise fair and responsible practices, as to problem gamblers, thieves, and those who shouldn’t be gambling.