SBC Summit North America Talks Addiction, Regulation and Moderation

Day 1 of the SBC Summit North America sports betting conference is in the books.

Gambling addiction played center stage to kick off the event.

“There are three issues that this industry needs to put their big boy and big girl pants on and understand can prevent us from having a sustainable industry,” said panelist Bill Pascrell III of Princeton Pubic Affairs Group.

These include diversity, payment processing and responsible gambling.

“The brick and mortar casinos looked at the addicted gambler as the VIP customer. Online can’t afford to do that. Online must understand and appreciate the only way to continue a sustainable gaming industry is to not look at a one 800 number as checking a box on a consumer-facing page,” Pascrell added.

Regulation and moderation is the key to sports betting sustainability, Jessica Welman of SBC News writes.

“What we have to do is we have to learn the lesson from what happened in the UK, where it was totally unfettered. The industry, to a degree, ran amok and like here, we’re one newspaper headline away from some politicians son or daughter, husband, wife, brothers, sister, aunt uncle from having a major issue,” Pascrell said.

The proliferation of sports betting ads has become a major issue as well.  Some states are now looking to crack down on the volume of ads and potentially the messaging.

“With all the money we spend on marketing in this industry, the fact that we don’t put a certain percentage of that marketing aside for a responsible gaming message and how to keep it safe and why it shouldn’t be safe and fun is actually just bad because this is as much a customer service as it is responsibility.”

- Gilbert Horowitz, Gambling911.com