Massachusetts regulators find responsible gaming tools underutilized
Responsible gambling tools provided by the Massachusetts Gaming Commission (MGC) are not being fully utilized, state regulators said Thursday.
At the agency's meeting Thursday, the commission announced plans to hold a responsible gambling conference in Worcester on May 14. The event is hosted by the Northeast Problem Gambling Council, which in addition to Massachusetts includes Connecticut, Maine, New Hampshire, New York, Rhode Island and Vermont.
MGC says it will bring insights from over 10 years of players. The goal of the spring meeting is to discuss possible ways responsible gaming plans can better serve consumers, commissioners said Thursday.
The nature of gambling in Massachusetts has changed significantly over the past 10 years. We have provided considerable evidence as to what these changes are. "How do we take this evidence and rewrite the script?" said Mark Vander Linden, MGC's director of research and responsible gaming.
The Massachusetts Legislature legalized commercial casino gambling with the Expanded Gaming Act of 2011. The bill authorizes up to four commercial casinos. Since then, three casinos have opened, including the slot machine-only Plainridge Park Casino, and two resort casinos: MGM Springfield and the Encore Boston Harbor Casino in Everett.
Responsible gaming tools are underutilized
The commercial gambling industry in Massachusetts has been a huge success. The first slot machine bets were placed at Plainridge Park Casino when it opened in June 2015. The state has since collected nearly $1.6 billion in gambling taxes and levies from the three casinos. Plainridge shares 49 percent of slot machine profits with the state, while Encore and MGM have a lower tax rate on gross gaming revenue of 25 percent.
legislator and then-governor of Massachusetts. Charlie Baker (right) expands gambling in the Commonwealth in 2022 to include retail and online sports betting. On January 31, 2023, three casinos officially opened live sports betting. Online betting starts in March.
While gambling has always been a major asset to the country, the MGC wants to ensure the industry does not negatively impact players prone to excessive risk-taking. Commissioners last year found that the responsible gambling tools currently provided by operators were not being fully utilized.
Tools that allow online sports bettors to "cool off" by temporarily suspending their betting accounts and a "self-exclusion scheme" have not been popular with bettors, commissioners said.
For example, at DraftKings, the market leader in online sports betting, less than 0.1% of sports bettors in the Commonwealth use the time limit tool. Only 2.3% used deposit limits, 0.4% set a maximum bet amount, and less than 0.2% used tools that limited the number of bets that could be made in a given period of time.
Promote RG participation
MGC chair Cathy Judd-Stein said in November that increasing the use of responsible gambling tools was a top priority for the council. Judd-Stein said the state's low use of responsible gambling tools is not unique to Massachusetts but is a reality faced by other states where online sports betting is legal.
Massachusetts is a leader in responsible gaming. The state is the first to introduce GameSense, the responsible gaming program developed by the British Columbia Lottery Corporation, into its casinos. The plan requires casinos to have responsible gaming kiosks and staffed kiosks on-site to educate players about casino games and the opportunities associated with them.
MGM has since deployed GameSense in most of its U.S. casinos.
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Source: www.casino.org
