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With multiple states legalizing sports betting in 2019 and 2020, gaming regulators have their work cut out to ensure that both retail and online sports betting operators are complaint with gaming regulations.
The Iowa Racing and Gaming Commission (IRGC) which is the gambling regulator in Iowa recently pulled up DraftKings and two land based casinos for violating gaming regulations in the state.
Iowa legalized sports betting in 2019 and is keeping a close watch on the levels of problem gambling in the state.
All licensed betting operators have been instructed to strictly comply with problem gambling measures but it appears DraftKings has dropped the ball in this regard.
IRGC said an audit of DraftKings showed that the betting operator was late in uploading a list of self-banned players. This self-banned list includes the names of all players in Iowa who have voluntarily put themselves on this list as they don’t want to have any exposure to sports betting or sports betting content.
Iowa regulations require all betting operators to upload their list of self-banned players within a period of 7 days. This list is circulated across all licensed betting operators in the state who will then ensure that these self-banned players are not contacted or allowed to access any of their sports betting portals or content.
DraftKings admitted to their lapse and was agreed to pay a fine between $5,000 to $20,000. Since this was the first violation for the sports betting operator in Iowa, the commission imposed a minimum fine of $5,000.
Land Based Casinos Fined
The Iowa Racing and Gaming Commission also pulled up two land based casinos for breaching gaming laws in the state. The Rhythm City Casino located in Davenport was pulled up in 2018 and 2019 for failures with their surveillance cameras. The IRGC pointed out that critical areas in the casino blacked out for extended periods of time.
Rhythm City Casino suffered another surveillance outage in February 2020 that lasted for 4.5 hours. Once again, key areas in the casino had a complete blackout. IRGC informed the casino that they should have made changes to their surveillance cameras given that this was an on-going problem and fined them $7,500.
Diamond Jo Casino located in Worth County also faced similar failures with their surveillance cameras in Nov 2019 but did not report them since they were unaware of the failure. They were also hit with a $7,500 fine.
