Massachusetts was the sixth busiest mobile betting state last weekend with over 8 million transactions and 400,000 mobile sports betting accounts active in the first three days.
GeoComply, a Gambling Commission vendor that offers geolocation and fraud detection services, announced Tuesday that it registered 406,437 unique player accounts and 8.1 million “geolocation transactions” last weekend among the six mobile operators that went online in the Bay State on Friday. Mobile betting is projected to overtake in-person betting here.
The business stopped over 5,000 transactions from “devices or accounts with a known history of fraud, saving its clients tens of thousands of dollars.”
“Today, one of the major issues confronting operators is enrolling real participants and keeping out fraudsters,” said Lindsay Slader, GeoComply’s senior vice president of compliance. “With the gold standard of geolocation and an experienced team of professionals, we are ideally positioned to lead the battle against fraud in all its forms.”
GeoComply claimed in a news statement that only New Jersey, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and New York had higher sports betting activity over the weekend.
GeoComply is also giving the Mass. Gambling Commission roughly $1,300 in video and tech equipment to create a real-time sports betting geolocation screen in its downtown Boston lobby.
Last week, Commission Executive Director Karen Wells said the display “will show where all the — live and in real time — bets are being placed on mobile sports wagering, phones and other devices… so that staff, commissioners and the public who will be coming into public meetings at some point in the near future can see the operation.”
Illegal Bet Hearings
At Tuesday morning’s first official hearing on the wave of unlawful collegiate bets accepted at in-person sportsbooks last month, commissioners saw how mobile betting would handle such instances.
Encore Boston Harbor’s wager on Boston College’s Feb. 2 women’s basketball game versus Notre Dame was the first of two hearings. According to commission investigations, the casino accepted a $70 five-game parlay wager. Encore cancelled the BC leg of the parlay wager before cashing the ticket.
Encore Senior Vice President and General Counsel Jacqui Krum said Encore didn’t know the bettor’s identity, so they couldn’t warn them they wouldn’t be paid out for the invalidated component of their parlay until they cashed out the next day. If the wager was placed using the WynnBet mobile app or with a Wynn rewards card, the gambler might be warned when the sportsbook realized it accepted a banned bet.
In answer to commission inquiries, WynnBet general counsel Jennifer Roberts stated, “What we would do is notify the consumer and advise that the wager is a banned gamble and under our terms and conditions and terms of service that we’re not permitted to provide the wager. “That element of the parlay would have been canceled… but the parlay ticket could proceed with the other legs.”
Only tournaments with at least four teams are allowed to bet on Massachusetts school games.
The Gaming Commission’s afternoon hearing focused on Plainridge Park Casino’s Feb. 2 wagers on Merrimack College’s men’s basketball game against Long Island University. Kambi “mistakenly listed the participant school state for Merrimack College as Florida instead of Massachusetts,” according to Chief Enforcement Counsel Heather Hall.
The game had 33 $6,848 bets. Hall said wagers won $4,270. Four Merrimack game bets were placed at the betting counter with a “writer” or teller. One writer alerted Plainridge management.
The Gambling Commission did nothing. Tuesday afternoon, commissioners deliberated privately. Chairperson Cathy Judd-Stein said commission decisions will be written. She stated the commission can issue a civil administrative penalty, impose conditions on the operator’s license, suspend it, revoke it, reprimand the licensee “and or” punish them.
The Gaming Commission’s response to these infractions may create a precedent for the nascent Massachusetts sector, and authorities have other hearings scheduled on MGM Springfield’s offenses and Encore’s unlawful college wagering.