With every state in the U.S. getting to regulate gambling however they prefer, it can make for a messy situation for operators. Applying the correct rules, and denying the right customers, becomes key. GeoComply has solutions for that, and CEO David Briggs spoke with our Becky Liggero Fontana at G2E Vegas about it.
As the U.S. market has evolved, the solutions needed for it have had to change too. Liggero Fontana asked Briggs to expand on how things have changed. “It’s been quite a while, but I mean, we really created the company to solve a problem that we saw happening that it was unique to the U.S. market,” he said. “Compared to other jurisdictions, which is our federal or national, the U.S. has a gaming regulatory regime which is always at state level. So if digital was ever going to happen here, it would again be at the state level. That was the view that we took, anyway. And if you want to have gaming in a single state, you basically have to make sure that that gaming doesn’t happen in the neighboring states. And some of these states have cities that naturally flow across state lines.”
GeoComply saw the need to solve this, because existing methods of determining a player’s location just weren’t good enough. “The penalty for taking somebody from the wrong side of the state line is up to five years in jail, not just for the operator but also for the payment method used by the player,” he emphasized. “So those are pretty serious penalties, so the geofencing system would have to have been really, really strong, and yet a really good user experience. And that was our vision.”
As online, digital gaming has flourished, many U.S. land based operators have fought it tooth and nail. “I think some people that are wedded to the notion of cannibalization will never give up on that notion,” Briggs noted. “It seems incredible to me. I’ve been in the industry for 20 years, and I have never seen the impact of cannibalization that matches any of the hysteria that I’ve heard discussed particularly in the U.S. market. I mean, I remember in the poker world, poker rooms were dying all over the world, and then online poker came along and it rejuvenated them because it introduced a whole new generation of people that would play online, they’ve qualified, and they go to the World Series of Poker. And the World Series of Poker became bigger and bigger and bigger.”