State lawmakers want to take on further regulations around mobile sports betting this upcoming session.
Assemblymember Carrie Woerner, who chairs the Racing and Wagering Committee, told Spectrum News 1 that she expects a package of bills, including existing legislation as well as fine-tuning stemming from a legislative hearing in Albany Wednesday, will be ready to go by the time the 2026 session starts up for the year in January.
It comes as the state is also making a move toward legalizing other forms of online gambling. They will have to juggle the debate over whether or not to unleash that market with how to best manage the one that has already been created.
“We need to do a better job of putting guardrails, putting some regulations, around mobile sports betting,” she said.
Woerner pointed to testimony which made it clear that promotions and how they are managed and targeted will be top of mind for lawmakers.
“They all talked about the promotions, and how much those are targeted at specific age groups, the younger age groups, to bring them in,” she said. “We need to minimize the amount of promotional play that somebody gets to keep them betting.”
Part of the rationale for legalizing mobile sports betting and i-gaming, should the state choose to go that route, is regulating the market for both revenue purposes and in order to create guardrails for young people and those most at risk of developing a gambling problem.
Michelle Hadden, executive director of the New York Council on Problem Gambling, stressed that the state is collecting revenue from these activities, and New York must hold up its end of the bargain and ensure that the product is safe.
“We have an online gambling space now and we need to take a look at how we mitigate risk for people,” she said. “Looking at how we assess the risk of these online games and how we can work with regulators and operators to ensure there is safety as much as possible in a game that is based on chance and risk.”
In addition to managing promotions, she pointed out that some options discussed also include those which impact player activity, not just operators. That includes ways to offer budget management and financial assessments which look into whether players can sustain the habit at a given level.
“Affordability checks were discussed quite a bit today, along with limits on the amount of gambling, the timing around placing bets,” she said.
Republican Scott Gray said the ideological battle over whether to put these guardrails on a legalized activity could come down to the burden problem gambling creates for the state
“People have personal responsibly, I respect that, but on the other hand when we start affecting the costs of other programming within the state, whether it’s our social service programs, our treatment programs, then it becomes our responsibility,” he said.
As the state juggles what to do about going further and legalizing i-gaming, the question been raised is: has mobile sports betting kept people off illegal platforms and do regulations deter people from using the legal market?
Woerner thinks it has encouraged people to take the legal route, and she doesn’t buy into the idea that further regulations will push people to illegal options.
“There were people who bet on sports through bookies before, but there’s a whole lot more people who are betting on the legal sports market and I think that’s the way to look at it,” she said.
Spectrum News 1 reached out to multiple of the primary outlets for sports betting in New York and did not immediately hear back.