34 PUBLIC GAMING INTERNATIONAL • SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2022 Lotteries have Expanded Responsible Gaming Protections as Their Online Product Offerings have Grown, But Illegal Operators Without Such Protections Are Still Allowed to Operate * Mark Hichar is a Shareholder with Greenberg Traurig, LLP, resident in the firm’s Boston office, and is a member of the Board of the Massachusetts Council on Gaming and Health. ** Marlene D. Warner is the Executive Director of the Massachusetts Council on Gaming and Health. The Mass. Council is a private nonprofit and an affiliate of the National Council on Problem Gambling. (See https://macgh.org/.) By Mark Hichar* and Marlene D. Warner** Laws passed in many states in recent years have expanded the scope of state lottery product offerings and the channels through which lottery products are delivered. For example, lotteries in Connecticut, Montana, Oregon, Rhode Island and the District of Columbia operate sports betting, and approximately a dozen state lotteries offer lottery products via mobile applications and online web sites (not counting state lotteries that offer only draw games by subscription or offer games online only via a third party courier service). In connection with these expansions of product and channel offerings, laws and regulations have correspondingly expanded the state lotteries’ responsible gaming and problem gambling resource commitments. Because of the player-related data that is available in connection with mobile and online lottery play, protections and resources can be brought to bear that are unavailable in the traditional, bricks-and-mortar lottery world. As noted at a roundtable discussion at the 2021 Public Gaming Research Institute (“PGRI”) conference in Nashville (“Nashville Panel Discussion”), “the use of credit cards [in a lottery transaction] transforms the transaction from an anonymous cash purchase, in which nothing is known about the player, into a record and data-point that can help the player be more aware and manage play more responsibly. Decisions on both the lottery and player sides will be more informed from that data.” In order to purchase digital lottery products in the states that offer them, a player must first open an online account with the lottery, providing their name, age, email, phone number and other personal information, and the player must fund the account, providing personal bank account and/or electronic card information; all the provided information is checked and verified by a third-party secure vendor. Then, when purchasing a digital lottery product, the player’s location within the applicable state is checked and confirmed as well. Finally, all lottery wagering transactions are recorded and logged. As a result, lotteries offering digital products have a complete history of each player’s digital lottery product purchase and play activity that can be used to strengthen their interventions and messaging toward healthy play. The question, of course, is whether this data is actually being used to help those players to keep their gambling safe and to assess players for at-risk behavior that may lead to gambling problems. The evidence so far suggests that it is, certainly by U.S. lotteries that offer digital instant lottery games online.
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