Maui Millions

What is Maui Millions?

“There are significant checks on individuals and businesses before a licence is granted,” he says. “The UK Gambling Commission has set out what it expects. If you want a licence in the UK, you need to meet those expectations.”

Bentley believes regulated operators are genuinely trying to do the right thing but says some mistakes could be mitigated through better automation and continuous monitoring. Enforcement statements also provide lessons that businesses should use to test their own exposure.

“It would be crazy to say that these cases are positive for the industry,” he says. “They will no doubt continue, but as an industry we need to try to reduce their frequency.”

What is Maui Millions?

Just eight years after the state of New Jersey successfully petitioned the US Supreme Court to repeal the Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act, which opened the floodgates of sports betting expansion across the country, the Garden State has again petitioned the high court, this time to defend its sports betting jurisdiction against the rise of prediction markets and sports event contracts.

On Wednesday, New Jersey Attorney General Jennifer Davenport announced that her office had filed a petition for writ of certiorari following an appeals court verdict from earlier this year that went in favour of prediction markets. That 2-1 verdict from the Third Circuit Court of Appeals was handed down in April, and New Jersey had until Thursday to petition the high court.

The petition poses the question of whether the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, which was enacted in 2010 in the aftermath of the Great Recession, “preempted states from regulating sports bets that occur within their jurisdictions if those bets are offered on markets registered with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission”. Prediction markets have argued that their event contracts are financial derivatives regulated by the CFTC whereas many states contend that they are simply sports bets by another name.

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Here, advertising for online betting sites is positioned differently. Presented as news, the content talks about the highest odds on the market, features offered by operators, regulatory changes and various cases of bettors, ranging from those who made huge financial gains to those who lost everything. 

It is very common among the different profiles identified to refer to regulatory bodies, such as the National Advertising Self-Regulation Council and SIGAP (Brazil’s betting management system). They also speak of responsible gaming in a generic way. In many cases, this is associated with illegal operators and potentially irregular advertising practices.

In this context, the regulations developed to protect players begin to function as a means of legitimisation, with illegal operators even using the term “authorised” in their communication and the “.bet” extension in their domain, which is intended only for licensed operators.