The New Jersey Division of Gaming Enforcement (NGE) fined BetMGM for breaching state law and accepting wagers on college sports games taking place in the state, as well as games involving college teams from the state.
Technology Supplier’s Failures behind Both Violations
The $25,000 fine was imposed on BetMGM for two lapses of its trading team which resulted in accepting bets on games that were not eligible for betting in New Jersey under state law.
According to NGE documents made public last week, both violations occurred in May last year and amounted to less than $100 in bets placed on a tournament game and a Rutgers University game.
On March 10, BetMGM accepted two bets on a Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference tournament game between Niagara University and Marist College scheduled to take place in Atlantic City the next day.
The violation occurred due to a failure on behalf of BetMGM’s technology partner Entain, which failed to identify the game as taking place in the state, even when a manual verification of the location was required by looking at a spreadsheet of events and their locations of play.
The automated venue checking system deployed by BetMGM and Entain was not used in this instance as it was not functional at this time, the DGE outlined. The error was detected by a member of BetMGM’s trading team 40 minutes after the bets were offered and bets were voided and money returned yet the violation occurred.
BetMGM told the DGE that its betting markets are created by Entain and it is Entain’s responsibility to check the eligibility of any game but in this case, Entain failed to flag the game as being played in New Jersey.
The Risk of Having a Global Operations Team
The second law breach took place just ten days later when a pre-made parlay involving a Rutgers basketball game was available for eight hours before it was taken down by BetMGM. In that time, the operator accepted bets from two people for a total of $30.
According to the DGE documents, the pre-made multi-game combination was created by an Entain employee operating out of Australia who failed to recognize Rutgers as a New Jersey team and make the parlay ineligible for BetMGM bettors in the Garden State.
The documents made public by the enforcement division revealed BetMGM and the enforcement division had entered into a settlement as the operator agreed to pay the $25,000 fine.
The law which prohibits betting on local college teams and collegiate games taking place in the state could have been amended at the referendum last November but New Jersey residents overwhelmingly voted to keep the restriction.
Restrictions on betting on in-state college teams also exist in several other states, including New York, South Dakota, Virginia, and Washington.