Tennessee Sports Betting Fines: BetMGM's $25K Penalty

Watch Tennessee Sports Betting Fines: BetMGM's $25K Penalty - SportsGrid on Dailymotion

Transcript

00:00All right, so some violations and some fines given out in Tennessee.

00:07I saw this story on Legal Sports Report a few days ago.

00:11And it's pertaining, Jim, if I'm not mistaken, the fines are during a soccer and pertaining

00:16to fines on specific penalties.

00:19You're going to have to tell us a little bit more about how that works.

00:22And, you know, I sort of can, I mean, I guess I can kind of understand how the sportsbook

00:25operators may not have the familiarity as much and the regulators with betting on penalties

00:30and things like that.

00:32So how did this all happen?

00:33Why did they get fined?

00:34And specifically, is it just because of them having penalties available on their sportsbook

00:39to bet on?

00:40Yeah, that's essentially it, Craig.

00:42And, you know, as you know, each state has kind of different approved wagers and things

00:47that customers are allowed to bet on.

00:50So in Tennessee, betting on the number of penalties given out in a soccer match is a

00:57prohibited wager.

00:59For BetMGM, that option was available to players in Tennessee, and several of them worked those

01:06bets into same game parlays on some recent soccer matches.

01:10And Tennessee sports betting regulators slapped BetMGM with a $25,000 fine for doing so.

01:18Two other operators were fined for allowing excluded players to deposit and access their

01:27account and place bets.

01:29That was Action 24-7 and ESPN bet.

01:34Action 24-7 was fined $18,000, and ESPN bet had two violations that were, you know, involving

01:44excluded players.

01:45One was sending marketing materials to players on that self-exclusion list, and another was

01:52allowing a self-excluded player to access their account.

01:56And, you know, all told, those two violations cost ESPN bet about $12,000.

02:01Now, what I found interesting was, you know, again, just how each state sort of has the

02:07different approved and allowable bet types and things you can wager on.

02:14Tennessee also does have, you know, pretty strict fines for these violations.

02:19I've covered several other state regulatory fine stories over the last couple of months,

02:26and Tennessee's did seem to be the most expensive.

02:29And if you recall, a couple of months ago, we talked, Craig, about some Indiana sports

02:34betting violations also involving some self-excluded players, also including BetMGM, as a matter

02:42of fact.

02:43And that was only a couple of thousand dollars.

02:45So not rising to the same level of, you know, financial, you know, the same financial level

02:53as they are in Tennessee, but, you know, across the industry landscape, Tennessee sports betting

03:00regulators do issue probably some of the steepest penalties for these violations.