As the gambling industry evolves and grows, its commitment to responsible gambling is increasingly important. Geolocation technology—which, first and foremost, ensures jurisdictional compliance—is emerging as a vital responsible gambling tool beyond its traditional uses.
Typically, operators rely on geo-tracking to enforce regulatory compliance by using player geolocation data to ensure play happens within a legal jurisdiction. However, as the accuracy of geotechnology improves, it’s providing new ways for operators, regulators, and legislators to protect vulnerable populations. The key is in the level of precision. Modern geolocation holds the potential to exclude players from a given city block as easily as from outside a given state.
While the application of such possibilities is still in the early stages, geofencing tech could allow operators to block players from betting from sensitive locations. Some examples might include schools, universities, and places of worship.
Bonus spoke with Manu Gambhir, CEO of geolocation provider Xpoint, about the benefits of operators using geo-tech to shore up multi-pronged responsible gambling strategies. He also discussed its limitations and how they might shift as the field evolves.
Responsibility is critical to geolocation brands
If you look at why operators have responsible gaming strategies, it’s clearly good for business, Gambhir said during last week’s interview.
It ultimately results in building the operator’s brand and credibility, both in the marketplace with end users, and with regulators. And you know that credibility goes a long way towards building a good business.
Operators have several tools in their basket to implement responsible gaming strategies.
He added that Xpoint understands and appreciates that it is one tool in the toolbox, not the entire set.
We’re a small part of that.
However, while geo-tech predominantly ensures players play from permitted areas, operators are beginning to block play from sensitive locations within a regulated jurisdiction.
The UAE provides a case study
One example Gambhir provided is the United Arab Emirates Lottery, one of Xpoint’s clients. Although the UAE is gradually embracing regulated gambling, it’s religiously prohibited in Islam.
They have their own cultural norms. And there’s sensitivity about allowing gaming… So, part of the rules and regs there are that we need to block out the ability for people to play from places of worship.
This use, said Gambhir, falls under the domain of responsible gaming.
The company also has clients in the US who are blocking out high schools or undergraduate dorms at universities, even though regulators do not require that, he added.
They’re doing that because it’s part of their responsible gaming mindset. Geolocation becomes a simple way for them to do that. Technically speaking, it’s pretty easy for us to do. We just throw a geofence around whichever area they want us to block out. And whenever someone enters, we let our client know.
From there, he added that the client is responsible for letting the player know they are in a prohibited area and cannot place a bet.
However, at this point, few operators use geofencing to block out sensitive sites on their own accord. Early adopters have started, but others are in the evaluation process, Gambhir said.
The industry is aware of this potential and thinking it through, but most haven’t pulled the trigger yet, he added.
It’s kind of a new thing that’s coming online. It’s not ubiquitous yet.
Is it better to block or monitor?
Although using geofencing to make it impossible for players to gamble from sensitive locations has obvious benefits, it forgoes an alternative use of geolocation, which is the use of the same location data to spot suspicious behavior.
Take the recent Iowa NCAA college sports betting scandal. In that case, geolocation data—not geofencing specifically—was used to help spot the illegal bets. Although the athletes involved pleaded their innocence, location data showed betting was happening from inside restricted areas, to which no legal bettor would have access.
Had geofencing been applied to the locker rooms, the guilty parties would likely have left the building to make their bets from another, non-restricted area. That would have made it much harder for authorities to detect that improper betting was happening, let alone prove it.
In such scenarios, geofencing could be counterproductive. It would amount to forcing illegal bettors to play from somewhere they’d be safe from detection, said Gambhir.
Therefore, he added, geofencing should only be done after careful consideration, not just anywhere it feels like a good idea.
In some cases, you might be creating more complications for regulators and authorities.
Is at-home self-exclusion in our future?
However, as the ability to pinpoint exact locations improves, it could create new geofencing possibilities for responsible gambling tools like self-exclusion. In many states, a player can add themselves to an exclusion list that blocks them from gambling for a specified time.
However, the drastic nature of self-exclusion may cause some at-risk gamblers to shy away from it. One casino operator has experimented with a quick-and-gentle panic button for short-term self-exclusion, with promising results.
Gambhir said he recently spoke to someone who suggested the next step in responsible gambling might be to allow players to exclude not themselves, but their homes. Preventing the easy temptation of gambling at home might be enough for some who want to cut back, but not stop entirely.
Such a shift would be logistically complicated due to the risk of blocking someone else unintentionally. It would depend on solving what Gambhir calls the “last-mile problem.”
Nonetheless, he said the idea got him thinking about the potential for consumer-driven applications. That’s why investing the money and pinpointing the accuracy of these systems is so important, he said.
It’s a 100-mile race. We’ve run the 99, but the last one is brutal…Getting it to 98% isn’t good enough anymore. The stakes are too high.
As things stand, the precision of geo-tech is still too variable. Sometimes, it’s accurate down to a couple of meters, but other times the error can creep up to a couple of hundred. That said, most of the time it’s within a few to tens of meters, according to Gambhir.
Improvements over the years have dramatically cut down on the number of false positives—when someone gets blocked incorrectly—and false negatives—being allowed to bet when they shouldn’t. However, there’s still work to do, said Gambhir.
If we want to build a massive, gigantic, healthy industry for operators, the public, and consumers, this tool set is important… like, technology everywhere in the world, we’re also evolving.
And that could just be the beginning. Who knows what others could think up down the road, he mused.
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