Keeping up to speed with regulatory shifts in the betting industry can be exhausting, to say the least. Goalposts are constantly shifting, bills are being passed, and strategies are being ripped up overnight.
Liam Hoofe, GO Intel Content Strategist, believes the most successful businesses are the ones who have an eye on the future and contingency plans in place. Liam explains why the difference between having a strategic plan for changes, and scrambling to ensure you are compliant, often comes down to one thing: timely, and well-researched intelligence.
Hoping you can react quickly to changes is not enough. By the time a regulation is passed, the window for strategic positioning is likely to have closed. Your competitors have already started adjusting their approach, reallocating resources, or even exiting markets. To stay competitive, businesses need to be armed with the intelligence and insights to see these changes coming.
When Analysis Becomes Reality
Within just a few weeks of launching GO Intel, our new intelligence service at GameOn, we have already seen the importance of this in action. One of our first reports explored the state of sweepstakes casinos in the US – ‘The Gateway to Gaming: How Regulatory Scrutiny is Reshaping the Sweepstakes-to-iGaming Funnel.’
In the report, we provided actionable steps operators and businesses in the sweepstakes market can take in the face of an ever-changing regulatory landscape. The report didn’t just highlight existing regulations, it identified where regulatory momentum was building, highlighted potential outcomes, and provided operators with advice on how to prepare for it.
Our recommendations were clear: monitor upcoming legislation and have contingency plans in place for multiple outcomes. We ran through several scenarios and offered our own analysis of how businesses could react to them.
Within days of our report being published, the Californian Senate passed a bill to ban sweepstakes in the state. While this law has not yet been signed by the state’s Governor Gavin Newsom, it seems highly likely that, despite some pushback from the industry, it will.
Information vs Intelligence
Staying ahead of regulation is not about luck. Information is everywhere; press releases, publications, regulator’s websites. But knowing how to distill this information and build strategy based around it is an entirely different matter.
Anybody could have looked ahead to see that the Senate in California was taking a vote to pass that bill. However, what our report was able to do was highlight exactly why that vote mattered in a broader regulatory context, how similar bills could be passed in other states, and what operators could do about it, regardless of the outcome.
We have been able to utilise the latest AI technology and combine it with our team’s vast experience to create a service that can stay up to speed with the industry’s developments and offer actionable insights based on them. This, we believe, will provide our partners with a significant advantage over those who simply digest information and wait for change to happen to them.
A Consistent Advantage
In an industry as competitive as ours, those who succeed are the ones who can look ahead. The ones who are proactive in changing, rather than reactive. Being equipped with the latest intelligence is one of the best moves you can make to ensure you find yourself in the former camp.
The sweepstakes market is just one example of these changes. Regulations are evolving constantly across multiple verticals and jurisdictions. Payment processing rules shift. Advertising standards tighten. Tax frameworks change. New markets open while others restrict access. This is an industry that never stops.
To survive, businesses need to be prepared for a wide range of scenarios, and they require intelligence that enables them to do precisely that, which is exactly what we can provide at GO Intel. Having access to timely analysis and strategic recommendations isn’t just valuable in today’s environment; it’s essential.
