Last week, the Massachusetts Gaming Commission (MGC) voted unanimously (four to nil) to create a panel to study online gaming and daily fantasy sports. The special commission will be headed by the chairs of the Joint Committee on Economic Development and Emerging Technologies, Sen. Eileen Donoghue and Rep. Joseph Wagner, and will have its first meeting no later than November 1st.
The other members of the committee include MGC chair Steve Crosby, an appointee from Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey with fantasy sports consumer protection experience, an appointee from Governor Charlie Baker with fantasy sports industry experience, and appointees by the state’s legislative leadership: Senate President Stan Rosenberg, Senate Minority Leader Bruce Tarr, House Speaker Robert DeLeo and House Minority Leader Brad Jones.
A final report is due by July 31st, 2017, and while it will be about most forms of online gambling, it is not allowed to include anything about the lottery, online or not.
Addressing the attendees of an MGC meeting, Crosby said of the study, “Hopefully, this will be an opportunity for us to continue…the initiative that we’ve made about trying to come up with some omnibus legislation that will give the Legislature and then probably the Gaming Commission the tools to regulate all of online gaming.”
The omnibus approach to which Crosby refers is possible legislation that would legalize and regulate virtually all forms of online gambling at once, including poker, daily fantasy sports, casino gaming, and lottery. In December, he said:
If they could craft a bill, which incorporated regulatory priorities, fundamental values, whatever, that could be applied to all of these games – e-sports, [daily fantasy sports], online poker, whatever all the new ones are – maybe then they could give it to some agency to implement, and the agency does the grunt work every six months making it apply to whatever the new technology is.
The point, really, of the omnibus approach is to just get it all done. States have legalized online poker, online lottery, casino games, and daily fantasy sports, but aside from New Jersey and Delaware legalizing poker and casino, no state has done more than one. This writer has always thought that was stupid (hell, I think it should all be legalized on a federal level), as it implies that somehow one form of online gambling is cool and worth legalizing, while the others are not. Besides, it just makes things more of a pain in the ass if lawmakers want to go ahead and regulate other games later. You have to do everything all over again. Crosby and the MGC seem to understand this and want to get ahead of the curve (which isn’t saying much, considering how flat that curve is).
Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey filed final regulations for daily fantasy in March. DFS isn’t officially, explicitly legal, as legislation has not been passed to make it so, but by filing those regulations Healey effectively legalized the games in the state, requiring that sites abide by them.
DFS industry leader DraftKings is based in Massachusetts.
