The US gambling industry has been described as a ‘Highway Without Speed Limits’ by an expert in the country. But with laws decided on a state-by-state basis, could they be right, and is the US headed for a crash?  

Jordan Maynard is one of the most outspoken critics when it comes to gambling in the United States. As the country overhauls its rules on a state-by-state basis, lured by the profit in taxation, he has warned that the sector has become a “highway without speed limits.”

Maynard’s Criticism of US Gambling

His exact analogy was that he sees it as cars without seatbelt dingers. “Regulators are who put the seatbelt dingers in. I don’t think the car manufacturers just woke up one day and decided to annoy whoever’s driving the car until they put their seatbelt on.”

The chair of the Massachusetts Gaming Commission, Maynard, has also added that Washington should consider nationwide rules on gambling advertising. However, there has long been opposition to federal involvement in laws that are determined on a state-by-state basis. This is different from many countries in which laws are decided nationally.

Not only does this create loopholes, but it also creates confusion and often an inability to regulate it from the states themselves. A person may be in a state like California, where all forms of online gambling are banned, just to go over state lines and be able to use online casinos and bookmakers. Advertising standards can become inconsistent as a result, and so can the methods used to reduce problem gambling. In an interview with The Guardian newspaper in the United Kingdom, he said these laws are “ripe for a federal conversation.”

Concepts for Federal Governance

This fractious approach arrived in 2018 when a Supreme Court decision allowed states to manage their own gambling affairs, overturning a previous law that banned sports betting. Since then, casinos or racetracks are legal in 38 states, with 27 allowing bets online. Only seven of these currently allow online casinos and table games. The National Council on Problem Gambling has said it believes around 2.5 million adults in the country have severe gambling issues, with 5 to 8 million having significant issues.

The industry in the United States has grown exponentially since then. Many of the top operators have begun to police themselves, realising how important this is in such a competitive field. This has created a trove of third-party reviewers who combine their own research and customer experience to recommend the best and safest operators. Gambla.us was the first to report honest reviews based on user experience.

Many of his ideas for federal governance involve schemes that have been successfully used elsewhere, particularly in the United Kingdom and Europe. These include self-exclusion schemes, which do not generally work when you are operating on a state basis only and need to be national. This would prevent problem gamblers from placing bets anywhere in the country and stop them from going across state lines to do so.

This does not mean that states have not attempted this, and some have done so with success. New Jersey is one state that has long been at the forefront of gambling innovation and legislation. It has a self-exclusion scheme that must be used by all operators in the state. It also ensures player activity is monitored to spot the signs of problem gambling, along with deposit limits.

Maynard believes that regulators serve two main purposes. These are to protect the legal gambling industry from illegal threats. The second is to safeguard the general public. He also added that he is not thinking about big business, but how the citizens of Massachusetts are impacted.

It is this latter view that has often made him unpopular with operators. He began working at the Gaming Commission in 2022, moving to the interim chair position by 2024, and later took on the full-time position. Last year, a roundtable discussion was held for the top ten sports betting operators in the state, but none of them showed up as they did not want to speak to him.

Engaging with Problem Gambling in the United States

With this state-by-state approach, true and accurate figures on problem gambling are hard to come by. Added to this is the looming threat of offshore casinos. In many states, where they are illegal, people simply go to ones based outside the United States. This makes getting a handle on how many people are using them very hard to do.

One study suggested that two-thirds of all bets placed on the Super Bowl were done through illegal offshore bookmakers, showing how huge the issue is. Maynard described stopping them as like playing a game of Whac-a-Mole, but as something that needs to be done.

Underage gambling is one of the main worries, and Maynard has even championed some of the work done by operators and their advertising to combat this. In the state of Massachusetts, gambling under the age of 21 is illegal. He believes that combating this should be the job not just of the regulators, but of the leagues, athletes, and others.

Few other countries are set up like the United States in terms of gambling. Even Brazil, with its similar system, is turning to federal oversight. With so many parties at play in US states, from operators down to First Nations, it seems this is not an issue that will be resolved anytime soon.