Responses to complaints

Regulation: The permit holder must respond in writing within 15 days to any complaint “about any aspect of the sports betting program.” The permit holder is also required to state “with specificity” reasons for denial of any relief. (11 VAC 5-80-30(B))

Comment: We recommend limiting the types of complaints that an operator must respond to within 15 days to only those related to wagering transactions, instead of “any aspect of the sports betting program.”

Age verification

Regulation: The draft rules authorize five ways to remotely verify a patron’s age. (11 VAC 5-80-50) 

Comment: We request that a sixth option be added: Verifying the patron’s name, address, date of birth, and Social Security number against databases of such information.

Information sharing with third parties

Regulation: The proposed regulation prohibits sharing information that could be used to personally identify a sports bettor with any third party, except the Department, law enforcement with a warrant or subpoena or a credit-reporting agency. (11 VAC 5-80-100(B))

Comment: Please note that sports betting operators have vendors with whom patron’s names, phone numbers, addresses, and email addresses are shared in order to effectively market the operators’ sports wagering products.  We would like to seek confirmation that such activity complies with the proposed regulations.

Honoring withdrawal requests

Regulation: The sports betting permit holder is required to honor a patron’s request to withdraw funds, unless the operator has good-faith belief that the patron has engaged in fraud or some other violation. (11 VAC 5-80-100(E)(5))

Comment: It appears that the number of days is missing from the draft regulation: “The permit holder shall honor any sports bettor’s request to withdraw funds by the later of __ days after receipt of the request or….”  In our view, three days would be acceptable.

Attempts to create multiple accounts

Regulation: The proposed rules require a permit holder to implement and prominently publish procedures to terminate accounts of a sports bettor who creates more than one username or more than one account. The procedures may allow the sports bettor to retain one account, provided that the permit holder investigates and makes a good faith determination that the sports bettor's conduct was not intended to commit fraud or otherwise evade the law. (11 VAC 5-80-110(C))

Comment: To ensure accounts are held by unique sports bettors, we recommend that the Lottery Board develop commercially and technologically reasonable procedures that uniformly apply to all operators.  We also suggest deleting the duty to investigate each case in which a sports bettor creates more than one account.  There are non-nefarious reasons for which a patron might create multiple accounts, e.g., a forgotten password or forgetting that an account already exists.

Proxy servers

Regulation: A permit holder must not allow a sports bettor to use a proxy server for the purpose of misrepresenting his location in order to engage in sports betting. (11 VAC 5-80-110(D))

Comment: We suggest changing the provision to “A permit holder shall take commercially and technologically reasonable measures to prevent a sports bettor from using a proxy server….”