The Arizona Department of Gaming released its draft sports betting and daily fantasy rules Tuesday, a day later than planned. The proposed sports betting rules are 13 pages and are missing at least some key elements, including how much an operator, vendor, or supplier will pay to be licensed in the state.
Stakeholders are surprised by the brevity and lack of information available in the draft, which is open for public comment. The six-day public comment period closes on June 21, and then the ADG will begin to review and incorporate changes or additions into the proposed regulations with an eye still toward launching operators for sports betting on the first day of the NFL season, Sept. 9.
The ADG will hold two three-hour virtual sessions per day Friday and Monday to hear public comment, including from stakeholders. The Event Wagering session begins at 9 a.m. local time Friday, followed by a session on Daily Fantasy Sports, set for 1 p.m. The schedule will be reversed on Monday.
Event wagering has broad definition
Arizona’s draft rules are significantly shorter than those in most other states. For example, Wyoming’s draft rules check in at 70 pages, and Washington State’s took up 32 pages of the latest Washington State Gambling Commission’s meeting packet.
Arizona’s draft rules include key sections from definitions to internal controls to licensing, though in the licensing section, the fees for most licenses are blank. The ADG does outline six license levels, but does not address either application or licensing fees.
The draft rules offer a broad definition for “event wagering:”
“Event Wager” means a wager on sports events or other events, portions of sports events or other events, the individual performance statistics of athletes in a sports event or combination of sports events or the individual performance of individuals in other events or a combination of other events through any system or method of wagering.
As written into the law, Arizona could be one of a handful of states that will ultimately offer wagering on the Academy Awards or other awards in cinema and music. According to the statute, event wagering includes professional, college, and Olympic events.
The proposed rules appear to allow each of the 20 brick-and-mortar entities eligible for a license will be entitled to one online skin, or platform. There will also be 10 limited licenses available for retail-only wagering at horse racetracks and OTBs.
Other key points:
- Credit cards will not be accepted to fund player accounts
- Servers must be located in the state and cloud backup is permitted, but only upon approval of the ADG
- The rules appear to require the use of official league data, but allow operators to request to use a “non-exclusive” data source
- Proxy betting is prohibited
- Operators will be permitted to offer “tournaments,” like March Madness pools.
