There are bad bills. And then there are bills that will have the exact opposite effect intended by the legislator who penned the bad bill to begin with.
There’s one of those in my home state of New Jersey right now. And I can fix it with a single word.
I’m like David Copperfield over here.
Or maybe Willy Wonka is the better reference: Strike that, reverse it.
May I direct your attention to Assembly Bill 4003, sponsored by a trio of New Jersey Democrats — Assemblymen Dan Hutchinson, Cody Miller, and Michael Venezia.
The current summary reads thusly: “Prohibits sports wagering licensee from offering incentive-based wagering to anyone utilizing responsible gaming mechanisms.”
In short: Use RG tools, receive no more bonuses or free spins or bet boosts.
Here’s how I would change the bill. Remember, one word. I’ll capitalize, italicize, and highlight it for those of you reading with one eye while getting rid of your RG tools with the other: “Prohibits sports wagering licensee from offering incentive-based wagering to anyone NOT utilizing responsible gaming mechanisms.”
Honestly, that’s a better bill. That’s a good bill. That’s a smart bill. Incentivize people to sign up for RG tools before they blow through four figures playing Lucky Larry’s Lobstermania Slingo (can you even imagine?!?).
But as currently written? The bill is simple: Anyone who signs up for any responsible gambling tool, whether it be through an operator or the state itself, will be banned from getting any “promotional credits, incentives, bonuses, complimentaries, or similar benefits.”
To be abundantly clear: Be a responsible gambler in New Jersey, you won’t get any extras from the books and casinos. Be an irresponsible gambler, receive all the bonus offers you can get.
“I’m a fan of mandatory responsible gaming tools that you can opt out of if you choose,” said fellow New Jersey gambler Capt. Jack Andrews. “However, even better is rewarding people for choosing to be responsible.”
Smoke and fire
I’ve been trying to come up with a comparison on how ridiculous this bill is, and let me tell you: It ain’t easy, mostly because it’s so ridiculous.
But imagine taking a defensive driving course, and as a direct result, your insurance doubles. Imagine telling the bartender you’re the designated driver, and as a direct result the cost of your Coke triples. Put a smoke detector in your house? Great, but now as a result the fire department won’t come to help when there’s a fire.
See? Ridiculous, but they all follow the same pattern: Do something preventative, and get whacked for it.
Which is why I can see myself spending an annoying — and potentially dangerous — afternoon taking every responsible gambling tool off every single New Jersey gambling app.
Deposit limits? I have them at nearly every sportsbook and casino, and I would be taking them off. Time limits? Gone. Bet limits? Nevermore. Farewell, responsible gambling.
This bill — without my NOT — would punish people for being responsible. It would take people like me, who love their bonuses and who have their RG tools set because it’s the prudent thing to do, and force them to drop the RG tools.
And it’s already sailed through one committee. The Democrats control the legislature and the governor’s office, so I would expect this insanity could actually, maybe get signed into law.
RG madness
I’m not the only one who thinks this is backward. I called up Keith Whyte, who runs Safer Gambling Strategies and has spent a career working on problem gambling issues.
He had a better analogy than I did.
“Responsible gambling tools are for everyone and should be seen like the equivalent of a seatbelt,” Whyte told me. “Seatbelts aren’t only for bad drivers. Seatbelts are for all drivers.”
Whyte also pointed out something I hadn’t considered: The bill doesn’t just punish responsible gamblers. It punishes responsible operators.
“The stated goal of many companies like FanDuel is to have all their customers using responsible gambling tools,” he said, “which would mean they would be then prohibited from offering these sort of promotions to their entire customer base. The more responsible the operator is, the more competitive disadvantage they face.”
The better an operator is at getting customers onto RG tools, the fewer customers they would be allowed to market to. The less responsible the operator, the bigger the marketing pool. That’s the math this bill creates.
Whyte landed on my one-word fix without me even pitching it to him.
“Customers who are using RG tools are demonstrating they’re at lower risk,” he said. “And so, therefore, they are perhaps more eligible for bonuses. I absolutely believe you should be incentivizing your customers to use the RG tools. I think it’s a great idea to give someone a bonus for setting a deposit limit or watching an RG video.”
So that’s two of us. Plus Capt. Jack. Plus, presumably, anyone who reads this bill and thinks about it for more than 12 seconds.
But not the legislator
Which brings me to Assemblyman Hutchinson, who I called up to pitch my one-word fix.
He demurred. Said we were “diametrically opposed” on this one.
Here’s his thinking: If someone signs up for an RG tool, they’ve taken a step toward recognizing they have an issue. And once they’ve taken that step, the industry shouldn’t be allowed to lure them back with bonuses.
“If somebody takes a step toward recognizing that they have a problem,” he told me, “then the gambling industry has to take note of that and not try and overcome their will.”
He compared it to binge drinking. Wake up Monday morning, regret the weekend, call Alcoholics Anonymous. To Hutchinson, signing up for a deposit limit is the gambling version of that phone call.
I told him that’s not why I set my RG limits. I set them like I buy beer at the liquor store instead of Everclear; not because I have a problem, but to make sure I don’t develop one. Preventative, not reactive. (And still a lousy analogy, because there’s really nothing in the world that fits this situation.)
Anyway, he wasn’t buying it. As he sees it, using the tools is the line — put your photo on the door of the bar (his analogy) and you’re off-limits. Short of that, the industry can market to you. But my flip — making RG tool users the only ones eligible for bonuses — he called “extreme.”
I told him the bill, if passed, will cause people like me to strip our RG tools off just to keep the bonuses flowing. His response?
“Those are the people who don’t need it then,” he said. “But the people who do need it are going to be protected, and they’re going to keep them on.”
The guy who wrote the bill is admitting it will push some responsible gamblers to remove their guardrails. He just figures those people didn’t really need the guardrails anyway. Which is nonsense, because every single gambler knows tilt is never far away.
My fix, modesty aside, is brilliant. One word. NOT. That’s all it would take. And then you actually have a bill engineered to prevent problem gambling instead of a bill that punishes responsibility.
You get the smoke detector and the fire department.
