Meta recently announced a change to its rules for gambling advertising. Attorneys general have recently more vigorously defended their states’ legal gambling markets from unregulated. Still, ads from offshore or nonexistent websites mimicking actual legal casinos continue to jam the social media feeds of most anyone who searches for gambling content online.
In West Virginia, it’s often Wheeling Island Casino, which caught the attention of state Del. Shawn Fluharty, who represents the district where that casino resides. iGaming is legal in West Virginia, but the ad in question eventually routes to an offshore website.
In Florida, where the Seminole Tribe owns a virtual monopoly on gambling, but online casino isn’t legal, fake ads for an online Hard Rock casino are ubiquitous. There are even individual versions for the Seminoles’ Tampa and Hollywood, Florida, Hard Rock properties. But enough clicks eventually take an ill-informed gambler to a website ending with “.ag,” as in Antigua and Barbuda.
Attorneys general should be involved, Brian Kane, executive director of the National Association of Attorneys General, said on Thursday at the National Council of Legislators from Gaming States Summer Meeting. But the casinos should be on point, he said.
“So is this essentially a counterfeiting sort of thing?” Kane asked initially when informed of the practice. “So, I think that this is one of those areas where AGs have some authority within this space from a consumer protection perspective, but they may not have as much authority as folks just going out and protecting their brand on these sorts of things. And counterfeiting is an issue across the spectrum.”
Kane said it behooves casino companies to help shut down these sites, because they ultimately suffer the consequences.
“If somebody goes out and they respond to a Wheeling Casino ad and they don’t get paid on their bet, or they figure out that it’s a rigged system and their money just disappears, the challenge isn’t that those folks are going to blame the fraud. They’re going to blame Wheeling because they’re like, ‘Well, this is your thing.’ And it’s the same thing if I get fake Viagra and it doesn’t work. I’m not going to say, ‘Oh, I got fake Viagra.’ I’m going to say, ‘Pfizer doesn’t know what they’re doing with Viagra.'”
Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul said his state is prepared to work in conjunction with aggrieved casinos.
“I’d say they’ve got a lot of capacity to be able to see that this is happening and to hopefully go after them civilly,” he told InGame. “ But our recurring theme is our Consumer Fraud and Deceptive Practices Act. That falls squarely within the umbrella of that authority.
“If it’s happening in Florida, it’s happening in other states. And so frequently, while it might not be the same casino, if they’re doing it to one, they’re probably doing it to a different brand in another state.”
Meaning casinos need to do some of the hard work in conjunction with AGs.
“The best thing that you can do is to take action to protect your brand and have a relationship that allows you to report that to work with an agent’s office in those scenarios,” Kane said.
