Tennessee Sports Betting Fines: BetMGM's $25K Penalty
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00:00All right, so some violations and some fines given out in Tennessee.
00:07I saw this story on Legal Sports Report a few days ago.
00:11And it's pertaining, Jim, if I'm not mistaken, the fines are during a soccer and pertaining
00:16to fines on specific penalties.
00:19You're going to have to tell us a little bit more about how that works.
00:22And, you know, I sort of can, I mean, I guess I can kind of understand how the sportsbook
00:25operators may not have the familiarity as much and the regulators with betting on penalties
00:30and things like that.
00:32So how did this all happen?
00:33Why did they get fined?
00:34And specifically, is it just because of them having penalties available on their sportsbook
00:39to bet on?
00:40Yeah, that's essentially it, Craig.
00:42And, you know, as you know, each state has kind of different approved wagers and things
00:47that customers are allowed to bet on.
00:50So in Tennessee, betting on the number of penalties given out in a soccer match is a
00:57prohibited wager.
00:59For BetMGM, that option was available to players in Tennessee, and several of them worked those
01:06bets into same game parlays on some recent soccer matches.
01:10And Tennessee sports betting regulators slapped BetMGM with a $25,000 fine for doing so.
01:18Two other operators were fined for allowing excluded players to deposit and access their
01:27account and place bets.
01:29That was Action 24-7 and ESPN bet.
01:34Action 24-7 was fined $18,000, and ESPN bet had two violations that were, you know, involving
01:44excluded players.
01:45One was sending marketing materials to players on that self-exclusion list, and another was
01:52allowing a self-excluded player to access their account.
01:56And, you know, all told, those two violations cost ESPN bet about $12,000.
02:01Now, what I found interesting was, you know, again, just how each state sort of has the
02:07different approved and allowable bet types and things you can wager on.
02:14Tennessee also does have, you know, pretty strict fines for these violations.
02:19I've covered several other state regulatory fine stories over the last couple of months,
02:26and Tennessee's did seem to be the most expensive.
02:29And if you recall, a couple of months ago, we talked, Craig, about some Indiana sports
02:34betting violations also involving some self-excluded players, also including BetMGM, as a matter
02:42of fact.
02:43And that was only a couple of thousand dollars.
02:45So not rising to the same level of, you know, financial, you know, the same financial level
02:53as they are in Tennessee, but, you know, across the industry landscape, Tennessee sports betting
03:00regulators do issue probably some of the steepest penalties for these violations.