Virginia

West Virginia University Hosts Inaugural Responsible Gaming and Digital Entertainment Symposium

Published

10 hours ago

March 18, 2025

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MORGANTOWN, W. Va., March 18, 2025 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — West Virginia University (WVU) made history on Monday by hosting its first-ever Responsible Gaming and Digital Entertainment Symposium.

The event, organized by WVU’s Esports Business and Entertainment Program, brought together distinguished speakers from industry and academia to discuss ethical and responsible growth within esports, sports gambling, and digital entertainment industries.

The symposium was sponsored by Playtech, Continent 8, Play’n Go, IC360, Defy the Odds, and Absolutebet, and featured discussions on key topics such as “Regulation and Research Combine to Create a Safer Environment,” “Consumerism in iGaming, Esports, and Traditional Sports,” and “Women and Underrepresented Populations in Esports, Sports, and Entertainment.”

Krisztina Kalla, Head of Regulatory Affairs and Compliance at Absolutebet, emphasized the importance of the event, stating: “This symposium was the first step of something truly impactful, and we’re excited to continue our partnership with WVU to create many more groundbreaking events. Together, we’re paving the way for a future that introduces students to responsible gambling practices and opens doors to the world of iGaming.”

Kelly Kehn, Founder of Defy the Odds, highlighted the necessity of collaboration between key stakeholders: “What an honor and privilege to join the staff and students at WVU’s inaugural Responsible Gaming and Digital Entertainment Symposium. If we are to create a sustainable industry that creates jobs in our communities and innovation for our customers, collaboration between legislators, educators, and businesses must occur. It was inspiring to participate as WVU leads the way on this front.”

European Gaming Congress 2024 (Warsaw, Poland)

Jeremie Kanter, Director of Regulatory Affairs at Continent 8 Technologies, and David Brace, Principal of Innovation and Technology at Continent 8 Technologies, echoed this sentiment: “It has been a privilege to participate in the inaugural Responsible Gaming and Digital Entertainment Symposium. This initiative marks the beginning of an innovative and impactful approach to leveraging data through a distinctive partnership model that includes the state lottery, industry, and academia, with the purpose of safeguarding and supporting the state’s gaming participants while fostering the growth of the broader entertainment sector.”

Jonathan Doubilet, a key industry participant, praised the event’s collaborative nature: “I was honored to participate in the Responsible Gaming and Digital Entertainment Symposium in West Virginia. The event provided a unique opportunity to bring together industry leaders, scholars, and students to discuss how industry stakeholders can work together to build a sustainable and responsible digital entertainment sector.”

West Virginia Delegate Shawn Fluharty (D-Ohio) was also in attendance to discuss the Responsible Gaming and Researching and Industry Development Act, which was passed during the 2024 legislative session. This legislation allows for the collection of anonymized gambling data to be used for research at WVU. Fluharty expressed his hopes that this initiative will position West Virginia at the forefront of the expanding gaming industry, while providing research opportunities and career pathways for WVU students.

As WVU continues to expand its Esports Business and Entertainment Program, which began offering a Bachelor of Arts degree last year, the university aims to lead the way in responsible gaming research and digital entertainment innovation.

A photo accompanying this announcement is available at https://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/b8381339-0dbf-4a5e-aa51-5552592c02f1

CONTACT: CONTACT Chen Truman
COMPANY Absolutebet
EMAIL: [email protected]
WEB: http://www.absolutebet.com

Fanatics Betting and Gaming

Fanatics Sportsbook Is Live in Virginia

Published

1 year ago

November 22, 2023

GamingAmericas.com

Fanatics Betting and Gaming, a subsidiary of Fanatics Holdings Inc, a global digital sports platform, launched the most rewarding online sportsbook today in Virginia. Sports fans living in and visiting Virginia will be able to download the Fanatics Sportsbook on iOS and Android and begin their Fanatics experience. Virginia marks the seventh state for the Fanatics Sportsbook.

In August 2023, Fanatics Betting and Gaming began acquiring the U.S. Businesses of PointsBet and planning the migration of PointsBet customers to the Fanatics Sportsbook app. In Virginia, each customer’s username, password, account balance, rewards and responsible gaming settings will be automatically migrated to the Fanatics Sportsbook. If you are a PointsBet customer in Virginia, the first step is to download the Fanatics Sportsbook on iOS and Android. Then login using the same email address and password used on PointsBet and any open bets and the balance from your PointsBet account will be available in your new Fanatics Sportsbook account.

This week, customers will be able to take part in Rewards Surge, seven days of big offers to celebrate all the games over Thanksgiving weekend. The Fanatics Sportsbook offers customers up to 5% back in FanCash on bets and is poised to disrupt the sports betting industry by offering the following exciting new features:

Building a better sportsbook: The Fanatics Sportsbook app was built natively on iOS and Android. The design, speed and quality of the navigation experience rival the sports betting apps in the market today that were not built specifically for iOS and Android.
The most rewarding sportsbook: It’s all thanks to FanCash – The Currency of Sport. FanCash, the backbone of the Fanatics loyalty program, can be converted dollar-for-dollar into Bonus Bets and can also be used to purchase your favorite team merchandise at Fanatics.com.
- Earn 5% FanCash on Same Game Parlay (SGP) bets.
- Earn 3% FanCash on parlay bets.
- Earn 1% FanCash on straight bets and odds boosts.
From curated to a more personalized experience: Customers know what they want to bet on, and a sportsbook should know it too. Introducing the Fanatics Sportsbook Discover page with marquee games, trending bets, promos and the rewards you want most. In the near future, the Discover page will be personalized to the customer’s favorite teams, sports and markets.
Search: Search easily for the bet you want and bet directly from the results. The Fanatics Sportsbook offers industry-leading search functionality, including a search bar, recent searches, autocomplete, synonym/alias and deep linking to leagues, events and markets.
Live streaming: The Fanatics Sportsbook, in partnership with Genius Sports Limited, was one of the first legal sportsbooks to launch BetVision, a first-of-its-kind live sports betting product that enables customers to place bets while live streaming select professional football games in the sportsbook app.

The Fanatics Sportsbook is making a profound commitment to the customer with a world-class Help Center, chat experience and knowledgeable agents with 24/7 coverage. Customers will also have access to Responsible Gaming tools to manage their time and money.

AGA

National Skill Game Leader Pace-O-Matic Congratulates United States Casino Industry and American Gaming Association on Best July Ever

Published

1 year ago

September 20, 2023

GamingAmericas.com

national-skill-game-leader-pace-o-matic-congratulates-united-states-casino-industry-and-american-gaming-association-on-best-july-ever

Pace-O-Matic, the industry leader in legal skill games, would like to congratulate the United States casino industry and the American Gaming Association (AGA) on reporting their best July in history.

According to the AGA, the national trade association for the gambling industry, commercial casinos made nearly $5.4 billion in July of this year, up nearly 6% from last year. They AGA also reported that the casino industry will surely have its best year yet in 2023, having made nearly $38 billion since the beginning of the year. That’s an 11% increase over 2022.

Curiously, the casino industry reports record profits month after month while simultaneously touting legal skill games as a hindrance to their revenue. The casinos and AGA have waged a full-scale attack on the skill game industry in several states. Those states include Pennsylvania and Virginia where the AGA notably reported that casinos in those markets helped hit a new monthly record for in-person gambling.

“We may sound like a broken record when we continue to send our congratulatory notes to the casino industry but that’s because they continue to report record profits over and over again,” the Chief Public Affairs Officer for Pace-O-Matic, Mike Barley, said. “We will continue to point out their hypocrisy as long as they continue to attack legal skill games, which are supporting small businesses and fraternal organizations in many states.”

Skill games provide critical revenue to restaurants, bars, taverns, VFW halls and American Legion posts throughout the country. They help struggling mom-and-pop shops afford things like bills, updates and wages in a tough economy. The skill game industry has routinely asked to be regulated in markets and has faced opposition from the casino industry every time.

“We take no issue with the casinos and the evidence shows that we can coexist with them in a regulated market,” said Barley. “But it seems that the casino industry will rest at nothing until they stamp out any perceived competition. Studies have shown that skill games have no impact on casinos and their own financial reports back that up.”

Pace-O-Matic is the leading developer of legally compliant skill games in the United States, creating and marketing fun and exciting games for small businesses and fraternal and social clubs. With games in several markets across the nation, customers enjoy using their skill and patience to win.

Cameron Conn Founder and CEO of OneComply

OneComply’s Clients Drive Adoption by Eight Jurisdictions for Gaming Licensing Investigations

Published

2 years ago

December 6, 2022

GamingAmericas.com

OneComply is pleased to announce that through customer requested engagement, eight jurisdictions are now accessing applicant licensing information shared in our client’s secure OneComply data repository to conduct their investigations, which is a normal part of the licensing process.

Investigators in jurisdictions including Tennessee, Maryland, Colorado, Ohio, Virginia and Indiana have now accessed data that is securely shared with them by OneComply clients, in order to conduct their investigations. The acceptance by regulators of utilizing the OneComply data repository for their investigations ensures a highly secure and efficient process, without using 3rd party file sharing sites.

Background: The gaming licensing investigative process

Virtually every time a company submits a key person or business application for a state gaming license, they’ll receive a request back from the regulator or an investigator to provide additional information to support the application.

Until now, this required the licensing staff to manually begin the process of finding (or asking for) all the requested information, copying the files, organizing them into folders, and then uploading all the information to an external file sharing site like Dropbox. Then they’ll go through the process to provide access to the site for the respective regulator or investigator. In some cases, applicants are asked to mail in sensitive documents to investigators.

Since most, if not all, of the information being requested by a regulator or investigator is already stored inside our client’s OneComply Document Repository, as part of their personal or business disclosure process, the job of organizing and sharing the information from within OneComply is easy, fast and highly secure.

OneComply clients simply create a new folder inside their Document Repository, copy the files already residing in OneComply (while retaining their existing folder structure) and then securely share the folder with the regulator/investigator. Once the investigation is complete, permission to access the share folder is removed, ensuring ongoing data security.

“We’ve always known that what we’re providing to our clients is also a value-add to regulators,” says Cameron Conn, Founder and CEO of OneComply. “Our clients love that we’ve simplified another of their licensing tasks and regulators are also seeing efficiencies in their investigative process. This capability not only centralizes data access for regulators, but reduces exposure to our clients from copying private documents from multiple locations to external file sharing sites. We look forward to more jurisdiction coming onboard to benefit from this important capability.”

“It was such a great surprise realizing we could instantly share our information directly to investigators in OneComply,” says Christopher Kape, Chairman & CEO of Out The Gate, Inc. “This is an important innovation for the industry and provides a direct line for us to share information with the regulator using an extremely simple and secure process.”

OneComply – significant milestones achieved in 2022

2022 has been an exceptional year for OneComply, achieving an impressive growth in customers including some of the world’s top gaming companies while delivering a number of innovative new product features and capabilities to our clients. OneComply also closed a significant financing led by Warner Investments with participation from gaming industry experts including Katie Lever, Benjie Cherniak and Quintin Singleton.

OneComply has received numerous industry accolades in 2022 including winning the VIXIO Gambling Compliance Innovation of the Year and EGR B2B Corporate Services Supplier of the Year; runner-up for the SBC Compliance Solution of the Year, Global Gaming Business Digital Product of the Year and EGR North America Best Product Innovation; plus shortlist recognition for several more important industry awards.