The Martin Lycka Safe Bet Show has returned, and this time in the hot seat is Valerie Spicer, Founding Partner at Trilogy Group and former Executive Director of the Arizona Gaming Association.
To begin the episode Spicer recapped some of her earlier career in tribal gaming and also spoke about some of the complexities of the sector given that tribal compacts can vary greatly between states.
She said: “When you want to come into the industry and work in tribal gaming, you should understand before you go talk to anybody that every tribe is a government and every state is unique. There are a lot of layers in tribal gaming that there are not in commercial gaming.
“Tribal gaming has three layers of regulatory oversight. There is the tribal regulator, who’s the primary regulator, the state and then the federal government. The dynamics state by state, government by government and tribe by tribe can be varied and it’s important to research that before you advance any ideas of wanting to do business or offering a product.”
Given that this is the Safe Bet Show, the discussion quickly turned to responsible gambling.
Spicer was complimentary of efforts made by organisations to put an increased focus on responsible gambling as the sector grows in the US.
She said: “We can’t move forward and expand without also keeping an eye on [responsible gaming] as well because the health of our industry is critical to the future of it and its perception to people.
“I’m glad to see that more companies are creating policies and programs, as well as the groups that have gathered together to help promote it. I think that we need to take lessons from the European market where the growth went so fast and the responsible gambling efforts didn’t keep up with it.”
Several industry-led groups on problem gambling have been established in recent times. One of the most prominent is the Responsible Online Gaming Association (ROGA), which was founded by some of the most high-profile US operators, including DraftKings, Fanatics Betting and Gaming and FanDuel.
Despite the positives of an increased focus on responsible gaming, both Lycka and Spicer agreed that there is a risk that having several different organisations may hinder the overall cohesion of responsible gaming efforts.
“On one hand you want to say this is great that you’re focusing on this, but on the other hand I just feel like we need a collaborative, cohesive approach,” explained Spicer.
“When you have so many separate viewpoints and so many different aspects going towards something, you might lose the strength of the collective. Not only that but there’s the dollars that it takes and the resources that are needed.
“When you have groups breaking off to create organisations do you risk the fact that you may be weakening another organisation? I don’t know, but I’ll be interested to see. I would just like to see that there would be a unified effort and that we don’t spread thin the opportunity that we’re all trying to achieve.”
Spicer, who sits on the advisory board of the National Council on Problem Gambling (NCPG), finished by saying that she hopes the different organisations will feed into the NCPG as she believes there needs to be a “national voice that is known and respected on the hill that can go up there and speak to issues and to what’s happening out there”.
