The Martin Lycka Safe Bet Show is back and this time in the hot seat was Lou Rogacki, Deputy Director and Assistant Attorney General at the New Jersey Division of Gaming Enforcement (NJDGE).

In the podcast, Rogacki discussed his experience launching online gaming and sports betting in New Jersey, working alongside former director David Rebuck and the Seton Hall Law School compliance bootcamp.

Launching in New Jersey

In 2013, New Jersey became one of the first states in the US to authorise the launch of a regulated online gaming market.

From making the decision, the NJDGE was given just nine months to launch the new industry and Rogacki described having “lots of sleepless nights” as the department set out the framework for something that “nobody else was doing anywhere in the US”.

He also admitted that the NJDGE accepted it would make mistakes and would need to “tweak and revise” given that it had such a short period of time to prepare for launch.

“We knew we were going to make mistakes and that’s hard for a regulator to admit,” explained Rogacki.

“There was a lot of tweaking and a lot of companies coming in to say, we know you guys are trying to do this and you’re trying to learn, but we’re not sure if you knew about this aspect, And there was that learning process for us. Credit to the former director [David] Rebuck, he was very receptive to that and wanted us to make those adjustments.”

Working with David Rebuck

The launch of online gaming in New Jersey and the subsequent introduction of sports betting in 2018 – following the repeal of PASPA – were overseen by Rebuck, the former Director of the NJDGE.

During the episode, Rogacki recalled the “amazing” experience of working alongside Rebuck, who previously appeared on the Safe Bet Show.

He said: “The things that he accomplished as the director were solely due to his leadership and the fact that he pushed us. He knew that we could get it done and we just needed to be pushed sometimes. His drive and dedication on a daily basis were impressive to sit there and see. 

“It was easy to run through a wall for Dave since he’d usually have run through it before any of us could get to it. He was not someone who just sat there and said, you do this and you go do this.

“He was no-nonsense when it came to addressing every issue that faced the casino industry during his 12 years as director. I learned something from that man every day that I worked with him and I’ll always be indebted to him for having the confidence to pick me in [2016] to be his next deputy director.”

Seton Hall Law School Bootcamp

Towards the end of the episode, the pair discussed the Seton Hall Law School Gaming Law, Compliance, and Integrity Bootcamp, which provides “high quality and robust legal, compliance, and ethics education” to professionals within the gaming space.

Both Rogacki and Lycka were part of the initial advisory board that founded the initiative and Rogacki explained that it is something “near and dear” to him.

He added: “The people that I have the most interaction with on a day-to-day basis are compliance people and good compliance people are sometimes hard to find and very underappreciated within their own organisations. They’re viewed as the no people, which doesn’t put them in a popular spot,

“But they’re people that speak the same language a lot of the time as the regulator but they’re coming at it from a business perspective. This bootcamp was set up as a way to bring all those people together and exchange ideas. It has a lot of panel sessions but they’re all geared towards compliance issues and regulators dealing with operators and having that interaction.”