New York regulators threaten sportsbooks over problem gambling data

Brian O'Dwyer had a message for nine licensed operators when he finished the vote on Friday, and it was not subtle. Share the data on problem gamblers across your platforms, or the New York State Gaming Commission will build a solution you will not like.

The specific problem O'Dwyer named is structural. A customer restricted by one sportsbook for problem gambling behavior can walk to the next licensed operator and start again. The nine licensees — Bally Bet, BetMGM, Caesars, DraftKings, Fanatics, FanDuel, Resorts World Bet, Rush Street Interactive, and theScore — each hold their customer data separately. The restriction does not travel with the person.

This is the kind of gap that looks like a compliance technicality until it produces a visible harm. At that point it produces legislation. O'Dwyer is signaling that the Commission intends to move before the harm is the story.

The AI restriction the Commission advanced alongside the problem gambling rule follows New Jersey's model: not a prohibition, but a boundary. Sportsbooks and their vendors cannot use algorithmic profiling, machine learning, or generative systems to personalize promotions, odds, betting limits, or product recommendations based on customer data. The proposal goes back for public comment before a final vote, which means the industry still has a window to shape the language. That window has a visible closing time.

The two proposals together form something more coherent than a regulatory checklist. What O'Dwyer is building is an argument: that the industry's self-described commitment to responsible gambling has to be demonstrated through shared infrastructure, not individual operator programs. The data-sharing requirement is where that argument has teeth. An operator can run its own responsible gambling program and remain genuinely indifferent to what happens to a restricted customer at a competitor's platform. O'Dwyer is trying to end that indifference by making it a licensing matter.

The consensus read on this is that the proposals are Governor Hochul's consumer protection politics arriving at the regulatory level — announced in her State of the State program in March, now moving through the formal process. That reading is not wrong, but it underweights what the Commission is actually attempting. Cross-operator data sharing on at-risk bettors is not a standard regulatory ask. It requires operators to build a shared infrastructure they have no competitive incentive to build, on a timeline they did not set. The industry's response to that requirement — not its response to the AI rule, which is manageable — is the variable that determines whether this ends with a Commission-imposed solution or an industry-negotiated one.