STATE HOUSE NEWS SERVICE
MORE THAN 400,000 mobile sports betting accounts were active during the first three days online was available in Massachusetts and more than 8 million transactions took place, making Massachusetts the fifth busiest mobile betting state in the country last weekend.
GeoComply, a vendor that provides the Gaming Commission with geolocation and fraud detection services, said Tuesday that it recorded 406,437 unique player accounts and 8.1 million “geolocation transactions” last weekend across the six mobile operators that went live in the Bay State on Friday. In-person betting began at the end of January, but mobile betting is expected to quickly become the dominant method of sports wagering here.
The company said it also prevented more than 5,000 transactions from “devices or accounts with a known history of fraud, saving its customers tens of thousands of dollars.”
“Today, one of the biggest challenges facing operators is onboarding genuine players and keeping out fraudsters,” Lindsay Slader, GeoComply’s senior vice president of compliance, said. “With the gold standard of geolocation in place and an experienced team of experts, we are uniquely positioned to lead the fight against fraud in all its forms.”
Only New Jersey, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and New York recorded more sports betting activity over the weekend, GeoComply said, though it noted that the data it included in a press release “does not purport to be definitive or represent the entire market in Massachusetts or any other jurisdictions but is intended to provide general insights into relevant market dynamics.”
GeoComply is also providing the Massachusetts Gaming Commission with video and tech equipment valued at nearly $1,300 so the commission can install a screen displaying sports betting geolocation data in real time in the public lobby of its downtown Boston headquarters.
Commission Executive Director Karen Wells said last week that the display “will show where all the — live and in real time — bets are being placed on mobile sports wagering, phones, and other devices … so that staff, commissioners and the public who will be coming into public meetings at some point in the near future can see the operation.”