- The commission’s lead recommendation would compel operators to surrender anonymized player-level wagering data for independent analysis.
- An in-game betting ban appears in the report as two hedged sentences under its lesser, more immediate measures.
- Pennsylvania booked a record $6.39 billion in gaming revenue in fiscal 2024-25, with iGaming supplying nearly 39 percent.
- The Gaming Control Board’s own problem-gambling rulemaking is open for public comment until Aug. 10.
HARRISBURG – The Pennsylvania Joint State Government Commission’s July staff study on sports betting names one recommendation as its “deliberate” measure: requiring licensed operators to hand over anonymized player-level transactional data to an independent party for analysis.
The Recommendation the Report Ranks First
The commission separates its proposals into one “deliberate” measure and a set of “more immediate” ones. The deliberate measure is data.
Actual player data from licensees “should be collected, anonymized and independently evaluated to distinguish the more harmful offerings from the less harmful offerings,” the study states, and the analysis “must be conducted by a party independent from operators or any entity with a vested interest in its outcome.”
The commission points to two templates already in statute or in progress. Colorado added Colo. Rev. Stat. section 44-30-1507.5, which will require sports betting operators to submit all anonymized transactional data and metrics to the state Division of Gaming, which reports on it every three years.
Massachusetts Senate Bill 302 would route operator customer-tracking data through a nonprofit research entity, with each wager flagged as pre-game, in-game or parlay.
Pennsylvania House Bill 2557 carries a similar research section for skill games.
The case for the mandate rests on how few concentration figures exist. British researchers who examined a year of transactional data from 140,000 online accounts found the top 10 percent of customers supplied 79 percent of operator revenue and the top 5 percent just over two-thirds.
France’s regulator, using a 23-indicator algorithm across all licensed player accounts, identified problem gamblers as 8.7 percent of registered players, accounting for 60 percent of gross gaming revenue. Commission staff wrote that they found only two published reports using actual player data that disclose how much revenue a precise share of gamblers generates.
In-Game Betting Gets Two Sentences
The report’s treatment of a live-betting prohibition is brief and conditional. In-game bets “might be the most problematic wagers and these could be prohibited,” it states, reasoning that speed of play can indicate problem gambling and that betting on every pitch may be more harmful than betting a game total. It adds that parlays “tend to be terrible bets but probably do not impact the speed of play the same way that the in-game bets do.”
The passage sits under “More Immediate Recommendations,” which the commission itself describes as protecting gamblers but diminishing revenue “less precisely than the deliberate recommendation.”
Companion items in that section are a uniform credit card deposit ban, mandatory rather than optional self-limits on losses, session length and deposit counts, a ban on logged-off promotional offers, and curtailment of VIP programs. The credit card proposal would harmonize a prohibition that already covers slot play but not interactive accounts under 58 Pa. Code section 812a.7. Senate Bill 265 would enact that change.
The study puts in-play wagering at more than 40 percent of national sports betting handle, and notes DraftKings expanded its live betting options from 124 per game in 2022 to 517 per game in 2025. No two states treat those products alike, a split the US sports betting laws run through state by state.
The Revenue Base
The Gaming Control Board reported record revenue of nearly $6.4 billion from legal gambling in fiscal 2024-25, of which $2.48 billion was iGaming and $487.6 million was sports wagering. iGaming revenue rose 27.09 percent from the prior fiscal year, while every other category moved between a 3.04 percent decline for retail table games and a 0.7 percent increase for video gaming terminals. The report attributes the upward trend in total gaming revenue to iGaming alone.
That growth is the base any restriction would cut into, and it is concentrated in the online product Pennsylvania sportsbook apps have expanded fastest. The state’s annual Interactive Gaming Assessment, prepared by Penn State researchers and cited in the study, found that between 17 percent and 30 percent of Pennsylvania adults gambled online in the past year. More than half of calls to the state gambling helpline specifically mention online gambling as the most problematic form.
House Resolution 60 of 2025 directed the commission to produce the study and to recommend methods of further regulating the industry.
The Rulemaking With a Deadline
The study is advisory and carries no legal force. The Gaming Control Board’s own proposed rulemaking does. Regulation 125-258 amends chapters 501a, 503a, 609a, 812a, 814a, 815a, 1118a, 1208a and 1209a, covering compulsive and problem gambling requirements, casino self-exclusion, credit and interactive gaming player accounts. It was published in the Pennsylvania Bulletin on July 11.
Public comment runs 30 days from publication and closes Aug. 10. The Independent Regulatory Review Commission may then file comments for 30 days after that close, the next dates on the calendar for legal sports betting rulemaking in the state. The commission wrote that regardless of which recommendations are fulfilled, the board’s proposed amendments “would likely advance its efforts to address this problem as well.”
The board’s package covers expanded self-limit options, account suspension for up to a year, marketing opt-outs, monthly licensee reporting on self-limiting and self-exclusion activity, and a formal rule on advertising exposed to majority-underage audiences.
