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Research Review on GamblingNews
Alyssa Komal
School of Sport, Tourism, and Hospitality Management
THM 3328: Gaming and Casino Management
Dr. Wes Roehl
May 2025
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The content I chose to review was the casino section of Gambling News
(gamblingnews.com). After reviewing the “About us” section, I gained more insight into the
organization and its vision for the articles published under the name. Gambling News prides
itself on being “The World’s Trusted Gambling Authority,” featuring accurate, reliable news on
the gaming industry. They primarily focus on online gaming, but I did come across a multitude
of articles that were more general to gaming laws or brick and mortar casinos. From the
perspective of a young hospitality professional, it is important that the industry news we are
consuming is accurate, as false perceptions can seep into the workplace and have negative
effects.
One interesting feature of the website is that the casino section shows live updated ratings
on online casinos from a scale of one to five. By clicking on these ratings, users can learn crucial
information about the company and details needed to play the games. For example, minimum
deposit, payout speed, bonuses, and number of games are outlined. In addition, more specific
information like country of license, years of operation, and restricted countries are also listed
further down. These can be incredibly powerful tools for industry professionals, especially
having all comparable information for popular online casinos available on one site. This can be
valuable to compare one's own company and services to the industry standard and get an idea of
how the bigger industry firms operate. Other pages on the site also display information for top
online poker rooms, e-sportsbooks, and the slots page features an online slot developer of the
month.
Many of the articles tend to cover topics related to legal affairs within the gaming
industry. More specifically, I found that there were many articles covering industry-related
policy progression, relevant court cases, and uncovered scandals within the hospitality industry.
These are all extremely valuable as hospitality professionals, and much more so to this group
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rather than an average consumer of hospitality or gaming services. These topics offer insight into
the implications of actually running a business, and real-world examples of what not to do.
The monitoring of policy progression is applied to a worldwide scale, with articles
describing government action from countless legal jurisdictions. From my research, I found an
article outlining a proposed new tax plan for online gambling in the United Kingdom. This is
especially interesting, seeing as online gambling organizations have more flexibility to where
they can set their home country as, so these country-specific policies are even more important.
Another example was an effort by the Rhode Island government to criminalize underage online
gaming. This is an especially hard policy to monitor, seeing as individuals are able to engage in
the games from their own home, decreasing the amount of possible security. It is unknown if
stricter policies on underage online gambling will have any significant impacts on revenue, so
monitoring this as it goes along will be important for hospitality professionals involved in online
gaming. In addition to this, if the policy does go through, there is the possibility that it will be
adopted by other states in the future. Therefore, seeing how the public reacts and how online
gaming organizations are impacted early on is key to understanding the future of the industry if
this is implemented on a larger scale.
As for relevant court cases and scandals, these are significant for industry professionals to
further understand the limitations and implications of the law. For example, one article covers a
lawsuit between a New Jersey gambler and MGM Resorts. He argues that MGM targeted his
gambling addiction, sending him frequent promotions for their online gambling websites,
BetMGM and Borgata, to profit off his addiction. He lost over $24 million US dollars between
2019 and 2020. The federal appeals court decided MGM Resorts was not at fault for the man’s
losses, which signifies a great win for the gaming industry. This shows that the casinos are not
legally held at fault for the losses of gambling addicts and are not considered catalysts in their
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self-destructive behavior. According to the US Court, the fault and losses are to the individual,
seeing as the casinos are upfront about the odds and potential for loss with the individuals. This
removes any ethical responsibility tied to legal action for casinos and puts all the responsibility
on the individual engaging in the gambling.
From these articles and news reports, a hospitality professional can gain endless
information and insight on current, relevant industry trends and information. From this website
particularly, legal updates and court cases are among the plentitude of information available.
This knowledge will help readers understand how to successfully run their business while
minimizing logistic mistakes and learning from examples in the industry.
