Massachusetts Gaming Commission holds Boston Encore Harbor adjudicatory hearing

Boston Encore Harbor (EBH) has been deemed to have accepted unauthorised wagers on a basketball game on 2 February 2023.

Massachusetts Gaming Commission holds Boston Encore Harbor adjudicatory hearing

On 2 February 2023, EBH notified GAN it had mistakenly offered wagering on an unauthorised event.

This was specifically the Boston College BC vs Notre Dame College women’s basketball game. The error occurred because the NCAA women’s basketball was omitted from the prohibited games list.

EBH uses GAN technology to provide event management with regards to sports betting events.

GAN placed blocks on any Massachusetts school that was flagged as unauthorised by WynnBet. The list is used to stop any games from prohibited schools being applied into the system.

However, the blocks were not applied to this specific women’s basketball team.

Upon learning the mistake, EBH froze the ticket and voided this leg of the parlay, as the game had not taken place yet.

Rob Lekites, Vice President of GAN, explained that there were two names for Boston College in the system, which meant only one was blacklisted. One was called Boston College, the other was Boston College Eagles.

He also explained that GAN has since implemented additional names for teams, in case slightly different names are used for the teams. This will be a safeguard against this happening in the future.

The automatic system has also been changed to a manual one, where an employee from WynnBet has to physically allow bets to happen for each new event.

He also explained that the company would usually use code to blacklist names, but due to the short turnaround time of completing the task the day before going live, it was done manually.

Jacqui Krum, SVP and General Counsel for EBH, said: “We regret offering wagering on the Boston College basketball game.”

This section of the proceeds has now concluded and the issue will be deliberated in private.

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