Wondr Nation CEO Anika Howard on Digital Gaming: With Growth Comes Responsibility

Wondr Nation CEO Anika Howard on Digital Gaming: With Growth Comes Responsibility

Compliance. Mandates. Standards. Regulatory expectations. Those are just a few of the words that come to mind when the gambling industry starts talking about responsible gaming. We often see it presented as a cautionary tale while being relegated to the fine print of marketing and product design.

But Anika Howard, President and CEO of Wondr Nation, talks about it differently. She believes the industry sometimes treats its most important safety feature like a movie character written into the script, only to later be pushed into the background.

“I feel like with responsible gaming, it’s like, you’re putting baby in a corner,” she told CasinoBeats during a wide-ranging interview about what responsible gaming should look like at a time when the casino experience is increasingly digital, and we can carry a sportsbook in our pockets.

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Former CFTC Regulator Carl Kennedy on Prediction Markets, Insider Trading & Federal Oversight

Former CFTC Regulator Carl Kennedy on Prediction Markets, Insider Trading & Federal Oversight

With cease-and-desist orders flying, lawsuits piling up, state regulators and tribal gaming leaders pushing back, and a public still trying to figure out what exactly the fight is all about, prediction markets are now front and center in one of the most contentious legal battles over jurisdiction in recent years.

Watching it all unfold, it’s hard not to reach the conclusion that prediction markets currently sit in a legal no-man’s-land. To some, they’re nothing more than gambling. To others, they’re legitimate financial contracts.

That was the backdrop when CasinoBeats spoke with Carl Kennedy about the legal tug-of-war over prediction markets and what comes next. Kennedy is a partner and co-chair of Financial Markets and Regulation at Katten and a former regulator at the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) who was a primary drafter of several rules implementing the Dodd-Frank Act.

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Bloomberg’s Stake Report on Drake Raises More Questions Than It Answers

Bloomberg’s Stake Report on Drake Raises More Questions Than It Answers

When Bloomberg Businessweek’s article on Stake dropped on February 27, it attracted a lot of attention because it seemed to prove something many who’d watched Drake’s streams believed: there was no way all those jackpots lighting up the streams were just a normal run of good luck.

And for many reading the article, what Bloomberg said proved their suspicions were correct: the rapper and his fellow Kick star Adin Ross were hitting impossibly lucky jackpots on the crypto casino’s in-house slot.
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