COMPLIANCE TECHNOLOGY
T he online gaming industry – encompassing everything from sports betting and iGaming to digital lotteries, sweepstakes and skill-based competitions – faces a uniquely complex and fast-evolving regulatory environment. Operators need to navigate myriad jurisdictional requirements, ensure that only authorized players gain access, and do so without compromising user experience or profitability. A cornerstone of meeting these challenges lies in deploying a robust, future-forward geolocation solution. Such a system not only ensures compliance and mitigates fraud, it can also drive higher revenues by welcoming legitimate players with fewer false positives and improve operational efficiency by automating critical checks. Yet, not all geolocation technologies are created equal. To truly excel in this space, a solution must go beyond simple IP checks or even GPS confirmation. Today’s cutting-edge platforms integrate multiple sensor streams from mobile devices, employ machine learning and AI-driven fraud detection, and also provide fully automated checks permitting operators validate with confidence a player’s location critical to their regulatory compliance. The end result is a seamless, secure, compliant and profitable gaming environment. Navigating the regulatory quagmire with ease Online betting’s compliance landscape is a labyrinth of local, state, and/or national regulations. Every jurisdiction will allow certain forms of entertainment, be it sports betting, iCasino, iLottery, DFS, sweepstakes and/or skill-based games; another might require that betting can only happen from their country or region; yet another might require highly granular player verification before a single wager can be placed. For operators, missteps can be very costly, inviting fines, license revocations, reputational damage, and losing marketing budgets. By integrating a sophisticated and innovative geolocation platform, operators can meet these regulatory demands with confidence. The system ensures that only players in authorized regions gain access to real-money games, while those outside
the permitted area are automatically blocked. This protects operators from non-compliance risks and, crucially, saves time and resources that might otherwise go into manual verifications or dispute resolutions. Superior geolocations technology can also help ensure jurisdictions are not losing tax revenue unnecessarily. Maximizing revenue by reducing false positives While compliance is critical, it is by no means the end of the story. Operators must also ensure that legitimate players can place wagers without unnecessary friction. Less precise systems often rely on too-few data points – like IP addresses or approximated geolocation data – leading to false positives where legitimate, paying customers are turned away. Each denied bet or blocked spin represents lost revenue, a frustrating player experience and a potential recruit for the unregulated market. Enter multi-sensor geolocation capabilities: Advanced solutions from providers like Xpoint don’t simply check where a device claims to be, they integrate multiple factor sources of truth. GPS coordinates are validated against Wi-Fi access points, cellular data, and even environmental cues obtained from the user’s smartphone. The result is a high-accuracy location determination that dramatically reduces false positives. Fewer frustrated users equals more steady play, more bets placed, and, ultimately, more revenue for operators and state jurisdictions. This makes for regulatory serendipity. Technical wizardry: beyond the basics of location Leveraging the full sensor suite of mobile devices Modern smartphones are bristling with sensors – GPS chips, Wi-Fi adapters, cellular antennas, accelerometers, gyroscopes, magnetometers, barometric sensors, and even ambient light sensors. Each of these can provide subtle, context-specific signals that refine and confirm a user’s location.
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IMGL MAGAZINE | JUNE 2025
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