1.  Bingo, as gambling, seldom gets much in the way of headlines, often being regarded as a somewhat unglamorous, unsophisticated game. Still, commercial bingo’s proven profitable to commercial gambling operators for years and, with the rise of the Internet, the game has joined the 21st century roll of essentially-slot-machine-like means of exploiting human weakness. With (as yet) little public notice, two pending bingo-based federal civil cases in California, recently combined by a federal judge’s order, may have large impact in the world of tribal gambling and elsewhere.
Both cases have the Iipay Nation of Santa Ysabel as named defendants, with one case being brought by the State of California and the other by the United States. Both plaintiffs seek to block the Iipay tribe from offering real-money online bingo and online poker, games which the tribe asserts fit within the category of Class II gambling under the Indian Gaming [sic] Regulatory Act (IGRA). Based on this novel and perhaps aggressive interpretation, the tribe had already begun the online bingo (at a site it named Desert Rose) without state approval. That operation was halted by an injunction the state obtained. In subsequent pleadings, the plaintiff-governments assert that both IRGA and tribal-state gambling compacts are violated by the offered or to-be-offered games which, by being offered online, constitute Class III gambling. The ultimate classification (II or III?) of these online gambling games, if online gambling is allowed at all (i.e., depending on whether the US DOJ’s much-criticized Dec. 2011 re-interpretation of the Wire Act gets reversed by legislation or by a new administration’s return to the long-correct interpretation of the Act), may have significant impact, especially given the controversy in California.
This blog’s brief summary, if course, omits details that counsel interested in tribal gambling litigation should note; if you are so interested, you are encouraged to review the cases’ pleadings and orders at U.S. District Court for the Southern District of California CASE NO. 3:14-cv-02724-AJB-NLS and CASE NO. 3:14-cv-02855-AJB-NLS. The combined cases, which now include a counterclaim and third-party complaint, are slated for trial on Feb. 9, 2016, before District Judge Battaglia.
2. Daily Fantasy Sports (DFS)-based cases exist in many jurisdictions, and other blogs cover many of these cases. This blog will do so, too, in future posts; however, for now, let’s look even a step beyond DFS gambling to the fad close on its’ heels: so-called “eSports” gambling. This growing practice involves (usually online) gambling on the actual electronic games played by the “gamer” community, often with proposition bets, and can also involve “fantasy” eSports betting.
Analysts forecast that these rapidly-growing forms of online gambling will generate scores of billions of wagered dollars as early as 2020. One such prediction, from Eilers Research, on Aug. 19, 2015, gushed that the “all-digital nature of eSports explodes the current limits on wagerable events within a given sports competition….open[ing] up new frontiers for online sportsbooks in terms of bet types, frequency, and customer control.” Litigators would do well to pay attention to this phenomenon and assess how best to affix liability on operators who violate applicable standards and laws when, as often happens, “new frontiers” in an industry develop by running roughshod over public health and safety.  With electronic games now being purposely-designed to be as addictive as possible, and with electronic gambling machines likewise being purposely-designed to be as addictive as possible (see Addiction by Design, by Natasha Dow Schull), the melding of the two seems likely to appeal to commercial gambling entrepreneurs’ basest instincts, with resultant tortious conduct and overreaching a near-certainty.

If you hadn’t seen it (and have some spare time), it’s instructive to review the massive-in-length complaint filed by the plaintiff, City of Boston, versus the state’s gambling commission and its officials.  You can access it by an internet search using the case’s filing number: 15-0012-BLS2.  It’s an impressive piece of pleading, setting out alleged flaws in the awarding of a casino license. Even if you’re not in Massachusetts, the pleading gives one a feel for what kinds of allegations these disputes involve–ones you may wish to raise when similar apparent chicanery in awarding of casino privileges can be proved where you reside.

From recent press coverage of the case, it seems Boston’s mayor has been meeting with Wynn commercial gambling personnel to perhaps discuss settlement.  One wishes the discussion would turn from dollars to policy.  Putting a commercial-gambling-cancerous outpost at the edge of Boston, one designed to drain resources from the already-poor (for example), seems like policy that a responsible administration would oppose entirely, rather than seek a financial settlement about.