Invading Vegas

What is Invading Vegas?

“This successful investigation clearly demonstrates the scale that the illegal gambling market has now reached,” said Mathias Dahms, president of the DSWV.

Dahms highlighted the significant dangers unlicensed operators pose to player protection and the overall integrity of the licensed market. He cited the absence of controls such as deposit limits, identity verification and player suspension tools. 

He also called for continued rigorous enforcement efforts alongside strict regulation to safeguard consumers, adding: “Anyone who wants to strengthen player protection must therefore consistently crack down on illegal services and strengthen legal ones.”

What is Invading Vegas?

Misleading messages: Messages that present betting as a risk-free activity, a source of income, a financial solution, a sure profit, a guaranteed method or a way to recover losses cannot be disseminated.

The restriction does not extend to strictly institutional communication made through the authorised operator’s own official channels, such as websites, apps, internal platform areas and customer service channels. In these spaces, information should be limited to company identification, official channels, access rules, self-exclusion and blocking mechanisms and mandatory warnings.

These channels may not contain promises of winnings, bonuses, invitations to bet, boosting or features designed to attract and retain user attention. The operator will also be responsible for the actions of affiliates, agencies, influencers, and other third parties who are paid or incentivised for commercial promotion. 

About Invading Vegas

For Ramiro Atucha, founder and CEO of Atucha Strategic Advisory, whether international operators can press home their scalable advantages will depend on how seriously they take localisation.

“When we talk about localisation, we’re not talking about the language or doing a game about Machu Picchu,” he tells iGB. “We’re talking about taking the effort to understand what the history of those players is, what they’re used to.

“I always found it funny when Colombia was starting, operators were saying ‘players here do not like slots’, as if they have a different DNA. Five years later, they would say, ‘well, they do like slots, but simple slots’. And five years later, they were playing all the usual [slots]. It’s not that they didn’t like slots.