Dave & Buster’s announced plans this week to enable friendly wagering between patrons on Skee-Ball and other notable arcade games at D&B locations through its app, a move that has been met with backlash on social media.
Rep. Daniel Didech (D-Buffalo Grove) proposed HB 5832 in the Illinois General Assembly Thursday to prevent the arcade giant from implementing this plan in the Prairie State.
“It is inappropriate for family-friendly arcades to facilitate unregulated gambling on their premises. These businesses simply do not have the ability to oversee gambling activity in a safe and responsible manner,” Didech said in a press release.
The new bill, titled the Family Amusement Wagering Prohibition Act, would ban a family amusement establishment such as Dave & Buster’s from facilitating wagering on amusement games. It would also restrict potential advertising that promotes any type of wagering on these amusement games, so D&B’s partnership with Lucra is not off to a great start in Illinois.
What does this mean
Lucra’s technology intends to enable D&B patrons aged 18 and older to place real money wagers when competing against one another in the various amusement games that have made Dave & Buster’s notorious across its more than 200 establishments in North America. Hypothetically, if I – a 32-year-old dude – went to Dave & Buster’s with a group of other 30-something friends, I could face off against my buddy in the Hot Shots basketball game and bet $20 that I beat him, all facilitated through the functionality Lucra has been tapped to install on the D&B app.
If HB 5832 moves through the Illinois legislature and becomes law though, I wouldn’t be able to do this with my friends who live in Chicago because the bill’s language says an "amusement game" includes games of skill, games of chance, and games of a combination of skill and chance, which would encompass the arcade games that make the D&B experience what it is.
Illinois sports betting is on a hot streak in its own right, hitting a state record handle for three consecutive months from September through November of last year. However, Didech doesn’t see the legal, regulated sportsbooks in Illinois the same as what Dave & Buster’s hopes to do.
“Everyone involved in the gambling industry in Illinois undergoes thorough background checks, is required to implement security protocols, can only offer games that are fair and safe for players, and must create a responsible environment to protect minors and problem gamblers,” Didech said
Didech told CNBC that he has concerns with the lack of protections for problem gamblers as well as the risk of exposing younger people to gambling, especially since Illinois requires people to be 21 and older to gamble.
“None of those protections are in place at Dave & Buster’s locations. They haven’t even remotely done their due diligence,” Didech said.
Dave & Busted
This week has probably not gone as smoothly as the D&B PR team hoped it would when it announced its intention to bring “an unparalleled, gamified experience” to its customers through the Lucra deal.
Covers own Geoff Zochodne detailed the negative chatter resulting from Tuesday’s announcement, quite literally forecasting that state lawmakers might raise their eyebrows at Lucra’s claims that its software development kit (SDK) for skill-based gaming is not subject to the same regulatory oversight that gambling operators face.
To quote his article directly: “Still, who’s to say some state lawmaker or regulator doesn’t look at what Dave & Buster’s and Lucra are doing here and take issue with it?”
Well, Didech is the first to take action in this case, and he quickly assembled strong support within the Illinois House of Representatives with 27 of his congressional colleagues co-sponsoring the bill.
HB 5832 received a first reading and was subsequently referred to the Rules Committee for further assessment.
In a time when patience for all things gambling and gambling-adjacent is growing thin in the public eye, it seems the threat of even slightly risky behavior is triggering lawmakers to take concerted action.
