Caesars receives $10k fine for online gambling misdeed

The New Jersey Division of Gaming Enforcement has issued a $10,000 fine to down to Caesars Interactive. The casino-resort has received a fine for violating one of NJ’s online gambling regulations for online marketing campaigns. The company has been sending promotional emails to all of its customers and affiliates as a part of the marketing campaigns of the gambling resort as any other company does; but it made a big mistake by including 250 people who already withdrew from these promotional campaigns. New Jersey’s gambling regulation, as well as any other market legislation, considers that these are clear representations of unprofessional conduct, business malpractice, as many customers do not wish to get themselves bombarded by millions of online marketing campaigns. This is a very important issue and one of the reasons why, nowadays, businesses offer options like self-exclusion lists. According to the journal, The Press of Atlantic City, this case, something went wrong inside of Caesars Atlantic City Resort and Casino. However, the New Jersey Division of Gaming Enforcement had nothing to do but handing down the $10,000 fine to Caesars Interactive.

The fact that this has been the first fine to an online gambling operator in New Jersey sounds like some sort of scandal, as this has happened right on the first anniversary of New Jersey’s online gambling industry.  However, Caesars Interactive is no ordinary company. The casino-resort industry in the United States will always have Caesars Palace as icon. Las Vegas and Atlantic City, the most important gambling cities in the United States as well as worldwide, both have their Caesars Palace; and that fact, that image is responsible for what the company did. The casino-resort company had a problem with the promotional campaign online; their systems failed and a computer glitch made the promotional campaign to go out without excluding those customers from the self-exclusion lists. The company’s systems sent emails to 250 people who did not wish to receive these materials between February 16th and May 28th.

However, Caesars Interactive was the one to report itself to the New Jersey Division of Gaming Enforcement for violating one of the rules from the New Jersey gambling legislation. Seth Palansky, Caesars Interactive’s Vice President of Communications, said: “The issue that caused our system to inadvertently target these patrons has been fixed and we have had no incidents since. We can assure the public that this lapse on our part was not an intentional targeting of these patrons, but simply a back-end software issue that failed to properly scrub our database before certain mailings. We can assure the public that this lapse on our part was not an intentional targeting of these patrons, but simply a back-end software issue that failed to properly scrub our database before certain mailings”.