Understanding how Compliance Affects B2C Content in the American Sweepstakes Market

Real Money operators and execs often feel surprised when first introduced to this concept, especially in the U.S. Forbidden words of sweepstakes are no joke. The vertical relies heavily on legal opinions, and the intricacies of each American state dictate that some words are compliance mortal sins.

The first example that comes to mind is the word “bet.” It’s simply forbidden. The usual substitution is “play.” That also applies to customers, who are usually referred to as players, clients, or customers, but absolutely never “bettors.”

The way to stay compliant is to refer to a document called the Sweepstakes-Compliant Dictionary.

Each company, whether an operator or a platform, normally adopts an official substitution of potentially non-compliant terms for previously approved alternatives.

It’s simply impossible to keep a close track of the imagination of each team member and approve on a case-by-case basis every potential alternative to forbidden terms.

References to fiat currency, for example, become references to FC and SC, alternative credit terms that legally aren’t money.

The best alternative, operationally, is simply to circulate a dictionary, usually in the form of an Excel or Google Sheet document, that everyone can refer to. This way, there’s no excuse for team members of operators and platforms that produce customer-facing content to include forbidden terms.

Supplier Content and Compliant Lexicon Within Sweepstakes Operations 

Sometimes, the biggest challenge, however, is to control content that comes from suppliers. GSPs have their own systems to substitute references to fiat currencies like USD or EUR in their games, and a platform or operator must trust the efficiency of the GSP.

If, for example, a slot displays a reference to Euros or Dollars within the game environment, the platform or operator needs to simply disable the game and immediately call the GSP.

The problem with that kind of situation is that GSPs have different approaches to situations like that. Some of the B2B support will be limited to business hours depending on the query, and disabling, for example, a game that is featured on an operator’s home page requires a technical choice that isn’t always easy.

Games featured on the home page usually come along with special commercial conditions like GSP discounts, or worse, maybe the operator is a shareholder of the GSP itself!

I’ve seen this situation firsthand. The sequence of things that happen when a game is faulty, not only within sweepstakes compliance issues, but others, is a situation that requires a clear protocol.

Also, sometimes the best GSP partners show their worth based on how easy it is to fix situations like this. Sometimes a discount in prices may hide poor contingency protocols on the GSP side.

The trade-offs when choosing suppliers are indeed very intricate and require firsthand experience with different suppliers from different geos.

But before even analyzing the potential issues derived from third-party suppliers, operators and platforms must do the internal homework and make sure that their own teams do not generate compliance and technical problems.

Running an online sweepstakes operation surely isn’t for the faint of heart, as the usual iGaming challenges come with the added layers of compliance, like the lexicon used in B2C environments. Additionally, doing all that within the highly litigation-prone environment of America really makes a combo that requires major efficiency across teams, operators, platforms, and suppliers to run profitable operations smoothly.