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Bill

S 302

Rusty Charpia

2025-2026 Regular Session Introduced by Russell Ott

Limits sports betting harms by banning live/prop bets, tightening ads, requiring affordability checks, banning revenue-based pay, and sharing anonymized data for research.

Introduced and adopted
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Bill Summary · S 302

Summary — S.302 (2025): "An Act addressing economic, health and social harms caused by sports betting"

Note on sources and metadata
- The provided bill text is a Massachusetts Senate bill (filed by Sen. John F. Keenan et al.) that amends chapter 23N (Massachusetts sports wagering law) and chapter 93A (consumer protection). Some supplied metadata (title about school district transportation, out‑of‑state sponsors) appears inconsistent with the bill text; this summary focuses on the legislative language in the bill text.

Purpose and intent
- To reduce economic, health and social harms from sports wagering by (1) narrowing permissible bet types, (2) strengthening consumer protections and advertising oversight, (3) requiring operator data reporting to support research and interventions, and (4) limiting certain operator compensation and high‑risk wagering.

Key provisions and changes
1. Prohibits live/in‑play bets and proposition bets
- Amends chapter 23N to expressly exclude in‑play (live) bets and proposition bets from authorized sports wagering; straight bets remain allowed.

  1. Advertising controls

    • Expands section 4 to explicitly cover “advertising related to sports wagering during a televised sporting event.”
    • Amends chapter 93A to make consumer‑protection rules applicable to wagering advertising/promotions such as bonus promotions, same‑game parlays, odds boosts, reload bonuses, and “risk‑free” wagers.

  2. Expanded regulated parties

    • Adds “agents, promoters” to the list of parties subject to section 11 requirements.

  3. Affordability and betting limits

    • Requires operators to prohibit customers from placing wagers of more than $1,000 per day or $10,000 per month with an operator unless the operator has conducted an affordability assessment and determined those limits do not exceed 15% of the amount the person has available in a bank account.

  4. Compensation limits for operators and partners

    • New subsection prohibits operators, their officers, employees, affiliates, subcontractors and others from receiving compensation based on a percentage of a customer’s wagers or deposits (i.e., bans revenue tied directly to bet/deposit volumes).

  5. Numeric adjustments

    • Increases a numeric threshold in section 14 from 20 to 51 (text replaces “20” with “51”).
    • Doubles a dollar figure in section 15 from $1,000,000 to $2,000,000 (likely an increase in a financial requirement such as a bond, cap, or penalty).

  6. Broader harm tracking and research data sharing

    • Expands the harms listed in section 23 to explicitly include “suicide attempts, suicides and self‑harm among gamblers.”
    • Requires each licensed operator that accepts mobile wagers from in‑state users to annually provide customer tracking data to the commission.
      • Commission to contract with a nonprofit to develop an anonymizing system to remove PII (names, addresses, bank/credit info, last 4 digits of zip).
      • Data fields to include demographics (gender, age, region) and player behavior (frequency, length, speed, local time, amounts wagered, whether in‑play or pre‑contest, and parlay status).
      • Anonymized data to be made available to qualified researchers to study gambling addiction, develop harm‑minimization strategies, and create monitoring/detection/intervention systems.

Who is affected
- Sports wagering operators, affiliates, agents, promoters, employees, subcontractors.
- Bettors (limits, affordability assessments, and privacy implications through bank‑data checks).
- Advertisers and broadcasters (expanded ad regulation, subject to chapter 93A).
- Massachusetts Gaming Commission (data collection and contracting duties).
- Nonprofit research entities and qualified researchers with access to anonymized data.

Procedural status and timeline
- Introduced Jan 29, 2025 (MA Senate docket). Legislative record shows referrals to multiple committees (Economic Development & Emerging Technologies; Agriculture; Education) — metadata conflicts exist. Hearings were scheduled for Nov 13, 2025 (per provided actions). The bill remains under committee consideration as of the latest entries.

Potential impacts / considerations
- Would restrict product offerings (no live or prop bets) and marketing tactics that attract new/at‑risk players.
- Introduces rigorous affordability checks tied to bank data; raises privacy and implementation questions (technical, legal, and administrative).
- Bans percentage‑based compensation could disrupt current affiliate and marketing models.
- Data‑sharing requirement could create a valuable research resource for harm reduction but will require robust anonymization and governance safeguards.

Compiled from official sources — confirm details with the bill’s official record.

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