Bill > HB2879

This bill adds a new chapter to Title 35 of the Pennsylvania Consolidated Statutes to establish comprehensive public health and consumer protection regulations for online gambling—defined as interactive gaming and interactive sports wagering—while creating the Online Problem Gambling Public Health Task Force within the Department of Drug and Alcohol Programs (the department). Key provisions limit individual deposits to a maximum of two per 24-hour period and cap unverified deposits at $5,000 over 180 days, require affordability assessments and mandatory daily and monthly monetary loss limits, ban credit cards and government assistance cards for funding accounts, prohibit rapid-fire games under 15 seconds, autoplay features, microbets (live, in-game proposition bets on specific plays), and VIP loyalty programs, and mandate biometric authentication for logins and large wagers. Furthermore, the legislation heavily restricts marketing by banning push notifications for bet solicitations, prohibiting algorithmic targeting based on user loss data, outlawing promotional terms like "free bet" or "risk-free" when personal funds are at risk, and forbidding advertisements on college campuses and during live sports broadcasts between 8 a.m. and 10 p.m. To fund oversight and treatment, the bill imposes a 0.75% assessment on gross interactive gaming and sports wagering revenues, collected by the Department of Revenue and deposited into a restricted account managed exclusively by the department for problem-gambling education, prevention, treatment, and secure academic research using anonymized transaction data.