Washington DC’s council meeting into the apparent failure of Gambet DC has labelled Gambet and the Intralot contract for mobile wagering as a ‘failed operation’.
The criticism comes as Gambet continuously falls short of projected revenue targets, and provides ‘inadequate’ returns to the State. Amongst the biggest critics was DC council chairperson Kenyan McDuffle.
The chair commented: ““Since its launch in 2020, DC’s sports wagering program has experienced repeated operational challenges,” He continued: “The challenges directly contributed to delays in getting retail locations up and running, as well as the inability to generate a robust customer base for the district’s mobile app, Gambet DC”.
From the mobile wagering inception, the District of Columbia has received returns to the State of approximately US$440,000, while US$4m of taxpayer money has been given to private company Intralot to manage GambetDC.
The initial decision to give Intralot the contract (back in 2019) was made without an open tendering process, given the company already ran lottery operations for the State. However, it seems evident that the sports betting experiment simply hasn’t worked.
In the majority of US States where mobile and online wagering is readily available and legalized, around 90 percent of handle is generated through mobile. The District of Columbia is one of the only States whereby retail wagering is actually higher, and that’s despite limited retail locations for sports betting.
Pressure continues to mount from those who opposed the initial contract, and implore the State to no longer waste taxpayers money in a product deemed unfit for purpose and clearly failing compared to States of similar profile.
