Keith Whyte’s NCPG Exit Raises Questions About Future Of Responsible Gambling Movement

With Keith Whyte — choose one — (fired), (forced out), (amicably split), (left happily), (quit angrily) from the National Council on Problem Gambling, a group he helmed for over a quarter-century (which, in the timeline of online gambling, equals forever), a fair question to ask right now is simply this: What happens next?

Whyte wasn’t the singular moderate voice in the responsible gambling world, but he was more or less “the” moderate voice in the responsible gambling world, and while he posted on LinkedIn that he’ll continue to work in the space, he won’t have the NCPG brand behind him. And — perhaps even more importantly — the NCPG won’t have the Whyte brand behind them.

“Keith is agnostic on gambling,” said longtime casino exec (and Casino Reports contributor) Richard Schuetz.

And that’s about all you’re going to see by way of attributed quotes for the rest of this piece. I spoke with a bunch of people in the RG space, and no one wanted to go on record. Everyone’s a little jumpy right now.

And nobody knows what’s going on.

One question that kept coming up is the obvious: Why is Whyte out? It certainly seems he was forced out, based on the short press release from the NCPG that came out of nowhere.

And most people I talked to had questions on the same theme: Who’s pulling the strings?

“When it comes to problem gambling programs, you worry about the same thing you worry about with regulatory bodies: Who are they representing and have they been captured?” one watcher told me.

Who’s running the show?

On one hand, there were plenty of people on the “we need more stringent rules to protect Americans!” side who believed Whyte was too close to the gambling industry, and now the worry is the NCPG is going to push the industry away.

On the other hand, there were plenty of people on the “let ‘er rip, we’re all adults here” side who accused Whyte of challenging the gambling industry too much, and as a result of his leaving, that may mean the industry has “infiltrated” the NCPG.

But, as one person I spoke to pointed out, the answer is probably … both and neither.

They said things like Whyte walked the fine line of putting science and evidence together with policy pushes that attempted to maximize collaboration, that he was seen as THE (not my caps) moderate and pragmatic person in the space. They pointed out that he never threw around words like “never” and “always.”

That he was, as Schuetz said, agnostic.

Which brings us back to the opening query: What happens next?

As in, if the agnostic, moderate, pragmatic voice no longer has the pulpit at the NCPG, what happens to the RG space? What happens to the NCPG? 

On one side, you have the fire-and-brimstone crew, led by former gambling addict Harry Levant, who is the director of gambling policy with the Public Health Advocacy Institute at Northeastern University and one of the architects of the SAFE Bet Act, a piece of federal legislation that would take the knees out of the current online gambling space. An almost identical piece of legislation was just introduced on a state level in Massachusetts.

On the other side, you have — basically — the gambling industry. While they (obviously) paint a very public picture of being Very Concerned about responsible gambling, it doesn’t take a Ph.D. in psychology to recognize that without people going on tilt every now and again, there is no gambling industry. (Come on. We all know that’s true. Are we still doing “sorry not sorry”? If so, #SorryNotSorry.)

For the last quarter-century, Whyte — as the NCPG — staked his claim in the middle of all this. 

So many questions

Does the middle hold without Whyte at the helm?

Does the NCPG abandon the middle?

As of today, we don’t know. And remember: All this happened mere weeks after the Congressional hearing on sports betting (in which Whyte and Levant were two of five witnesses called, and none were called from the industry itself).

The questions just beget more questions.

Was it Whyte’s position that needed to be changed?

If so, is the NCPG about to change its position? 

Will the NCPG carry any weight without Whyte?

Will this create a vacuum in which one side or the other runs roughshod? Or will it create an environment — much like the current political climate — where everyone is dug in, yelling at each other, not willing to even hear the other side? 

One person told me that “tensions seem to be mounting” between the problem gambling advocates and the industry, and that the only people who are going to lose in this scenario are the consumers.

“There is only one Keith Whyte,” one watcher told me. “And it’s such a loss for NCPG and the entire field. A man that perfected how to play the game, yet never let the games play him or the issues he stood behind.”