NJ Bill Would Provide Profit And Loss Statements To Gamblers

One of the best Saturday Night Live skits in recent memory — and arguably of all time — featured Nate Bargatze as George Washington, speaking to the troops about the promise of America. It quickly devolved into a discussion about “weights and measures,” and how silly it is that we measure some stuff in the metric system and other stuff in (what I just found out is called) U.S. Customary Units.

The big laughs came when the troops would ask G.W. “Why?” and his answer was “Nobody knows.”

Nobody knows.

You know what else you never know? How you did gambling on any legal site in America. Oh sure, you can download your transaction history, but good luck trying to suss out how you did on teasers, or on the NFL, or on player props. And heaven forbid you want to see your slot or blackjack play in an easily digestable format.

There is not one gambling app in America that does this cleanly and easily for you, despite — obviously — the data being available, and almost certainly being used, by the gambling companies themselves. (Yes, some are easier to navigate than others, but none are easy, and none give you the whole picture.)

And while New Jersey state Sen. John McKeon’s bill, S4280, wouldn’t exactly solve this, it would go a long way toward a day where we can choose our own laws, choose our own leaders, and choose our own way we want to find out — to the penny — how we’re doing on the gambling apps.

Nuts and bolts

The bill, which has been forwarded to committee, is straightforward enough: Every online casino and sportsbook operating in New Jersey would be required to send you, at least once a month, a simple statement showing your total winnings and losses since the last one.

The one little wrinkle in this bill that I like, and one that I imagine the gambling apps won’t, is that the statement would be sent via push notification. It won’t get buried in email, it won’t come via USPS.

So there you’ll be, putting together a 16-leg parlay while trying to get to the bonus round on Huff N’ Even More Puff Grand, and your phone will buzz and blink and you’ll get your P&L statements from every operator. You’ll know, immediately and without question, how you did last month.

Put another way: The exact same mechanism the operators currently use to nudge you about the +450 parlay boost and the no-sweat first bet is now going to be repurposed to gently inform you that you’re down $1,400 this month.

Still, it’s a modest bill, with three measly sections. It would take effect immediately if passed, but it doesn’t go nearly as far as I’d like it to. You’re still not getting your teaser breakdown, your player-prop ledger, or whatever tragedy unfolded at the live blackjack table.

It’s just total in, total out, since last time.

Glimmer

Although … the bill does say the statement has to include those win/loss totals “and any other information deemed appropriate by the division.” That’s some squishy language, even by politician standards, but it does leave open the possibility for this bill to become my dream.

“Appropriate” could one day mean a breakdown by sport, by bet type, by slot machine. The law wouldn’t need to be rewritten for that to happen, it would just be up to the New Jersey Division of Gaming Enforcement to dictate it. I am not holding my breath, but still: It would be possible.

Even without the full breakdown, McKeon’s bill, if passed, would be a start.

Listen: I get why the operators aren’t exactly forthcoming with this information, and why getting it requires a bunch of steps and knowledge of Excel. It’s probably the same reason there are no clocks in a brick-and-mortar casino.

Better for them to keep our knowledge as limited as possible.

But — and again, I’m coming at this all the time as someone pro-gambling, pro-legalization, pro-everything — it’s pretty cruddy the operators willingly make it difficult to discern if I won or lost money at any given time.

So this bill, while not the whole megillah, would be a step in the right direction. It’s more than “nobody knows.” It’s simply somebody — namely us, the gambler — knowing, very easily, if we’re winning or losing.