Next week’s Seton Hall Law School Gaming Law, Compliance and Integrity Bootcamp will attract gaming professionals from the East Coast and beyond.
But if the audience skews a bit younger than the usual gaming gathering, it’s because law students from Seton Hall will also be attending sessions on corporate ethics, regulatory structures, sports integrity, and other issues the industry faces.
According to Devon Corneal, Seton Hall Law School Associate Dean of Academics, the boot camp is an opportunity for about a dozen students considering gaming industry careers to “learn what is expected of them.”
“We really require that they participate,” Corneal says. “They have to ask questions, they have to learn to network, they’ve got to really engage in the process. It helps us understand the contours of the issues that are facing regulators and operators and professionals and help them clarify what they need to help prepare, and what they need to be, in order to enter that field.”
The Seton Hall Bootcamp is scheduled for March 4-5 at the Seton Hall University Law School in Newark, New Jersey.
Corneal notes that Seton Hall’s law school has been hosting compliance education sessions for healthcare professionals for 20 years. The growth of sports betting since the repeal of the Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act in 2018, and the state of New Jersey’s importance as one of the gaming industry’s hubs, indicated a need for the Seton Hall bootcamp.
“It seemed like this was the place where we could really contribute and start to develop corporate cultures of ethics and compliance and regulatory affairs,” Corneal says of the bootcamps, which debuted in 2020.
The growth of sports betting and the expected expansion of igaming make it imperative that gaming professionals be well-versed in compliance issues. Sessions such as “The Purpose of Compliance Officers & Compliance Committees” and “Operating Successfully in Multiple Markets & Working Effectively with Regulators” are designed to illustrate how to navigate various gaming markets.
“What we can provide people with is the capacity to understand how to go about being compliant,” Corneal says. “How to foster internal cultures of ethics and compliance and regulatory experience, how to build positive relationships with regulators, how to read and analyze statutory guidance, how to prepare for the questions that they are going to face in the industry. What’s the appropriate level of advertising, what is the language that can be used, what are the questions that your compliance committee is going to ask. We’re trying to get people to think of these things. We’re not educating people as to the exact language of New York or New Jersey statutes, for example, but what we are doing is giving them the tools and the skills to understand their operations, how to effectively manage those relationships, how to build your substantive knowledge, how to connect with your colleagues in order to make good decisions.”
The intersection of sports and gambling will be featured in the session “Maintaining Sports Integrity: The Lifecyle of an Investigation.” Corneal notes that PASPA’s repeal and the adoption of sports betting in 30 states (counting North Carolina’s March 11 launch) and the District of Columbia has caused uncertainty among professional sports and collegiate teams, coaches, and athletes.
“Education at all those levels is incredibly important,” Corneal says. “It’s making sure that the entities and teams and leagues themselves know what the contours of the regulations are so that they can implement rules that make sense, and really provide the kind of educational support they need for everyone.”
The Seton Hall bootcamp also will feature sessions on “Responsible Gaming: Stories from the Front Lines” and “Tribal Gaming: The Current State of Play.”
