Google to Lift Online Casino Ads Ban in the US

18.02.2020, 18:35

According to a report by EGR, Google plans to remove its ban on online casinos advertising in the United States in 2020. The step occurs due to the changes in the US online gambling regulations. Since 2018 and the removal of the federal ban on sports betting in the US, both online gambling and sports betting have been legalized in numerous states across the country.

The Policy Changes

Several states have already legalized online gambling yet Google’s ban continued being active. For example, Delaware, New Jersey, and Nevada legalized online gambling in 2013, 7 years ago.

The lift of the ban has been announced for the first quarter of 2020. Google has recognized the potential revenues since the online gambling sector is rapidly growing in the US.

Online casino advertisement prohibition was expected to be overridden earlier, especially since Google made changes for sports betting after the Supreme Court decided to remove the federal ban on sports betting in May 2018. However, the changes occurred at the start of February 2020 when Google updated its policy stating that sports betting advertisements will be allowed in Indiana, Iowa, Montana, Rhode Island, and Pennsylvania. Previously, the ban has been lifted for Nevada, New Jersey, and West Virginia.

Unrelated to the US, Google also made an announcement that online gambling ads will be allowed in Colombia, Kenya, and Nigeria.

Google Careful With Gambling Regulations

Sports betting ads were allowed on Google in New Jersey from June 2019. Thus, all legal online sports betting operators from New Jersey had the ability to apply for Google’s AdWords and according to Chris Harrison, Google Industry Head of Financial Trading and Egaming: “All who (had) been granted a license in New Jersey and are operating (applied)”.

In April last year, Harrison implied that Google doesn’t want to become a gambling company but a tech and ads partners. He also said that Google is working on their policy but that there are a lot of difficulties due to different state-to-state laws in the US.

According to Harrison, regulations are the foundations of everything in Google and the fact that each state in the US has its own regulations means that they need to adjust the policy according to people from these states, which is why it is taking time to remove the ban.