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The Nevada Gaming Control Board (NGCB) will make additional efforts to amend or remove outdated gaming regulations in 2025 following several successful initiatives over the past year, according to board chairman Kirk Hendrick.

“My focus is ensuring that every division of the board is doing everything it can for the state of Nevada,” Hendrick told 91����ԭ�� GamblingCompliance on Friday (December 20).

“Decisions regarding which specific regulations need revision will be addressed in the new year.”

Additionally, Hendrick confirmed he will be presenting the NGCB’s proposed gaming reform bills to the state legislature once it reconvenes in February.

Assembly Bill 58 and Senate Bill 46 were pre-filed last month and would revise various statutory requirements relating to gaming, including enabling the NGCB to administratively approve new casino games without additional approval from the Nevada Gaming Commission (NGC).

Both bills have been referred to their respective chambers' judiciary committee. The 83rd session of the Nevada legislature is scheduled to convene on February 3 in Carson City. 

Nevada’s Republican Governor Joe Lombardo signed an executive order shortly after taking office in January 2023 ordering all executive branch agencies and departments to review all existing regulations and recommend which should be eliminated, as well as explaining why new regulations qualify for exemptions.

The NGC in September 2023 signed off on the NGCB’s recommendations to eliminate 16 regulations, which were submitted to the governor’s office in late April.

Among the regulations deleted was Regulation 5.225, Subsection 19, governing wagering accounts. The deletion of the regulation changed the requirement that licensees submit their wagering account rules for approval before implementation.

“All (decisions) to revise, remove NGC regulations had the goal of making the NGCB the most effective gaming regulatory agency in the world,” Hendrick told 91����ԭ��. “The board held more workshops and hearings with all three members present over the last two years than in any time in recent history.”

Hendrick added that he was “extremely pleased with all the regulatory workshops and hearings held in 2024”.

The NGCB over the year.

Wagering Account Use Expanded By Regulators

After a lengthy discussion during its last meeting of 2024 on Thursday (December 19), the NGC approved further amendments to Regulation 5.225 allowing wagering accounts to be used for retail purposes, or non-gaming activities, as long as those transactions take place within a licensed casino.

John Michela, senior deputy attorney general with the Nevada attorney general’s office, said the discussions around the proposed changes centered around how much to expand the possible use of wagering accounts for non-gaming purposes, from retail purchases at a licensed casino, “all the way to unlimited use like a debit card”.

“The draft recommended to you is in the middle of this,” Michela said. “This is probably the right step at this time.”

NGC chair Jennifer Togliatti expressed concern over language in the amended regulations that enable payments via wagering accounts for “any other uses approved by the (NGCB) chair”.

“What if we have a chair that feels it should be opened to all purposes,” Togliatti said. “That’s concerning to me.”

Togliatti said she was not concerned that current NGCB chair Hendrick would allow the use of wagering accounts state-wide, but was concerned that the commission would lack the authority to grant final approval.

Nevada has a two-tiered regulatory system consisting of the NGCB and the NGC. The control board is a full-time agency that administers the Nevada Gaming Control Act, but its corresponding regulations are adopted by the five-member commission.

NGCB staff assured commissioners that such language was common in regulations, but Togliatti was still uneasy with the lack of commission oversight. In the end, the commission requested that a report be filed in December 2025 updating the commission on the expanded use of wagering accounts.

“We’re here for a reason, a statutory reason and as time goes by, it’s kind of just being eroded and I’m concerned about that,” Togliatti said.

Hendrick, who attended Thursday’s meeting, warned that if the commission got involved in day-to-day operations it would slow down the process and potentially put Nevada behind other states.

According to the amendments to Regulation 5.225, the chair does not have ultimate discretion in expanding the usage of wagering accounts, because the regulation states that they can only be used in Nevada at a gaming licensee, tenant or affiliate of a licensee.

Jim Barbee, chief of the control board’s technical division, stressed that payment companies already have the “ability to do this now, but we have not approved its use”.

“That’s what spurred this conversation,” Barbee said.

Sports-Betting Data Provider Regulations

When the control board returns to work next year, the NGCB is expected to consider new regulations to license sports data services, which have become more important to gaming companies with the expansion of sports betting in the U.S.

“It is something that I’ve heard about, and the board has had regulatory workshops on this maybe two years ago,” Hendrick said during a workshop earlier this month.

“To me the question that has arisen, (is) do we have enough visibility and knowledge of everyone involved in the sports wagering business?” the chairman said. “As time has evolved, are we making sure those who are involved in setting the lines, and providing data, are captured within our regulatory process? I’m not saying they’re not; they might be.”

Barbee confirmed discussions were held in 2022 to consider changes to the service-provider regulation. He explained that a new entity had emerged between the information service and the event itself, which was given the placeholder name “sports-data service provider”.

“The genesis for the conversation was the current regulatory and statutory environment was created at a time when there were fewer players in the sports wagering space,” Barbee said.

Barbee explained that when the regulations were first put into place, there were three events, including the event itself, and the information service, which would monitor the events and create the lines, that would eventually be consumed by the operators.

“As sports betting has evolved, the number and types of events have also evolved,” Barbee said. “So, there is a new entity that has emerged that is somewhat in between the information service and the actual event itself.”

Should the control board move forward with regulating a “sports-data service provider”, companies that could be required to register with the control board include Sportradar, Genius Sports and LSports.

Registering with the NGCB would allow the agency to evaluate its suitability to operate in Nevada, review any violations, and work with the entities to resolve issues.

“As it stands now, our visibility stops at the information service,” Barbee said.