College Campus Betting Bills Put Sportsbook Geofencing to the Test

On paper, it seems like a pretty straightforward idea: draw a digital line around a college campus to stop people inside it from placing mobile sports bets.

In practice, that line may have to wind around public roads, private businesses, hospitals, student housing, and mixed-use buildings. And the map would have to keep changing as the campus itself changes. 

That’s the challenge behind a pair of bills in New York that would turn college campuses into no-bet zones for mobile wagering.

If those bills become law, the minute a bettor steps onto a college campus, they would be blocked from placing a mobile sports wager.

The technology exists to do exactly that. However, there’s still the question of what happens when legal sportsbooks are asked to manage smaller, more complicated boundaries inside states where mobile sports betting is already legal. 

Assemblywoman Rebecca Kassay, who introduced A10526 in March, told CasinoBeats:

“My team continues to speak with stakeholders throughout New York State to more deeply understand the impact this may have on preventing problem gambling, especially for young adults, and how implementation will best be accomplished.”

The proposal also has a Senate companion, S10470, introduced in May by state Sen. Andrew Gounardes. His office didn’t respond to a request for comment before publication. 

GeoComply, a company that provides geolocation compliance technology to the gaming industry, confirmed to CasinoBeats that property-level geofencing is possible.

But Elizabeth Cronan, its vice president of government relations, said the technology is only one part of the equation. 

“Modern geolocation technology is capable of supporting accurate and reliable, property-level geofencing where regulators require it,” she said.  

“The real policy discussion is not whether it can be done. It is whether the added complexity and cost will meaningfully advance the intended public policy objective.”

New York Bills Would Turn College Campuses Into No-Bet Zones

The two proposals in New York would prohibit mobile sports wagering operators and platform providers from accepting or facilitating a wager from anyone physically located on a college campus in the state. 

Operators would have to use geolocation and geofencing technology to detect and block those wagers, while colleges would be required to provide the New York State Gaming Commission with the geographic data and campus boundary information needed to ensure compliance. 

If the legislation were to take effect as written, operators and platform providers would have until August 1, 2027, to comply. 

However, since the bills didn’t advance to a floor vote during the 2026 regular session, they would need to be reintroduced next year unless lawmakers take them up in a special session. 

While much of the discussion surrounding the bills has focused on how the restrictions would work, Assemblywoman Kassay said her proposal is about more than just technical fixes to stop betting on campus.

“If mobile bets cannot be placed while on a college campus — where students, faculty, and staff alike gather around the shared goal of higher education — this will not only prevent betting there, but also help to facilitate conversations and a healthier culture acknowledging the risks and signs of problem gambling,” she told CasinoBeats.

The state gaming commission would be responsible for implementing the law, including adopting rules and establishing civil penalties.

But it’s still an open question who would be responsible for defining and updating campus boundaries, how colleges would keep that geographic data current, and what happens if the map doesn’t exactly match the campus’s physical layout. 

GeoComply Says Technology Can Draw Smaller Boundaries

When we think of geolocation checks in the context of sportsbooks, state-level boundaries are typically what come to mind. 

“State-level geolocation is primarily about determining whether someone is inside or outside a legal jurisdiction,” GeoComply told CasinoBeats. 

With campus restrictions, geolocation would have to operate at a much more granular level.

“Campus or school-level restrictions require much finer precision, often down to individual properties, buildings, or even portions of a city block.”

The company pointed to regulated markets where this level of granularity is already in use. 

“Micro-geofencing already exists in certain regulated contexts where lawmakers or regulators have determined that property-level restrictions are necessary,” GeoComply explained. 

“Tribal lands are a good example in several jurisdictions such as Michigan and Arizona.”

The company also said it has “demonstrated parcel-level and building-level geofencing in regulated markets, including in Washington, D.C.”

The bigger change comes with scale. Instead of managing one outer state boundary, operators could be asked to manage thousands of much smaller restricted areas, some of which may change as colleges expand, relocate facilities, or even give up properties.

Urban Campuses Make the Map Harder to Maintain

“How do you determine and maintain updates to exactly what the boundaries are of all the college campuses throughout New York?”

That was the question Douglas Mishkin, a partner at Bryan Cave Leighton Paisner, posed during an interview with CasinoBeats.

“Some may be relatively straightforward, others in city environments, probably less so.”

New York is home to a number of urban campuses where academic buildings, dorms, public streets, and other properties sit side by side.

GeoComply said those environments can make it much more complicated to define a restricted zone.

“Many campuses are not isolated properties,” the company told CasinoBeats.

GeoComply said campuses can include “public roads, privately owned businesses, hospitals, athletic facilities, residential housing, mixed-use developments, and buildings with multiple occupants.”

The challenge is compounded by the fact that “users can also move in and out of restricted areas within seconds.”

Mishkin also pointed out that city campuses come with their own set of challenges.

“In an urban environment for a college campus, especially, you probably will have that right at the edge of a sidewalk or street, and so that’s where I think there becomes a lot more pressure on exactly where that line is drawn,” Mishkin said.

Mishkin also raised questions about whether off-campus facilities, leased spaces, and student housing would fall within a university’s boundaries.

“How exactly are those lines going to be drawn if they’re updated or changed?” he said. “Who’s sort of staying on top of that?”

The smaller the restricted area becomes, the more important the exact placement of that line becomes. 

A geofence drawn too widely could end up blocking someone who’s outside the intended no-betting zone. On the other hand, one that’s drawn too narrowly could fail to cover all the property the law is meant to include.  

“It could be overinclusive, it could be underinclusive,” Mishkin explained. 

“Someone who lives around the edge might be allowed to place bets, but they shouldn’t be, and someone who’s just outside may be blocked, even though they shouldn’t be.”

The Bills Leave Open Who Owns the Boundary

“Any geofence is only as reliable as the underlying data supporting it,” GeoComply told CasinoBeats. 

“The more granular the restrictions become, the greater the need for continuous maintenance and quality assurance.”

Under the New York bills, colleges would have to provide the gaming commission with the “necessary geographic data and campus boundary information” needed for compliance.

However, the bills themselves don’t spell out who would verify that information or how changes to a college’s property would be handled. 

Mishkin said asking any single party, whether that’s colleges, operators, or regulators, to take on this responsibility could create practical problems of its own. 

“As you put more burden on any of the parties involved here, from a dedicated resource standpoint — from personnel to technological to financial — there’s also ongoing maintenance. Who’s responsible, and what are the penalties for that?

“The more pressure you put on it, the more you’d look for what the upsides are. What are the benefits if you get this all right? Is it worth it?” he said.

When asked where legal or regulatory responsibility would fall if a geofence were wrong, outdated, too wide, or too narrow, Mishkin said isolated technical glitches would likely be handled through a sportsbook’s terms and conditions.

He also pointed to contracts between sportsbooks and their geolocation technology providers, which may allow operators to seek remedies if the technology fails to meet agreed-upon service levels.

But a pattern of failures could create a different kind of problem.

“If it’s a sort of repeated, broader issue, then, of course, you have reputational and brand considerations coming out of that. You might just lose customers,” Mishkin said.

More Restricted Zones Mean More Compliance Complexity

While New York’s proposals have garnered a fair amount of attention, it’s not the only state where lawmakers have looked at drawing smaller no-bet zones inside otherwise legal betting markets.

But the proposals in other parts of the country don’t all draw the line in the same place.

For example, in Pennsylvania, HB 2631 would require gambling operators to block access on K-12 school property. 

Meanwhile, lawmakers in Tennessee introduced companion bills, HB 1768 and SB 1831, that would have restricted mobile betting on certain public college campuses and off-campus athletic venues. However, the House version failed in subcommittee in March.

In Maryland, HB 46 would have created a pilot program to test no-gambling zones and geofencing technology at Bowie State University and Morgan State University. But that bill was withdrawn in February.

None of those bills has advanced beyond the committee stage. Still, it’s that kind of state-to-state variation that GeoComply says can make compliance harder.

“If every state adopts different definitions of restricted properties, different buffer zones, different mapping standards, or different update requirements, compliance becomes significantly more operationally intensive.

“That doesn’t necessarily make it unworkable, but it does increase implementation costs, ongoing maintenance obligations, and the potential for inconsistent consumer experiences across jurisdictions,” the company told CasinoBeats.

Mishkin made a similar point when asked what would happen if more states adopted their own versions of no-bet zones.

“The more variation in terms of the geofencing implementation that an operator is required to comply with, the more challenging it is,” he said.

That could mean sportsbooks would have to manage the outer border of every state where they operate, in addition to multiple internal boundaries governed by different definitions and requirements.

Ultimately, the operational challenge would be much bigger than simply drawing a line around the state. It would be keeping track of the growing number of lines that would have to be drawn inside of it.

New Rules Still Stop at the Regulated Market

Even the most precise geofence has one major limitation: It only applies to operators subject to the rules.

“Lawmakers should also consider that these requirements generally apply only to licensed operators that are already complying with strict player protection standards,” GeoComply’s Cronan told CasinoBeats.

GeoComply also warned that added complexity and friction for legitimate users “could have the unintended consequence of driving these players to unsafe, unregulated operators that will actively defy these new regulations.”

Joe Maloney, president of the Sports Betting Alliance, also pointed to the protections already required of legal operators.

“The legal sports betting industry is unequivocal in its zero tolerance for underage illegal betting. Legal sports betting operators utilize state-of-the-art, proven age-verification technology,” Maloney told CasinoBeats.

He contrasted those safeguards with the lack of similar requirements in the offshore market.

“Unfortunately, unregulated offshore sports books do nothing of the sort and have a proven track record of facilitating underage betting.”

That doesn’t mean campus geofencing would send all student bettors offshore. But it does mean the reach of any new restricted zone ends at the regulated market.

After all, the map can only govern operators that obey it.