Dustin Gouker
Owner, Closing Line Consulting
Thursday, June 25, 2026 | 2:00 PM ET
Webinar Overview
State-regulated online gambling, including iGaming and sports betting, is no longer the full market in North America. While legalization has expanded slowly, a growing share of wagering activity is shifting into products like prediction markets, sweepstakes casinos, crypto platforms, and skill-based gaming.
Many of these models operate outside traditional licensing frameworks while still offering betting-like experiences to the same users, often with fewer controls and inconsistent oversight.
As regulators respond and definitions continue to evolve, licensed operators face increasing complexity, uneven competition, and new risk considerations.
In this session, sports betting and iGaming consultant Dustin Gouker will break down where the market is actually growing, how these models work, and what they mean for your compliance obligations, competitive position, and risk exposure.
Topics Include:
- How the online gambling ecosystem is expanding beyond state-regulated models into gray or quasi-regulated areas
- The scale and structure of emerging verticals such as prediction markets, sweepstakes, and crypto-based platforms
- Why competitive dynamics now extend beyond traditional licensed operators
- The regulatory and compliance challenges created by uneven oversight across these categories
- The practical limitations and risks for state-regulated iGaming and sports betting operators considering participation in these adjacent markets
Presenters
Dustin Gouker has been an executive, analyst, writer and editor in the gambling industry for more than a decade after a career in journalism. He currently runs a consultancy in the gaming and content industries and publishes two daily newsletters: The Closing Line on the gambling industry and The Event Horizon on prediction markets.
He helped build a number of sites that covered the rise of daily fantasy sports and sports betting in the United States, including Legal Sports Report. That let to a role as vice president of content at Catena Media, a publicly traded gambling affiliate company.
He’s also worked at The Washington Post and has been cited as an expert in a number of national publications, including The New York Times, Axios and CNN. He graduated from The George Washington University (’00) with a degree in political communication.
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