Jewel Rush

What is Jewel Rush?

The Brazil betting industry has faced increasing scrutiny of late over claims that families are falling into debt because of gambling.

The president is not seeking to introduce the measures through a full bill, as the legislative process in Congress could reduce their immediate political impact ahead of the elections.

Some factions within the government, especially the Ministry of Finance, are resisting more drastic measures. The Ministry of Finance, responsible for regulating sports betting and online gaming, understands the sector’s importance to the economy. Finance Minister Dario Durigan’s difficulty lies in convincing Lula that a well-regulated activity is important for public finances. Lula has said, in line with critics of the sector, that if it were up to him, he would end betting in Brazil.

What is Jewel Rush?

While Station has remained steadfast in its opposition to Culinary, the union has made gains elsewhere in recent years. The entire Las Vegas Strip is now unionised, and Culinary used city-wide strikes as leverage in late 2023 and early 2024 to gain new multi-year labour agreements with the city’s major operators, including Wynn, Caesars and MGM.

Other than Station, Las Vegas Sands had been the other largest non-union holdout in Las Vegas for many years. But when the Venetian-Palazzo was sold to Apollo Global Management in 2021, the firm had no issues with Culinary and ratified the property’s first-ever deal with the union in 2024.

The animosity between the sides has become political over the years. Station is owned and operated by the Fertitta family, who have been prominent Republican donors for many years. Culinary is a largely Democratic organisation that typically supports and endorses left-leaning candidates.

How to play Jewel Rush

Internally, the board has also been hard at work revising and overhauling several sets of regulations, including rules for gaming salons, AML reporting and now technical standards. Dreitzer represents the fifth NGCB chair to take office since 2019, and the partial term he inherited runs through January 2027.

He told iGB earlier this year he’d “certainly be interested” in a full four-year term after the current one expires. With a background in suppliers and testing labs, Dreitzer is acutely aware of the technical challenges facing the state.

“When I started here, I had multiple conversations with various licensees who operate across multiple jurisdictions, and the consistent commentary I heard was that they would go to Nevada last, if not never at all, because there was concern about the time it would take, the lack of regulatory consistency, the lack of clarity,” he told iGB in January. “So when I came in, in view of the mandate from the governor and the work began by Chair Hendrick, I felt I needed to do something.”