When Mike Dreitzer began his career at the Nevada Attorney General’s Office in the late 1990s, his boss was Kirk Hendrick, another up-and-coming lawyer for the state. In 2025, nearly 30 years later, Dreitzer succeeded Hendrick as chairman of the Nevada Gaming Control Board, taking the reins of perhaps the most high-profile regulatory post in US gaming.
“I accepted the role as basically the honour of my professional life, to be able to serve the state in this capacity,” Dreitzer said in an interview with iGB this month.
Overseeing Nevada’s premier industry is always complicated, but Dreitzer has had his hands full since inheriting the remainder of Hendrick’s term last June. The NGCB issued four multimillion-dollar anti-money laundering fines in 2025, and Las Vegas’ economy has been shaken by a still-ongoing tourism slump. Additionally, the state has become a key legal battleground against prediction markets, with a high-profile lawsuit against Kalshi currently working its way up the court system.
Turnover at the board itself has also created a sense of instability — Dreitzer represented the fifth chair to take office since January 2019, and his partial term only runs through January 2027. None of the previous four chairs served full four-year terms, with some leaving to pursue other opportunities. That doesn’t appear to have the same sway with Dreitzer, who has already held senior roles elsewhere in the industry. An extension of his term next year could represent a stabilising period for what has become something of a revolving door.
“If I’m fortunate enough, I would most certainly be interested in a full term following the completion of this term, but obviously that’s something that’s beyond my direct control,” he said. “But I’ve certainly expressed a willingness and desire to serve a full term after the conclusion of this one.”
Technology a key priority for new regime
While the AML investigations and Kalshi lawsuit originated under Hendrick’s tenure, Dreitzer has the obligation to uphold the board’s current endeavours while identifying new ones to pursue. With an extensive background in the supplier space, he has prioritised overhauling the board’s technology capabilities and other processes surrounding new products and services.
His goal, he said, is to modernise Nevada’s regulatory framework to adapt “at the speed of business” to keep the Silver State competitive.
“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,” Dreitzer said. “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.”
Utilising internal, external testing labs
As Dreitzer alluded to, Nevada Governor Joe Lombardo has emphasised streamlining state regulations for multiple years, and Hendrick spearheaded efforts to eliminate a total of 16 outdated regulations during his tenure.
That work has ramped up further since Dreitzer took office, with a number of regulatory workshops held in recent months to update rules related to cybersecurity, game approvals, back-end systems and more. A litany of rulemaking proposals and revisions have come through the board since the beginning of December alone.
The concern that Nevada lags behind other jurisdictions in terms of process is not new — stakeholders have lamented this dynamic for years. Dreitzer has spotlighted the board’s internal technology lab as an underutilised resource to help stem those frustrations. The lab tests products and codifies the state’s technical standards, while also working in tandem with external labs like GLI and BMM Testlabs. Dreitzer, who once served as BMM’s president of North America, said he views the state lab, external labs and licensees as being connected like a triangle.
“The labs are multinational — they’re global organizations who have expertise in all areas of gaming technology in offices all around the world, so it’s a smart move to leverage that expertise, leverage that support and have both the licensees work together with the labs and the [NGCB] and our lab to provide better service overall to the industry,” he said.
One of Dreitzer’s first moves to bolster the state lab was to promote Jeremy Eberwein to chief of technology, which was announced 2 January. Eberwein previously spent nine years with the board in addition to stints with companies like GLI and Playtech. His appointment represents the first step in Dreitzer’s overarching equation of “people, process, and proper regulation”.
Nevada groups offer praise of Dreitzer
Overall, the new board administration has been applauded by the state’s chief stakeholders. On the casino side, the Nevada Resort Association has been active in collaborating with Dreitzer, with new private gaming salon rules being one recent example.
“The industry appreciates Chair Dreitzer’s collaborative approach and his focus on keeping Nevada the gold standard in gaming regulation and innovation,” Virginia Valentine, president and CEO of the association, told iGB. “He’s thoughtful, proactive, open to feedback and committed to working with industry to get public policy right.”
The Association of Gaming Equipment Manufacturers has also been a key voice from the supplier side, which will continue as the emphasis on technology grows.
“During Mike’s tenure, he and his team have ventured to get further into the technical aspects of gaming technology and find common ground to improve and modernize the framework,” said AGEM President and CEO Daron Dorsey. “Mike is building on the work of [Chair Hendrick] and we welcome that ongoing dialogue, because there will be numerous ways we can all work together to make regulation and oversight in Nevada more aligned with the realities of today’s gaming marketplace.”
Navigating the prediction market conundrum
In the immediate future, Nevada’s war on prediction markets will be a pivotal issue, though that is largely a legal matter at this point. The NGCB was the first state regulator to issue a cease-and-desist order against Kalshi last year, and that resulted in the lawsuit that is still ongoing. Kalshi won an initial injunction, but that has since been dissolved. In the wake of that development, the board has also initiated legal action against Kalshi’s chief competitor, Polymarket.
But while Dreitzer maintains that prediction markets don’t currently comply with state law and regulations, it does not mean the technology could never come to the state in some form.
“I think you can absolutely take these new technologies, and if you do it right, you can absolutely fit them within the appropriate regulatory structure of Nevada and other states,” Dreitzer said.
Such sentiments might intrigue state licensees who also offer sports betting, like MGM and Caesars. Those companies have so far refrained from pursuing prediction market products in order to protect their Nevada licences. Meanwhile, competitors like FanDuel and DraftKings have relinquished their state licences in order to embrace the burgeoning sector. Could the likes of MGM and Caesars attempt to create a Nevada-compliant prediction product? The answer is complicated, but Dreitzer is at least open to the idea.
“I will never discourage a licensee from bringing new technology to the state of Nevada,” he said. “If they have a path forward under existing regulation, let’s sit down and have a discussion. Let’s figure out if in fact it comports with the existing rules and regulations in the state of Nevada, and if it does, then we will faithfully execute our job, like we are with the lab, and move this as another product through the lab.”
Jess Marquez
Jess has covered the global gaming industry since 2022. A native of Reno, Nevada, he’d like to note that it’s Ne-va-da, not Ne-VAH-da.
The industry veteran views the new post as the opportunity of a lifetime, but there’s no shortage of challenges ahead.