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U.S. Gambling Industry Spent 8.7x More on Celebrity Endorsements Than on Responsible Gambling Communications in 2025, 5W Research Division Finds.

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$520 million on celebrity and athlete partnerships. $60 million on responsible gambling programs and communications. The ratio is now appearing in ESG ratings, legislative testimony, and AI search citations. 

MIAMI, July 3, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — The 5W Research Division today released the 5W Responsible Gambling Communications Audit 2026 — a 24-month industry analysis examining how the U.S. gambling industry communicates about responsible gambling and what that communications posture is costing in regulatory, ESG, and AI-search outcomes. 

The audit reviewed 30 operators across sports betting, online casino & iGaming, and land-based casino. Data sources included 47,000+ earned media articles, 180+ ESG disclosures and 10-K filings, 240+ state regulator filings, and 2,400+ AI engine queries across ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, Gemini, and Google AI Overviews. 

The U.S. gambling industry spent $3.9 billion on marketing and advertising in 2025. Of that: 

$520 million went to celebrity and athlete endorsement partnerships.$60 million went to responsible gambling programs and communications.Ratio: 8.7 to 1 — the highest of any regulated American consumer category with a public-health dimension.

For context: U.S. tobacco’s ratio is below 1.5-to-1 post-Master Settlement. Alcohol is approximately 4-to-1. Pharmaceuticals run near 1-to-1 under FDA-mandated risk communication. 

Six headline findings: 

The 8.7-to-1 Ratio. No publicly traded operator surveyed has issued a specific defense in investor communications.Earned Media Underinvestment. $90M on earned media against $3.9B total — 2.3%. 34% of branded search results are not operator-controlled.ESG Disclosure Gap. Only 4 of 12 publicly traded operators disclose RG investment as a percentage of marketing spend.Regulator Communications Asymmetry. In 11 of 38 legal markets, state gaming commissioners receive proactive RG communications from fewer than three operators per year.The AI Citation Gap. BetMGM cited in 78% and DraftKings in 64% of AI responses for strongest RG programs. Six other major operators are cited in fewer than 20%.The Pre-Legalization Penalty. In Michigan, Ohio, and North Carolina, operators that published RG content in state media before legalization achieved faster regulatory approval.

The 5W RG Communications Index scored each operator on a 100-point scale. Top performers: MGM Resorts International (81/100), BetMGM Sportsbook (78/100), BetMGM Casino (74/100), DraftKings (71/100), FanDuel (66/100). Bottom performers: Las Vegas Sands (41/100), ESPN Bet (38/100), Fanatics Sportsbook (34/100), bet365 (29/100), Stake.us (22/100). 

“The gambling industry has built the most visible advertising ecosystem in American consumer marketing in five years. It has not built the credibility infrastructure to match it,” said Ronn Torossian, Founder and Chairman of 5W. “The 8.7-to-1 ratio is no longer a marketing department metric. It is a capital markets metric. It is in Sustainalytics. It is in MSCI. It is in legislative testimony in California, Texas, and Florida. And it is in the answer ChatGPT gives a parent who asks which sportsbook is safe for their kid in college.” 

The audit recommends five communications investments to close the gap: disclose RG investment as a percentage of marketing spend, build owned-media RG content the AI engines can cite, establish executive visibility on RG topics outside crisis windows, engage regulators proactively in pre-legalization markets, and reallocate 3–5 percentage points of marketing budget toward earned media at parity with celebrity partnerships — representing $117M to $195M redirected at industry scale. 

The full audit is available free at 5wpr.com/research/responsible-gambling-audit-2026/.

About 5W 

5W is the AI Communications Firm, building brand authority across the platforms where decisions now happen — ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, Gemini, and Google AI Overviews — alongside earned media, digital, and influencer channels. 5W combines public relations, digital marketing, Generative Engine Optimization (GEO), and proprietary AI visibility research to help clients measure and grow their presence in AI-driven buyer research. Founded in 2003, 5W is recognized as a Top U.S. PR Agency by O’Dwyer’s, named Agency of the Year in the American Business Awards®, honored as a 2026 Top Place to Work in Communications by Ragan, and named to Digiday’s WorkLife Employer of the Year list. 5W serves clients across B2C sectors — Beauty & Fashion, Consumer Brands, Entertainment, Food & Beverage, Health & Wellness, Travel & Hospitality, Technology, and Nonprofit — and B2B specialties including Corporate Communications, Reputation Management, Public Affairs, Crisis Communications, and Digital Marketing across Social, Influencer, Paid Media, GEO, and SEO. Learn more at 5wpr.com.

Media Contact
research@5wpr.com

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SOURCE 5W Public Relations

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He Sold Everything and Moved to Colombia for Her. Then Built the Translator They Needed and Named It After Her.

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Nayerly, a patent-pending iPhone app, is the first translator both people can talk over at once. Fully offline, 22 languages.

EDMONDS, Wash., Aug. 25, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — Michael Wilson sold everything he owned and left the US for Colombia to be with the woman he loved. They did not share a language.

Every translator they tried forced them to take turns: one speaks, stops, waits for playback, and only then can the other answer. It worked. It also turned every conversation into a transaction.

So he built his own, alone, and named it after her. Nayerly is now on the App Store.

Nayerly is full duplex, meaning it listens and speaks at the same time instead of taking turns. The app keeps listening while it is speaking, so you can talk over the translation, and it keeps listening when more than one person talks, so two people can talk over each other and it still works. No phone passed back and forth. It works like a personal interpreter sitting between you.

“Every other translator is a walkie-talkie. You talk, you stop, you wait,” Wilson said. “I built this so I could speak better with someone I love. That is the only way you make a real connection. It works so well you forget you are using it and start talking over each other.”

Everything runs on the device. All 22 language models download during setup, so it works with no Wi-Fi and no signal – on a plane, abroad, off the grid – and no audio ever leaves the phone. Hands-free works with any AirPods, not just the premium ones.

Key features:

– Full duplex: listens and speaks at the same time, so you can talk over the translation and over each other
– 100% offline in 22 languages, including Spanish, Arabic, Chinese, Japanese, Hindi and Ukrainian
– Hands-free with any AirPods
– Private by design: audio is never recorded or stored
– Free to download, 10 minutes of translation daily

Unlimited use is $1.99 per month during launch, billed annually. A one-time lifetime option includes Apple Family Sharing. New languages will be added in future updates at no additional cost to existing users.

Videos of Wilson and his girlfriend using Nayerly in Colombia, both speaking at once in English and Spanish, are on Instagram at instagram.com/nayerlyapp and TikTok at tiktok.com/@nayerlyapp.

Availability

On the App Store for iPhone now: https://apps.apple.com/app/id6762064110
More: https://nayerly.com 

About Nayerly
Nayerly is an independent iPhone app built alone by Michael Wilson and named for the woman he built it for. It exists so two people without a shared language can just talk.

Media Contact
Michael Wilson
Founder, Nayerly
421311@email4pr.com
425-220-5237

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SOURCE Nayerly

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Eleven GovTech Startups Named to Pitch at State of GovTech 2026

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Companies from across the country will pitch live to government and investor judges in Montgomery County, Maryland, September 9–10. Registration is free for government employees.

SILVER SPRING, Md., Aug. 25, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — CivStart today announced the eleven startups selected to pitch at State of GovTech 2026, the organization’s seventh annual national govtech summit, taking place September 9–10 at the Silver Spring Civic Building in Montgomery County, Maryland.

The selected companies span permitting, public safety, emergency management, grant administration, constituent services, and civic infrastructure finance. They will pitch live on the main stage to a judging panel drawn from local government, county technology leadership, and the govtech investment community.

The 2026 Startup Cohort

Appellate  (Bentonville, AR) — system of record for police towing and vehicle custodyAyla  (Washington, D.C.) — public-sector recruiting on a live government labor-market data engineCODICE  (Washington, D.C.) — no-code permitting, licensing, and inspections platformGostly  (Westminster, MD) — real-time command center for urban infrastructureGrantwell  (Los Angeles, CA) — AI grant management across the full lifecycleGreen Stream Technologies (Wake Forest, NC) — flood and weather early warning systemsGovstream  (Seattle, WA) — AI-driven permitting intakeLabrynth  (US, Australia, EU, UK) — AI-native regulatory intelligence for permittingManyBond — crowdfinancing for community-supported local investmentReadyly  (Connecticut) — agentic AI resolving resident inquiries across every channelSamora AI  (Bellevue, WA) — multilingual voice AI for citizen information lines

The Judging Panel

Hillary Orr, Deputy Director of Transportation, City of Alexandria, Virginia Rita Reynolds, Director of Public Sector, CAI Thao Hill, Co-Founder and CEO, Govinity Tom Spenger, CEO, SOVRA Eyal Feder-Levy, CEO, Zencity

The pitch competition is one part of a two-day agenda built around working sessions rather than passive programming. Attendees draft AI use policies, run live cybersecurity breach simulations, and bring unresolved problems from their own jurisdictions to work through with peers.

State of GovTech 2026 is expected to draw more than 200 attendees, split roughly evenly between public sector leaders and the entrepreneurs, investors, and industry practitioners who serve them. The venue sits directly on the Washington Metro, and registration is free for government employees. Full agenda and registration at civstart.com/sogt26.

About CivStart

CivStart is a govtech organization connecting government leaders with the technology solutions and entrepreneurs solving public sector challenges. Through its accelerator programs, industry events, and products including Clarity and GovFit, CivStart helps state and local governments define their challenges and find partners equipped to solve them. State of GovTech is CivStart’s flagship annual summit, now in its seventh year. Learn more at civstart.com.

Media Contact:

Nick Lyell

Co-Founder & COO

421351@email4pr.com | 608.234.2166

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SOURCE CivStart

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Goodix Unveils New Generation Touch Screen Controllers for Medium and Large Displays

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SHENZHEN, China, Aug. 25, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — Goodix has launched its new-generation GT9976 series of high-performance touch screen controllers for medium and large displays, targeting premium flexible OLED tablets, foldable smartphone main screens, and other smart devices. Delivering major upgrades in gaming control, touch performance in challenging environments, and active stylus support, the series enables device makers to create differentiated large-screen products for gaming, work, and learning.

As an early commercial deployment of the series, Lenovo’s latest Legion Y700 Wuji gaming flagship tablet and Tab Pen Pro 2 integrate Goodix’s innovative portfolio, including the GT9976N touch screen controller, an active stylus driver chip, and an ultra-narrow side-key capacitive fingerprint sensor, to deliver a more responsive and immersive user experience.

Faster Response for Smoother Large-Screen Interaction

High-refresh-rate displays used in competitive gaming place greater demands on touch response and data processing. The GT9976 series features Goodix’s proprietary full-screen parallel sensing architecture, which achieves a higher signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) within a shorter scan time — significantly accelerating finger-signal capture and processing efficiency.

Supporting 7- to 9.5-inch flexible OLED displays, the new series delivers industry-leading touch report rates and instant sampling rates. From everyday browsing and app switching to sudden stops, sharp turns and rapid multi-taps in high-frame-rate games, the GT9976 series ensures smooth, precise, and highly responsive touch interaction.

Reliable, High-Precision Touch Performance in Demanding Conditions

To address the noise interference from flexible OLED panels under heavy system loads, the GT9976 series adopts an industry-leading high-noise-suppression analog front end (AFE) sampling architecture that doubles SNR over the previous generation. Combined with Goodix’s proprietary gaming algorithms, the controllers accurately identify valid touch signals even in complex noise environments, delivering stable, precise coordinate data at all times.

In demanding scenarios such as FPS, MOBA and rhythm games, the GT9976 series combines a higher SNR, high-speed scanning and sampling, and enhanced real-time noise monitoring with frequency-hopping technology to enable faster tap response and stable multi-finger control without jitter or drift. This improves responsiveness and tracking accuracy for pixel-level actions such as flick aiming, recoil control, combo execution and movement.

The series also integrates advanced dual-mode self- and mutual-capacitance sensing with complementary algorithms to improve palm rejection, effectively reducing false touches caused by grip and edge contact. Dedicated optimization for sweaty hands, wet fingers and gaming finger sleeves helps maintain sensitive and stable touch performance under challenging real-world conditions.

Enhanced Active Stylus Support for Productivity and Creativity

For mobile productivity, education and professional drawing, the GT9976 series also delivers significantly enhanced active stylus performance. When paired with Goodix active stylus driver chip, the solution supports a 360Hz pen report rate. Together with Goodix’s proprietary stylus anti-interference algorithm, it achieves outstanding linearity and precision — accurately reproducing every stroke for tasks such as note-taking, fine annotation, sketching, and handwriting practice.

For flagship OLED tablets with large screens, Goodix also offers the GT7A series, which supports display sizes ranging from 10 to 14 inches while delivering the same high overall performance, further strengthening its portfolio for mid- to large-size touch applications. Both the GT9976 and GT7A series have been validated by leading device brands and display panel manufacturers, and are set to be adopted in foldable smartphones, gaming tablets, and slim flagship tablets — enabling smoother, more precise, and more reliable large-screen interaction.

View original content to download multimedia:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/goodix-unveils-new-generation-touch-screen-controllers-for-medium-and-large-displays-302859395.html

SOURCE Goodix

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