The Washington Post and the Spartanburg Herald Journal both carried pieces decrying the need for online gambling bans over the weekend, pointing out that prohibiting something for which there is a strong demand simply pushes people towards a black market and makes consumers less safe. Michelle Minton, a fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute in …
The commercial clout of the business media was again illustrated last week when companies with an interest in online lottery activities in China found their share prices under siege following a misinterpreted report from a news agency that the government regarded all online lottery operations as illegal. So serious was the fall-out, China’s Ministry of …
Two investment advisory firms have voiced support for suggestions by an activist investor that the board of Bwin.Party Digital Entertainment needs an infusion of new blood and thought. The proposal the election of four new directors to the board comes from Jason Ader’s SpringOwl investment company, which holds a 5.2 percent stake in the online …
The battle for the minds of Washington lawmakers on whether online gambling should be banned in the USA continued over the weekend with an op-ed in the publication The Hill by Joe Valandra, CEO of tribal i-gaming provider Great Luck LLC. After giving a summary of the background to tribal and internet gambling, Valandra wrote …
Malaysian police in the South Seberang district this week destroyed 766 desktop computers seized in recent years by the police in raids on illegal internet cafe gambling outlets. Local commander Superintendent Shafien Mamat told reporters that the raids had resulted in the successful prosecution of 200 persons for illegal gambling activity in the district, and …
Spanish online gambling operators, already burdened with bureaucratic reportage and high taxation requirements, have been advised that tighter anti-money laundering regulations must now be applied. These include the identity verification of any player receiving a pay-out of more than Euro 2,500; measures to check up on repeated winners and to better uncover suspicious player activity; …
The online betting group GVC Holdings has announced the inclusion of Betradar’s ‘Virtual Football League’ to its offering, which includes the Australian operations of Sportingbet which GVC acquired last March (see previous reports). VFL provides sports punters with a virtual reality experience through the use of 3D animation and artificial intelligence, available around the clock …
A GBP 15,000-a-year finance assistant was sent to prison for three years by a Manchester judge this week after pleading guilty to fraud by abuse of position in which she stole GBP 508,000 from her employer, a local motor claims company that has been so badly hit by the thefts that it has had to …
During the first quarter of 2014, the Mr Green Casino company continued to grow substantially, both in terms of sales and earnings, according to its Q1-2014 posting Friday. Management claims that the enterprise significantly outperformed the market, resulting in the company continuing to capture market share. The online casino group’s total revenue amounted to SEK …
Spurred on by complaints from microlenders and pawn shops who see as much as 40 percent erosion of their business through luckless gamblers resorting to bank cards rather than selling property to cover land gambling debts, the Chinese government has embarked on a crackdown at UnionPay, the only legal domestic bank-card organisation available to Chinese …
Land casino mogul Sheldon Adelson took his jihad against US online gambling to Bloomberg’s business TV channels this week in an interview with Betty Liu which showed either a deliberate or ill-informed disregard for the facts. We thought the ninth wealthiest man in America came over as somewhat overbearing and even arrogant, bolstered by a …
The Q1-2014 results for Scientific Games Corporation, which recently acquired WMS, make for rather depressing reading on the numbers side, showing an $11.1 million positive in Q1-2013 reduced to a $12.7 million loss in operating costs in the first quarter of this year. The company posted an overall net loss for the first quarter 2014 …
The overall Q1-2014 group results for US gambling giant Caesars Entertainment may have been less than stellar, but the company’s Caesars Interactive Entertainment division led by Mitch Garber turned in a creditable performance, boosting net revenues by almost 50 percent year-on-year to $124.2 million. Growth in social and mobile operations, along with the $90 million …
Milpitas police in the San Francisco Bay area teamed up with the state Department of Justice Wednesday to bust an internet sweepstakes cafe allegedly providing online casino gambling. Officers executed a search warrant for illegal online gambling at Net Connection, taking away over 50 desktop computers and other evidence. “There’s just various criminal activity that …
The Southern Gaming Summit in Biloxi, Mississippi wound down this week with one theme standing out – the need to attract a younger demographic to gambling…and some opined that presentation, technology and online gambling may be the way to do it. Slot machines designed to appeal to the baby boomers, who comprise the majority of …
Football fans on Skybet in the UK will see the company’s first live streamed football matches Thursday evening when the Simplestream-powered service kicks off by delivering League 1 and 2 matches to their screens. Multi-platform live streaming and catch-up TV service provider Simplestream has been chosen to support the streaming of all of the Sky …
Yet another contradictory US poll on legalised online gambling surfaced this week, with the latest Fairleigh Dickinson University PublicMind survey claiming that only 27 percent of respondents support the legalisation of online gambling in the 47 states that have not already legalised. Reporting on the poll, the Associated Press news agency notes that although only …
Aided by Inspired Gaming, the Slovenia state sports lottery (Športna Loterija) has launched its virtual sports betting online site well ahead of the Brazil-hosted FIFA World Cup football championships in June this year. Inspired has provided the sports lottery’s website, e-stave, with seven sports – horses, greyhounds, football, motor racing, speedway, tennis and cycling – …
The UK digital sports media group Perform has released its Q1-2014 numbers showing revenues soared 32 percent, thanks mainly to strong performances from the Opta and Watch&Bet subsidiaries. First quarter revenues reached GBP 59.6 million (Q1-2013 GBP 43 million) positioning the group strongly for the upcoming World Cup football in Brazil mid-2014. Joint CEO Simon …
Pennsylvania state Senator Kim Ward, who chairs the Senate Community, Economic and Recreational Development Committee, appears to have found positive content in the recent Econsult report on the potential for legalised online gambling, and plans to hold a hearing in her committee to discuss the study – probably early in June. Ward said Wednesday that …
The UK Gambling Commission’s latest gambling participation review conducted by ICM Research over the four quarters ended 31 March 2014 shows that online wagering actually declined year-on-year by a percentage point. The main gambling channel for Brits remained the National Lottery (41 percent of respondents), although there has been a y-o-y 3 percent decrease in …
The Baltic state of Lithuania will have to wait until August 7 to discover whether the European Commission has approved its online gambling regulations, which have prompted questions regarding certain elements that raise compliance issues with EU principles. These elements mimic regulations implemented by other EU nations – Belgium for one – which the EC …
US-based app developer PBJ Games has announced the launch of its Dollar Candy gaming app in HTML 5 format as it seeks to enter the skill gaming sector legal across many US states. The app makes 60-second skill games for real money accessible across major mobile and tablet devices. The skill games sector in the …
Oahu restaurant owner Thomas Ky (47) was sentenced to six months in jail Wednesday on a money laundering charge involving $1.3 million, allegedly from an unidentified but illegal online gambling enterprise. Exactly how Ky committed the offence is unclear – court documents show only that he became involved when he assisted former employees embroiled in …