Canada’s Intertain Group has pulled the trigger on its latest acquisition, snapping up the Jackpotjoy and Botemania online bingo brands and the Starspins casino brand from UK gaming operator Gamesys.

Intertain will pay Gamesys £425.8m upfront – including 7.4m Intertain shares worth about £57m – with top-ups of a maximum £15m provided Jackpotjoy meets certain earnings benchmarks. Intertain says the Jackpotjoy business recorded earnings of £67m from revenue of £130.9m in the 12 months ending September 2014.

In addition to securing the rights to the brands and player data, Intertain inked a 10-year deal that will see Gamesys continue to supply platform services and gaming content to the Jackpotjoy operation. Gamesys founder Noel Hayden will also join Intertain’s board as a non-executive director.

Hayden described the deal as “a perfect match,” claiming that the two companies were in ideological lockstep “from our earliest discussions.” Intertain CEO John Kennedy Fitzgerald said the acquisition was in keeping with his company’s stated focus on “the female demographic, in regulated markets.” Fitzgerald claims the deal has made Intertain the planet’s largest purveyor of “online, bingo-led gaming.”

Last June, Intertain acquired the UK-facing Costa Bingo brand via a $45m purchase of Mandalay Media. That followed Intertain’s late-2013 $70m acquisition of the B2C WagerLogic business from fellow Canucks Amaya Gaming, which holds a significant stake in Intertain. More recently, Intertain inked a letter of intent to acquire Nordic-facing operator Vera&John.

Intertain has followed Amaya’s acquisitive path to success and Fitzgerald told eGaming Review that Amaya’s blockbuster $4.9b deal to buy the Rational Group and its PokerStars cash machine had “woken up” the investment community to the potential of online gaming deals. Intertain shares rose nearly 4% on the Toronto exchange on the day’s news.

As promised, Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-UT) has reintroduced the Restoration of America’s Wire Act (RAWA), the anti-online gambling legislation written/supported/demanded by Las Vegas Sands chairman Sheldon Adelson. Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) has vowed to reintroduce RAWA in the Senate this year after it failed to come up for a vote in the previous legislative session.

The three-page bill (read it here), which is identical to the 2014 model, seeks to undo the late-2011 Department of Justice opinion that confirmed the 1961 Wire Act applied only to online sports betting. The opinion paved the way for the regulated intrastate online gambling markets in Nevada, New Jersey and Delaware, all of which would be forced to close if RAWA were to pass. RAWA would also restrict state lotteries from offering their services online.

Fortunately for those states, RAWA has about as good a chance of passing as President Obama has of joining the faces on Mount Rushmore. RAWA has been publicly slammed by a host of Republican icons, including Ron Paul and Grover Norquist, as an assault on the hallowed ground of state’s rights. The fact that Adelson is a major GOP sugar daddy has also given legislators qualms about the blatant quid pro quo that RAWA entails. To paraphrase Virgil Sollozzo, they don’t want to be seen as one of those politicians you carry in your pocket, Don Adelson, like so many nickels and dimes.

Chaffetz brushed off the controversy, telling reporters that Adelson had never personally funded any of his election campaigns. Chaffetz said he was glad Adelson supported RAWA but insisted the issue was “not just about any one person.” Chaffetz framed his anti-online gambling stance as a response to the DOJ opinion, which he called “yet another example of executive branch overreach.”

Chaffetz said the DOJ had made “what amounts to a massive policy change without debate or input from the people or their representatives.” Chaffetz insisted “that’s not the way we change laws in this country.” Of course it isn’t. If you want to pass a law without debate, you wait until the middle of the night then sneak it into a larger, unrelated piece of legislation, like the way Republicans slipped the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act (UIGEA) into the SAFE Port Act back in 2006.

DID NETANYAHU PIMP JAPAN ON ADELSON’S BEHALF?

Adelson appears to be getting a much better bang for his funding dollars in Israel. Local media is in a frenzy over Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s alleged lobbying of Japan’s government about Adelson’s desire to build a casino in the Asian country.

French online poker cash game traffic has dropped 33%, over the past three years, according to a fresh report from the French independent online gaming regulator ARJEL.

If you want to see a lot of art, queue for a exceedingly long time to climb to the top of a very large tower, or visit a cathedral that was once the home to a geezer with a colander tucked under the back of his shirt then go to France.

If you want to play poker, then don’t.

That’s not the view of a xenophobic Englishman chucking stones from across the channel. That’s the view of over a hundred French poker players who now earn their trade playing out of a different country.

And how does that effect the French online poker economy? It affects it quite a lot, actually.

On January 30th 2015, the independent French online gaming regulator Autorité de régulation des jeux en ligne (ARJEL) released the quarterly analysis of the market for online games in France (Q4: 2014).

It was painful reading.

Bertrand ‘Elky’ Grospellier, Patrick Bruel and Paul Tedeschi have taken advantage of a tough stance from the Betclic Everest Group by joining #TeamFrance ahead of the inaugural Global Poker Masters.

Billed as Poker’s World Cup, the Global Poker Masters (GPM) is one of the most eagerly anticipated events of the year. The top eight countries, as ranked by the Global Poker Index (GPI), will compete until one team is declared the champion of the world, and the French are the first to finalize their team.

They were in turmoil earlier this week after two of their stars were forced to withdraw on request of their sponsor. Fabrice Soulier and the current French No.1 Benjamin Pollak, withdrew from the line up after the GPI CEO Alex Dreyfus made it very clear that the live stream would be patchless.

A patch-free live stream didn’t suit the French managerial team at Betclic Everest, and Soulier and Pollak were soon vacating spaces that needed filling. The next two players in line were PokerStars Pro Bertrand ‘ElkY’ Grospellier, and the baby faced assassin Paul Tedeschi.

It seems PokerStars are non-too fussed about the power of the patch – as Vanessa Rousso found out this week – and neither are Winamax. The former World Series of Poker (WSOP) bracelet winner, Patrick Bruel, was added as the fifth and final member as the team’s wildcard entry.

“The first draft was great, but the second one is also good,” Says PokerNews France Chief Editor Matthieu Sustrac. “I think we have a chance to win, and Patrick is a great wildcard entry, especially for advertising the game in France. I am also delighted for Paul Tedeschi. It’s a great accomplishment for him. He’s young, a nice guy and the future of French poker.”

If the inclusion of Patrick Bruel surprises you (he carries a rank of GPI#1452) then never under-estimate the power of having a singer in your team. It’s all about morale folks, and when you have seen seven of your albums hit the top of the French charts, then the man knows how to warble a tune.

PokerStars have sued former Full Tilt Poker pro, Erick Lindgren, for an outstanding debt worth $2.5m, and have also parted ways with long-standing member of Team Pro Vanessa Rousso.

PokerStars are suing Erick Lindgren for $2.5m

I guess it’s not exactly a surprise. The men and women who once ran Full Tilt Poker strike me as the type to turn a blind eye to a $2.5m cock-up – not PokerStars.

Rational FT Enterprises Limited v. Lindgren is a fight that started on January 30th 2015, and it’s going to be interested to see how this one develops. Lindgren is a former gambling addict. He managed to accumulate a  debt load that Caesars Entertainment would be proud of. Unless he has an empty coke bottle that generates money, like the ones Dynamo uses, I would say he’s screwed.

So how does one manage to owe PokerStars $2.5m?

Here is the direct answer taken from court records.

“Pursuant to an agreement between Lindgren and Full Tilt and in accordance with Full Tilt’s capitalization table Full Tilt Poker would submit distributions via direct deposit into Lindgren’s bank account. The distributions were compensation for Lindgren’s service as a professional poker player pursuant to the agreement, under which Lindgren promoted the Full Tilt Poker brand.”

Spain’s regulated online gambling market got a boost in 2014 from sports betting, which helped push the overall market’s annual revenue up 11% to €254m. The figures were released this week by the Dirección General de Ordenación del Juego (DGOJ).

For the three months ending Dec. 31, overall online revenue rose 10.3% to €65.6m as gambling turnover rose 26% to €1.85b. Sports betting claimed €34.3m (+1.7%) of Q4’s total, while casino grew 8% to €11.1m and bingo was flat at €2m. Roulette captured 69% of casino revenue, well ahead of blackjack (29%) and baccarat (1.7%).

Poker revenue fell 3.5% to €16.6m, as a 28.7% rise in tournament poker revenue wasn’t enough to overcome a 20% fall in cash games. Cash game turnover fell 17% while tournament stakes rose 15%. (Similar patterns played themselves out in France, which saw cash games stakes fall 12% in Q4 and 14% for 2014 as a whole.)

The number of active Spanish player accounts rose 11% year-on-year but fell sequentially. Total number of registered accounts grew 12.5% to 382k. Licensed operators spent €20.1m marketing their wares, an increase of 3% year-on-year and 59% sequentially.

PokerStars Spanish-facing site has more to market following the recent relaunch of its casino offering. The casino games went offline a month ago so Stars’ boffins could tweak the software to record blackjack hand and roulette spin histories, as required by Spanish regulators. PokerStars.es has also expanded its casino offering via the launch of live dealer roulette.

PORTUGAL’S TAXING SITUATION

Across the border in Portugal, the country’s plans to tax its regulated online sports betting market have been slammed by the bean counters at PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC). The Remote Gambling Association commissioned PwC to study the issue and the results have been duly submitted to Portugal’s economic officials.