Monthly Archives: September 2017

Hong Kong Jockey Club faces HKD 1.2b hit from new typhoon

The Hong Kong Jockey Club (HKJC) turned in another record performance in its most recent fiscal year but it could take a serious weather-related hit this weekend.

Thursday saw the HKJC hold its annual general meeting, at which it revealed that its total racing, sports betting and lottery turnover in the 12 months ending June 30 was up 6.8% year-on-year to HKD 216.5b (US $27.7b), while contributions to the government through duties, taxes and charitable donations rose nearly 17% to a record HKD 30.5b.

The club’s mainstay racing operations reported turnover rising nearly 8% to HKD 115.8b, while its sports lottery turnover gained 6.8% to HKD 92.7b. The Mark Six lottery was the lone decliner, reporting sales falling 6.2% to HKD 8b.

Despite the HKJC’s much-heralded commingling deals with international racing partners, their contributions to the total pie remain modest. While commingling turnover enjoyed 77% year-on-year growth, international wagers amounted to HKD 6.1b, just 5% of the total, while commingling revenue rose 43% to HKD 361m, 7% of the total.

Quebec’s online gambling site continues to lag west coast rival

Quebec’s provincial gambling monopoly is enjoying double-digit gains in online gambling revenue but still can’t keep pace with its west coast provincial rival.

Earlier this month, Loto-Quebec released its report on its performance in the 12 months ending March 31, during which revenue rose 2.1% to C$3.6b (US $2.9b) while profits were essentially flat at C$1.23b but just managed to exceed the fiscal year target.

Loto-Quebec’s mainstay lottery ops saw revenue inch up 1.7% to C$1.83b. This category includes the Mise-o-jeu parlay sports betting product, which contributed revenue of C$76.7m, up 16.5% year-on-year. The brick-and-mortar casino vertical saw revenue rise 4% to C$838.8m, while gaming establishments gained 1.3% to C$993.5m.

Loto-Quebec’s Espacejeux.com online gambling site saw its revenue rise 29.7% to C$85.9m (US $69.4m). While the nearly one-third rise is impressive, it’s well short of the C$157.6m recently reported by the British Columbia Lottery Corporation’s PlayNow.com, which operates in a province with less than two-thirds of Quebec’s population.

Russian search engines reach deal to restrict gambling results

Russia’s telecom watchdog has reached preliminary agreement with the country’s search engines on measures to block local residents’ access to banned gambling sites.

This week, the Roskomnadzor agency convened a meeting with the country’s leading search engines, including Yandex, Sputnik and Mail.ru, to ensure that Russian citizens are denied access to the thousands of websites that the watchdog consigns to its ever-expanding blacklist each week.

In July, Russian President Vladimir Putin signed two federal laws: one requiring Russian internet service providers to block all mirror sites of blacklisted domains, and the other putting strict new curbs on Russians’ use of tools to circumvent these restrictions, including anonymizers and virtual private networks (VPN). The laws are set to take effect on October 1 and November 1, respectively.

At this week’s meeting, Roskomnadzor officials spelled out how it expects search engines to scrub online references to banned sites and the circumvention tools. The agency will establish an automated service that alerts search engines to blacklist updates, after which the companies will have 72 hours in which to purge the offender from their search results.

Typhoon Hato can’t snap Macau casinos’ 13-month winning streak

Typhoon Hato wasn’t strong enough to stop Macau’s casino industry from posting its 13th straight month of year-on-year revenue gains in August.

Figures released Friday by Macau’s Gaming Inspection and Coordination Bureau (DICJ) show the special administrative region’s casino generated revenue of just under MOP 22.7b (US $2.8b) in August, a 20.4% rise over the same month last year.

This marks the 13th consecutive month of gains since Macau snapped its 26-month revenue losing streak last year. For the year-to-date, Macau’s total gaming revenue stands at MOP 172b ($21.3b), a 19.1% improvement over this same point in 2016.

The carnage wrought by last week’s Typhoon Hato, the worst storm to hit Macau in over half a century, was expected to negatively impact August’s revenue figure after some casinos were forced to shut down due to power outages and water supply disruptions. Pre-Hato, some analysts had suggested August’s growth rate could top 25%.

SIS boosts international reach with Codere

Spanish bookmaker integrates supplier’s new greyhound service as part of five-year agreement

1st September 2017 – Leading live pictures and data supplier SIS (Sports Information Services), has signed a five-year deal with Codere to provide the Spanish bookmaker with its new and improved SIS greyhound service.

As part of the agreement, SIS will supply live pictures, commentary and data for horses and greyhounds across the operator’s entire retail estate.

The new service has been developed by working closely with race tracks and bookmakers to create an improved service which meets the market’s growing expectations.

NYX Gaming Group’s OpenBet Sportsbook delivers record volumes on Mayweather vs. McGregor bout

September 1 2017 – LONDON, NYX Gaming Group (TSX-V: NYX), the market-leading end-to-end supplier and technology provider to sports betting and gaming operators across the globe, handled record numbers of boxing bets and stakes via its OpenBet platform leading up to and during the fight between UFC champion Conor McGregor and the undefeated Floyd Mayweather on Saturday August 26th in Las Vegas.

The record saw Mayweather vs. McGregor yield an increase of 530% in total stakes and 375% in total number of bets over the previous record betting fight between Mayweather and Manny Pacquiao in 2015.

Eighty-five percent of bets placed were in favour of Irish underdog McGregor. While the total stakes were £1 million higher for Mayweather. The average bet piled on by McGregor supporters was £20 while the smart money was placed on Mayweather with an average bet six times higher at £120.

Keith O’Loughlin, Executive Vice President OpenBet commented, “OpenBet proved again that the platform we offer to operators can scale to cover very significant spikes of business. The resilience and scalability of OpenBet allows us to smash previous records with confidence and we continuously offer our customers a great experience 24×7 when it matters most. OpenBet, our customers, punters, Mayweather and McGregor all came out winners on one of the biggest fights in history – that’s pretty unique!”

Rummy companies move to Tamil Nadu as challenges to Telangana’s decrees continue

Hit by Telangana’s gaming ordinances, an online rummy company in India is turning to the Supreme Court for help.

On Friday, Glaws.In reported that Krida Sports and Games Pvt. Ltd. has filed a new civil writ petition in the Supreme Court, stating “that rummy should be allowed to be played for stakes without any interference from the police.”

Krida Sports is a Chennai-based company that is eyeing to start its rummy operations in the states of Tamil Nadu, Telangana and Andhra Pradesh.

If you recall, the Telangana government issued two new ordinances amending the state’s Gaming Act of 9174 to ban online gambling. The first was the Telangana State Gaming (Amendment) Ordinance, 2017 which added new definition of “cyber space” in the gaming legislation, making betting and gambling through the internet illegal, which means that playing online matka, sports betting, poker and rummy in the state will now incur criminal penalties.

‘Game of skill’ allows users to bet on bitcoin price movements

A new tool has joined the growing list of mechanisms that cryptocurrency investors in the United States can use to speculate the price movements of bitcoin.

Bitcoin Market Predictor is the brainchild of Chicago-based company Level Trading Field. On its website, the company said the tool is “based on a very simple pari-mutuel system,” in which 10 people make a prediction on the future value of a publicly priced item—in this case, bitcoin—and the person with the most accurate prediction wins.

Bitcoin Market Predictor is aimed at retail investors, with each game costing $50 to play, according to the company. At the moment, Coinbase’s GDAX exchange is the only exchange that allows U.S. residents to short on bitcoin—although that feature is currently disabled while the GDAX reviews ethereum’s unusual price movements in June.

In an interview with CoinDesk, Level Trading Field CEO Lanre Sarumi said “there are really no tools available” that let retail investors to make the bet when they “believe the price is going to go down.”