Monthly Archives: December 2017

No survivors: feds rumble Ron & Mike’s Football Pool

US authorities have reportedly shut down a major football survivor betting pool, whose surviving members now appear even more unlikely to collect any winnings.

On Thursday, ESPN scribe Darren Rovell tweeted a screenshot of a message reportedly received by members of the Ron & Mike’s Football Pool, advising them that the website “has been forced to shut down at this time and is unlikely to open again.”

On Friday, Rovell reported that he’d spoken with Joe Conway, an attorney representing the pool’s organizers, Ron Kronengold and Mike Bernstein. Conway said the website had been shut down due to circumstances that caused his clients’ business to be compromised.

Conway said Kronengold and Bernstein had been served with a search warrant but were otherwise in the dark as to what legal actions, if any, the authorities intend to take. Rovell reported that the warrant was served by federal prosecutors in the Eastern District of New York.

VIP gambling rebound has Macau junkets in expansionist mode

Macau’s resurgent VIP gambling market has casino junket operators back in expansionist mode following the sector’s lengthy period of retrenchment.

On Friday, GGRAsia reported that the Tak Chun Group junket planned to launch a new VIP gambling club at MGM China’s MGM Macau casino on Monday. The club will reportedly encompass 12 gaming tables spread across six rooms.

A little over one year ago, Tak Chun announced it had “suspended” its operations at MGM Macau, which reportedly totaled around 15 VIP tables, along with plans to relocate these tables to Sands China’s shiny new Parisian Macao property.

While Tak Chun usually plays coy with the size of its overall Macau operations, in November 2016 company CEO Levo Chan claimed that the junket operated 13 VIP clubs – including a new club with nine VIP tables at Melco Resorts & Entertainment’s Studio City resort – offering roughly 200 tables in total.

Italy online sports betting soars, poker liquidity plans stall

Online gambling operator Bet365 has emphatically reclaimed its role as the top dog in Italy’s frantically growing sports betting market.

Figures released this week by Italian gaming news outlet Agimeg show Italy’s combined retail and online sports betting market generated revenue of €147m in November, a whopping 78.2% gain over the same month last year.

Online betting accounted for €61m of November’s total, up 89% year-on-year, while online turnover gained 30.7% to €505.4m. For the year-to-date, online turnover is up 40.5% to €5.2b while online betting revenue improved 46% to €473.3m.

Despite lacking a retail betting presence, Bet365 outpaced its Italian omni-channel rivals with a 16.1% share of overall betting turnover. Snaitech played runner-up with 11.5% while Eurobet’s 10.6% narrowly edged out SKS365’s 10.45%. However, Snaitech, Eurobet and SKS365 all surpassed Bet365 in terms of overall betting revenue.