A group of Canadian broadcasters are pushing the nation’s telecom regulator to establish an independent body that would have the power to order internet service providers to block the domains of certain websites.

On Monday, CANADALAND reported having obtained a draft proposal to be submitted to the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) by Bell Canada on behalf of a coalition of broadcasters, movie studios and cinema operators seeking the creation of an ‘Internet Piracy Review Agency’ (IPRA).

Under this proposal, the IPRA would be allowed to blacklist offending domains without the need for a court order. The only opportunity for judicial review would come after a domain had been added to the blacklist and ISPs had begun blocking the domain.

The broadcasters’ proposal, which was hinted at earlier this year, has taken on new significance due to the ongoing negotiations over revisions to the North American Free Trade Act (NAFTA), as well as planned reviews of Canada’s Copyright Act and Telecommunications Act. However, most observers feel Bell’s proposal is likely to fall on deaf ears.

UK gambling regulators have fined yet another online licensee for failing to adequately disclose significant conditions of promotional offers.

On Tuesday, the UK Gambling Commission (UKGC) announced that it had imposed a £100k penalty on online gambling operator Broadway Gaming Ltd for what the regulator deemed to be misleading advertising material on five Broadway-controlled websites.

In June 2016, the UK’s Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) upheld a complaint against an advert that appeared on Broadway’s Butlers Bingo website. The ASA ruled that the ‘Deposit £10. Play £35’ advert failed to communicate significant conditions that applied to this promotion.

A subsequent UKGC probe found similar shortcomings on four other Broadway sites: Bingo Diamond, Casino of Dreams, Dotty Bingo and Rehab Bingo. The UKGC concluded that Broadway had violated the UK advertising codes as well as its UKGC license conditions and codes of practice.

It was back in 2008 that Apollo and TPG combined forces for a leveraged buyout of Caesars, then Harrah’s. The timing was at once horrific and very lucky. It was horrific because the world was already in the midst of its worst recession since 1929. But it was also very lucky because the deal was made on the cusp of the most prolonged period of extremely low interest rates the world has ever seen, enabling Caesars to service its obscene debt load for just long enough to eke out some convoluted deal that kept it going. Without those extremely low rates, no incarnation of Caesars could have possibly survived.

Caesars miraculously made it through by playing a very distorted and frustrating game of money-shuffle. Eventually, after throwing all the dead weight overboard and quite frankly destroying the finances of many of its initial backers in the 2008 deal, Caesars kept going. But consider the following question. What if the next recession is not accompanied with ultra-low interest rates, as was the recession of 2008?

I almost never make unqualified statements. As is the general practice in the financial prognostication world, I pepper my statements with words like “likely” and “probably” and if I’m feeling especially confident I add in a “very” or an “almost certainly”. But here I will make an unqualified absolute statement. The next recession will not by accompanied by falling interest rates. Not a chance.

Penn National Gaming and Pinnacle Entertainment are discussing a merger. The two regional casino firms are already partners in many ways, not the least of which is the fact that Penn’s REIT spinoff Gaming and Leisure Properties (GLPI) owns most of Pinnacle’s real estate assets. It’s not that a merger doesn’t make any sense – it does. This is no AOL-Time Warner nonsense when mergers were taking place for the sake of merging. It’s just that however you crunch the numbers, a merged Penn-Pinnacle will be extremely leveraged at the very time that the world will be on the cusp of the next major recession, this time with rising interest rates instead of falling ones.

The user base of British online gaming technology provider GameAccount Network (GAN) has grown to almost 3 million in the third quarter, thanks to the vibrant simulated gaming market in the United States.

GAN told the London Stock Exchange and the Irish Stock Exchange that the company posted a fifth consecutive quarter of Active Player-Days growth, up 15.2 percent to 2.996 million from 1.7 million in the same period in 2016.

Dermont Smurfit, chief executive officer of GAN, attributed the growth of its user base to the company’s increased institutional outreach to the U.S., where the company conducts the predominant portion of its business activities.

At least 13 casino operators in the U.S. have taken the services of GAN’s Simulated Gaming since the gaming technology provider received its first full U.S. gaming license from New Jersey in April. GAN also has two clients of real-money regulated gaming products in New Jersey.

South Korea’s foreigner-only casino operator Paradise Co. Ltd. posted a KRW54.78 billion (US$50.6 million) revenue in November on the back of a vibrant slot machine segment.

In a disclosure to the Korea Exchange on Tuesday, Paradise said its casino revenue grew 3.9 percent in November 2017 from KRW52.73 billion (US$48.51 million) in the same period last year.

Paradise’s slots segment has fueled the casino operator’s revenue last month, surging by 36.8 percent to KRW3.47 billion (US$3.19 million) from KRW2.54 billion (US$2.34 million) in the prior-year period.

The table revenue of Paradise, on the other hand, had modest gains last month, growing 2.2 percent year-on-year to nearly KRW51.31 billion (US$47.2 million), from nearly KRW50.19 billion (US$46.17 million) a year earlier.

Chinese gaming operators are rapidly transforming Cambodia’s southern coastal city of Sihanoukville into the country’s leading casino hotspot.

This weekend, the Nikkei Asian Review reported on the construction boom engulfing Sihanoukville, with new factories, hotels and condo towers dotting an increasingly crowded skyline thanks to the ongoing influx of Chinese investment capital.

Gambling venues are also breeding like bunnies. According to Ministry of Finance spokesperson Ros Phirun, Sihanoukville currently has 16 operational casinos, and nine more are expected to open in 2018.

Phirun said most of the Chinese-backed gaming operators “come to do online gambling,” as licensed casinos are permitted to offer live-streamed action from land-based tables to gamblers in other countries. The local online industry got an additional boost in March via the installation of a new high-speed internet submarine cable.

The inaugural season of Global Poker League China ends with a victory for the Chengdu Pandas, as they clean sweep the Hong Kong Treasure Ships in the finals on Monday.

Pandas aren’t an endangered species.

I never knew that.

The term used by conservationists to describe the plight of this adorable animal is ‘vulnerable.’

Inspired by Ryan Holiday’s 14 Ways to Make Journaling The Best Thing You do in 2018, Lee Davy comes up with six reasons it will also improve your poker game.

The ancient Stoics believed the best time for reflection is either first thing in the morning or last thing at night. Roman Emperor, Marcus Aurelius, chose the morning to reflect and enshrined those thoughts in one of the most oft-cited entrepreneurial masterpieces Meditations. 

Let’s hope pro poker players cram in reflections at the end of the day because it doesn’t seem to be a morning thing.

For the past 20+ weeks, some of the world’s smartest professional poker players have shared their poker routines via the Poker Routines column.

Those hoping for a legal and regulated poker framework in the Indian state of Gujarat face up to bitter disappointment this morning after a judge throws a civil petition to call poker a game of skill into the trash.

When I think about the politicians of the world playing rock, paper, scissors with the future of online poker I feel frustrated, angry, and devoid of empathy.

Of course, my thinking is as shallow as the conversations I used to have with the barflies. I want to write to Santa, begging him to place a few poker chip sets under the political trees.

Educate them!