Italy has made good on its threat to ban all gambling advertising and sponsorships, while offering further details on how soon existing deals must conclude.

Monday saw Italy’s Council of Ministers approve the latest draft of the new coalition government’s so-called Dignity Decree, which includes a blanket ban on all gambling advertising and sponsorships, regardless of the medium through which they’re promoted. The decree must now be approved by the full parliament within 60 days.

The ban is scheduled to kick in on January 1, 2019. Before the vote, Deputy PM Luigi Di Maio, who also serves as Minister of Labor and Economic Development, indicated that the decree would allow existing advertising and sponsorship contracts to continue although they couldn’t be renewed.

After the vote, Di Maio (pictured) claimed that the government would give gambling operators “a few months” to resolve their existing contracts. Francesco Silvestri, vice-president of the Five Star Movement party in the Chamber of Deputies, subsequently claimed that this transitional period “will last at most until June 30, 2019.”

What will you get when three of the biggest event brands in the gaming industry are packed into one spectacular four-day iGaming conference? Of course, the first ever iGB Live!

This year, Clarion Gaming is bringing a fresh idea to the table by consolidating three of the biggest iGaming conferences—the iGaming Super Show, European iGaming Conference, and the Amsterdam Affiliate Conference—into a single event that happening at the Amsterdam RAI on July 17-20.

Event Director Shona O’Donnell, also the creator of the iGaming Super Show, believes that it’s the right time to rebrand the three conferences into iGB Live! to meet stakeholder needs from a networking, education and business perspective in a single event.

Despite being a single event, O’Donnell said that the iGaming Super Show, EiG and the Amsterdam Affiliate Conference will retain their individual personalities, identities and visions that have made them three of the best known and respected brands in iGaming events.

The Hellenic Gaming Commission (HGC) is being pressured to launch a casino tender on or before August 30 in order for Greece to move ahead with the long-delayed €8 billion ($9.33 billion) Hellinikon project.

GTP Headlines reported that the HGC has been given until next month to launch the casino tender since the privatization of Athens’ former Hellinikon airport hinges on the issuance of a license to a casino operator.

“If there is interest in the casino license, the privatization process will move ahead swiftly,” an unnamed privatization source told the news outlet.

Greece is bent on making the integrated resort casino business a reality to assure international lenders that the country has sufficient revenue streams to pay back its debt. The Hellenic Republic has been on financial life support for eight years after the Eurozone plunged into a deep financial crisis in 2010.

Tax officers swooped down on a hundred gambling facilities across Slovakia, sealing and confiscating machines during the two-day illegal gambling bust.

The raid, which was carried out on June 28 and 29, was considered to be the biggest action since the newest gambling law took effect earlier this year, according to The Slovak Spectator.

Authorities reportedly confiscated five of the so-called quiz machines and sealed 75 gambling units during the simultaneous raids in the country. They conducted a test run on the machines to determine whether they were used for gambling. Tax officers also seized the 2017 and 2018 accounting books of four companies that were believed to be operating the quiz machines for gambling.

Ľudovít Makó, chief of the Financial Administration’s criminal department, was quoted by the news outlet saying, “In some facilities the gambling machine was turned off during the investigation, while in the others there were missing internet connections and power supplies.”

Back in March we layed out the bull and bear cases for Macau as it neared all time highs, and concluded the analysis saying that it looks unlikely that Macau stocks will go much higher until September at the earliest.

Now, as the Shanghai Composite Index is officially in a bear market, defined as 20% below its highs, Macau stocks are falling with the broader Chinese indexes. The VanEck Vectors Gaming ETF (BJK), mostly Macau stocks, is down over 4% year to date now, after being up about 8.6% as of May 2st. At best, I continue to believe that Macau will trade unpredictably up and down with no prevailing trend until this worsening trade war is worked out, and currency developments continue to unfold. More on that in a minute. The risks for a bearish downtrend are higher though than an uptrend from here as I see it.

Macau is basically following the Shanghai Composite Index more or less, though Macau has been a little bit stronger than the general Chinese stock market. This could be because there is still a lot of bearishness to work off after Macau stocks bottomed out along with oil. Which brings me to something of a strange correlation. Macau does seem to move in tandem, somewhat, with oil.

As you can see from the chart above comparing BJK with the US Oil ETF, Macau crashed from 2014 to 2016 almost in lockstep with the price of oil, bottomed along with oil, and then began climbing back up with oil. At first glance this seems strange, and maybe even counterintuitive. Usually, when commodities fall, stocks rise because the cost of doing business falls, beefing up profit margins and encouraging more consumption. So why would Macau have a correlation with oil?

The short-list for the 2018 Poker Hall of Fame nominees is out. There are two new faces, eight old ones, and Lee Davy uses a high tech AI inspired algorithm to choose Mike Matusow and Huck Seed as his picks. 

When I’m on point, I wake up moments before my alarm kicks in; I’m talking seconds.

My phone is my alarm. I leave it by the side of my bed. Airplane Mode, of course. I don’t want to catch Wi-Fi brain cancer. And when I’m blunt, it goes off, and reaches out to me, slowly, lava-like, the burn pulling me out of another dimension.

Sometimes, I am still in a hypnogogic trance.

According to a report published by brokerage firm Sanford C. Bernstein Ltd. last Friday, SJM will continue to see its share of gross gaming revenue (GGR) in Macau continue to shrink next year. This is in spite of the company’s first resort to be opened in Cotai in 2019, the Grand Lisboa Palace (GLP).

The authors of the report, financial analysts Zhen Gong, Kelsey Zhu and Vitaly Umansky, said, “While we forecast a resumption in EBITDA [earnings before interest, taxation, depreciation and amortisation] growth and margin expansion after Grand Lisboa Palace opens, in the mid-term, we expect SJM’s share in GGR will continue dropping, to an estimated 14.1 percent in 2019 and share in EBITDA will drop to 4.6 percent.”

SJM has seen its GGR continue to decrease over the past seven years. In 2011, it reported GGR of 29%, which fell to 16.1% by 2017. The casino operator hasn’t seen an increase since 2010, the year that it announced it was the leader among the six Macau casino operators with 31.3% of the city’s total GGR.

The GLP, which is reportedly costing SJM $4.6 billion to complete, is expected to open in the latter half of next year. SJM CEO So Shu Fai said last month that the casino would help the company recover some of the losses it has seen in the market share. However, this view is not supported by Bernstein.

Osaka, Japan wants to host the 2025 World Expo. Las Vegas Sands (LVS) wants a casino in Japan. In order to promote its cause, without promoting its cause, LVS and owner Sheldon Adelson have put their support behind Japan to try and help it win the bid. Adelson joins a short list of other casinos to show their support for Japan, all of which, coincidentally, are interested in securing a gaming license in the country once the government finalizes legislation on casinos.

LVS stepped up to back Japan in March, but did so with little chest-thumping. When Asia Gaming Brief spoke with the company’s managing director of global development, George Tanasijevich, he told the media outlet, “Osaka is a special business city where its long history and rich culture exist alongside technologically-sophisticated companies and warm, dynamic local people. The 2025 World Expo is an opportunity for Osaka to highlight these qualities and enhance its importance as a global city and destination.

“Las Vegas Sands is proud to be an Official Partner of Osaka’s 2025 World Expo bid. We wish Osaka the best as it gears up for the final stages of the bid, and look forward to contributing to the city’s successful holding of the 2015 World Expo if it wins the bid.”

Previously, Melco Resorts became the first to decide to back Japan in its quest in October of last year. It was followed by Caesars, Hard Rock and MGM. All of these companies have expressed interest in vying for one of three casino licenses the Japanese government will issue once casinos are authorized.