It already feels like the Champions League and little brother tournament the Europa League are down to the business end of the competitions. With the remaining Last 16 clashes bringing teams down to a single-leg, single-country ‘Final 8’ format which will leave all the teams still in with a chance just three wins from lifting the trophy, there’s all to play for. Who will come out on top and who might fall short?

Juventus (0) vs. (1) Lyon

Cristiano Ronaldo and company have a rescue mission on their hands in Turin as they look to overcome a second leg tie where they find themselves a goal down from the tie in France and without an away goal, either.

Lyon, while not exactly match fit after Ligue 1 was cancelled upon the lockdown taking effect, will come into the game knowing that if they score once then the ‘Old Lady’ need to net three times. While Juventus are terrible odds to win the tie outright at 7/15, they are a mouthwatering 12/1 to win by the exact score of 3-1. We think that might be where the value is.

If you’ve been following this series, then you have a solid idea of how to conduct interactive communications to get things done and push communications to get your message out there. But even if you are an email hoarder, these kinds of communication can be so ephemeral, so now we look at how to ensure everyone has the information they need at their fingertips with pull communications.

When should I be using pull communications?

Pull communications are typically the least urgent information you need to share. You don’t want to distract your team or workforce from the task at hand, but you want your message to be out there for when they have a minute and can catch up on it. Not everyone needs to see it, it won’t affect the business badly if they don’t, but it needs to be somewhere in case someone wants to find it.

To use an arcane example, lets think of the washroom cleaning logbook. Not everyone in the company needs to know how often the washroom is cleaned, or who last cleaned it, and exactly what they cleaned. But for record keeping purposes, the logbook exists so that if the room is cleaned badly, we can trace back who isn’t such a fan of cleaning the urinals.

Gavin Cochrane took down the WPT World Online Championships 8-Max Championship for a top prize of $540,664 and a $15,000-entry into the season-ending Tournament of Champions including flights and accommodation as he bested a field of top-quality players to come out on top.

With a total of 1,062 entries, there was over $3 million in the prizepool, and Cochrane it was who got his name on the Mike Sexton WPT Champions Cup, coming into the final table as chip leader and riding out a dramatic last battle to emerge as a deserved winner.

Going into the final table, Cochrane had over 34 million chips, which in real terms was 115 big blinds. His nearest challenger was the other Britain-based player at the final table, Thomas Boivin, but he sat on 60 big blinds.

Despite leading as play got under way, Cochrane would suffer an early setback as his missed straight draw saw Dmitry Yurasov double-up into the lead. It was the worst possible start for Cochrane, but he used the energy to carry on playing consistently excellent poker, dominating the late stages of an event which was as fun to watch as it looked to play in.

As with all technology, mobile phone networks continue to be upgraded as innovation leads to new and improved ways to look at existing infrastructures. 3G was seen as a relatively modest jump for mobile carriers, and 4G expanded the capabilities significantly. 5G is now emerging and is expected to be so much more than just another carrier solution. The Liverpool 5G Consortium out of the UK is showing how robust the network can be, and has been given a grant of £4.3 million ($5.62 million) to further its efforts. 

Liverpool 5G describes itself as a “unique and innovative consortium of public sector health and social care suppliers, the NHS, university researchers, third sector organisations, agile local SMEs and a leading UK 5G technology vendor, who came together to deliver the DCMS-funded Liverpool 5G Testbed.” It was given the funding through a larger project that is designed to support health and social care technologies, a competition set up by the UK’s Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sports (DCMS). The DCMS has launched its 5G Testbed and Trials Programme, which hopes to encourage 5G innovation on a number of levels that have never before been possible.

The Create: Connecting Health and Social Care initiative launched by Liverpool 5G explores the use of 5G technology, which has download speeds of up to ten gigabits per second, to develop a private and independent network that will be used in health and social care applications in certain areas of Liverpool. It is being designed to operate as a test of the network’s capabilities and is expected to provide free and accessible connectivity to a number of health, social care and education services. If the project goes as planned, it could eventually be rolled out on a much larger scale.

The consortium is being led by the University of Liverpool. Joe Spencer, a professor in the school’s Department of Electrical Engineering and Electronics, explains, “This is a great opportunity to build on our previous testbed and develop the British technology that can change people’s lives by enabling affordable connectivity and reducing digital poverty.”

The focus of International Game Technology’s (IGT) Q2 earnings announcement was definitely about cost savings, as the pandemic has sucked up most of the new demand their products could satisfy. With revenues cut in half, they pretty much have to be.

IGT CEO Marco Sala admitted that results aren’t great, but they are better than expected. “Our second-quarter results reflect the intense impact of global lockdowns caused by the pandemic,” Sala said. “Thanks to strong North America Lottery performance and our swift adoption of cost-saving and avoidance measures, we delivered better cash flow than we expected back in May.”

Overall, revenues were down 48% for the quarter, down to $637 million from $1.24 billion the year prior. Gaming equipment and interactive gaming sales fell 65%, while revenues from slots and other gaming equipment was down 57%.

The North American lottery performance Sala hailed as a savior was down by only 12%, but international lottery took a bigger hit at 56%.

Wynn Resorts had lots to talk about in the second quarter earnings call, and not much of it was good news. The casino operator has flooded the zone with terrible financial results for Q2, an update on their plans for Japan, or lack-there-of, and some news on just how healthy their employees are.

Wynn revenues grim

Group-wide operating revenues are were down 94.8% in Q2, the operator reported in their latest results. That’s down from $1.66 billion for the same period in the year prior. Operating revenues were $85.7 million, resulting in a $638 million loss.

Those losses came from all across the world of course. Wynn Palace only brought in $8.7 million in operating revenue, a 98.6% drop, and Wynn Macau had $11.9 million, a 97.8% drop. Encore Boston Harbor was closed for the entire quarter and represented $19.3 million in expenses.

Many people’s first exposure to digital currency might be through something they see on YouTube, and the platform has a responsibility that they don’t get suckered in for snake oil. The platform has started taking that responsibility seriously, terminating some digital currency channels for “encouraging illegal activities.”

Altcoin Daily, a Youtube channel run by brothers Aaron and Austin Arnold, was suspended at some time around July 31 for allegedly encouraging illegal acts.

URGENT! YouTube has just terminated our channel claiming that we were “encouraging illegal activities”!

We are a news/opinion channel! We have never promoted anything illegal!

The mounting woes of Imperial Pacific International (IPI) have now resulted in indictments for two of its executives and one of its contractors facing arrest. Liwen Wu, known as Peter Wu, Jianmin Xu and MCC International have been indicted on 71 counts, with racketeering, international money laundering, and harboring and employing illegal aliens.

The two senior executives and Yan Shi, a project supervisor for MCC, were indcted by charges laid in federal court on August 1, 2020, and unsealed August 4. The charges detail contractors being sped up to finish work on the Saipan Imperial Pacific resort, and illegal laborers being imported in from China to help with the work. They also allegedly smuggled in $24 million from the U.S. to get the job done.

If convicted, they not only face heft fines, but several of the crimes alleged carry 20 year sentences.

The documents shown in court make it clear that, if the charges are true, none of this was an accident. They allege IPI and MCC planned to deceive U.S. Customs and Border Patrol by telling employees to lie to immigration and claim they were tourists. Costumes and backstories were provided, and men were teamed up with female employees to make them look more passable as tourists. The women roped into the scheme were told to act as spouses or girlfriends in exchange for a free vacation.

Melco Resorts & Entertainment (MRE) is apparently having some major financial issues – possibly more so than it wants to admit. The international casino operator has announced a new senior notes offering it is putting together that it hopes will allow it to collect $500 million to be used for working capital. While that by itself isn’t enough to cause concern, giving the current status of gambling companies everywhere because of the coronavirus, the track record of money grabs already seen this year is. In senior note offerings alone, MRE is looking to attract as much as $1 billion.

MRE launched a similar exercise just last month that saw it issue senior notes in return for $500 million. It is expected to release its second-quarter financial report within the next couple of days, but CEO Lawrence Ho has continued to be optimistic about the company’s strength, as well as the rebound of the entire industry. Some analysts aren’t on the same page, though, expecting to see a per-share loss of around $0.85 for a drop of 87% over the price a year ago. 

When MRE released its previous-quarter results, it admitted that its revenue had fallen 41.3% year-on-year, adding a net loss of $364 million compared to the net profit of $120 million in that same period. It moved quickly to cut expenses, reducing its overhead in Macau from around $3 million, which it was spending before COVID-19, to $2.2 million in May.

However, despite the losses, MRE confidently boasted of having $1.2 billion in cash and cash equivalents at the end of the first quarter. It also secured a new money line in April that provided it with another $1.6 billion in undrawn revolver credit. Next, it sold its interest in Crown Resorts in order to reduce any friction with Australian gaming regulators (and, possibly, because it needed some cash, given the loss it incurred), and that gave it another $355 million. All of that has been over the past four months, and would have given the company access to around $3.155 billion. 

The Belgian Pro League (BPL), the top soccer league in Belgium, has a new gambling partner. The sportsbook and iGaming operator bwin, one of the entities under the umbrella of GVC Holdings, has signed on with the organization in a sports gambling deal that will cover the next three seasons. The arrangement includes the BPL, the 1B Pro League and the Super Cup.

The agreement was reportedly facilitated with the help of Eleven Sports, an international sports broadcaster that will be involved in the arrangement. Game streaming rights will be given to bwin, which will allow the operator to put live matches up on its website, as well as its mobile platforms. The financial details of the arrangement haven’t been released.

The commercial head of bwin Benelux & Row, Steven Cartigny, is ready to dig in and develop a robust plan in Belgium. He explains, “bwin is extremely proud to become the exclusive betting partner of the Jupiler Pro League and Eleven Sports for the next three seasons. Thanks to its European sponsorship strategy, bwin has become a fixed value in the online sports and casino world. We also want to build a strong presence in Belgium.

“bwin has already set up a successful partnership with the German Football Association and Bundesliga 3. As a result of this positive experience, we now continue to focus on Belgian football. Belgium is a breeding ground for talented football players, who are doing a great job worldwide.”