Ganapati continues to spiral around the globe, as new documents confirm their troubles in Estononia. Documents obtained by CalvinAyre.com confirm Ganapati NEO Estonia OÜ filed for bankruptcy on May 27, 2020, with proceedings now nearly reaching their end.

In the document from the Harju County Court, dated from August 10, the court resolved to terminate the hearings due to the extinction of the company. They outlined Ganapati’s situation locally going into the bankruptcy:

“The debtor has obligations at least EUR 672 149.70 ($792,333) and assets EUR 521 238.65 ($614,438.73). The reason for insolvency is the recession caused by the coronavirus. The debtor considers himself to be permanently insolvent and asks declare bankruptcy.”

The court agreed with Ganapati’s given reason for bankruptcy. “The insolvency developed in March 2020 at the latest,” the document shows.

Even if the Philippines wants to tax online operations at a higher rate, a decline of the industry might wipe out any gains. The Bureau of Internal Revenue has revealed that a Covid-19 caused exodus has resulted in reduced tax revenues from Philippine Offshore Gambling Operators (POGOs).

BIR Deputy Commissioner Arnel Guballa has admitted that recent tax collections from POGOs have reduced from pre-Covid levels, reports the Philippine Daily Inquirer. “The issue is still the same, Pogos are closing down, because they are afraid of COVID-19,” said Guballa.

Actual figures are not available at the moment, but only 29 of the confirmed 55 operational POGOs have returned to work, while 99 service providers have also reopened. A lack of workforce could be a contributing factor to the other 26 not reopening yet. “Plenty of Chinese workers’ visas were canceled and they went back to China because there are plenty of COVID-19-positive cases in the Philippines,” Guballa said.

The return of the POGO industry has been worrying since May, when Covid lockdown measures were eased and operators were given the greenlight to reopen, assuming they could meet their tax obligations. By July, only 11 POGOs had been given that permission, with lawmakers speculating that payments were made under the table to get things moving.

The gambling industry can find a lot of benefits from Bitcoin SV (BSV), but it’s easy to get confused by all of the other blockchain offerings out there. Thankfully, the CoinGeek Live conference is here to clear up all the questions you might have, and Bitcoin Association Founding President Jimmy Nguyen joined our Becky Liggero Fontana on this week’s episode of the Long Con to extend an invite.

Nguyen began by explaining just how the industry got to the point it’s at. “Bitcoin and blockchain came out with this promise of excitement, and then people kind of got bored with it,” he said. “And the reality is because of two things. The Bitcoin blockchain under the form taken by what we call BTC, Bitcoin Core, which many people think is Bitcoin, did not effectively scale. Meaning, it didn’t grow to be able to support huge numbers of transactions, fast, at super, super low cost. So people stopped using it for what it was born to be, which is in the title of the Bitcoin whitepaper, ‘A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System.’ Electronic cash we use every day. Its network became congested and slow. The fee it costs to send a Bitcoin transaction would spike anytime there’s huge amounts of traffic on the network, to sometimes $4, $6, $8, at one point $40 per transaction. You’re not going to use Bitcoin in daily life if it might cost you $40 just to send a transaction, including for gaming.”

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nD_XN2Hd2-E]

“And then in addition, there became too many blockchain and cryptocurrency projects,” he added. “Everyone started looking at creating their own coin, Becky Coin, Jimmy Coin, Whoever’s Coin, to make a quick buck in that ICO (initial coin offering) craze that happened. And so we live in a world today with over 5,000 digital currencies and well over 100 blockchain projects. That’s way too many, and it’s caused confusion among businesses as to, ‘Well wait a minute, what am I supposed to use? How are they supposed to interoperate with each other?’ And I think that confusion really slowed down the growth of blockchain technology.”

Until earlier this month, Chan Weng Lin (also known as Levo Chan) held less than 1% of the shares in Macau Legend Development, the company behind Macau’s Macau Legend casino and other activity. Chan, the CEO of junket operator Tak Chun Group, then bumped that stake to 20.65% when his wholly-owned subsidiary Perfect Achiever Group (PAG) spent $137 million to increase its holdings a few days ago. That share acquisition didn’t come without a few strings attached, though, and Chan was only allowed to make the purchase by agreeing to buy an even larger stake. He has now confirmed that this is going to happen and, when the ink on the paperwork is dry, Chan will own 49.94% of Macau Legend. 

 PAG is an investment firm out of the British Virgin Islands, and Chan used it to purchase holdings previously belonging to Macau Legend Chairman David Chow and All Landmark Properties Ltd. As a result of that deal, Chow and his wife, Melinda Chan, reduced their stake from 20.89% to 9.89%. Melinda is the current CEO of Macau Legend, having been given the title following the appointment by her husband this past March. Sheldon Trainor-DeGirolamo, an executive director at the company, was involved in the transaction, as well, reducing his stake from 1.38% to 0.73%.

The latest share acquisition comes as part of the rules of the game in Hong Kong, where Macau Legend was, until recently, listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange. Trading has been suspended as a result of all the movement, and the rules stipulate that Chan could only make his initial purchase if he agreed to buy all publicly held shares, of which 29.08% are held by unidentified shareholders and another 0.11% by company director Carl Tong. 

Chan won’t get access to the shares held by certain executives, directors or former directors. Nor will he be able to purchase those controlled by Vast Field Investments Ltd, a subsidiary of SJM Holdings. SJM is the owner of the gaming license that Macau Legend uses to provide gaming services to three casinos in Macau, Babylon Casino, Landmark Casino and the Legend Palace. In addition to those venues, Macau Legend is also behind the Macau Fisherman’s Wharf hotel and a resort in Laos, and is also hoping to get a new resort up and running on the island of Cape Verde sometime next year. 

Casinos are expected to adhere to a number of laws and regulations designed to prevent money laundering and other illicit activity. Questions have arisen lately over whether or not Crown Resorts in Australia has been fulfilling its obligations in accordance with those guidelines, and the possibility of it being forced to give up its license no longer seems far-fetched. However, if New South Wales (NSW) thinks it will go quietly into the night, the government should think again. Crown asserts that it has an ace up its sleeve and that it’s not afraid to pull it out. If it does, it could cost the government billions of dollars in compensation. 

Specifically, if Crown is denied the ability to work with Asian junkets, NSW could be on the hook for a massive amount of money. According to The Sydney Morning Herald, there’s language in the original agreement established between the casino operator and the government that addresses the company’s financial stability in the event the government makes changes to its license. The language in that clause, asserts Crown, gives it the right to demand a payout of 10.5 times the amount the change would make to its bottom line. The clause reportedly covers all of Crown’s “assets, liabilities, properties … operating results, operations, reputation or prospects.”

Crown, in a recent financial filing, indicated that its VIP segment, which comes mostly from junkets, was worth AUD$398.2 million ($290.6 million) in fiscal year 2020, which ended this past June. The year prior, the one without all the COVID-19 drama, had been worth $374.6 million. As a result, according to Crown, should the government make any changes to its license, the operator could request over ten times that amount in restitution. 

Crown has been accused of not doing a sufficient job in preventing money laundering activity, allowing war criminals to gamble at its venues, rigging machines, engaging in shady marketing tactics and playing games with regulations. The fallout comes as the company hopes to launch a new, $2-billion venue in NSW, which has put it under the regulatory microscope. A decision on whether or not it should retain its license isn’t expected to be announced until at least the beginning of February next year. 

South Korea has only one casino that is able to provide its gambling services to country residents, and it has been dealing with a lot of pressure this year because of COVID-19. Kangwon Land first closed everything down in February because of the global pandemic, then got things back up and running in May. At the time, the idea was to allow high-rollers to visit in a test to see how well everything would go. That test fell flat as the coronavirus decided to make another run in the country, and the casino shut down once again. Confident there would be a stronger, healthier light at the end of the tunnel, Kangwon Land worked diligently to prepare for today, September 21, the day it would get back to business. However, based on an update provided last Friday, today’s not looking good either, and the gambling venue won’t be back up and running until sometime next month. 

Kangwon Land provided the Korea Exchange with new information on Friday, explaining that the property will remain closed until 6 AM local time on October 5. The decision follows a move by South Korean officials to extend health protection measures in the country for an additional week as they continue to try to keep COVID-19 from spreading. The officials also plan on turning the screws on travel and other activities, which will impact the upcoming fall holiday that typically runs at the end of September. 

Located only 93 miles from the 9.73 million people who live in Seoul, the country’s capital, the continued shutdown is bad news for the property’s bottom line. Already this year, revenue is substantially off, with the property reporting a 91.4% year-on-year drop across the first six months of 2020. That put the company’s take in the red, and it now expects to lose an additional $46.4 million from this Wednesday until it reopens next month. That figure is based on the daily average of casino sales across the first half of the year, but the actual losses could be higher if July and August activity were included. 

There are now 22,975 record cases of COVID-19 in South Korea, according to the country’s Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Of these, 82 were identified over a 24-hour period from Saturday to Sunday, an indication that, while control efforts are helping, there is still more work to be done. Earlier this month, it had been reported that the daily total of new positive cases had been in the triple-digit range since August 14. 

Earlier this year, the president and CEO of the Kentucky Lottery, 72-year-old Tom Delacenserie, announced that it was time to ride off into the sunset and enjoy greener pastures. He had done what he set out to do and it was time to retire, and the Lottery began exploring its options to determine who would pick up the reins. That decision has now been made and the choice to fill the vacancy probably won’t come as a surprise to many associated with Kentucky’s gaming operations. Mary Harville, the Kentucky Lottery’s now-former senior VP, general counsel and corporate secretary, is taking over. She becomes the first female ever approved for the position. 

Before accepting her new responsibilities, Harville had to be approved by both the Lottery’s Board of Directors and Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear. She had little resistance with both and will now be able to easily step into her new role. Explains the Lottery’s board chairman, Mark Sommer, “Based upon her many years of senior leadership with the Kentucky Lottery, as Board Chair I can confidently assert that Mary’s selection as CEO is a wonderful step in keeping the Kentucky Lottery moving forward to new and bigger heights.”

Before being tapped to take over, Harville spent 16 years with the Lottery in her previous position, giving her more than ample experience with the operations. Prior to that, she was a lawyer for a law firm out of Louisville, Kentucky, for 16 years. All of her experience and knowledge should prove beneficial for the Lottery, which is coming off one of its stronger years in recent history. For fiscal 2020, it saw $1.2 billion in total sales, 6.2% higher than the $73.8 million from a year earlier. 

Harville knows she’s more than capable of holding the reins and is ready for any new challenges that might come up. She explains, “As a life-long Kentuckian and graduate of a Kentucky university, I am also proud to lead the organization that funds KEES scholarships for Kentucky college students, and my goal is to ensure we continue to provide this much-needed funding.”

The U.K.’s gambling industry is about to suffer another blow. Anytime a new group is formed, of any kind, its first goal is to make a name for itself, and this is undoubtedly what will happen as a result of the creation of the Peers for Gambling Reform (PGR). The goal of this new peer-led group in the House of Lords is to act as a kind of watchdog over the gambling industry in the country, reviewing different aspects of operations and providing recommendations to the government on reforms that should be made. Based on the continued restrictions the U.K. has been placing on the gaming industry, PGR will almost definitely look to crack down even more. 

PGR is going to be led by Lord Foster of Bath, who will serve as its chairman. Joining him as vice chairs are Lord Smith of Hindhead, Baroness Armstrong, Lord Butler and the Bishop of St Albans, Alan Smith, as well as about 145 more individuals. Smith has held his position since 2009 and has a die-hard anti-gambling stance. He is staunchly opposed to fixed odds gaming machines and was one of the figures behind the push the £2 ($2.59) limit on those machines. 

It takes a lot to win a World Series of Poker Main Event, but while it’s often said that no-one remembers the runner-up, that doesn’t apply to the man who lost the heads-up battle in 2009. While Joe Cada celebrated becoming the youngest ever winner of the Main Event aged just 21, Darvin Moon was almost as fondly remembered as the winner himself. This weekend, the poker world mourns a man who was as friendly as he was almost unsuited to the era of poker he had a hand in ushering in.

In the early hours of Sunday morning, Poker Night in America developer Todd Anderson broke the sad news that Darvin Moon passed away, at the age of just 56 years old.

The best person I ever met through poker is Darvin Moon. A man of integrity and honor. And quite possibly the most interesting person I’ve ever known. Truly. He and his wife Wendy became good friends. Sadly, Darvin succumbed to complications from surgery today. He’ll be missed. pic.twitter.com/oq0DmL74Jk

— Todd Anderson (@PokerNight_Todd) September 19, 2020

It took him long enough, but Parker ‘tonkaaaa’ Talbot finally became a WCOOP champion on Day 18 of the 2020 PokerStars World Championship of Online Poker festival. When it happened, Talbot couldn’t wait to tell an old friend all about it.

It’s fair to say that Parker Talbot and Ben Spragg have been the best of frenemies at times online, such as the time the pair of them donned Virtual Reality helmets to take each other on in a poker game with a difference.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dlBMZCCWo5s]

Talbot, playing under his usual pseudonym of ‘tonkaaaa’ on PokerStars took down the 8-Max Progressive KnockOut (PKO) event which cost $530 to enter and featured 842 players. That mammoth playing field of talent saw Talbot’s top prize end up being a massive $51,168 as he beat a fellow Canadian at the final heads-up stage.

Another high roller tournament win went the way of one of the most consistent performers on the circuit as Steve O’Dwyer once again showed that it doesn’t matter which poker table he plays at; he’s a favourite to win once he gets cards.

In the latest tournament that he dominated the final stages in, there was no final table full of players to beat, just one opponent standing between O’Dwyer and the WPT title, that’s because it was the Heads-Up World Online Championship they were battling for.

With 166 entries all paying $3,200, the #WPTWOC Heads-Up Championship saw the $500,000 guarantee exceeded by $31,200 including the registration fees collected, another decent result for the World Poker Tour and partypoker during an online series which has been something of a success at the virtual felt.

Only the top 32 places were paid once all the registrations were collated and plenty of big players missed out on the money positions, to be expected in a tournament that attracted some stellar names.

The Philippine gambling market saw its revenue fall over 95% between the first and second quarters of 2020, but online gambling operators apparently contributed precisely nothing to this total.

On Friday, the Philippine Amusement and Gaming Corporation (PAGCOR) issued its Q2 gaming industry financial report, which showed total gross gambling revenue of just P2.4b (US$49.9m) in the three months ending June 30, down 95.4% from Q1’s P52.9b.

PAGCOR has dramatically revamped its financial reporting tables, and not in a way that offers more insight into locally licensed gambling operations. For instance, the data on Philippine Offshore Gaming Operators (POGOs) appears to have been folded into one of the categories that remain, although which one isn’t exactly clear.

POGOs were ordered to close in mid-March as the Philippines struggled with its surging COVID-19 infections, which also severely limited land-based gambling options. The first POGO sites weren’t cleared to reopen until late-June, so it’s possible there was simply no POGO revenue in Q2 to report.

Google’s gambling policies briefly forced Indian online payment processor Paytm out of the Google Play marketplace, and while the app is back, this fight appears far from over.

Early Friday, tech giant Google issued a blog post reminding the world of its strict no-gambling policies for Google Play apps, adding that these policies also apply “if an app leads consumers to an external website that allows them to participate in paid tournaments to win real money or cash prizes.”

Paytm apparently violated these rules due to a promotion on its payment app in which users received ‘stickers’ for each transaction. Users were urged to collect five stickers and redeem them for Paytm Cashback. This ‘Paytm Cricket League’ was timed to coincide with the Indian Premier League’s 2020 season, which gets underway Saturday in the United Arab Emirates.

The expulsion of Paytm’s app set off a brief panic among its hundreds of millions of users in India, forcing Paytm to reassure customers that their funds were safe. A few hours later, Paytm’s app was restored to the Google Play market after the company removed the offending promotion.

US casino operator Hard Rock International (HRI) has once again failed to overturn the Greek government’s awarding of an integrated resort license to rival Mohegan Gaming & Entertainment (MGE).

On Friday, Greece’s highest court, the Council of State, rejected HRI’s latest appeal of the government’s decision to award the sole casino license for the €8b Hellinikon resort on the site of Athens’ old airport to MGE and its local partner, construction giant GEK Terna.

In January, Greece’s Hellenic Gaming Commission (HGC) disqualified HRI’s Hellinikon bid due to HRI’s alleged failure to provide a bank guarantee attesting to its ability to see such a massive project through to completion. HRI protested that its guarantee had only arrived four days late and accused the HGC of being biased toward MGE’s bid.  

HRI’s efforts to overturn the HGC’s ruling have found little traction in Greek courts, but the company is exploring its options with European Commission courts. There’s still time for an appeal, as Greece doesn’t expect to formally issue MGE’s casino license until next year, after it’s received MGE’s binding financial offer, meaning construction on this perpetually delayed white elephant isn’t likely to start until 2022.

UK online gambling activity continues to pull back from its pandemic high, although partly because bettors are redirecting their action to newly reopened betting shops.

Figures released Friday by the UK Gambling Commission (UKGC) show all online gambling verticals reporting gross gambling yield (GGY) declines from June to July, with poker, virtual sports and eSports falling hardest as real-world sports were recalled to life.  

Online slots GGY totaled £162.9m in July, down 2% from June, while other online casino products slipped 5% to £66m. Real-event betting dipped 4% to £209.3m, while virtual betting dropped 15% to £8m, eSports wagering was off by one-quarter £2.6m and online poker slid 23% to £9m.

In terms of the number of online bets placed, only real-event sports posted positive growth, rising 5% to 267.2m. The number of active real-event sports bettors grew by 3.7% while slots were basically flat and all other verticals reported negative growth.

This past Tuesday, the president of the University of Nebraska (UN), Ted Carter, didn’t realize he was standing in front of a live microphone when he made a comment meant to be heard only by Bob Hinson, the director of the National Strategic Research Institute (NSRI). He mentioned a pending announcement coming that same day about the return of the Big Ten to college football, which had called off its season a few months ago (they called it a postponement until 2021) because of the COVID-19 threat. However, the “powers that be” then decided that they may have been a little too eager to pull the trigger, and were ready to resume football in October. It could merely be nothing more than a major coincidence, but the timing of that Big Ten announcement came the same day that UN announced it was going to receive a huge contract from the U.S. Department of Defense (DOD), $92-million huge. 

Carter and Hinson were on hand to make the announcement about the DOD research program when the school’s president let the Big Ten cat out of the bag. The DOD had awarded the school $92 million, through its NRSI, having previously been the beneficiary of two contracts in 2012 and 2018 worth $84 million and $92 million, respectively. According to Carter, “Our research dollars coming in to support everything from early childhood development to technical agriculture and innovation, to cyber security, to again, this DOD work, has been on the positive and is still increasing.”

When the Big Ten was contemplating a halt to all fall sports in the league, the final decision was to be based on a majority vote. 11 school presidents and chancellors agreed to postpone the season, including Iowa and Ohio State – and Nebraska. Carter wasn’t involved in the subsequent vote by the league when the schools discussed whether to bring sports back, according to ESPN, but the timing of the two announcements is a little suspect and will certainly have some conspiracy theorists running wild. 

Not only is Carter the head of the UN system, but he’s also a retired Vice Admiral of the U.S. Navy. He accepted his position in December of last year, shortly after having retired from service. There’s no way to definitely ascertain that the latest NSRI award by the DOD could have been influenced by an internal Big Ten push to resume sports, although President Trump has said frequently that he thought the decision to call off the season was wrong and has lately touted his “intervention” with Big Ten brass to bring the football action back. The connection between the DOD funding and the Big Ten decision is very tenuous and thin, but it’s still something to think about. 

The number of positive cases of COVID-19 being detected is still up and down, depending on where you are in the world. Daily testing in many environments has become commonplace, and this is especially true in casinos. There have been suggestions that the nature of the gambling business makes it difficult to prevent, or even track, the coronavirus, and this is causing some concern among health officials. Las Vegas could be especially susceptible, since practically its entire world revolves around gambling, and some casino employees have already voiced their concerns about the possibility of becoming infected. Casinos are trying to do their part to keep business flowing while protecting employees and patrons, but sometimes things slip through the cracks. Wynn Resorts just reported that as a result of its ongoing testing of employees in Las Vegas, 548 staff members have been confirmed to be positive with COVID-19. 

After having to keep its Vegas operations shut down for several months because of the coronavirus, Wynn began to get back to work in the middle of June. Since then, it has been conducting random tests of its employees and taking extra precautions to ensure all areas are properly sanitized and safe in accordance with established guidelines. The casino operator indicated yesterday that it had conducted a total of 15,051 tests, thanks to the assistance of University Medical Center, and that the low rate of infection is a positive sign. It signifies that only 3.6% of its workforce has the virus, which, according to Wynn, can mostly be attributed to infections outside the workplace.

Wynn added, “The Company’s extensive Surveillance Testing Program tests groups of up to 700 employees every two weeks using an algorithm to ensure a random sample. The program catches any employees who are positive for the virus but are asymptomatic… The Company has continued to see a significant downward trend in virus positivity rates since it began its multi-faceted Pre-employment and Surveillance Testing Programs. In fact, in the recent round of Surveillance Testing conducted on September 11, only one out of 285 employees tested positive.”

In addition to the employees, there have also been some guests that have been determined to possibly be infected with COVID-19. Wynn isn’t testing everyone who walks through its doors, but explains that it has received over 500,000 customers since it reopened in June, and that those who self-identify as positive for the coronavirus, or those who display any symptoms, are given in-room testing. So far, only six have ultimately tested positive, according to Wynn’s statement.